Tavus — Build real-time, emotionally intelligent human-like AI video agents. Best for Developers building conversational video agents with real-time human-like interaction, Enterprise teams deploying secure, customizable AI humans for sales, support, and healthcare, Individuals seeking an AI companion (PALs) that sees, hears, and remembers. Free to start; paid plans from $20/mo.
Developers building conversational video agents with real-time human-like interactionEnterprise teams deploying secure, customizable AI humans for sales, support, and healthcareIndividuals seeking an AI companion (PALs) that sees, hears, and remembersResearchers and innovators exploring human-computer interaction and emotional AI
Not ideal for
Teams needing only text-based chatbots without video or emotionBudget-constrained buyers due to undisclosed pricing and likely enterprise costSimple use cases that don't require real-time or high-fidelity facial animationProjects requiring extensive integrations with third-party tools (not listed)
Tavus is a strong choice for teams needing low-latency, emotionally aware video agents. Its <500ms latency and white-label deployment outperform most chat-only alternatives, but pricing is undisclosed and the platform is still research-heavy.
Pick Tavus if you need real-time, human-like video AI with emotional intelligence for customer-facing roles like sales, support, or education. Its <500ms latency and white-label deployment make it ideal for production at scale. Pass if you only need text-based chatbots or can't commit to an enterprise plan—pricing isn't public, and the research models may be overkill for simple use. Compared to competitors like Synthesia (focused on pre-recorded avatars) or ElevenLabs (voice-only), Tavus offers true real-time interaction and multimodal perception. Real-world caveats: the platform is still evolving, and integration complexity may require dedicated engineering resources. The PALs product is experimental, and enterprise features like custom replicas likely require a custom quote. For developers wanting to build the next generation of human-computer interaction, it's a cutting-edge platform worth exploring, but expect to invest in setup.
Skip Tavus if Skip Tavus if you only need text-based chatbot functionality or lightweight pre-recorded videos without real-time interaction.
Latest from Tavus
Updated today
Across the latest 10 updates: 2 feature updates, 1 launch and 7 news mentions.
How likely is Tavus to still be operational in 12 months? Based on 6 signals including wrapper dependency, GitHub traction, pricing model, and category risk.
funding runway
60
website health
90
github activity
50
category mortality
70
wrapper dependency
100
hyperscaler overlap
80
About Tavus
Tavus is a San Francisco-based AI research lab pioneering human computing—building AI that sees, hears, and emotionally understands humans in real-time face-to-face video. The platform enables developers to create conversational video agents with out-of-the-box building blocks for perception, dialogue, and rendering, achieving <500ms end-to-end latency. Trusted by innovative companies, Tavus offers APIs for video generation and custom replicas, and its PALs product delivers personal AI companions that listen, remember, and respond. For enterprise, it provides production-grade infrastructure for secure deployment across learning, healthcare, sales, education, and support, with emotion control and SLAs. Tavus positions itself as the leader in making computing feel instinctive and alive, bridging human-machine interaction with foundational models in rendering (Phoenix-4), perception (Raven-1), and emotional understanding (Sparrow-1).
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Unified object recognition and emotion detection (Raven-1)
Out-of-the-box building blocks for perception, dialogue, rendering
API for video generation
Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Tavus actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Developer integrating CVI
You're building a SaaS product and want to add an AI sales rep that can hold live discovery calls. You use Tavus APIs to create a custom replica from a 2-minute video, configure the agent with Raven-1 perception and Phoenix-4 rendering, and embed it in your pricing page.
Outcome: Within a week, you have a white-labeled AI sales rep handling initial prospect conversations, booking meetings for your human sales team.
Enterprise learning & development lead
You need to scale 1:1 coaching for 500 employees. You deploy Tavus enterprise with custom replicas of your top trainers, using Sparrow-1 dialogue model for adaptive Q&A and Phoenix-4 for realistic facial expressions.
Outcome: Employees get 24/7 access to AI coaches that provide real-time feedback, reducing training costs by 40% while improving engagement.
CVI minutes burn fast in real production — a 5-minute support session per user across 1,000 users is 5,000 minutes in Growth-plus. Personal Replica training requires careful consent video capture; off-spec recordings produce visible artefacts. Real-time CVI quality degrades on weak networks (<2 Mbps) and doesn't auto-fallback to text. Documentation is engineer-grade — non-developers need help integrating. PALs product is separate from developer APIs and may confuse users.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Annual total
Free
Over 12 months
Effective monthly
Free
Billed monthly
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Tavus tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0/mo
Ideal for
Developers testing Tavus APIs with low volume — 25 CVI minutes and 5 stock replicas.
What this tier adds
Free entry point with watermarked videos and limited concurrent streams (1).
Starter
$59/mo
Ideal for
Individual developers or startups needing to run small-scale trials with custom replicas and pay-as-you-go overage.
What this tier adds
Adds 3 custom replica trainings, 100 CVI minutes, 3 concurrent streams, and pay-as-you-go overage at $0.37/min.
Growth
$397/mo
Ideal for
Teams productionizing AI conversations with moderate volume — 1,250 CVI minutes, 10 concurrent streams, and discounted overage.
What this tier adds
Increases CVI minutes, replica trainings (7), concurrent streams (10), and includes conversation recordings at $0.32/min overage.
Hidden costs & gotchas
What the public pricing page doesn't put in bold. Captured from pricing-page footnotes, contract terms, and recurring complaints.
•Pay-as-you-go CVI overage: $0.37/min on Starter, $0.32/min on Growth
•Additional replica training: $65/replica on Starter, $40/replica on Growth
•30-second minimum charge per CVI conversation
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Tavus's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Tavus pricing is developer- and enterprise-oriented. The Free tier (25 CVI mins) works for testing, but production costs add up quickly via overage. At $59/mo Starter and $397/mo Growth, it's expensive compared to pure audio/chat APIs like Twilio or Google Dialogflow, but justified for face-to-face video with emotional intelligence. Enterprise custom pricing with volume discounts.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Tavus — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
For developers, you can create a basic voice-to-voice agent in a few hours using the API docs. Adding a custom replica requires a 2-minute video recording and takes about an hour to train. Full production deployment with white-labeling and enterprise SLAs may take 1-2 weeks.
Switching to or from Tavus
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
Migrating in
→From pre-recorded video tools: Replace static onboarding videos with Tavus CVI agents that respond to user questions in real time.
Recent material changes
Pricing, brand, ownership, or deprecation changes worth knowing before you commit. Most-recent first.
•2026-05-14: Image-to-Replica launch — create AI humans from a single image, no video recording needed.
•2026-05-06 to 2026-05-14: Multiple blog posts on latency factors, conversational AI pricing, and enterprise use cases.
