Ethical Stack.

Cartesia API

Hosted and enterprise routes for streaming speech synthesis, transcription and voice agents.

Score calculation

(2 + 5 + 2 + 1 + 7) ÷ 5 = 3.4

5 of six dimensions rated. Unrated dimensions are excluded from the average.

Full scoring method ↗
Setup details

First-party Cartesia APIs; deployment options vary by model and agreement.

What fits your needs

First-party Cartesia APIs; deployment options vary by model and agreement.

What it does

Hosted and enterprise routes for streaming speech synthesis, transcription and voice agents.

See the evidence

Route

REST/WebSocket APIs with cloud and enterprise deployment options.

See the evidence
Tradeoffs to expect

Terms and data

This is a hosted product. Review the applicable data-use, retention and model terms before sending recordings or production prompts.

See the evidence
How to switch

Get started

Use the official product or API documentation to select the relevant model and delivery route.

See the evidence
Practical questions

Rights and permissions

Check whether submitted recordings and transcripts are used for service improvement, how to disable it, how long content is kept, and how deletion works for both source audio and outputs.

See the evidence

Data path

Audio, prompts or transcripts are sent to the hosted service; connected LLMs, telephony and storage can have their own retention and training terms.

See the evidence

Energy practices

2/10↑

The public service documents a hosted route, but no comparable energy or clean-electricity report was found.

See the evidence

This hosted audio service profile scores disclosed deployment choices and operating controls, not measured energy savings. The reviewed product and company materials do not publish request-level electricity, an attributable data-center energy mix, or verified clean-power procurement for this service.

1 + 1 reporting + 0 electricity + 0 controls = 2/10. This grades documented practices and transparency.

Comparable per-minute or per-generation electricity, water use, lifecycle emissions and independently verified clean-power sourcing are not published in these sources.

Reporting1/3
The official documentation identifies the hosted runtime boundary. It does not quantify electricity or lifecycle impact for this route.
Electricity sourcing0/3
No attributable clean-electricity procurement or hourly matching evidence was found in the cited primary material.
Resource controls0/3
No documented user controls for reducing energy demand were found in these product sources.

Water disclosure

Water reporting has not been assessed for this choice.

Training data

—Depends on the model↑

The selected route can include several models, and the vendor has not published a complete audio-training rights audit here.

See the evidence

This assessment covers Cartesia API rather than claiming permission for an unnamed or changing model. The vendor’s terms explain how it may handle user-submitted prompts, recordings and outputs; those input rules don’t settle rights to the original model training recordings, compositions, lyrics or performer voices.

The serving model and release, training source ledger, composition and sound-recording permissions, performer consent or compensation, and removal outcomes remain unclear.

Your data & privacy

5/10↑

Cartesia offers enterprise Zero Data Retention for selected TTS and STT routes; cloning is excluded.

See the evidence

Cartesia’s enterprise ZDR documentation covers TTS and STT audio/text payloads and says customer content is not stored for those eligible routes. It does not cover voice cloning or voice creation; operational metadata is retained, and Playground history may be unavailable. Do not apply this control to Managed Agents or other product paths without confirming eligibility. The linked Terms and Privacy pages were last revised in June 2024.

The default retention period and post-2024 policy changes are not established here; ZDR does not protect cloning samples, and selected routes retain operational metadata.

Openness

2/10↑

The application, hosted API and model serving are proprietary; public technical docs cover integration and selection.

See the evidence

Official materials describe Cartesia API and how to use its hosted features, but do not publish its complete application or serving implementation under an open-source license. Public API documentation does not make the hosted model weights or full production stack inspectable.

Complete source code, model weights, training recipe and independent reproduction are unavailable for this hosted service.

Worker protections

1/10↑

Cartesia publishes public company and careers information, but the reviewed pages don’t confirm worker protections across its AI supply chain.

See the evidence

The reviewed company and product material provides some public visibility into the organization, but not independently verified evidence on annotation, moderation, contractor pay, worker representation, grievance handling or remedies. This score reflects what the vendor documents, not a finding that workers are mistreated. These findings concern the developer or operator. This product’s use in a particular deployment needs separate evidence.

1 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 1/10. Documented worker protections; missing disclosure is an evidence gap.

Contractor conditions, worker voice and remedy, supply-chain coverage and independent worker-level assurance are not established in these sources.

Pay & conditions0/3
No clear public evidence on pay or working conditions across employees and contractors was found in the reviewed company and product pages.
Worker voice & remedy0/3
No worker grievance, representation or remedy process was found in the reviewed public pages.
Evidence & follow-through0/3
No independent worker-level implementation audit was found in the reviewed public pages.
Workers rubric ↗

Military ties

7/10Not established↑

No military customer, contract or operational defense offering was established in the official sources reviewed for Cartesia.

See the evidence

The reviewed official company and product materials establish an audio product business but do not identify a military customer, defense contract, operational defense offering or military-use restriction. This is a bounded finding about sources checked, not proof that no relationship exists. No identity, location or supplier assumptions are used. These findings concern the developer or operator. This product’s use in a particular deployment needs separate evidence.

7 base + 0 safeguard adjustment = 7/10 (1 of 9 safeguard points; every 3 adds 1). No military relationship was established in the cited sources. This ranks above known defense ties without claiming a verified clean record.

Named customers, contract scopes, downstream deployments, customer-screening practices and independent military-use oversight may not be disclosed in the reviewed material.

Use restrictions1/4
General service terms provide baseline restrictions, but no clear blanket prohibition on military use was found.
Enforcement & oversight0/3
No public military customer review or independent defense-use oversight was found in these sources.
Relationship disclosure0/2
The reviewed pages do not name a military customer, contract scope or deployment.

No direct military or defense relationship was established in the reviewed official product, company and terms pages. This is a source-limited finding and does not certify that no relationship exists.

Military rubric ↗

BDS targets

Not listed↑

Cartesia was not named in the two official BNC technology and corporate target lists checked.

See the evidence

The official BNC corporate boycott and pressure guide and its No Tech campaign page do not name Cartesia among the current targets listed there. BDS uses selective, campaign-based targets; absence from these two lists is neither approval nor a broad assessment of company relationships. These findings concern the developer or operator. This product’s use in a particular deployment needs separate evidence.

This categorical check covers only the two linked BNC lists as reviewed on the date shown; local campaigns and future list updates may differ.

More from Cartesia

All sources

Side by side