Hume AI Review: Voice API Pricing 2026

Hume AI now sells the Audio Decisions API, which answers plain-language questions about audio for $0.47 per 1M tokens. Octave TTS and EVI end November 13.

Quick answer: Hume AI is best known for Octave, its expressive text-to-speech model, and EVI, its Empathic Voice Interface for voice agents. Hume is now sunsetting both: access ends at 12:01 a.m. EST on November 13, 2026, and account data is deleted after that. The product Hume sells today is the Audio Decisions API, launched on November 2, 2026, which listens to a recording and returns probabilities for questions you write, such as “Does the caller sound frustrated?” It costs $0.47 per 1M input tokens, with a 1M-token trial credit. Prices checked in Hume’s billing docs on November 10, 2026.

What Hume AI does in 2026

• Audio Decisions API: send an audio file (1 second to 5 minutes) with up to 25 plain-language questions. Answers come back as yes/no, choice, score or time-span probabilities, with no transcript.
• Expression Measurement API: scores emotional expression in speech and faces, with separate audio and video endpoints.
• Real-World VoiceEQ: Hume’s benchmark and leaderboard for comparing voice AI systems in real conditions.
• Octave TTS and EVI (ending): the expressive voice generator and speech-to-speech voice agent API. Both stay supported until November 13, 2026, then shut down.

Hume AI voice products: what changes on November 13

Hume posted the sunset notice in its developer changelog on October 2, 2026. Octave 1 and 2, voice cloning, voice design and every EVI configuration go away with it, and Hume says any data left in your account is permanently deleted after the cutoff. If you built on Hume voices, export generated audio, prompts and EVI configs now. The notice points users to Real-World VoiceEQ to compare replacement voice models.

For new voice projects, look at ElevenLabs for realistic voices and cloning, or our list of free unlimited text to speech tools if you just need narration. Luvvoice is a simple free option with 200+ voices.

Hume AI Pricing (2026)

Product	Price	Notes
Audio Decisions API	$0.47 per 1M input tokens	No commitment. Answers are not billed, only audio plus question text
Trial credit	1M input tokens	Granted once your organization gets access; expiry shown on the Plan page
Enterprise	Custom	Volume pricing, deployment in your own VPC, on premises or in country
Octave TTS and EVI	No longer sold	Access ends November 13, 2026; hume.ai/pricing now redirects to the homepage

What does that cost in practice? Hume’s own examples put a 5-minute support call with six questions at about 26,400 input tokens, roughly $0.012. Rating a 10-second text-to-speech clip is about 1,000 tokens. Audio length drives most of the bill, so ten questions about a minute of audio cost little more than one.

Who Hume AI is for

Teams that review calls or test voice models: contact centers scoring calls for frustration or interruptions, voice-agent builders checking if a reply sounds natural, and labs grading text-to-speech output without a listening panel. It is a developer API, not an app. If you wanted Hume to read text aloud, that part of Hume ends this week.

Limitations

• No more voice generation: Octave and EVI shut down on November 13, 2026.
• Developer-only: there is no consumer app; you need an API key and some code.
• Five-minute cap per request: longer recordings must be split into files.
• Perceptual answers are probabilities: Hume reports 70.7% agreement with a human panel’s average, so set thresholds on your own labeled audio.

Hume has turned from a voice generator into an audio judgment API. If you need to score thousands of calls or voice-model outputs, the Audio Decisions API is cheap to try and easy to call.

If you came for Octave voices or EVI agents, plan your move now: both stop working on November 13, 2026.