Voice providers
Every agent speaks every language for free on bitHuman's built-in voice pipeline — or bring your own OpenAI, Grok, ElevenLabs, or Cartesia key to unlock premium voices that run on your account.
Two ways to give your agent a voice
| Lane | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| bitHuman default | The built-in voice pipeline — multilingual out of the box. Your agent auto-detects the caller’s language and replies in it. No setup, no keys. | Included |
| Bring your own provider | Connect your own OpenAI, Grok (xAI), ElevenLabs, or Cartesia key and pick that provider’s premium voices — including low-latency speech-to-speech (realtime). | Runs on your key, billed by your provider |
You never have to bring a key. The default pipeline already speaks every language. Bring your own only when you want a specific premium voice or a provider’s realtime engine.
Use the default (nothing to do)
Open any agent’s voice settings at bithuman.ai. The bitHuman voice section is marked Included — design a voice, clone one, or pick from the gallery. It’s multilingual automatically, so there’s no language toggle to manage.
Bring your own voice provider
1. Connect your key
Go to Developer → Integrations, add your provider, and paste your API key. bitHuman validates the key before saving — an invalid key is rejected on the spot, so a saved provider is always a working one. Keys are encrypted at rest and never leave the platform in plaintext.
2. Pick a premium voice
Back in the agent’s voice settings, the premium providers you’ve connected unlock. Choose a voice; a provider you haven’t connected stays locked with a shortcut to Integrations. Your selection runs that voice on your key.
Supported providers
| Provider | Voices you can select | Realtime (speech-to-speech) |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | Realtime voices (alloy, ash, ballad, cedar, …) | ✓ |
| Grok (xAI) | Grok voices (ara, eve, rex, …) | ✓ |
| ElevenLabs | Your ElevenLabs voice library | — |
| Cartesia | Cartesia voices (also powers the free default) | — |
Tip Realtime providers (OpenAI, Grok) give the lowest-latency, most expressive speech-to-speech — great for kiosks and live demos. ElevenLabs and Cartesia give you a specific voice on the standard pipeline.
How billing works
- The default pipeline is part of your normal per-minute avatar runtime credits — nothing extra.
- Bring-your-own voices run on your provider account. bitHuman charges you only the normal avatar runtime; the voice tokens are billed to you by OpenAI / xAI / ElevenLabs / Cartesia directly.
If a bring-your-own key ever fails or is removed, the agent automatically falls back to the free multilingual pipeline — it never silently stops talking.