Air AI vs Retell AI
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Air AI if you want defunct ai voice agent; subject of a 2026 ftc enforcement settlement (Autonomous agent, enterprise); choose Retell AI if you want platform to build, test, deploy, and monitor ai voice agents for calls (Autonomous agent, usage).
| Air AI | Retell AI | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Defunct AI voice agent; subject of a 2026 FTC enforcement settlement | Platform to build, test, deploy, and monitor AI voice agents for calls |
| Type | agent | platform |
| Autonomy | Autonomous agent | Autonomous agent |
| Pricing | enterprise | usage · $0.07/min voice engine (model + telephony billed on top); Enterprise from $8,000 |
| Best for | smb | developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise |
| Deployment | saas | saas, api |
| Modalities | voice | voice, text, api |
| Models | proprietary | model-agnostic, gpt, claude |
| Protocols | none | rest-api, function-calling |
| Integrations | - | Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, ElevenLabs, PlayHT |
| Capabilities | 2 documented | 4 documented |
Air AI
- +2023 demos were unusually natural and long-duration for the era and reached a wide audience
- -Defunct: no live product, and the air.ai domain now belongs to an unrelated company
- -Subject of an FTC enforcement action and 2026 settlement banning the owners from marketing business opportunities
Retell AI
- +Provider-flexible: bring your own telephony, voices, and LLM, or use Retell's built-in carrier
- +Structured Conversation Flow Agents (nodes and transitions) give fine control alongside looser prompt-based agents
- +Usage-based pricing with no mandatory base subscription and free credits to start; built-in testing and monitoring
- -Advertised $0.07/min covers only the voice engine; LLM, telephony, and international add to real per-minute cost
- -Building reliable structured flows for complex calls takes meaningful human setup
Which should you choose?
Air AI is defunct ai voice agent; subject of a 2026 ftc enforcement settlement, best for smb. Retell AI is platform to build, test, deploy, and monitor ai voice agents for calls, best for developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.