Top 5 Hume AI alternatives for truly better customer interactions (2025)

Let’s be honest, Hume AI is pretty wild. The first time you hear its empathic voice interface, it’s hard not to be impressed. The AI voices sound incredibly human, capturing tone and emotion in a way that’s genuinely new. But after playing around with it and thinking about how a business would actually use it, I hit a wall.

A realistic voice is a great feature, but it’s just one small part of the customer experience.

Most businesses I know aren’t struggling because their automated responses sound robotic. They’re struggling with slow response times, repetitive questions bogging down their agents, and company knowledge scattered across a dozen different apps. They need an AI that doesn’t just sound helpful, but can actually be helpful. One that plugs into their workflow and starts making a difference right away.

So, I started digging into the market to find the best Hume AI alternatives that tackle these bigger, more practical problems. This isn’t just about voice; it’s about finding tools that can actually transform how you interact with customers.

What is Hume AI and why look for Hume AI alternatives?

Before we jump into the alternatives, let’s quickly get on the same page about what Hume AI is. At its core, it’s a text-to-speech (TTS) system built on an "empathic" model. This means it tries to understand the emotional context of words and generate audio that matches, with a natural tone and rhythm.

This technology is perfect for a few specific things:

• AI Phone Agents: Running customer service or sales calls with a voice that people won’t immediately recognize as a robot.

• Content Creation: Making realistic voiceovers for things like podcasts or video tutorials.

• AI Characters: Voicing virtual characters in games or other interactive experiences.

While that’s all very cool, it doesn’t do much for the day-to-day grind of most support teams who are swimming in emails, live chats, and help desk tickets.

What I looked for in the best Hume AI alternatives

To find real-world solutions, I had to look beyond just the quality of a synthetic voice. My search for the best Hume AI alternatives was guided by what actually makes a support team’s life easier.

• Could I get it working fast? I looked for self-serve tools you could set up in an afternoon. No lengthy sales calls or waiting for a custom implementation just to get started.

• Did it fit into our current workflow? The last thing anyone wants is a tool that forces you to change all your processes. I wanted something that integrates with the help desks and apps we already use.

• Was I in control? I needed to be able to tell the AI exactly what it should know, what its personality should be, and what kinds of questions it was allowed to handle.

• Could it learn from everything? A truly smart AI needs to pull information from everywhere, not just a single help center. I looked for tools that could connect to past tickets, internal wikis, and shared documents.

• Was the pricing straightforward? No one likes surprise fees. I prioritized platforms with clear, predictable pricing models that don’t punish you for resolving more customer issues.

A quick comparison of the top Hume AI alternatives in 2025

Here’s a quick rundown of the tools I looked at and what they’re best for.

Tool	Best For	Key Feature	Pricing Model
eesel AI	Complete customer support automation	Go-live-in-minutes help desk integration	Subscription (interaction-based)
ElevenLabs	High-quality voice cloning & content creation	Realistic and versatile AI voices	Subscription (character-based)
Cartesia AI	Real-time voice applications	Ultra-low latency voice API	Subscription (character-based)
OpenAI TTS	Developers needing a versatile voice API	High-quality voices from a leading AI model	Pay-as-you-go
Zendesk AI	Teams already embedded in the Zendesk ecosystem	Native integration within the help desk	Add-on to Zendesk plans

The top 5 Hume AI alternatives for better customer interactions in 2025

Alright, let’s get into the details of each platform.

1. eesel AI

While Hume is all about the voice, eesel AI is about the entire support workflow. It’s the best pick for any business that wants to automate common questions, give agents a helping hand, and bring all their company knowledge together in one place. Best of all, it works right inside tools you already use like Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Intercom.

A workflow diagram showing how eesel AI automates the customer support process, a key feature for businesses looking for Hume AI alternatives.::

What really stood out to me about eesel AI was how ridiculously fast it was to get running. You connect your help desk, point it to your knowledge sources, and you have a functioning AI agent ready to go in minutes. No mandatory demos, no sales pitches. You can even run a simulation on thousands of your past tickets to see exactly how it would have performed and what your ROI would be before you let it talk to a single customer. That’s a huge confidence booster.

The eesel AI simulation dashboard, a powerful feature for businesses considering Hume AI alternatives to test ROI.::

You get fine-grained control over what the AI does. You can set up rules to decide which tickets the AI handles (like "where’s my order?" or "password help") and what it can do, like looking up order details in Shopify or adding tags. Anything it can’t handle gets passed seamlessly to a human. This lets you roll it out gradually, automating the easy stuff first.

What’s great about it:

• Genuinely self-serve: You can go from signing up to having a live AI agent in less than an hour.

• Connects to all your knowledge: It learns from past tickets, help centers, Confluence pages, Google Docs, and pretty much anywhere else you store information.

• Simple pricing: The pricing is based on how many interactions the AI has, not how many tickets it resolves, so it’s easy to predict.

• Powerful simulation: You can test everything on your historical data before it goes live, taking the guesswork out of it.

What to keep in mind:

• It’s focused on text-based channels like email, chat, and Slack, not voice generation.

Pricing:

eesel AI has a few clear, interaction-based plans.

• Team Plan: $299/month ($239/month billed annually) for 1,000 AI interactions. Good for getting started and deploying a copilot to help agents.

• Business Plan: $799/month ($639/month billed annually) for 3,000 AI interactions. This unlocks the full AI Agent that can resolve tickets on its own and run simulations.

• Custom Plan: For larger needs with unlimited interactions and custom integrations.

2. ElevenLabs

If your main goal is simply to create incredibly realistic text-to-speech audio, ElevenLabs is probably Hume AI’s biggest direct competitor. It’s famous for its voice quality and the emotional depth it can generate.

ElevenLabs is a fantastic choice for content creators, marketers, or developers who just need high-quality voice output. Their platform lets you design new synthetic voices or even clone your own with just a few minutes of sample audio. It also supports a ton of different languages, which is a big plus.

But it’s important to remember that it’s a voice generator, and that’s it. It doesn’t have any features for managing support tickets, automating workflows, or connecting to knowledge bases. You’d have to build a whole separate system and plug the ElevenLabs API into it to use it for customer interactions.

What’s great about it:

• Incredibly realistic voice quality.

• Impressive voice cloning features.

• Supports a wide variety of languages.

What to keep in mind:

• It’s purely a text-to-speech tool with no business automation built in.

• Pricing is based on characters, which can add up quickly for longer audio clips.

Pricing:

ElevenLabs offers several tiers based on how many characters you need to generate.

• Free: $0/month for 10,000 characters.

• Starter: $5/month for 30,000 characters.

• Creator: $22/month for 100,000 characters.

• Pro: $99/month for 500,000 characters.

• Scale: $330/month for 2,000,000 characters.

• Enterprise: Custom plans are available.

3. Cartesia AI

Cartesia AI is another major player in the voice AI space, marketing itself as a faster and more accurate option than Hume or ElevenLabs. Its standout feature is its speed. It has incredibly low latency, which is critical for real-time conversations where any lag feels awkward and unnatural.

Just like ElevenLabs, Cartesia offers high-quality voice cloning from just a few seconds of audio. It’s built for developers who need a speedy, reliable voice API for their own applications, whether it’s for gaming, virtual assistants, or real-time phone agents.

The catch is the same as with other pure voice providers. It gives you the voice, but you have to build all the logic for understanding what a customer is saying, managing the conversation, and connecting to your business systems. It’s a great fit for a team with strong engineering skills but not for a support team looking for a ready-made solution.

What’s great about it:

• Super low latency, making it feel very responsive.

• High-quality voice cloning from a short audio sample.

• An API that’s easy for developers to work with.

What to keep in mind:

• You need to do a lot of development work to use it in a real business application.

• It has fewer voice and language options than some of the more established tools.

Pricing:

Cartesia uses a credit-based system.

• Free: $0/month with 20,000 credits for personal projects.

• Pro: $5/month for 100,000 credits.

• Startup: $49/month for 1.25 million credits.

• Scale: $299/month for 8 million credits.

• Enterprise: Custom pricing is available for bigger needs.

4. OpenAI TTS

You can’t really have a conversation about AI without bringing up OpenAI. Their text-to-speech models are another solid, developer-first alternative. Using the same powerful models behind ChatGPT, their TTS API can create natural-sounding speech in a range of different voices.

The main draw for OpenAI is that it’s part of a much larger ecosystem. If you’re a developer already using GPT for generating text, adding their voice API is a pretty simple next step. It’s a reliable and scalable option from one of the biggest names in the game.

But again, it’s a building block, not a finished product. It gives you the voice engine, but you’re responsible for building the application around it. It’s a powerful ingredient for a custom solution, but it’s not a tool you can just plug into your help desk to start automating support.

What’s great about it:

• High-quality audio from a top AI company.

• It’s part of the powerful and familiar OpenAI ecosystem.

• Simple pay-as-you-go pricing.

What to keep in mind:

• It requires a developer to implement it.

• It doesn’t have the specialized voice cloning features that dedicated platforms offer.

Pricing:

OpenAI charges based on usage.

• TTS-1 (faster): $15.00 per 1 million characters.

• TTS-1 HD (higher quality): $30.00 per 1 million characters.

• GPT-4o mini TTS: Around $0.015 per minute of audio.

5. Zendesk AI

If your team is all-in on Zendesk, it makes sense to look at Zendesk’s own AI offering. This isn’t a separate tool but AI features built right into the help desk you already know. It can do things like suggest canned responses, summarize long ticket threads, and power basic chatbots.

The biggest plus here is convenience. There’s no setup or integration needed; it’s already connected to your tickets and knowledge base. For teams that want to keep their tech stack simple, this can be really appealing.

But that convenience comes with some serious limitations. Zendesk AI can only learn from information stored inside Zendesk, so it can’t access knowledge you have in Google Docs or Confluence. Its automation features are also pretty basic compared to dedicated AI platforms. And, of course, you’re locked into their ecosystem. If you ever want to switch help desks, that AI investment is gone.

What’s great about it:

• It’s built right into Zendesk, so it’s seamless.

• No new software for your agents to learn.

What to keep in mind:

• You’re completely locked into the Zendesk platform.

• It can’t connect to knowledge stored outside of Zendesk.

• It’s not as powerful or customizable as dedicated automation tools.

Pricing:

Zendesk AI features are included in their Suite plans, but the more advanced stuff costs extra.

• Suite Team: Starts at $55 per agent/month and includes their "Essential" AI.

• Suite Professional: Starts at $115 per agent/month with the same AI features.

• Advanced AI & Copilot: These are paid add-ons that can drive up the total cost and make your bill hard to predict.

This video offers a direct comparison between Hume AI and ElevenLabs, two of the leading voice AI platforms discussed in this article.

How to choose the right Hume AI alternatives for your business

So, which tool is right for you? It really boils down to what problem you’re actually trying to solve.

• If you just need a voice for content or a custom app and have developers on hand, then a voice API like ElevenLabs, Cartesia AI, or OpenAI is the way to go. The choice between them will depend on your specific needs for voice quality, speed, and language support.

• If you want to add some simple AI help inside your existing Zendesk setup, then Zendesk AI is a decent starting point, as long as you’re aware of its limitations.

• But if your goal is to fundamentally improve your entire customer support operation, you need something more. If you want a tool that’s fast to set up, powerful, and works with all your existing tools, then eesel AI is the obvious choice. It gets to the root of the problem by tackling disconnected knowledge and repetitive tasks.

Ask yourself what your real goal is. Is it just to have a nicer voice on an automated call? Or is it to automatically resolve half of your support tickets, slash your response times, and free up your team to focus on the truly tricky issues? Your answer will point you to the right tool.

Go beyond voice with a complete AI support platform

Hume AI is doing some really exciting work in making AI voices sound less like robots. But for most businesses, the biggest wins with AI will come from making it act more helpful, not just sound more human.

A better customer experience comes from giving people instant, accurate answers that are drawn from all of your company’s knowledge. It comes from automating the boring stuff so your team can focus on what they do best.

While voice APIs are neat building blocks, a platform like eesel AI gives you a complete solution you can have up and running in minutes. It pulls all your knowledge together, works with your existing tools, and gives you the control you need to automate confidently.

Ready to see what a complete AI platform can do for your support team? Start your free eesel AI trial today.