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Hume EVI shuts down November 13

Move your voice characters before November 13

Hume's documentation says its EVI and TTS APIs are being sunset on November 13, 2026, with account data deleted afterwards. Neocortex gives your characters a new home with voice in and out.

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  • Unity, Unreal, Godot, Web SDK and Web API
Cora, the Neocortex AI character, waving hello

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Overview

What is Hume EVI?

Hume EVI is a speech-to-speech API from Hume AI whose replies adapt their tone to how the user sounds. Hume is sunsetting it on November 13, 2026.

The short answer

Hume EVI or Neocortex: which fits your game?

Choose Hume EVI if you want

  • Existing projects only, until the API stops on November 13, 2026

Choose Neocortex if you want

  • Teams migrating EVI characters before the deadline
  • Games that want voice plus engine SDKs
  • Projects that animate faces from emotion signals

Side by side

Hume EVI vs Neocortex: feature comparison

The facts that matter when you put AI characters in a game.

Status

Hume EVI

Shutting down November 13, 2026

Neocortex

Active, with regular SDK releases

Speech in and out

Hume EVI

Yes

Neocortex

Streaming TTS and STT

Character definition

Hume EVI

System prompt

Neocortex

Visual node editor: personality, emotion, knowledge, intents, actions

Emotion

Hume EVI

Prosody-aware replies

Neocortex

Starting emotion per character and an emotion tag on every line

Voices

Hume EVI

Hume voices

Neocortex

Voice cloning and voice design

Engines

Hume EVI

Python, TypeScript, React; no Unity SDK

Neocortex

Unity SDK, Unreal plugin, Godot (beta), Web SDK, Web API

Competitor details checked against their own docs, pricing pages or public reporting in October 2026.

Why teams switch

Why game teams choose Neocortex over Hume EVI

Migrate in an afternoon

Turn your system prompt into Agent, Knowledge, Personality and Emotion nodes.

Keep your voice

Clone it from a recording you have the rights to, or design a close match.

Emotion signals

Every reply carries an emotion tag you can use for animation and tone.

Engine SDKs

Unity, Unreal and Godot (beta) instead of building your own client.

Web API

Keep a custom stack and call characters over HTTP.

Help for larger moves

Moving a bigger project? Talk to us.

How it works

Characters you design, not prompts you babysit

  • Personality, emotion, knowledge and world are nodes you connect, not prompts you rewrite.
  • Intents and actions turn what a player says into something your game does.
  • Test every character in the browser for free before it reaches your engine.
neocortex.link/dashboard/characters
Neocortex visual character editor: emotion, personality, accent, language, voice and knowledge nodes connected to an agent, with intents mapped to in-game actions

What Our Customers Say

Discover what creators are saying about building with Neocortex.

After trying several Smart NPC providers, I came across Neocortex while looking for a stateful conversational AI solution for our Virtual Education platform. Neocortex stood out and topped all our key considerations.

Vallikat Peethamber
Managing Director

Neocortex opened scalable solutions for our VR platform, letting us create scenarios that make training more immersive. Keeping AI agents within clear boundaries is hard, but Neocortex handles it very well and makes customization easy.

Ottó Farkas
IT Specialist / Project Manager

In classroom practice, Neocortex and its action-based mechanism provide students with an out-of-the-box way to bridge conversational agents into software and hardware-based interaction design workflows.

Hongming Li
Lecturer / Instructor

I found out about Neocortex while I was working on my final-year project, and the platform's ease of integration and accessibility enabled me to seamlessly implement smart NPCs in my application. Highly recommend it!

Angela Pellillo
Backend Developer

Neocortex was the first step in bringing LLM-powered NPCs into a real Unity3D prototype, fast-tracking development and growing my TikTok account from 0 to 4000 followers within a month!

Brandan Chen
Associate Game Producer

After trying several Smart NPC providers, I came across Neocortex while looking for a stateful conversational AI solution for our Virtual Education platform. Neocortex stood out and topped all our key considerations.

Vallikat Peethamber
Managing Director

Neocortex opened scalable solutions for our VR platform, letting us create scenarios that make training more immersive. Keeping AI agents within clear boundaries is hard, but Neocortex handles it very well and makes customization easy.

Ottó Farkas
IT Specialist / Project Manager

In classroom practice, Neocortex and its action-based mechanism provide students with an out-of-the-box way to bridge conversational agents into software and hardware-based interaction design workflows.

Hongming Li
Lecturer / Instructor

I found out about Neocortex while I was working on my final-year project, and the platform's ease of integration and accessibility enabled me to seamlessly implement smart NPCs in my application. Highly recommend it!

Angela Pellillo
Backend Developer

Neocortex was the first step in bringing LLM-powered NPCs into a real Unity3D prototype, fast-tracking development and growing my TikTok account from 0 to 4000 followers within a month!

Brandan Chen
Associate Game Producer

From idea to playable character in a weekend

Game-jam teams use Neocortex to put talking, acting AI characters into playable games within a single weekend.

Read a game jam story

FAQ

Hume EVI alternative: common questions

Want the long version? Read the in-depth Hume EVI comparison.

Is Hume EVI shutting down?

Yes, on November 13, 2026. Neocortex covers speech in, the language model, expressive speech out and the character itself, so you can move your characters now.

What happens to my Hume data after the shutdown?

Hume deletes account data after November 13, 2026. Rebuild your characters in Neocortex before then: most take an afternoon.

Does Hume EVI have a Unity SDK?

No. Neocortex has a Unity SDK, an Unreal plugin, a Godot SDK and a Web API.

What is the best Hume EVI alternative?

Neocortex. Streaming voice in and out, voice cloning, and characters designed in a visual editor, ready for your game.

Migrate before November 13

Free plan, no credit card. Build a character in the browser and talk to it in minutes.

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More comparisons

All comparisons

Inworld AI alternative

Inworld moved its focus to voice and inference for consumer apps and retired Character Studio. Neocortex keeps character design visual, game-first and in your engine.

Convai alternative

Convai counts every character reply against a monthly quota, with concurrency set per API key. Neocortex gives game teams monthly credits, free editor testing and characters designers control.

NVIDIA ACE alternative

NVIDIA ACE is an on-device toolkit for Unreal Engine 5 and RTX GPUs. If you build in Unity, ship to mobile or the web, or lack a C++ team, Neocortex gets you a talking character today.

Charisma.ai alternative

Charisma.ai's homepage now leads with online training and campaigns. Neocortex is focused on characters players talk to, fight beside and trade with.

Player2 alternative

With Player2, every player signs in to Player2 and spends their own credits, and NPCs stop answering when those run out. Neocortex keeps your players inside your game.

ElevenLabs Agents alternative

ElevenLabs Agents is a voice pipeline for web, mobile and phone. Games need more: a stable SDK in every engine you ship, characters that act, and costs that do not grow with every minute of play.

Replica Studios alternative

Replica Studios closed on June 30, 2025, and its API went offline. Neocortex gives you character voices again, plus NPCs that listen and answer.

EGO AI alternative

EGO AI has moved from an AI game engine to character.world and now yōkai, a consumer voice agent, with no public SDK or API. Neocortex puts AI characters in your Unity, Unreal or Godot game today.