# Cartesia Ink vs Mistral Voxtral Transcribe

> Cartesia Ink scores 67.9 (B) to Mistral Voxtral Transcribe's 64.1 (B) for speech-to-text. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-mistral-voxtral-transcribe
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-mistral-voxtral-transcribe.md (~2,900 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-mistral-voxtral-transcribe.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-mistral-voxtral-transcribe.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Cartesia Ink scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Mistral Voxtral Transcribe's 64.1 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Mistral Voxtral Transcribe leads on security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do speech-to-text.

- Cartesia Ink: grade B, 67.9/100, rank #238 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cartesia-ink-stt.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cartesia-ink-stt.json
- Mistral Voxtral Transcribe: grade B, 64.1/100, rank #365 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mistral-voxtral-transcribe.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mistral-voxtral-transcribe.json
- Best speech-to-text APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/speech-to-text/index.md
- All 91 stt comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/speech-to-text/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Cartesia Ink (B)

Good for: Suited to voice agents that need turn detection and transcription from one model in English, French, Hindi, Japanese or Spanish, and to teams already using Cartesia text-to-speech.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 73 against 53
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 66

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where Mistral Voxtral Transcribe loses 3 points for them

Watch for: The terms let Cartesia train models on inputs and outputs unless otherwise agreed. Opting out is a form in the Playground's data controls

### Mistral Voxtral Transcribe (B)

Good for: Suited to low-cost batch transcription with diarisation in the 13 supported languages, and to live captions or voice agents that can run without speaker labels.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 70 against 52
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 35
- Transparency & trust, 82 against 67

Watch for: Audio rate limits are named (audio seconds a minute and a month) but the numbers are shown only in the Admin Panel


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cartesia Ink | Mistral Voxtral Transcribe | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 73 | 53 | Cartesia Ink +20 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 85 | Cartesia Ink +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 77 | Mistral Voxtral Transcribe +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 52 | 70 | Mistral Voxtral Transcribe +18 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 40 | Mistral Voxtral Transcribe +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 66 | Cartesia Ink +19 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 82 | Mistral Voxtral Transcribe +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **67.9 · B** | **64.1 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cartesia Ink | Mistral Voxtral Transcribe |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Cartesia | Mistral AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.cartesia.ai` | `https://api.mistral.ai/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP, websocket, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, websocket |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under the Cartesia Terms of Service. The Python and JavaScript SDKs are Apache-2.0 | Proprietary hosted service under Mistral's commercial terms. Voxtral Mini 4B Realtime weights and the SDKs are Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-17 | 2026-02-04 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-06-14 | 2026-09-25 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-06-14 | 2026-09-03 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 134 stars | 773 stars |

## Verdicts

**Cartesia Ink.** Ink 2 streams transcripts with turn detection built into the model, documented by an AsyncAPI file with typed ranges and structured errors. The terms, last revised 14 June 2024, let Cartesia train on inputs and outputs unless the customer opts out, and zero data retention is an Enterprise setting. Ink 2 has no batch endpoint and no diarisation.

**Mistral Voxtral Transcribe.** Batch transcription costs $0.003 a minute and takes one multipart call with a file, a URL or an uploaded file ID. Rate limit numbers are shown only in the console, and timestamps cannot be combined with a set language, nor diarisation with the realtime model.

## Before you call either

### Cartesia Ink

1. Use `wss://api.cartesia.ai/stt/turns/websocket` with `model=ink-2`, `encoding`, `sample_rate` and `cartesia_version=2026-08-14`. All four are required.
2. Send raw mono audio in chunks of about 100 ms at the speed it was spoken. Pushing a whole file into the socket can return an internal server error.
3. Read the final text from `turn.end` only. `transcript` is cumulative within a turn, so joining `turn.update` events duplicates text.
4. Send `{"type": "close"}` after the last audio and keep reading until the server closes the socket, or the buffered tail is lost.
5. Check `encoding` and `sample_rate` against the source before sending. The docs say the server might not return an error when they are wrong.

### Mistral Voxtral Transcribe

1. Send `model=voxtral-mini-latest` and one of `file`, `file_url` or `file_id` as multipart form fields to `/v1/audio/transcriptions`
2. Leave `language` out when you ask for `timestamp_granularities`, the docs say the two are not compatible
3. Use the batch endpoint for diarisation. `voxtral-mini-transcribe-realtime-2602` does not accept `diarize`
4. Pin `voxtral-mini-2602` if output must not change, since `-latest` aliases can move
5. Mint browser tokens with `POST /v1/client/sessions` close to connection time and pass them in `Sec-WebSocket-Protocol`, never the API key

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Cartesia Ink or Mistral Voxtral Transcribe?

Cartesia Ink scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Mistral Voxtral Transcribe's 64.1 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Mistral Voxtral Transcribe leads on security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust.

### Do Cartesia Ink and Mistral Voxtral Transcribe need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Cartesia Ink and Mistral Voxtral Transcribe without installing anything?

Yes. Cartesia Ink has a hosted endpoint at https://api.cartesia.ai and Mistral Voxtral Transcribe at https://api.mistral.ai/v1.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-mistral-voxtral-transcribe.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-ink-stt-vs-mistral-voxtral-transcribe.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "cartesia-ink-stt", "b": "mistral-voxtral-transcribe"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare cartesia-ink-stt mistral-voxtral-transcribe`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cartesia-ink-stt.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mistral-voxtral-transcribe.json

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