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Cartesia Ink 2

Every modelCartesia

Accuracy vs. speed

Lower and further left is better · Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe doesn't support streaming, so it is not shown

Best quadrantBest picks
Final-text delay P50 (ms)
Overall WER (%)

Cartesia Ink 2 is 4th of 19 on both datasets together and 12th of 16 on time to first text.

2.63% Overall WER (4th) · 2.39% Pipecat WER (8th) · 3.09% Ocular WER (4th) · 1.51s First text (12th) · 123ms Final text (7th)Likely range, 95% confidence: Pipecat WER 2.13 to 2.65%, Ocular WER 2.43 to 3.84%No published hourly price. No per-hour rate: Ink 2 is paid in subscription credits, 3 per second of audio. Source, checked Oct 8, 2026.

Last updated Methodology by Dileep Chagam

Cartesia Ink 2 against every other model

Lower is better on every measure. Hover a column for that model's full numbers.

  1. 2.2%
    Transcribe Stream 1
  2. 2.3%
    Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe
  3. 2.4%
    Reson8
  4. 2.6%
    Ink 2
  5. 2.6%
    Realtime Whisper
  6. 2.7%
    Universal 3.6 Pro
  7. 2.7%
    Universal 3.5 Pro
  8. 2.8%
    Chirp 3
  9. 3.0%
    Linden
  10. 3.0%
    Chirp 2
  11. 3.0%
    STT-RT v5
  12. 3.6%
    Pulse
  13. 3.7%
    4o Mini Transcribe
  14. 3.8%
    Nova-3
  15. 4.0%
    Flux English
  16. 4.8%
    Flux Multilingual
  17. 5.4%
    STT-1
  18. 5.8%
    Gradium
  19. 6.9%
    4o Transcribe
Glossary: WER, TTFT, TTFS, P50
WER · Word error rate
Share of words the model got wrong: replaced, missing or added. Lower is better.
Pipecat Dataset
1,000 short public clips from Pipecat's STT benchmark dataset.
Ocular Dataset
8 recordings from 4 real phone conversations, licensed from Ocular.
Likely range · 95% range
Where the model's true score probably falls, given how much audio was tested. Overlapping ranges are too close to call.
TTFT · Time to first text
How long after the audio starts streaming until the first words appear.
TTFS · Final-text delay
How long after the caller stops until the full transcript arrives. A voice agent waits for this before it replies.
P50 / P90 / P95 · Typical, slow and slowest turns
Half of turns are faster than P50. Only 1 in 10 is slower than P90, and 1 in 20 slower than P95.

Where Cartesia Ink 2 struggled

On real calls, dropped words are its biggest source of error. On clean clips, wrong words lead. For its voices, see our notes on Cartesia text to speech.

53%

of its errors on the Ocular calls are words it left out.

Median across all 19 models: 49%

Mix of errors

Real calls (Ocular Dataset)

Clean clips (Pipecat Dataset)

TTFT and TTFS at P50, P90 and P95

Timed on the same 206 streamed Ocular turns as every other model. P90 and P95 show what a caller meets on a slow turn.

TTFS, final text

How long after the caller stops until the full transcript arrives. A voice agent waits for this before it replies.

20ms100ms500ms2s
Typical, P50
123ms
7th fastest of 18
Slow, P90
139ms
5th fastest of 18
Slowest, P95
145ms
5th fastest of 18

TTFT, first text

How long after the audio starts streaming until the first words appear.

200ms1s5s20s
Typical, P50
1.51s
12th fastest of 16
Slow, P90
2.04s
11th fastest of 16
Slowest, P95
3.23s
11th fastest of 16

Every other model's typical turn, on the same axis.

1,000 Pipecat clips · 8 Ocular recordings · 198 turns timed · 0 failed requests

Cartesia Ink 2 head to head

Every comparisonAll 19 modelsBenchmark source

Cartesia Ink 2 FAQ

  • Cartesia Ink 2 places highest on both datasets together, 4th of 19 at 2.63%. Its weakest placing is time to first text, 12th of 16 at 1.51s.

  • Cartesia Ink 2 transcribes the 1,000 public Pipecat clips at 2.39% word error rate and the eight licensed Ocular recordings at 3.09%. Word error rate counts incorrect, missing, and extra words against the reference transcript, so lower is better.

  • First text arrives after 1.51s at the median, and the transcript is final 123ms after the speaker stops. Both are measured on the same 206 streamed turns as every other model, and the page shows P90 and P95 as well, which is what a caller meets on a bad turn.

  • Every model runs the same two datasets under the same conditions: 1,000 public clips from Pipecat's STT benchmark dataset for accuracy at scale, and eight licensed conversation recordings from Ocular for real speech. Latency comes from 206 streamed turns, using each provider's own supported finalization contract. Cartesia Ink 2 returned usable text for 1,000 of the public clips.

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