Retell AI vs Vapi (2026)
Comparing Retell AI and Vapi? Both are AI Agents & Chatbots and Voice & Phone AI tools in the directory, which is why buyers put them on the same shortlist. Below is a side-by-side look at pricing and an estimated monthly bill, channels, compliance claims, and integrations, plus when each is the better fit, so you can pick on the facts rather than either vendor's own sales page.
At a glance
| Attribute |
 Retell AI
|
 Vapi
|
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Self-serve platform for building, testing, and monitoring AI phone agents, priced per minute with published component costs. | Developer-first API platform for building voice AI agents, orchestrating your choice of speech, LLM, and telephony providers. |
| Pricing | Paid · $0.07/min | Paid · $0.05/min + provider costs |
| Est. monthly cost | $840/mo $0.07 per minute | $600/mo $0.05 per minute; Plus voice and LLM provider costs |
| Founded | 2023 | 2020 |
| Categories | AI Agents & Chatbots Voice & Phone AI | AI Agents & Chatbots Voice & Phone AI |
| Channels | ||
| Chat | ✓ | — |
| Voice | ✓ | ✓ |
| SMS | ✓ | — |
| Compliance (vendor-claimed) | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | ✓ |
| HIPAA | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR | ✓ | — |
| ISO 27001 | ✓ | — |
| PCI DSS | — | ✓ |
| Data residency | US | US, EU |
| Languages | 55 languages | 40+ languages |
| What the AI can do | ||
| Takes actions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hands off to a human | ✓ | ✓ |
| Choice of LLM | ✓ | ✓ |
| Buying | ||
| Free trial | Free credits ($10) on pay-as-you-go | $5 free credits |
| How you buy | Self-serve signup | Self-serve signup |
| Minimum commitment | No minimum, no contract (pay as you go) | $999/mo minimum (Pro support plan) |
| Company | Independent, venture-backed | Independent, venture-backed |
| Works with | Twilio Vonage Telnyx Cal.com n8n Make GoHighLevel HubSpot | Twilio Vonage Telnyx Deepgram ElevenLabs PlayHT OpenAI Anthropic |
| Key features |
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| Next step |
Full listing Visit site → |
Full listing Visit site → |
Estimates assume 5,000 conversations a month, 60% handled by AI and 10 agent seats, at each vendor's published list price (the cost calculator's model); treat them as a floor, not a quote. Compliance rows are what vendors publicly claim, and “Not verified” means we have not confirmed that fact yet, not that the tool lacks it.
Choose Retell AI or Vapi?
Choose Retell AI if
Best for: Developers and operations teams that want to build their own AI phone agents from interchangeable speech, LLM, voice and telephony parts, with published per-minute pricing from $0.07, free starting credits, 55 languages, US hosting and SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR coverage.
- you need Chat and SMS coverage
- you need a vendor that publicly claims GDPR and ISO 27001
Look elsewhere if you want a finished support agent or a help desk integration out of the box: Retell is a builder's platform, and its verified integrations are telephony, automation and scheduling tools rather than ticketing systems.
Choose Vapi if
Best for: Developers and agencies that want to build custom voice agents by wiring their own choice of speech, LLM, voice and telephony providers through one API, at a published $0.05 per minute plus provider costs, with free credits, US or EU hosting and SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI DSS coverage.
- you need a vendor that publicly claims PCI DSS
- you want the lower list-price bill (about $600/mo vs $840/mo at 5,000 conversations a month)
Look elsewhere if you want a finished support product or anything beyond voice: Vapi is infrastructure, voice-only, and its integrations are speech, model and telephony providers rather than help desks.
About Retell AI
Retell AI is a platform for building AI phone agents that answer and place calls. You compose an agent from interchangeable parts: a speech-to-text layer, your choice of LLM, a voice from providers like ElevenLabs, and telephony via Twilio, Vonage, Telnyx, or your own SIP trunk. The platform handles the hard real time bits, interruption handling, latency, call transfer, and IVR navigation, and adds testing, monitoring, and post call analysis aimed squarely at contact center and front desk workloads.
The company came out of Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch, founded in 2023, with Evie Wang among the cofounders. It grew unusually fast for a seed stage company: a $4.6 million seed led by Alt Capital in September 2024 arrived alongside a reported $3 million in annual revenue within months of launch. Named customers include telehealth company Ro, plus BPOs and contact center operators.
Pricing is published and usage based, which is refreshingly rare. Retell quotes $0.07 to $0.31 per minute all in, depending on your voice and model choices, with components itemized: text-to-speech from $0.015 per minute, LLM costs from $0.003 to $0.16 per minute, US telephony around $0.015 per minute. Every account includes 20 concurrent calls, extra concurrency is $8 per line monthly, phone numbers cost $2 monthly, and new accounts get $10 in free credits. Enterprise plans with dedicated infrastructure are custom.
Choose Retell if you have some technical ability, want a working phone agent this week, and value published per minute economics you can model before committing. Its contact center tilt (batch calling, warm transfer, IVR traversal) makes it a natural fit for support lines. Look elsewhere if you want a fully managed enterprise deployment with a vendor doing the tuning, or a pure no-code experience for a non-technical team.
Read the full Retell AI listing → · See Retell AI alternatives →
About Vapi
Vapi is a developer platform for voice AI agents. Rather than selling a finished support bot, it sells the orchestration layer: an API and SDKs that wire together speech-to-text (Deepgram and others), any major LLM (OpenAI, Anthropic), text-to-speech (ElevenLabs, PlayHT, Cartesia), and telephony (Twilio, Vonage, Telnyx) into a low latency phone agent. Support teams meet Vapi indirectly, as the engine behind custom-built inbound support lines, appointment desks, and agencies' white label voice products.
Founders Jordan Dearsley and Nikhil Gupta went through Y Combinator in 2021 with a productivity app called Superpowered, then pivoted to voice infrastructure in 2023 after Dearsley built himself an AI phone bot to think out loud with. It worked: Vapi reports over a million developers and a billion calls handled. It raised a $20 million Series A led by Bessemer in December 2024, then a $50 million Series B in May 2026 at a $500 million valuation, roughly $72 million total. Amazon chose Vapi for its Ring division after evaluating over 40 rivals.
Pricing starts at $0.05 per minute for the platform itself, with SMS at $0.005 per message. Provider costs (speech, LLM, voice, telephony) are passed through at cost, or drop to zero if you bring your own API keys. Realistic all in costs run $0.07 to $0.25 per minute. Ten concurrent calls are included, extra lines cost $10 monthly, and compliance add-ons are priced like enterprise software: HIPAA at $2,000 monthly, zero data retention at $1,000 monthly.
Choose Vapi if you have engineers and want maximum control over every layer of a support voice agent, with the freedom to swap providers as models improve. Skip it if nobody on your team writes code, or you want a vendor accountable for resolution rates rather than infrastructure.
Read the full Vapi listing → · See Vapi alternatives →
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