Sarvam AI alternative · Speech APIs
A Sarvam alternative for Hindi speech APIs and phone agents
₹1 is the T1 voice rate. On T1, Mirai phone calling (₹0.30/min) and call insights (₹0.20/min) are optional; T5 includes both. All prices exclude GST.
Voice Infra runs Hindi, Hinglish and English phone agents from ₹1 a minute at volume (₹1,00,000/month commitment), ₹5 pay as you go, and sells its voice, Mira TTS, at ₹1.80 per 1,000 characters. Sarvam suits teams that need many Indian languages today (Bulbul V3 speaks 11 and Saaras transcribes 23), a large voice catalogue, or high concurrency on self-serve plans. Voice Infra suits teams whose calls are in Hindi and Hinglish and who want speech, transcription, an LLM and agents from one supplier, priced in rupees.
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Side by side
Sarvam AI and Voice Infra
Sarvam AI's column comes from Sarvam AI's own public pages, each cell linked to the page it was read from. Ours comes from our price list and docs. Pages change, so check the links before you decide.
| Question | Sarvam AI | Voice Infra |
|---|---|---|
| Text to speech, pay as you go, per 1,000 characters | Bulbul V4 Flash ₹2.00; Bulbul V3 ₹3.00 Source: sarvam.ai | Mira TTS ₹1.80 (GST extra) |
| Text to speech on a plan, per 1,000 characters | Bulbul V4 Flash ₹1.70 and Bulbul V3 ₹2.70 on Growth (₹10,000/month) and Business (₹50,000/month) Source: sarvam.ai | ₹1.80 on Business (₹50,000/month), the same rate as pay as you go |
| Text-to-speech languages and voices | Bulbul V3: 11 languages (10 Indian + English), 30+ speakers; Bulbul V4 Flash: 200+ persona voices covering Hindi, English, English–Hindi and seven more Indian languages Source: docs.sarvam.ai | Hindi, English and Hinglish; four Hindi voices that code-switch into English |
| Text-to-speech concurrency | WebSocket: 60 concurrent on Starter (30 for bulbul:v3), 200 on Pro, 1,000 on Business Source: docs.sarvam.ai | 5 concurrent requests on pay as you go, 25 on Business |
| Audio out | wav, mp3, aac, flac or linear16; 8–48 kHz over REST, 8–24 kHz when streaming Source: docs.sarvam.ai | PCM or WAV up to 48 kHz; raw μ-law or A-law at 8 or 16 kHz for phone lines |
| API shape | Sarvam's own REST, HTTP streaming and WebSocket APIs, with Python and JavaScript SDKs Source: docs.sarvam.ai | OpenAI's POST /v1/audio/speech protocol, a WebSocket endpoint and a Pipecat integration |
| Speech to text | ₹0.49/min real-time or batch, pay as you go, on the pricing page; the docs pricing page lists ₹30 an hour Source: sarvam.ai | Recorded calls ₹18 an hour of audio; streaming recognition as a standalone API in private preview |
| Speech-to-text languages | Saaras: 23 languages (22 Indian + English), with transcribe, translate, verbatim, translit and codemix modes Source: docs.sarvam.ai | Built for Hindi and Hinglish phone calls, with speakers and timestamps |
| LLM, per 1,000,000 tokens | Sarvam 105B ₹15 input, ₹60 output Source: sarvam.ai | Mira LLM ₹14.38 input, ₹57.52 output; switched on when you ask |
| Voice agents, published price per minute | Sarvam Voice Agents ₹3.50 pay as you go, ₹3.25 Pro, ₹3.15 Growth, ₹3.00 Business (coming soon) Source: docs.sarvam.ai | T1 ₹1/min with a ₹1,00,000/month commitment; T3 ₹3/min with ₹50,000/month; T5 ₹5/min pay as you go |
For six platforms in one table, see Voice AI platforms compared.
Which to pick
Which to pick
Choose Sarvam AI if…
- You need Indian languages beyond Hindi. Bulbul V3 speaks 11 languages (10 Indian plus English), and Saaras transcribes 23 (22 Indian plus English).
- You need high text-to-speech concurrency on a self-serve plan. Sarvam's WebSocket limits run from 60 concurrent streams on Starter to 1,000 on Business.
- You want a large voice catalogue. Bulbul V4 Flash has 200+ persona voices, organised by language and style.
- You want translation, transliteration and document APIs drawing on the same credits as speech, which Sarvam's pricing page lists.
- You want a managed voice-agent platform in 11 Indian languages plus English. Sarvam Voice Agents is priced from ₹3.50 a minute pay as you go.
Choose Voice Infra if…
- You run phone agents at volume. T1 is ₹1 a minute with a ₹1,00,000 monthly commitment, model included; T5 is ₹5 a minute pay as you go with phone calling included too.
- You want one text-to-speech rate without choosing a plan: Mira TTS is ₹1.80 per 1,000 characters on pay as you go and on Business.
- Your code already speaks OpenAI's speech API. Mira TTS takes the same POST /v1/audio/speech request, so you change the base URL and the model name.
- You want phone-line audio straight from the API: raw μ-law or A-law at 8 kHz, or PCM up to 48 kHz, streamed as it is generated.
In detail
A Sarvam alternative for Hindi speech APIs and phone agents: in detail
How do Sarvam and Voice Infra differ?
Sarvam builds speech, text and document models for 22 Indian languages and English, sold as APIs that draw on one credit balance, plus a managed voice-agent platform. Bulbul is its text-to-speech family, Saaras its speech recognition, and Sarvam 105B its own LLM.
Voice Infra is voice infrastructure for Indian phone calls: TTS, STT, LLM and agents as APIs, priced in rupees. Mira TTS is the voice our agents use, offered on its own, and Mira STT is the speech recognition inside them; both are our own models. Phone agents run the whole Mira stack, from ₹1 a minute at volume (a ₹1,00,000 monthly commitment) to ₹5 pay as you go. Recorded calls transcribe at ₹18 an hour, the LLM is switched on when you ask for it, and streaming speech recognition as a standalone API is in private preview. We cover Hindi, English and Hinglish today, which is narrower than Sarvam’s range.
What does each cost?
Both companies publish in rupees, so the numbers line up directly. For 10 lakh characters of speech (1,000,000), Mira TTS is 1,000 × ₹1.80 = ₹1,800. On Sarvam’s pricing page, Bulbul V4 Flash is ₹2,000 pay as you go and ₹1,700 on Growth or Business, and Bulbul V3 is ₹3,000 pay as you go and ₹2,700 on those plans. On Sarvam’s Growth and Business plans, Bulbul V4 Flash at ₹1.70 is below our ₹1.80.
Speech to text is ₹0.49 a minute on Sarvam’s pay-as-you-go plan (its docs list ₹30 an hour). Our transcription of recorded calls is ₹18 an hour of audio. For the LLM, Sarvam 105B is ₹15 input and ₹60 output per million tokens; Mira LLM is ₹14.38 and ₹57.52.
For phone agents, Sarvam Voice Agents is ₹3.50 a minute pay as you go, down to ₹3.15 on Growth. Ours is ₹5 a minute pay as you go with phone calling and call insights included, ₹3 on T3 with a ₹50,000 monthly commitment, and ₹1 on T1 with a ₹1,00,000 monthly commitment, where Mirai phone calling is an optional ₹0.30 a minute. Our prices exclude GST.
What do listeners prefer on Voice Arena?
Voice Arena ranks Hindi voices from blind pairwise votes. In the leaderboard as pulled on 16 October 2026, Mira TTS scored 993 ± 25 Elo across all categories (440 votes, 11th of 19) and Sarvam’s Bulbul V3 scored 959 ± 9 (3,882 votes, 14th). Mira led in general conversation (1053 vs 961) and in content creation and education (1014 vs 901). Bulbul V3 led in customer support (984 vs 971) and in media and entertainment (967 vs 956).
Read those numbers with their limits. Mira has about a ninth of Bulbul’s votes, so its interval is wider. The scores move as votes arrive. The comparison is with Bulbul V3; Sarvam now recommends Bulbul V4 Flash for new integrations, and V4 Flash was not on the leaderboard. We have no measured latency for Bulbul, so there is no speed comparison here.
How does speech to text compare?
On RinggAI’s public benchmark of 10,000 Hindi utterances, Mira STT scored 9.12% normalised word error rate, the lowest of the five systems scored; Sarvam’s outputs in the dataset scored 12.83%. It is not best on every corpus: Ringg is lower on CommonVoice and IndicTTS, and ElevenLabs on FLEURS. The vendor outputs are the ones Ringg bundled with the dataset, so their model versions are Ringg’s, and the open model we fine-tuned was trained on those corpora’s training splits. The benchmark is read and prompted speech, so it says nothing about phone-call accuracy. Saaras covers 23 languages and five output modes; ours is built for Hindi and Hinglish calls.
What does switching look like?
Mira TTS speaks OpenAI’s speech protocol. Point an OpenAI client at https://sandbox.voice.miraiminds.co/v1, set model to mira-tts, choose a voice, and ask for ulaw_8000 on a phone line or pcm to stream. Code written against Sarvam’s SDK needs its requests rewritten to that shape. For a live call, the WebSocket endpoint keeps one connection for the conversation, and pipecat-mirai does the same inside Pipecat. The OpenAI-compatible TTS guide walks through the first request.
What should you test before switching?
Write test lines from your own calls (names, rupee amounts, OTP prompts and English product words inside Hindi), generate them on both with the voice you would ship, and play them blind to native speakers. The Hindi TTS guide has a starter set. Listen through a phone line, and time first audio from your own servers, as the latency guide describes.
By Mirai Minds · Published
Questions
Do listeners prefer Mira TTS or Sarvam Bulbul?
On Voice Arena's Hindi leaderboard (pulled 16 October 2026), Mira TTS scored 993 Elo overall against 959 for Bulbul V3, and led in general conversation (1053 vs 961) and content and education (1014 vs 901). Bulbul V3 led in customer support (984 vs 971) and media and entertainment (967 vs 956). Mira has far fewer votes, so its interval is wider, the scores move as votes arrive, and Bulbul V4 Flash was not on the leaderboard. Run a blind test on your own sentences before you decide.
Is Mira TTS ₹1 a minute?
No. ₹1 a minute is the T1 rate for a whole phone agent, with a ₹1,00,000 monthly commitment; pay as you go agents are ₹5 a minute. Mira TTS on its own is ₹1.80 per 1,000 characters, before GST.
Is Mira TTS faster than Bulbul?
We have not measured Bulbul's latency, so we make no speed comparison. Time both from your own servers: the delay to the first audio byte, and on a live call, the gap from the caller's last word to the first audio they hear.
Does Voice Infra cover Tamil, Telugu or Bengali?
Not yet. Today the voice speaks Hindi, English and Hinglish. Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Kannada and Bengali are on the roadmap, with each date announced as the language clears evaluation. If you need those languages now, Bulbul V3 and Saaras cover them.
Check our column yourself.
Open the sandbox, build an agent and listen to it. Nobody asks for an email until you test a call.