Hume AI (EVI & Octave)

Hume AI sells voice-AI building blocks by API: EVI, a speech-to-speech interface for voice agents, and Octave, an expressive text-to-speech model whose second version covers 11 languages including Arabic. It suits developers and agencies building phone agents or multilingual narration. The one thing to know: the free tier carries no commercial licence.

What does Hume AI cost for a small business?

• Price reads Free tier (10,000 TTS characters + 5 EVI minutes/mo, no commercial licence); Starter $3/mo, Creator $14/mo, Pro $70/mo, Scale $200/mo, Business $500/mo; Enterprise custom — hume.ai, Sep 2026.
• Creator is the first tier with a commercial licence; Enterprise adds SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA commitments.
• "Emotionally intelligent" is Hume's framing: the models measure vocal expression and generate expressive speech.

In January 2026 Google DeepMind hired founder Alan Cowen and a group of engineers under a licensing agreement; Hume continues independently under CEO Andrew Ettinger and keeps selling the API. Weigh that before building on it. Compare ElevenLabs in AI video and voice.

Who should skip it

Teams that only need plain narration will find cheaper, more mature text-to-speech elsewhere.

Research-based listing — not hands-on tested by Digital4All; details as of September 2026.