Retell AI vs Vapi
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Retell AI if you want platform to build, test, deploy, and monitor ai voice agents for calls (Autonomous agent, usage); choose Vapi if you want developer platform for voice ai agents that handle phone calls (Supervised agent, usage).
| Retell AI | Vapi | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Platform to build, test, deploy, and monitor AI voice agents for calls | Developer platform for voice AI agents that handle phone calls |
| Type | platform | platform |
| Autonomy | Autonomous agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | usage · $0.07/min voice engine (model + telephony billed on top); Enterprise from $8,000 | usage · $0.05/min platform fee + model costs at cost |
| Best for | developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise | developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise |
| Deployment | saas, api | saas, api |
| Modalities | voice, text, api | voice, text, api |
| Models | model-agnostic, gpt, claude | model-agnostic, gpt, claude, gemini |
| Protocols | rest-api, function-calling | rest-api, function-calling, mcp |
| Integrations | Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, ElevenLabs, PlayHT | Twilio, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google |
| Capabilities | 4 documented | 4 documented |
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
Vapi
- +Deep modularity and control: swap any STT/LLM/TTS provider, bring your own keys and models, fine-tune thousands of config points
- +Low latency at scale with enterprise reliability features (model fallbacks, SOC 2/HIPAA/PCI), validated by large production deployments
- +Transparent usage pricing with at-cost model pass-through and a low platform fee, plus open-source SDKs and a CLI
- -Complexity and steep setup; the no-code builder is limited and non-engineering teams face significant manual configuration
- -Costs can stack unpredictably: the per-minute fee is on top of separately billed provider costs and add-ons
Which should you choose?
Retell AI is platform to build, test, deploy, and monitor ai voice agents for calls, best for developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise. Vapi is developer platform for voice ai agents that handle phone 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.