> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Rime Review (Australia 2026): Enterprise-Grade TTS Voices for Voice Agents - URL: https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/review-rime-australia-2026/ - Published: 2026-10-07T23:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-09T06:35:29.000Z - Description: Rime builds TTS voices for enterprise voice agents. Its new flagship, Coda, replaced Arcana and brings six Australian voices. Still developer-only, USD-priced and hosted in the US. - Author: Adam - Tags: Audio, Voice & Podcasting, AI Reviews, #review **15**/25 ★★★☆☆ Good Rime · name: Rime AI (Rime Labs) Verified 8 Oct 2026 Value for Money**3**/5 Ease of Use**2**/5 Feature Depth**4**/5 Australian Fit**3**/5 Reliability & Support**3**/5 Pricing Quote-based pricing — see the pricing table History Edition 2\. Was [14/25, Jun 2026](https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/review-rime-australia-2026-06/) **The gate:** Five stars need 21+ and Australian Fit of at least 4/5. [Skip to the verdict ](#verdict) *Pricing in this edition: USD prices are converted at US$1 ≈ A$1.43 (RBA, 7 October 2026) and shown ex-GST. A GST-registered Australian business that supplies its ABN is not charged GST on an imported digital service; other buyers should allow \~10% on top (*[*Methodology*](https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/methodology/)*).* > **Verdict (TL;DR):** Rime builds AI voices for enterprise voice agents — phone bots, IVR systems, outbound calling. The model this review was first built around, Arcana, was retired from Rime's cloud on 15 August 2026\. Its replacement, **Coda**, is now the flagship: nine languages on the cloud API, sub-100ms model latency and, for the first time, six Australian voices. Mist v3 covers the lowest-latency jobs. Rime is still built for developers: API-first, USD-only and hosted in US regions. The only Australian option is running it yourself. For Australian teams building voice agents at scale, Rime warrants serious evaluation. For everyone else, it doesn't apply. > > **Score: 15/25 — ⭐⭐⭐ Good** *Last reviewed: 8 October 2026 by Adam.* > > **Earlier editions of this review:** [26 Jun 2026 — 14/25](https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/review-rime-australia-2026-06/). This is edition 2, dated 8 Oct 2026\. We keep every edition so you can see how the tool and our verdict have moved — [how and why](https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/review-timeline/). --- ## What Rime is Rime (trading as Rime Labs) is a San Francisco-based AI voice company founded in 2022 by a team of linguists and engineers. The founders — Lily Clifford (Stanford NLP), Brooke Larson (PhD linguist, former Amazon Alexa), and Ares Geovanos (Stanford engineer) — built Rime's models with an unusual focus: recording the full range of spontaneous human speech, including interruptions, laughter, breath, filler words, and vocal disfluencies. The resulting models sound human not because they are polished, but because they are messy in the right ways. Rime offers two production models (read 8 October 2026): - **Coda** — the flagship since 19 May 2026\. Rime pairs an LLM backbone with a speech engine trained on full-duplex conversations between real people. The docs list 287 Coda voices across nine cloud languages: English, Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish (the pricing page's comparison shows 184 voices and eight production-ready languages). Time to first audio is 96 ms at the median, per Rime. - **Mist v3** — the low-latency model: 37 ms median time to first audio, 94 voices, and English, French, German and Spanish. Requests that name no model go to Mist v3 by default. **What happened to Arcana.** This review was first written around Arcana v3\. Rime's changelog announced on 29 July 2026 that cloud Arcana traffic would move to Coda, and on **15 August 2026 Arcana was retired from the cloud API**. Requests that still name `arcana`, `arcanav2` or `arcanav3` are now served by Coda. Existing on-prem Arcana images still run but get no updates or security patches. In short, Arcana was replaced, not renamed: Coda is a different model that took over its traffic. Rime's customers include enterprise brands in food service, retail, and customer service. Their case studies cite a 15% sales increase for major food brands using Rime voices in outbound call campaigns — though that figure comes from Rime's own materials and should be treated as promotional context rather than an independent benchmark. Rime is not a consumer product. Its web dashboard lets you browse voices and generate test audio, but production use runs through the API, a CLI or an enterprise contract. --- ## What it costs in Australia Rime prices in USD. All figures below are approximate AUD conversions at US$1 ≈ A$1.43 (RBA, 7 October 2026), shown ex-GST (a GST-registered business quoting its ABN is not charged GST on an imported digital service; other buyers add \~10%). | Plan / Model | USD | Approx AUD (ex-GST) | | -------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------ | | Mist v3 — Starter, pay as you go | US$0.03 per 1,000 characters (\~1 minute of audio) | \~A$0.043 per 1,000 characters | | Coda — Starter, pay as you go | US$0.05 per 1,000 characters | \~A$0.072 per 1,000 characters | | Starter plan | Pay as you go, no credit card to start, 20 concurrent generations, public Slack support | — | | Enterprise | Custom volume pricing; SLAs, unlimited concurrency and voice clones, cloud, on-prem or VPC | — | *Pricing read on rime.ai/pricing on 8 October 2026\. The page lists two models, Coda and Mist v3, and two plans, Starter and Enterprise; the Arcana rate and the Growth plan this review carried in June are gone.* New accounts start with free minutes on the Starter plan. The pricing page says "\~800 minutes free" on the plan card and "3,000 free minutes" in its FAQ; Rime's docs also say 3,000\. Plan on the lower figure until your dashboard shows otherwise. --- ## How it works in practice Rime's API is straightforward. You send text to the TTS endpoint over HTTP or WebSocket with a voice ID and a model ID, and stream audio back. Set `modelId: coda` explicitly, because a request without one goes to Mist v3\. Rime quotes sub-200ms end to end over its cloud API, but that figure is for callers in the US; from Australia every request also crosses the Pacific, because Rime's cloud runs only in US West and US East. Voice selection happens from Rime's catalogue; the FAQ claims 600+ voices across all models. Each Coda voice is tagged by language and accent. Six are Australian: two male (marlu, drownlight) and four female (eucalyptus, perth, southvale, matilda). Rime's docs describe instant custom voice cloning, and Enterprise includes unlimited custom clones. **Multilingual support** changed with the model. Arcana v3's English–Spanish code-switching was a selling point in June. Coda covers more languages, but its docs say each voice speaks one language, so you pick voices per language rather than relying on one voice to switch mid-sentence. For most Australian use cases that matters little. **On-premise and VPC deployment** are available for Enterprise customers, self-hosted with Docker Compose or Kubernetes. This is significant for regulated industries: on-premise means audio and text never leave your infrastructure, which addresses the data residency problem entirely. It requires an Enterprise agreement, a GPU host and your own operations effort. **Integration** is typically with a voice agent orchestration layer — LiveKit, Pipecat, Vapi, Twilio or a custom WebSocket stack. Rime is one layer of a larger voice AI stack, not a complete solution. --- ## What it does well **Built for conversation, not narration.** Coda is trained on full-duplex conversations between real people, and Rime's founding team of linguists has always recorded spontaneous speech, disfluencies included. Rime says Coda tops human evaluations for voice quality; that is the vendor's claim, and we have not yet run our own listening test on Coda. Judge it on samples in your own call flows. **Latency for voice agents is excellent.** Rime quotes a median 96 ms to first audio for Coda and 37 ms for Mist v3\. For real-time conversation that is the fast end of production TTS, though Australian callers add the trip to a US region. **Australian voices now exist.** Coda's catalogue includes six Australian voices. For an Australian voice agent, a local accent is no longer a custom job. **Enterprise compliance is taken seriously.** SOC 2 Type II, a HIPAA BAA on Enterprise, and on-prem or VPC deployment are all in place. For regulated industries that can solve the hosting question, Rime has the compliance foundations. **Transparent, usage-based pricing.** Per-character billing with published rates is much easier to model than "contact us for pricing". The Starter free minutes allow meaningful evaluation. **The model choice is clear.** Coda for natural expression, Mist v3 for the lowest latency. Rime's docs lay out the trade-off plainly, which makes architectural decisions easier. --- ## What it doesn't do well **No consumer or small-business path.** Rime is enterprise infrastructure. If you need a voice for a podcast, marketing video or e-learning course, Rime is the wrong tool. The dashboard is for testing voices, not producing content, and the pricing model is designed for developers running at scale. **No Australian data residency in the cloud.** Rime's cloud runs in two regions, US West and US East. For AU businesses handling sensitive audio, this is a compliance gap. The on-premise option closes it, but at real infrastructure cost. **Only a handful of Australian voices.** Six Australian voices is a start, not a range. All six are Coda voices, so a Mist v3 deployment chasing the lowest latency has none. **USD pricing with no AUD option.** No Australian invoicing. GST is the user's problem to account for. **Support is enterprise-tier only.** Self-serve users get documentation and a public Slack. Meaningful support — SLAs, dedicated contact, deployment help — requires an Enterprise plan. For Australian developers evaluating the platform, expect to lean heavily on documentation. **The line-up moves fast.** Arcana was the flagship in our June review and retired from the cloud by mid-August, and on-prem Arcana users lost updates and security patches. If you build on a Rime model, plan for migrations. --- ## Australian fit Rime's Australian fit is middling: one real improvement, the old constraints otherwise intact. **Data:** US-hosted cloud inference, in US West and US East only. On-premise or VPC deployment for Enterprise customers is the only path to AU data residency. For regulated industries, that path exists but is expensive. **Pricing:** USD only. No AUD invoicing. GST-registered businesses quoting an ABN are not charged GST on an imported digital service; other buyers add \~10%. **Voices:** Six Australian voices in the Coda catalogue (marlu, drownlight, eucalyptus, perth, southvale, matilda). Enough for a local-sounding agent, not yet a broad choice. **Latency:** With no Australian region, every cloud request from Australia crosses the Pacific. Measure end-to-end response time from your own Australian host before you commit. **Compliance:** SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA BAA available. No specific AU regulatory certifications. **Support:** No AU presence or AU-timezone support. Enterprise clients get better access. For an Australian fintech or healthcare company building a compliant voice agent at enterprise scale, Rime's combination of latency, Australian voices and the on-premise option is worth the conversation. For smaller Australian developers or startups, the hosting and support constraints weigh more heavily. --- ## Alternatives - [**ElevenLabs**](https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/elevenlabs-review-australia-2026/) — The most direct comparison on voice quality. ElevenLabs offers broader voice libraries, voice cloning, and a more accessible entry point for smaller teams. Slightly higher latency than Rime's Mist for real-time agents. - [**Deepgram Aura**](https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/review-deepgram-australia-2026/) — TTS as part of Deepgram's all-in-one voice AI stack. The integrated STT + TTS + Voice Agent API is a simpler stack to manage than assembling Rime with separate speech recognition. - [**Murf**](https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/murf-ai-review-australia-2026/) — Interface-led TTS aimed at content creators rather than developers. If you need TTS for content production rather than real-time agent use, Murf is more accessible. --- ## Bottom line Rime is a serious TTS provider for enterprise voice agents. Coda's conversational training and Mist v3's speed are genuine product advantages, and the compliance foundations for regulated industries are in place. Arcana's retirement is a reminder that the line-up moves quickly. For Australia specifically, the picture improved in one way: Coda ships six Australian voices. The rest still holds. Cloud hosting is US-only, pricing is USD-only, and support is thin below Enterprise. The on-premise option resolves the data question, at enterprise cost and complexity. If you are a well-resourced Australian development team building voice agents at scale, Rime is worth evaluating alongside ElevenLabs. Test the Australian voices, and time requests from an Australian host, before you commit. If you are a smaller team, start with a provider that offers more support and an easier way in. --- ## Score | Criterion | Score | Notes | | --------------------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Value for Money | 3/5 | Competitive per-character pricing (US$0.03–0.05 per 1,000 characters); free starter minutes; Enterprise requires commitment | | Ease of Use | 2/5 | API-first; a dashboard for testing voices but no content-production interface; documentation is solid | | Feature Depth | 4/5 | Coda: nine cloud languages, word timestamps, 96 ms median first audio; Mist v3 at 37 ms; custom voice cloning; on-prem and VPC | | Australian Fit | 3/5 | Six Australian Coda voices; but US-only cloud regions, no AU data residency without on-prem, USD only | | Reliability & Support | 3/5 | SOC 2 + HIPAA BAA; on-prem option; support scales with plan tier; no AU presence; fast model churn | | **Total** | **15/25** | **⭐⭐⭐ Good** | *The ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent rating requires Australian Fit ≥ 4/5\. Rime scores 3/5 on Australian Fit, so it cannot be named a category Top Pick.* [*See our Methodology*](https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/methodology/)*.* --- Update history - **8 Oct 2026** — New edition. **Australian Fit 2/5 → 3/5; total 14/25 → 15/25, still ⭐⭐⭐ Good.** Was: a review built on **Arcana v3**, with Australian Fit docked partly for "no AU English voices in the standard library". Now: Rime's changelog records that **Arcana was retired from the cloud API on 15 August 2026** and that requests naming `arcana`, `arcanav2` or `arcanav3` are now served by **Coda**, launched 19 May 2026 as the flagship. Coda's catalogue includes **six Australian voices** (marlu, drownlight, eucalyptus, perth, southvale, matilda), which removes one of the three reasons for the 2/5\. Cloud hosting is still US West and US East only, and billing is still USD. Feature Depth holds at 4/5 on Coda's documented capabilities (nine cloud languages and 287 voices per its docs, word-level timestamps, P50 time-to-first-audio of 96 ms, instant custom voice cloning, on-prem and VPC); the June claims about Arcana's voice quality are withdrawn because we have not run the same listening test on Coda. The "no voice cloning" con is withdrawn too. AUD figures re-cut at US$1 ≈ A$1.43 (RBA, 7 Oct 2026). Sources: [docs.rime.ai changelog](https://docs.rime.ai/docs/changelog?ref=theaidirectory.com.au), [Coda voices](https://docs.rime.ai/docs/voices-coda?ref=theaidirectory.com.au), [regional endpoints](https://docs.rime.ai/docs/regional-endpoints?ref=theaidirectory.com.au), [rime.ai/pricing](https://www.rime.ai/pricing?ref=theaidirectory.com.au) (all read 8 Oct 2026; every figure here re-confirmed today). The previous edition is kept unchanged and linked above. - **30 Sep 2026 — re-verified by browser; negative confirmed, plans simplified.** `rime.ai/pricing` on an Australian connection now shows two plans: Starter (pay as you go, Mist v3 $0.03 and Coda $0.05 per 1,000 characters, free minutes on sign-up) and Enterprise (custom). The Growth plan, its $500 promo and the Arcana rate this review listed are gone from the page, and Arcana is not among the models it compares. Table, source note, free-credit lines, support con, Value for Money note and the pricing FAQ (body and schema) are corrected. Bare `$`, no `A$`. `aud_native: false` already set. Score held at 14/25; \[RS16\] (Arcana's status) filed. Capture: `Dossiers/captures/rime-pricing-2026-09-30.txt`; [Wayback 30 Sep 2026](https://web.archive.org/web/20260930061700/https://www.rime.ai/pricing). - **24 Sep 2026** — **The grossed-up AUD column removed from the pricing table.** The table carried a second Australian column adding 10% GST to every converted figure, so each plan had two Australian prices and the higher one asserted a tax most of our readers do not pay: a GST-registered Australian business that supplies its ABN is **not charged GST** on an imported digital service. The ex-GST column is unchanged and is the price. Removed, and kept visible here per our price-history rule — the column headed *“Approx AUD (if GST charged, +10%)”*: Mist — Pay As You Go **\~AUD $0.046/1K chars**; Arcana — Pay As You Go **\~AUD $0.062/1K chars**; Coda — Pay As You Go **\~AUD $0.077/1K chars**. `reviewed:` untouched per our dating rule. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Rime AI available in Australia? Rime's API is accessible from Australia, but its cloud runs only in US West and US East, so voice generation is processed in the US. Enterprise customers can deploy Rime on-premise or in their own VPC, which keeps audio and text inside their own infrastructure. Businesses with data residency requirements should talk to Rime's enterprise team. ### Does Rime AI have Australian English voices? Yes. Rime's flagship Coda model includes six Australian voices (checked 8 October 2026): two male (marlu, drownlight) and four female (eucalyptus, perth, southvale, matilda). Its faster Mist v3 model has none. Test them in your own call flows before committing. ### How much does Rime AI cost in Australian dollars? Rime prices in USD. Mist v3 costs US$0.03 per 1,000 characters (about A$0.043 ex-GST) and Coda US$0.05 (about A$0.072 ex-GST), at US$1 ≈ A$1.43 (RBA, 7 October 2026). Arcana was retired on 15 August 2026 and its requests now run on Coda. GST-registered businesses quoting an ABN are not charged GST; other buyers add about 10%. New accounts start with free minutes on the Starter plan (checked 8 October 2026). --- ## Sources - Rime Pricing Page: https://rime.ai/pricing (accessed 26 June 2026) — [Wayback 17 July 2026](https://web.archive.org/web/20260717022345/https://www.rime.ai/pricing) - Rime Company Page: https://rime.ai/company (accessed 26 June 2026) — [Wayback 30 June 2026](https://web.archive.org/web/20260630000259/https://rime.ai/company) - Rime — Arcana v3 Launch: https://rime.ai/resources/arcana-v3 (accessed 26 June 2026) — [Wayback 15 April 2026](https://web.archive.org/web/20260415105041/https://rime.ai/resources/arcana-v3) - Rime — Introducing New Pricing: https://rime.ai/resources/introducing-new-pricing (accessed 26 June 2026) — [Wayback 12 June 2026](https://web.archive.org/web/20260612053912/https://rime.ai/resources/introducing-new-pricing) - Rime — TTS + Voice Best Practices: https://rime.ai/resources/tts-voice-best-practices (accessed 26 June 2026) — [Wayback 12 June 2026](https://web.archive.org/web/20260612042913/https://rime.ai/resources/tts-voice-best-practices) - Rime pricing page, edition 2 reading: https://www.rime.ai/pricing (read 8 October 2026) - Rime docs changelog (Arcana retirement 15 Aug 2026; Coda launch 19 May 2026): https://docs.rime.ai/docs/changelog (read 8 October 2026) - Rime docs — Coda voices (Australian voices): https://docs.rime.ai/docs/voices-coda (read 8 October 2026) - Rime docs — Regional endpoints (US West, US East): https://docs.rime.ai/docs/regional-endpoints (read 8 October 2026) - Rime docs — Introduction (Coda languages, voices, cloning, deployment): https://docs.rime.ai/docs/introduction (read 8 October 2026) - Exchange rate: A$1 = US$0.6970 (RBA, 7 October 2026), i.e. US$1 ≈ A$1.43. - VentureBeat — Rime Voice AI Boosts Sales: https://venturebeat.com/ai/voice-ai-that-actually-converts-new-tts-model-boosts-sales-15-for-major-brands (accessed 26 June 2026) --- *The AI Directory Australia is an independent editorial publication. We don't accept payment for positive reviews. Read our* [*Methodology*](https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/methodology/) *and* [*Affiliate Disclosure*](https://www.theaidirectory.com.au/affiliate-disclosure/)*.* ---