Top 6 of 22 alternatives
Alternatives to VoiceAgents
Find a better fit. See what each alternative to VoiceAgents does better, where it falls short, and what it costs.
On this page
- 01
ElevenLabs Agents
Hosted platform for building voice and chat agents, with telephony, SDKs and a choice of LLM.
From FreeWhy it's on this listDone-for-you service · PartlySelf-serve software you run, but enterprises can buy ElevenLabs Forward Deployed Engineers who scope, build and stabilise the deployment; no price is published.Source ↗
Where it improves on VoiceAgents
- +Multi-agent · YesAn orchestrator agent routes a live conversation to specialist agents on natural-language conditions, and transfers can be nested; the transcript carries across.Source ↗
- +Agent permissions · YesTool use is gated per MCP server and per tool: always ask, fine-grained (auto-approved, requires approval, disabled), or no approval at all.Source ↗
Trade-offs against VoiceAgents
None found.
- 02
Vapi
Developer platform for building, testing and deploying voice AI agents that make and receive phone calls.
From $0.05/minuteWhy it's on this listDone-for-you service · PartlyYou build and run the agent yourself; the Scale contract adds an embedded Vapi engineer for the go-live, not a done-for-you build.Source ↗
Where it improves on VoiceAgents
Trade-offs against VoiceAgents
- −Opt out of training · PartlyThe privacy policy reserves call content for model training and names no toggle; the $1,000/month ZDR add-on is the only documented way to stop it being kept at all.Source ↗
- 03
Cartesia
Real-time speech models and a managed runtime for production phone and web voice agents.
From FreeWhy it's on this listOpen models · PartlyThe LLM layer routes through LiteLLM to 100+ providers, but the vendor names only Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, and its own speech models are API-only.Source ↗
Where it improves on VoiceAgents
- +On the command line · YesA `cartesia` CLI creates, deploys and manages agents, and can chat with agent logic locally.Source ↗
- +Self-hosted · PartlyOn-premise or VPC model deployment is sales-gated; separately, agent reasoning code can run on your own servers with Cartesia connecting to your URL.Source ↗
Trade-offs against VoiceAgents
- −Opt out of training · PartlyOpt-out is by request form for selected categories of content; Enterprise plans can additionally enable Zero Data Retention for TTS and STT inference.Source ↗
- 04
Deepgram Voice Agent API
One WebSocket API that runs speech-to-text, LLM orchestration and text-to-speech for real-time voice agents.
From $0.05/minuteWhy it's on this listMulti-agent · PartlyHandoff between specialised agents is a documented pattern with a reference implementation you run yourself: your orchestrator opens a fresh Voice Agent session per agent and summarises context between them. The API itself has no built-in agent-to-agent coordination.Source ↗
Where it improves on VoiceAgents
- +Open models · YesOpen-weight LLMs are listed as supported models: gpt-oss-20b through Groq, which requires you to supply the endpoint, and an NVIDIA Nemotron model that Deepgram manages. Deepgram's own speech and voice weights are not distributed.Source ↗
- +On the command line · PartlyThe dg CLI covers transcription, synthesis, text analysis and account management; its own getting-started enumeration and command reference contain no voice-agent command, while the agentic-tools page claims the CLI reaches voice agents. Both statements are recorded in notes.Source ↗
Trade-offs against VoiceAgents
- −Free tier · PartlyA $200 signup credit with no credit card required, spendable on any endpoint including the agent, plus a hosted playground. It is a credit grant, not a free tier: once it is spent, every call is metered.Source ↗
- 05
LiveKit Agents
Open-source Python and Node.js framework for voice AI agents, with LiveKit Cloud hosting, telephony and observability.
From FreeWhy it's on this listMulti-agent · YesMultiple agents in one session via handoffs, plus a supervisor pattern where one agent keeps control and delegates to scoped tasks.Source ↗
Where it improves on VoiceAgents
- +Open models · YesOpen-weight models are the recommended default in LiveKit Inference (Gemma 4 31B, GPT OSS 120B, DeepSeek), and the Ollama plugin runs models locally.Source ↗
- +On the command line · YesThe lk CLI creates projects, deploys agents and manages LiveKit Cloud; agents can also be run and talked to locally in console mode.Source ↗
Trade-offs against VoiceAgents
- −Pooled budget · PartlyNo per-user balances: allowances pool inside a project. Sharing one plan across projects, and quotas managed at workspace level, are Enterprise only.Source ↗
- 06
PolyAI
Enterprise platform for building voice and chat agents that resolve customer calls, priced per minute.
Why it's on this listDone-for-you service · PartlySelf-serve software plus vendor-delivered work: PolyAI builds and maintains managed dashboards, configures managed-service integrations, and runs an enterprise build of roughly six weeks.Source ↗
Where it improves on VoiceAgents
- +Open models · PartlyThe model catalogue enumerates only Raven, OpenAI and Amazon Bedrock (Claude, Nova) with no open-weight option, but you can attach your own LLM endpoint.Source ↗
- +On the command line · YesThe poly CLI pulls, branches, validates, pushes and chats against a project from the terminal.Source ↗
Trade-offs against VoiceAgents
- −Pooled budget · PartlyConversation volume draws on one account-level Subscription Volume of CX Tokens, but the Wren builder allowance is per person and not shared.Source ↗
- −Opt out of training · PartlyCustomer conversations reach Raven training only where the contract authorises it, and the privacy notice relies on consent where law requires; no self-serve opt-out control is documented.Source ↗
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