# Retell AI Alternatives (2026): 6 Voice Agent Platforms Compared

> Source: https://theagentsindex.com/retell-ai/alternatives (curated, quality-gated, re-verified)

Retell AI is a developer-first voice AI platform built around natural-sounding calls and low latency (~600ms) via its own proprietary turn-taking model, letting teams pick their own LLM, voice and telephony provider. It has grown quickly on modest funding — $60M in annualized revenue by April 2026, up roughly 650% year over year, while staying profitable on a single $4.6M seed round — but its pay-as-you-go pricing is component-based: the $0.07/min headline climbs toward $0.13-$0.20+/min once a real LLM, voice and telephony are added, and there is no permanent free tier, just $10 in trial credits. The six tools below are this site's other Published, individually researched voice-agent listings, each earning its place for a different reason rather than being a drop-in clone: Vapi is the closest developer-first rival, with a cheaper $0.05/min orchestration fee and proven enterprise scale; Bland AI fixes Retell's pricing-complexity problem directly with one all-inclusive per-minute rate; ElevenLabs Conversational AI swaps Retell's per-minute-only billing for subscription tiers built around best-in-class voice cloning; Synthflow AI replaces Retell's API-first builder with a visual, no-code Flow Designer and a named BELL deployment methodology for ops/CX teams, at the cost of a narrower, OpenAI-only model choice; LiveKit Agents is the only genuinely open-source, self-hostable option, with a real free tier; and PolyAI is the pre-LLM-era enterprise incumbent, with deep compliance certifications and a no-code builder Retell doesn't offer. Every fact below traces to each tool's own already-Published, already-sourced listing on this site, re-read fresh for this page.

| # | Name | What it is | Why it's here | Pricing | API |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | [Vapi](https://theagentsindex.com/vapi.md) | The developer platform for voice AI agents, bring your own model, voice and telephony, and Vapi orchestrates the call. | The closest developer-first rival — also model-agnostic and billed per minute, with a cheaper $0.05/min orchestration fee than Retell's $0.07-$0.31/min range and genuine enterprise-scale proof (Amazon Ring evaluated 40+ vendors and now routes 100% of its inbound calls through it) — but it leans even further into pure code and API, without Retell's drag-and-drop conversation-flow builder. | $0.05 / min | Yes |
| 2 | [Bland AI](https://theagentsindex.com/bland-ai.md) | Enterprise voice AI that owns its own model stack, priced all-in per minute with no model pass-throughs. | Fixes Retell's own most-cited limitation directly: one all-inclusive per-minute rate ($0.11-$0.14) that already bundles the LLM, voice and telephony instead of billing them as stacked components — the trade-off is Bland's proprietary self-hosted stack in place of Retell's bring-your-own-model flexibility. | $0.14/min / minute | Yes |
| 3 | [ElevenLabs Conversational AI](https://theagentsindex.com/elevenlabs-conversational-ai.md) | The voice-quality specialist’s own agent layer, 10,000+ voices and instant cloning, with a bring-your-own-LLM brain. | Swaps Retell's pure per-minute billing for subscription tiers with pooled minutes (Free through $990/month Business), built around best-in-class text-to-speech and instant voice cloning across 10,000+ voices — the pick if voice quality matters more than Retell's low-latency turn-taking pitch. | $0 / mo | Yes |
| 4 | [Synthflow AI](https://theagentsindex.com/synthflow-ai.md) | A no-code voice AI platform for enterprise phone agents — a visual Flow Designer and a structured Build-Evaluate-Launch-Learn deployment cycle, billed by the minute in separate components. | Replaces Retell's API-first, developer-configured builder with a genuinely no-code visual Flow Designer and a named BELL (Build, Evaluate, Launch, Learn) deployment methodology, aimed at ops/CX teams rather than engineers, backed by an unusually complete compliance set (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, ISO 27001) — the trade-off is Synthflow's narrower, OpenAI-only model choice against Retell's fully bring-your-own-model flexibility. | $0.11-$0.16 / min | Yes |
| 5 | [LiveKit Agents](https://theagentsindex.com/livekit-agents.md) | The Apache 2.0 voice-agent framework. 13.1k GitHub stars, self-hostable, and the only open-source pick in this category with fully published pricing. | The only genuinely open-source, self-hostable pick in the category (Apache 2.0, 11.5k+ GitHub stars), with a real free tier — 1,000 agent-session minutes a month, no credit card — versus Retell's $10-credit-only trial; the cost is writing and deploying your own agent code instead of using Retell's hosted dashboard and flow builder. | $0 / month | Yes |
| 6 | [PolyAI](https://theagentsindex.com/polyai.md) | The pre-LLM-era enterprise voice AI incumbent ($750M-valued, 200+ enterprise customers): sales-led only again after a May 2026 self-serve tier went away. | The furthest departure: a pre-LLM-era enterprise incumbent (founded 2017, 200+ named customers, a $750M valuation) shipping SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR and PCI DSS compliance plus a no-code Poly Agent Builder — sales-led only (a self-serve tier it briefly ran from May 2026 is gone as of an August 2026 re-check), unlike Retell's fully self-serve, sign-up-and-go pricing. | Custom (per minute, sales-led) | Yes |

## Methodology

These six are drawn from this site's own Published, individually-researched voice-agents category — eleven listings in total, the same corpus behind /best-ai-voice-agents and the site's AI voice agent buyer guide — never a fresh, unverified list assembled for this page. A tool qualifies only if we have already fact-checked its pricing model and sourced its pros, cons and a "best for" call. The order runs from closest-to-furthest from Retell's own developer-first, bring-your-own-provider model: Vapi first, the nearest analog on both audience and architecture; Bland AI next, the direct fix for Retell's own most-cited limitation (stacked, hard-to-predict pricing); ElevenLabs Conversational AI third, a different pricing shape (subscription plus pooled minutes) built around voice quality rather than orchestration flexibility; Synthflow AI fourth, the no-code alternative to Retell's API-first builder; LiveKit Agents fifth, the only open-source and self-hostable pick; and PolyAI last, the furthest departure — a sales-proven enterprise incumbent with a no-code path rather than a developer-first API.