Comparing LivePerson and PolyAI? Both are Contact Center & CCaaS and Enterprise tools in the directory, which is why buyers put them on the same shortlist. Below is a side-by-side look at how they price, what they integrate with, and when each is the better fit, so you can pick on the facts rather than either vendor's own sales page.
| Attribute | LivePerson | PolyAI |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Paid · Custom | Per resolution · Custom (per-minute) |
| Founded | 1995 | 2017 |
| Categories | AI Agents & Chatbots Contact Center & CCaaS Enterprise | Contact Center & CCaaS Enterprise Voice & Phone AI |
| Integrations | Salesforce Zendesk Microsoft Dynamics ServiceNow Shopify WhatsApp Apple Messages for Business Avaya | Salesforce HubSpot Zendesk Microsoft Dynamics OpenTable Zapier |
LivePerson Conversational Cloud is an enterprise platform for handling customer conversations at scale across web messaging, in-app chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business, and social channels. AI agents built on the platform resolve routine questions using an intent engine and a bring-your-own-LLM approach, while human agents work in a messaging-first workspace with a generative AI Copilot that drafts replies, summarizes conversations, and translates messages in real time. Voice AI ties phone calls into the same routing and analytics, and Conversational Intelligence reporting shows what customers are actually asking about.
The company is one of the original names in this space. Robert LoCascio founded LivePerson in New York in 1995, back when web chat was a novelty, and took it public on Nasdaq (ticker LPSN) in 2000. It bought VoiceBase and Tenfold in 2021 to add voice analytics and CRM integrations, partnered with Avaya in 2024 to bolt its digital capabilities onto Avaya contact centers, and today claims 18,000 plus brands, with HSBC, Burberry, PNC, and Zurich among its named customers. LoCascio later stepped down, and John Sabino has been CEO since January 2024. In April 2026, voice AI company SoundHound AI agreed to acquire LivePerson.
Pricing is quote-based. LivePerson publishes Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers describing what each unlocks, from the agent workspace up to advanced analytics and generative AI, but no dollar figures. Messaging channels like SMS and WhatsApp pass through provider rates plus a 15 percent handling fee, and generative AI entitlements are negotiated with sales. Budget for an enterprise contract, not a credit-card signup.
Choose LivePerson if you are a large brand that lives on asynchronous messaging and wants proven scale, deep channel coverage, and agent-assist AI with enterprise controls. Look elsewhere if you are a small team that wants transparent pricing and self-service setup, or if the pending SoundHound acquisition and several years of revenue decline make you nervous about vendor stability.
Read the full LivePerson listing → · See LivePerson alternatives →
PolyAI answers the phone. While most of this directory started with chat and added voice later, PolyAI has been voice-first since three Cambridge machine-learning PhDs, Nikola Mrkšić, Pei-Hao Su, and Tsung-Hsien Wen, founded it in London in 2017 out of the university's Machine Intelligence Lab. Its agents are known for sounding genuinely human and for surviving the things that break lesser systems: interruptions, accents, background noise, and callers who change their mind mid-sentence. Restaurants, hotels, banks, and utilities use it to answer every call instantly, day and night, with customers like PG&E, UniCredit, Golden Nugget, and Fogo de Chao on the roster.
The platform matured into what the company calls an agentic dialog platform: Agent Studio for building and managing agents without code, a developer kit for deeper work, and Raven, a proprietary conversation model trained on more than a billion enterprise conversations. Compliance boxes (SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI) are ticked, which matters because taking payments and health information over the phone is exactly where voice AI earns its keep.
Investors have noticed the wedge. In December 2025 PolyAI raised an $86 million Series D at a valuation around $750 million, with NVIDIA's venture arm participating, bringing total funding past $200 million. Commercially it bills on usage, priced per minute of conversation, with rates scoped to your call volume rather than published on the site.
Choose PolyAI when the phone is your problem. If most of your support pain is hold music, missed calls, and staffing the night shift, a voice-native specialist will beat a chat-first platform's bolted-on telephony, and PolyAI is one of the most proven voice specialists in the market.
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