Hume AI Octave alternatives

Hume AI Octave has announced that access ends on November 13, 2026. What to consider when choosing a Hume AI Octave alternative, built from Hume AI Octave's public pages as of October 10, 2026. ReadAloud, which we make, is one disclosed option among several.

Last verified October 10, 2026.

We make ReadAloud, so it appears below as one of the options, and we say so. Options are listed alphabetically, not ranked.

Who Hume AI Octave suits

We file Hume AI Octave under model vendors: companies known mainly for language or multimodal models that also offer a speech endpoint. It has no current public price list. The audience its pages name: teams that were using Octave for expressive, prompt-designed voices; because Hume has announced the API's shutdown on 13 November 2026, new projects should plan around that date.

How Hume AI Octave prices

In Hume AI Octave's words: Monthly subscriptions with included characters and per-character overage rates on the higher plans; one subscription covered TTS, EVI and voice features. The live pricing page now redirects to the homepage, so no current price list is available to cite.

Hume AI Octave no longer has a pricing page on its own site; the copy we found is an archived snapshot. We show no Hume AI Octave price, because a price that cannot be checked against the vendor's own page may be out of date.

API shape and switching cost

Hume AI Octave does not list an OpenAI-compatible speech endpoint. Hume exposes its own endpoints (/v0/tts, /v0/tts/file, /v0/tts/stream/json, /v0/tts/stream/file, and WebSocket /v0/tts/stream/input) with utterance objects containing text, voice, description and speed.

What Hume AI Octave lists as strengths

  • Octave is built on a language model, and the docs describe it adapting delivery to the emotional meaning of the text. (source: dev.hume.ai)
  • Voice design from a plain-language description, plus acting instructions to steer delivery after a voice exists. (source: dev.hume.ai)
  • Streaming over HTTP and WebSocket, with word and phoneme timestamps and a continuation feature to keep consistency across long-form text. (source: dev.hume.ai)
  • Octave 2 (preview) lists 11 languages including Japanese, Korean, Hindi and Arabic. (source: dev.hume.ai)
  • Users retain ownership of audio they generate. (source: dev.hume.ai)

Conditions to check with Hume AI Octave

  • Hume's documentation says it is sunsetting the TTS and EVI APIs: access ends 13 November 2026, and account data is permanently deleted afterwards. (source: dev.hume.ai)
  • Free and Starter plans were limited to non-commercial use. (source: dev.hume.ai)
  • Octave 1 lists two languages, English and Spanish; the broader language list is on Octave 2, which is labelled preview. (source: dev.hume.ai)

Voices and languages

Hume AI Octave: languages listed: Octave 1: English and Spanish. Octave 2 (preview): English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, Hindi, Arabic; custom voices: Voice design from a text description; voice cloning from as little as 15 seconds of audio (availability depends on subscription tier).

Limits and formats

  • Per request: 5,000 characters per utterance; description up to 1,000 characters; up to 5 generations per request. (source: dev.hume.ai)
  • Concurrency: HTTP rate limits are set by subscription tier; the per-tier figures were on the pricing page that has since been removed. (source: dev.hume.ai)
  • Output formats listed: MP3, WAV and PCM.

Account, compliance and data handling

Hume AI Octave's pages mention HIPAA, SOC 2 and GDPR. Self-attested in the Compliance row of the archived pricing page (Enterprise column): SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA. Not re-checked on a live page because the pricing page was removed. ReadAloud does not claim HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR or other certifications. If you need one of them, ask the vendors you are considering what they can show you.

What we could not confirm about Hume AI Octave

  • Whether Hume will change the 13 November 2026 date or offer an export route for voices and data; its documentation states that access ends and data is deleted afterwards, with no further detail.
  • The live pricing page no longer exists (it redirects to the homepage); plan figures come from an Internet Archive snapshot dated 2026-09-01, so no price is shown.
  • Total voice count is not stated.
  • SSML support: docs describe acting instructions and no SSML page was found.
  • Whether pricing changed between the 2026-09-01 snapshot and the sunset announcement.
  • The concurrent-connections row on the archived page sits under the speech-to-speech (EVI) section, so TTS concurrency is not stated.
  • Whether cloned voices can be exported before the shutdown.

What to consider when choosing a Hume AI Octave alternative

  • Price your monthly characters on each option you shortlist, because Hume AI Octave no longer has a public price list to compare against.
  • If you stream text in as a language model produces it, confirm that Hume AI Octave's WebSocket input handles partial sentences the way your code expects.
  • Hume AI Octave's per-request limit is stated as: 5,000 characters per utterance; description up to 1,000 characters; up to 5 generations per request. Compare it with the length of your longest text and plan how you will split it. (source: dev.hume.ai)
  • List the pronunciation problems you have today (names, acronyms, numbers) and test them, since not every service lets you correct them with markup.

Options besides Hume AI Octave

Three other vendors from our dataset, chosen because they share Hume AI Octave's category or pricing model, and ReadAloud, which we make. They are listed alphabetically, not ranked, and each summary comes from that vendor's own pages.

  • MiniMax Speech

    MiniMax Speech is also a model vendor, and it lists a price per character, where Hume AI Octave has no current public price list.

    Reviewed 2026-10-10 (source: platform.minimax.io)

  • OpenAI Text to Speech

    OpenAI Text to Speech is also a model vendor, and it lists a price per character, where Hume AI Octave has no current public price list. OpenAI Text to Speech lists an OpenAI-compatible speech endpoint.

    Reviewed 2026-10-10 (source: developers.openai.com)

  • ReadAloud

    A streaming text-to-speech API: ReadAloud Live at $4 and ReadAloud Studio at $10 per 1M characters. English today.

    Disclosure: this is our product

  • Rime

    Rime is also a model vendor, and it lists a price per character, where Hume AI Octave has no current public price list. Its pages mention HIPAA and SOC 2.

    Reviewed 2026-10-10 (source: rime.ai)

How ReadAloud differs from Hume AI Octave

ReadAloud bills per character ($4 and $10 per 1M characters), while Hume AI Octave has no current public price list. Live: one American English voice. Studio: several English voices. Requests are limited to 5,000 characters.

Details about Hume AI Octave come from its public pages as they were on October 10, 2026. Hume AI Octave may have changed them since, and a page that was unclear to us may be clear to you. Corrections: support@readaloudai.org. We make ReadAloud, so read this page with that in mind and check anything important with Hume AI Octave directly.

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