# CueLight vs Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface)

> Hume EVI scores 56.7 (C) to CueLight's 48.8 (D) for voice pipeline. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-15

Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) scores 56.7 (C) on agent readiness against CueLight's 48.8 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. CueLight leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do voice pipeline.

- CueLight: grade D, 48.8/100, rank #873 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cuelight.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cuelight.json
- Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface): grade C, 56.7/100, rank #669 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hume-evi.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hume-evi.json
- Best conversational voice-agent APIs: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/voice-agents/index.md
- All 102 voice agents comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/voice-agents/index.md

## Which one, for what

### CueLight (D)

Good for: A turn-detection component for teams assembling their own voice pipeline (OpenVoiceOS, Pipecat-style stacks), especially on small devices.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 50 against 27
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 37

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Free to start without a card
- Open source

Watch for: English only, and the author does not plan other languages soon

### Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) (C)

Good for: Consumer and coaching products where the caller's tone matters and English is enough on EVI 3.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 55 against 29
- Schema & documentation, 90 against 50
- Agent ergonomics, 66 against 61
- Maintenance & community, 65 against 46
- Transparency & trust, 61 against 54

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: Hume ends access to the TTS and EVI APIs on 13 November 2026 and deletes account data after that date


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | CueLight | Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 29 | 55 | Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) +26 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 50 | 90 | Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) +40 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 61 | 66 | Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 50 | 27 | CueLight +23 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 37 | CueLight +23 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 46 | 65 | Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) +19 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 54 | 61 | Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **48.8 · D** | **56.7 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | CueLight | Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | HTTP API |
| Vendor | sshah03 (individual developer, name not stated) | Hume AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.hume.ai/v0/evi` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT (SDKs) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-08-18 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-05 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2025-02-25 |
| Customer content may train models |  | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | yes |
| Popularity | 10 stars | 180 stars, 79k npm/wk, 24k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**CueLight.** CueLight gives a voice pipeline a local end-of-turn probability every 20 ms from audio alone, with a 1.9 MB model and Apache-2.0 weights. It is one day old, English only, installs from Git rather than PyPI, has no CI or changelog, and its accuracy figures are the author's own.

**Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface).** Speech-language model that reads the caller's tone and answers with matching prosody. One account-wide key, sent in the WebSocket and Twilio webhook URLs. Hume ends API access on 13 November 2026.

## Before you call either

### CueLight

1. Feed 320 float32 samples at 16 kHz mono per `push`. Resample first, or the call raises an AssertionError
2. Spell the preset as `snappy` or `careful`. Any other name silently uses default thresholds
3. Call `clear()` before a new call or session. Pass `reset_on_turn_start=False` if your pipeline already resets per turn
4. Pin weights by downloading them to a local folder and passing that path to `from_pretrained`
5. Don't use it to identify speakers or clone voices. The training data's conditions forbid it

### Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface)

1. Create a config with a voice first, EVI 3 has no default
2. Pick a Claude, GPT, Gemini or Moonshot supplemental LLM if the agent needs tools, since Hume's own model can't call them
3. Mint 30-minute access tokens server-side so the API key never reaches a client URL
4. Turn on 'Do not retain data' and 'Do not use for training' at app.hume.ai before sensitive calls
5. Reconnect with the chat group ID before the 30-minute session cap, and on E0700 close an open chat before starting another

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, CueLight or Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface)?

Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) scores 56.7 (C) on agent readiness against CueLight's 48.8 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. CueLight leads on security & auth and payments & pricing.

### Can an agent call CueLight and Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for CueLight. Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) has a hosted endpoint at https://api.hume.ai/v0/evi.

### Are CueLight and Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) open source?

CueLight is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface).


## For agents

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

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- [AssemblyAI Voice Agent API vs Hume EVI (Empathic Voice Interface)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/assemblyai-voice-agent-vs-hume-evi.md)
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