What is Tavus?
Tavus (Y Combinator Summer 2021) makes AI faces that hold live video conversations. Its main product, the Conversational Video Interface (CVI), is an API that puts a talking, listening video agent into a website, app or Zoom and Google Meet call. It runs on Tavus's own models: Phoenix-4.5 for rendering the face, Raven-1 for reading the person on camera, and Sparrow-2 for knowing when to speak. It also renders ordinary pre-made videos and sells PALs, a consumer companion app from free to $50 a month.
Developer plans run from a free tier with 20 conversation minutes a month to Business at $975 for 4,000 minutes. Tavus raised a $40M Series B led by CRV in November 2025, bringing its total to about $64M.
How much does Tavus cost?
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 20 CVI minutes, 1 concurrent session, stock faces |
| Starter | $22/month | 60 minutes, 1 custom face, no overage |
| Builder | $59/month | 175 minutes, 3 concurrent sessions, 3 custom faces |
| Growth | $397/month | 1,300 minutes, 10 concurrent sessions, recordings |
| Business | $975/month | 4,000 minutes, 15 concurrent sessions |
| Enterprise | Custom |
Developer: Free (20 CVI min/month); Starter $22/month (60 min); Builder $59/month (175 min); Growth $397/month (1,300 min); Business $975/month (4,000 min); overage $0.26 to $0.35/min; Enterprise custom. PALs app: Free, Plus $20/month, Max $50/month.
Is Tavus worth it?
A chatbot can answer a question, but it cannot make a nervous job candidate or a first-time patient feel that someone is listening.
That is the bet behind Tavus. Its video agents look at you through your camera, notice expressions, and reply out loud with a moving face, in under 600 milliseconds end to end according to Tavus's own figures for Phoenix-4. A custom replica of a real person needs about 2 minutes of training video. Developers drop it into a site with a few lines of code or send it into a Zoom or Google Meet call.
The price covers the whole pipeline: speech, language model, rendering and video streaming, with no separate model bills. Conversations are rounded to 6 seconds with a 30-second minimum, and paid plans keep running past their minutes rather than cutting a call off.
The catch: video minutes are expensive next to voice. Builder works out at about 34 cents an included minute and Growth about 31, against roughly 11 cents for a voice agent on Retell. Audio-only calls currently cost the same as video. Tavus's pricing page also showed two conflicting sets of plans when we read it, so confirm your tier at checkout, and Tavus does not publish a security or data retention page we could find.
Our take: Tavus earns its fee for interview practice, tutoring and patient intake, where a face holds attention; for a support line, a voice agent does the same job for a third of the price.
Where it earns its place
A career-coaching startup
Let users rehearse job interviews with a realistic interviewer
A CVI persona reads facial cues and asks follow-ups. Growth at $397 covers 1,300 minutes, or 65 twenty-minute sessions a month; beyond that, budget overage at roughly $0.31 a minute.
A digital health company's product manager
Greet new patients with a face before their first appointment
Embed a branded replica trained on 2 minutes of a clinician's footage. Confirm consent, data handling and any BAA directly with Tavus, because those terms are not published.
A solo developer
Prototype a video tutor for a language app
The free tier gives 20 minutes and stock faces; Starter at $22 adds 60 minutes, one custom face and no watermark, with no overage, so the bill cannot run away.
Before you commit
- Setup
- Create a free account, pick a stock face or record about 2 minutes of footage for a replica, configure a persona, and embed it with the CVI SDK.
- Integrations
- CVI API and SDK, Zoom and Google Meet configurations from Starter upwards, MCP access on PALs paid plans, and async video generation via the same account.
- Data and privacy
- Not published: we found no Tavus security page, certification list or retention policy; ask before sending personal or health data.
- Cost at scale
- Business at $975 a month includes 4,000 minutes and 15 concurrent sessions; a deployment doing 10,000 minutes would add about 6,000 overage minutes at the lowest listed rate of $0.26, roughly $1,560 more.
- Limits
- 1 concurrent session on Free and Starter, 3 on Builder, 10 on Growth, 15 on Business; recordings cost $0.03 a minute extra.
What's good
- Live video agents that read the user's expressions, not just their words
- Custom replica from about 2 minutes of footage
- One per-minute price covers speech, model, rendering and streaming
- Joins Zoom and Google Meet calls as well as embedding in apps
- Free tier with 20 minutes to test
What's not
- About 26 to 35 cents a minute in overage, several times a voice agent
- Audio-only calls priced the same as video for now
- 30-second minimum charge per conversation
- Pricing page shows conflicting plan tables
- No public security or retention page found
Best for
Product teams building interview, tutoring, sales or intake experiences where a live face measurably beats a voice or text bot.
Tavus alternatives
Tavus: common questions
- Is Tavus worth it?
- Tavus makes the most convincing live AI face you can buy off a price list, but at around 30 cents a minute it only pays where a face actually changes the outcome. We rate it 3.9 out of 5.
- How much does Tavus cost?
- Developer: Free (20 CVI min/month); Starter $22/month (60 min); Builder $59/month (175 min); Growth $397/month (1,300 min); Business $975/month (4,000 min); overage $0.26 to $0.35/min; Enterprise custom. PALs app: Free, Plus $20/month, Max $50/month.
- What are the downsides of Tavus?
- About 26 to 35 cents a minute in overage, several times a voice agent; audio-only calls priced the same as video for now; 30-second minimum charge per conversation; pricing page shows conflicting plan tables; no public security or retention page found.
- Who is Tavus best for?
- Product teams building interview, tutoring, sales or intake experiences where a live face measurably beats a voice or text bot.
- How much does Tavus cost for a team or in production?
- Business at $975 a month includes 4,000 minutes and 15 concurrent sessions; a deployment doing 10,000 minutes would add about 6,000 overage minutes at the lowest listed rate of $0.26, roughly $1,560 more.
- Is Tavus safe for company data?
- Not published: we found no Tavus security page, certification list or retention policy; ask before sending personal or health data.
- What are the best Tavus alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are HeyGen, Synthesia, ElevenLabs and Retell AI.
Answers checked Oct 26, 2026.