# Smallest AI review (2026): is it worth paying for? > Voice AI models and agents: text to speech, speech to text, calls Checked Nov 12, 2026 ยท graded Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA. Smallest AI is a voice platform with models for text to speech (Lightning), speech to text (Pulse) and speech to speech (Hydra, in beta), plus a builder for voice agents that take phone calls. Everything is billed by use on a pay-as-you-go account that starts with $10 in free credits, with a custom enterprise plan for large deployments. - **Category:** AI Voices & Text to Speech - **Made by:** Smallest AI - **Website:** https://smallest.ai - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Not for you if you want a flat monthly price, since there is none. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 12, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 12, 2026, Smallest AI is a paid product with a free trial. - **Pricing model:** Free trial - **Free plan:** None. - **Free trial:** $10 in free credits with full access when you sign up for pay as you go. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Enterprise | Custom | Dedicated infrastructure, a 99.99% uptime SLA, forward deployed engineers, SSO, SOC 2 support, on-premise deployment and custom concurrency. Sold through sales. | Read from https://smallest.ai/pricing/models on Nov 12, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Smallest AI before buying. ## Key features - **Lightning text to speech:** The Lightning v3.1 model lists sub-100 ms time to first audio, automatic switching between 14+ languages and 44.1 kHz output. - **Voice cloning:** The model page says a voice can be cloned from 5 seconds of audio; the pay-as-you-go comparison table lists voice cloning as not included and custom on Enterprise. - **Pulse speech to text:** Batch and real-time transcription with speaker identification, timestamps and sensitive-data protection, listed at a 5.42% word error rate. - **Hydra speech to speech:** A full-duplex speech-to-speech model that is in beta and available on request. - **Voice agents:** Build agents that run calls and campaigns, with a web widget, phone numbers at $10 a month and post-call analytics. ## Good for - Developers prototyping voice agents with usage-based billing - Teams that need both TTS and STT from one vendor - Enterprises that want on-premise deployment ## Worth knowing - Pay as you go has no monthly fee: about $0.175 per 10,000 characters for Lightning v3.1 ($0.195 for Pro) and $0.003 a minute for Pulse. - Voice agents cost roughly $0.09 to $0.21 a minute depending on the models chosen, plus a $0.01 a minute hosting fee. - Pay-as-you-go limits include 15 concurrent TTS streams, 100 TTS requests per minute and a 450M characters monthly cap. - HIPAA zero data retention is a $1,000 a month add-on, and SOC 2 compliance support and SSO are Enterprise only. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 1.8 out of 4**, graded Nov 12, 2026. Smallest AI sells text to speech, speech to text and voice agents on pay as you go, with $10 of free credit at sign-up. There is no monthly plan, so cost depends on use, and agents run $0.09 to $0.21 a minute plus hosting. HIPAA zero data retention is a $1,000 a month add-on. - **Value for money: C.** No monthly fee. Lightning v3.1 is about $0.175 per 10,000 characters and Pulse $0.003 a minute, so the bill follows usage and there is no sticker price to rank. - **Free plan and trial: C.** $10 in free credits with full access, once. After that it is pay as you go, and whether a card is needed isn't stated. - **Features: C.** Speech, speech to text and hosted agents, with enterprise on-premise. The limits include 15 concurrent TTS streams and a 450M-character monthly cap. - **Ease of use: D.** No store rating on record. It is a developer platform you call through an API. - **Platforms and integrations: C.** Web and an API, with OpenAI listed. No apps. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Smallest AI's own pages on 12 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among AI voice generators - Smallest AI's GPA of 1.8 is higher than 2 of the 43 other AI voice generators we grade, and level with 5. - It stands best on free plan and trial (C, above 12 of 43) and worst on ease of use (D, above 0). The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/ai-voices ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace Smallest AI you would be making a voice model, which you can rent by the minute but not make. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. That makes this kind of software worth paying for, not this one in particular: 36 of the 43 other AI voice generators grade higher. - You could not: A voice model, which you can rent by the minute but not make. - You could not: A voice model trained on your recordings. - You could not: An AI agent, with the models and the safeguards behind it. - You could not: Speech turned into text you can trust. - You could not: It plugs into other products, OpenAI among them, and has an API. - You could not: Hooks into the device itself: widgets. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with OpenAI **Tags:** Text to speech, Voice cloning, Transcription, AI agents, Public API ## Alternatives - [Rime](https://toolgpa.com/tools/rime): Voice models for phone agents: text to speech and speech to speech. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/rime-vs-smallest-ai) - [Cartesia](https://toolgpa.com/tools/cartesia): Low-latency speech models and voice agents for developers. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/cartesia-vs-smallest-ai) - [ElevenLabs](https://toolgpa.com/tools/elevenlabs): AI voice platform for speech, voice cloning, dubbing and voice agents. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/elevenlabs-vs-smallest-ai) - [Inworld AI](https://toolgpa.com/tools/inworld-ai): Text-to-speech, speech-to-text and LLM API with monthly credit plans. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/inworld-ai-vs-smallest-ai) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 12, 2026: - https://smallest.ai/pricing/models - https://smallest.ai/pricing/agents - https://smallest.ai Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/smallest-ai Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).