Head to head · Voice cloning · October 2026 research run

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design vs PlayHT Voice Cloning API

PlayHT Voice Cloning API shut down on 2025-12-31. Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design scores 60.8 (C) on agent readiness against PlayHT Voice Cloning API's 4.1 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do voice cloning.

Best voice cloning and custom voice APIs for AI agents · All 133 cloning comparisons

Which one, for what

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design C

Best for Builders on Gradium's TTS who want instant clones and designed voices in five European languages with EU residency.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 63 against 0
  • Schema & documentation, 83 against 31
  • Agent ergonomics, 67 against 0
  • Security & auth, 48 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 70 against 0
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 35

Also in its favour

  • Still running. PlayHT Voice Cloning API has shut down
  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where PlayHT Voice Cloning API loses 4 points for them

Watch for

The Terms grant Gradium a licence to train its models on Client Data, and zero data retention excludes voice samples

PlayHT Voice Cloning API F

Best for Nothing new. It shut down on 2025-12-31.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

Shut down, api.play.ht doesn't resolve

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Maintenance & community Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +70

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design 70

Read as a model, on the lines the other hosted cloning listings use (recency 30, dated releases 10, deprecation notice 10, support 15, SDKs 15, health 10). Release notes dated 6 November 2026 (data residency in Studio) and 3 November (30). Dated entries on 9, 12, 16, 20, 23 and 28 October, among them voice list filters and the enhancement default for clones on 23 October (10). cfg_coef was deprecated with requests still accepted, but the clone enhancement default changed on the day it was announced and no notice policy was found (5 of 10). Public release notes, support@gradium.ai and a Discord server, with no evidence read of how they answer (10 of 15). gradium on PyPI at 0.6.4 (4 September 2026), with no SDK in a second language (10 of 15). The SDK repository was not cloned (5 of 10). 30+10+5+10+10+5 = 70.

PlayHT Voice Cloning API 0

Last Python SDK release 0.1.14 on 2025-03-29, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 17 October. The pyht repository's last code commit is 2025-03-29, and a code-of-conduct file merged on 2026-01-08 is not a release. The npm package is still 0.21.0 of 2025-05-21 (0). No releases or changelog entries in the last 90 days (0). No support channel (0). SDKs abandoned (0). No package health (0).

Agent ergonomics Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +67

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design 67

Voice objects are compact metadata (20 of 25). GET /voices/ takes skip and limit (default 100) and since 23 October filters by locale, gender and use_case (20). Validation errors are structured 422 bodies, while synthesis errors arrive as plain-text HTTP 500 with a numeric code to parse (12 of 20). No idempotency key. Saving a design candidate twice answers 409, and the clone call has none (5 of 20). Three required fields with sensible defaults, and one official SDK, in Python (10 of 15). 20+20+12+5+10 = 67.

PlayHT Voice Cloning API 0

No live surface to call, so every line scores 0.

Reliability Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +63

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design 63

Graded on the hosted voice API with the hosted lines. Atlassian Statuspage at gradium.statuspage.io with five components, one of them Voice Cloning (20). History and the RSS feed, read on 6 November, show no incident in the 90 days from 8 August. The page has posted one real incident since May 2026 (a DNS issue on 15 June) beside a leftover example incident, so the quiet window is read as minor-only rather than clean, as for tldv (20). Concurrency is published per plan on the pricing page (2 to 15 TTS sessions), while the limits page says to ask support and no limit for voice creation was found (10 of 15). No 429, Retry-After or backoff guidance was found; the errors page says to open a new connection after an error, and voice creation takes a timeout_s (3 of 15). No SLA in the Terms or on the pricing page (0). Instant cloning carries no beta label (10). 20+20+10+3+0+10 = 63.

PlayHT Voice Cloning API 0

Retired. On 2026-10-17 api.play.ht and play.ht didn't resolve, so nothing answers a call. Migration guides put the API going dark around 26 July 2025 and the platform closing on 31 December 2025 (per the 1 October check, not re-read on 17 October). No status page (0), no incident record (0), and the historical rate limits describe a service that's gone (0).

Schema & documentation Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +52

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design 83

Public OpenAPI 3.1 file at docs.gradium.ai/api-reference/openapi.json (25). llms.txt and Markdown pages (10). The guides say when to clone, design, enhance or localise a voice, and the custom-voice page explains the enhancement default and how to opt out (14 of 20). The clone body has audio_file, name and language required, a five-value language enum and typed defaults for start_s, enhance and timeout_s (14 of 15). curl and Python examples. The create call documents only 201 and 422, and the errors page covers synthesis, with plain-text 500 bodies (9 of 15). Routes carry no version, the OpenAPI file is 0.1.0, and release notes are dated per entry, newest 6 November 2026 (11 of 15). The API reference FAQ gives a 300-second session where the limits page says 3,000. 25+10+14+14+9+11 = 83.

PlayHT Voice Cloning API 31

What's left is the docs, still served at docs.play.ht with pages last updated on 9 September 2025 and no shutdown notice. The Markdown copy of the clone reference page embeds an OpenAPI 3.0.3 fragment for POST /api/v2/cloned-voices/instant, and docs.play.ht serves an llms.txt that lists no cloning page. The fragment points at https://api.play.ht, which no longer resolves, and both describe the API as live. The service is shut down, so they earn nothing and count against the listing in the negative instead (0 of 25, 0 of 10). The clone endpoint page states the purpose and limits (8 of 20). Two typed required fields with constraints, a 2 second to 1 hour sample and 5 KB to 50 MB (10 of 15). Response codes listed (201, 400, 401, 403, 415, 429, 500) with examples (8 of 15). Versioned /api/v2 path, and docs.play.ht/changelog returns 404 (5 of 15). Total 31. A model reading these pages would call an API that doesn't exist.

Security & auth Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +48

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design 48

Graded for voice cloning as the other listings in this category, with consent and misuse controls in place of the read-only line and training and retention of voice data in place of the prompt-injection line. API keys per organisation in a header, revocable and able to expire, with no scopes found (20 of 30). No consent or verification field and no watermark. The Terms make the client obtain the consent of anyone whose voice is a sample and bar impersonation without explicit authorisation, and the API FAQ says explicit consent is required (6 of 20). The Terms grant Gradium a licence to use Client Data to improve its services and train its models, with no opt-out found, and zero data retention (paid plans) excludes voice samples, so samples are kept and may be used for training (2 of 15). Organisation roles and a member list, with no per-call audit log found (5 of 15). SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 audited by A-LIGN, a trust centre and security@gradium.ai. No security.txt (404) and no bug bounty found (15 of 20). 20+6+2+5+15 = 48.

PlayHT Voice Cloning API 0

No live surface. Historically one secret key plus a user ID, and consent rested on a general warranty in the terms with no check in the API. Clones and audio were reportedly deleted at shutdown with no export. Nothing left to score (0).

Payments & pricing Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +30

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design 30

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices and credits are public, 1 credit a character for speech, with no dollar price per unit, as cartesia-voice-cloning is read. Creating a clone uses no credits in the docs (10). The free plan has 45,000 credits a month, 5 custom voices and Voice Design, and the site says no credit card is required. Commercial use starts on the $12 plan (20). Signup is a browser flow in Gradium Studio (0). 0+10+20+0 = 30.

PlayHT Voice Cloning API 0

Nothing can be bought. No x402 was ever documented (0), no live pricing (0), no free tier (0), no signup (0).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGradium Voice Cloning and Voice DesignPlayHT Voice Cloning APIEdge
Reliability16%20630Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +63
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28331Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +52
Agent ergonomics13%16.2670Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +67
Security & auth14%17.5480Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +48
Payments & pricing10%12.5300Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8700Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +70
Transparency & trust7%8.86335Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design +28
Negative events≤150-4
TotalC 60.8/100F 4.1/100

Facts side by side

FactGradium Voice Cloning and Voice DesignPlayHT Voice Cloning API
KindModel APIModel API
VendorGradium SASPlayHT
Hosted endpointhttps://api.gradium.ai/api/voices/https://api.play.ht/api/v2
TransportsHTTP, websocketHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Gradium's Terms of Service (version of 19 October 2026). The gradium Python SDK is on PyPIApache-2.0 (Python SDK)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-11-062025-05-21
Terms last updatedno date given2023-06-01
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2021-06-19
Customer content may train modelsyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularitynone218 stars, 14k npm/wk, 6.6k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone1/5 (2)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design

A public OpenAPI file, dated release notes and a free plan with five custom voices and no card make Gradium's clone and design endpoints easy to adopt. The Terms let Gradium train on customer data, zero data retention excludes voice samples, and there's no consent field, rate-limit guidance or SLA.

PlayHT Voice Cloning API

The API reference is still readable at docs.play.ht, useful for mapping old integrations. Shut down, api.play.ht doesn't resolve.

Before you call either

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design

  1. Send language on every clone. It's required and must be one of en, fr, de, es or pt and match the recording
  2. Clones are enhanced by default since 23 October 2026. Pass enhance=false to keep the raw voice, then check enhance on GET
  3. Pass a clone as voice_id in TTS, not voice
  4. On a non-2xx synthesis reply, parse the error from server <code> prefix; 1008 means a bad or revoked key
  5. Check the custom-voice allowance first. The free plan holds 5 voices shared by clones and designs

PlayHT Voice Cloning API

  1. Don't call api.play.ht. The host doesn't resolve
  2. Ignore docs.play.ht for new work. It documents an API that no longer exists
  3. Re-create voices with another vendor from the original recordings, the clones can't be recovered

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design or PlayHT Voice Cloning API?

Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design scores 60.8 (C) on agent readiness against PlayHT Voice Cloning API's 4.1 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Do Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design and PlayHT Voice Cloning API need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design and PlayHT Voice Cloning API without installing anything?

Yes. Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design has a hosted endpoint at https://api.gradium.ai/api/voices/ and PlayHT Voice Cloning API at https://api.play.ht/api/v2.

Other comparisons with Gradium Voice Cloning and Voice Design or PlayHT Voice Cloning API

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