ai voice agents · comparison
Best AI voice agents (2026)
AI voice agents handle phone calls — inbound support, outbound sales, scheduling. They are almost all billed per minute, and the real cost stacks: platform per-minute + the underlying LLM + telephony + transcription. Below, each platform's per-minute economics are decoded and dated.
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// scraped weekly · every cell carries source + date · volatile cells flagged verify live · scroll sideways on small screens
| tool | best for | pricing model | entry price | free tier | self-host | mcp | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| most hands-off | per-credit | from $49.99/moverify live | 400 credits/mo | No | Both | Visit → | |
| outbound AI SDR + inbound voice | per-worker annual contract, volume-based | from $3,750/mo (Alice, billed annually)verify live | None. No free plan or public trial | No | None | Visit → | |
| AI customer support deflection | outcome-based per resolution | $0.99 per resolution (50/mo minimum)verify live | 14-day trial, unlimited Fin, no card | No | Both | Visit → | |
| enterprise customer support | usage-based, custom · per-conversation or per-resolution + platform fee | Custom (from ~$50,000/yr platform fee + usage)verify live | None. No free plan or self-serve trial; access requires a sales call. | No | Both | Visit → | |
| enterprise customer service | Outcome-based, you pay per successfully resolved conversation, plus a base platform fee | Custom (enterprise only); third-party estimates ~$150k+/yr plus $50k-$200k setupverify live | None, no self-serve trial, enterprise sales only | No | Server | Visit → | |
| voice agents | per-minute usage (platform fee + model & telephony pass-through) | from $0.05/min (platform fee; +model & telephony pass-through)verify live | No ongoing free tier, ~60 free minutes at signup | No | Both | Visit → | |
| voice agents | per-minute usage (voice) + per-message (chat) | from $0.07/min (usage-based; realistic all-in $0.13–$0.31/min)verify live | Yes. Free account with $10 in credits, 20 free concurrent calls, full platform access, pre-built agent templates and simulation testing, plus community and email support. | Yes | Both | Visit → | |
| voice agents | plan-based per-minute usage + platform fee | Free, then from $299/mo + $0.12/minverify live | Start plan, $0/mo, no card, 2 free credits | Yes | Both | Visit → | |
| No-code AI support chatbots | Tiered subscription with monthly message-credit allotments (free tier plus four paid tiers), plus usage-based overage credits | $32/month (Hobby, monthly billing)verify live | Yes. Free plan: $0/mo, 50 message credits/mo, 1 agent (agents get deleted on inactivity) | No | None | Visit → | |
| No-code voice phone agents | per-minute usage, no flat fee | $0.00/mo base (Pay As You Go); pay per minverify live | Free to build/test, pay on launch | No | Server | Visit → | |
| Multilingual enterprise CX automation | Consumption-based (usage/impact-aligned), no setup fees, custom quote only | Custom (quote-only)verify live | None (no free tier, no self-serve sign-up; access is via sales) | No | None | Visit → | |
| AI front office for home services | Sales-led custom quote, scales with call volume and CSRs | Customverify live | None. No free trial and no self-serve sandbox or demo environment; access is sales-led only. | No | None | Visit → | |
| Complex fintech/healthtech support automation | outcome-based per resolution + monthly platform fee | $1,500/mo (Start, billed annually)verify live | None, demo-led | No | Client | Visit → |
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11x
outbound AI SDR + inbound voiceFin by Intercom
AI customer support deflectionDecagon
enterprise customer supportSierra
enterprise customer serviceVapi
voice agentsRetell AI
voice agentsBland AI
voice agentsChatbase
No-code AI support chatbotsSynthflow
No-code voice phone agentsWonderful
Multilingual enterprise CX automationAvoca AI
AI front office for home servicesReal cost, decoded
The catch each tool's pricing hides.
Credit burn is wildly uneven: one voice call (~265 credits/min) can eat a chunk of the month. Credits do not roll over, and agents pause at zero. Full Lindy pricing →
Pricing is annual-commitment only with no free tier or trial, and the public "$3,750/mo" Growth number is what's quoted on the site, but third-party procurement data (Vendr, G2) shows real contract values clustering around $40,000 to $65,000/yr and effective monthly cost of $5,000+, with reportedly inflexible contracts and limited opt-out even when flexibility was promised in the sales process. You are locked in for the year regardless of results, so budget for the real all-in figure plus onboarding, not the headline rate, and confirm cancellation and auto-renewal terms in writing before signing. Full 11x pricing →
"Outcome" is broader than a clean resolution. Fin charges $0.99 not only when it resolves an issue end-to-end but also when it successfully runs a Procedure you configured to end in a handoff to a human or a workflow, so you can be billed for a "resolution" the customer still escalated. There is also a 50-outcome/month minimum floor, and if you bundle with Intercom you pay per-seat plan fees ($29 to $132/seat/mo) on top of every outcome. Full Fin by Intercom pricing →
There is no published price and no entry tier under six figures. On top of usage you pay a recurring ~$50k+ annual platform fee plus onboarding/professional services, and a hard practical floor means contracts below ~$50k are not even a fit for their sales process. On per-resolution billing, watch how "resolution" is defined in the contract, since a loose definition can inflate the bill and make savings hard to predict. Full Decagon pricing →
"You only pay for resolutions" sounds risk-free, but the definition of a resolution is negotiated per contract and you must agree up front what counts as resolved, which is where the real cost lives. Buyers also miss the recurring platform fee and the substantial upfront implementation and professional-services spend, which can exceed licensing. It is a managed, cloud-only platform with no self-hosting, so you depend on Sierra's forward-deployed team and deep custom workflows live on their roadmap. Full Sierra pricing →
The advertised "$0.05/min" is just Vapi's orchestration fee, not your bill. STT, LLM, and TTS provider costs plus telephony are passed through on top, so real per-minute cost is typically 3x-6x higher (often $0.15-$0.33/min). HIPAA ($2,000/mo) and zero-data-retention ($1,000/mo) are expensive paid add-ons, and SOC 2/SSO/RBAC require the annual Scale contract. Full Vapi pricing →
The advertised $0.07/min is not your real cost. It is only the voice-infrastructure layer; you still pay separately for the LLM, the TTS voice engine and telephony, so realistic all-in pricing is $0.13 to $0.31/min, roughly 2 to 4x the headline number. Premium voices (ElevenLabs) and frontier LLMs (Claude) sit at the top of that range, and features like knowledge base (+$0.005/min), PII removal (+$0.01/min) and AI QA (+$0.10/min) stack on top of every minute. Full Retell AI pricing →
The headline '$0.09/min' you still see quoted around the web is outdated. 2026 self-serve plans run $0.11 to $0.14/min, and the paid tiers add a $299 to $499/mo platform fee on top of usage, with the cheap $0.09 rate now reserved for custom Enterprise volume contracts. The real per-minute cost also climbs with add-ons: human transfers ($0.03 to $0.05/min on Bland numbers), a $0.015 minimum charge on every call attempt including failed calls, SMS at $0.02/message, and web-widget messages at $0.01 each. Full Bland AI pricing →
Billing is message-credit metered, not flat: a single conversation can consume multiple credits (premium models burn up to 5 each), and once you exhaust the monthly allotment you auto-recharge at $40 per 1,000 credits, so cost scales with traffic rather than seats. Voice, telephony, API access and outbound campaigns are gated behind the $120/mo Standard tier, and removing Chatbase branding is a separate $1,188/year add-on. Free-tier agents are deleted after a period of inactivity, so the $0 plan is for testing, not running anything live. Full Chatbase pricing →
The advertised per-minute rate ($0.09 voice engine) is NOT your real cost, because LLM and telephony minutes stack on top, so budget $0.15 to $0.24/min all-in. Optional add-ons like Performance Routing and Global Low Latency Edge each add $0.04/min, quietly pushing the rate higher. White-label is a $2,000/month standalone add-on (only included inside Enterprise), and in-house native telephony is Enterprise-only. Full Synthflow pricing →
No public pricing, no self-serve, and no free trial. It is a sales-led, deployment-heavy enterprise engagement where Wonderful embeds its own engineers, so it is overkill for SMBs and anyone wanting to spin up an agent without a vendor implementation team. The localization-first pitch is strongest in EMEA, LATAM, and APAC and in non-English markets, and it is a very young company (founded 2025) still scaling its delivery footprint. Full Wonderful pricing →
Zero pricing transparency plus a hard audience gate. There is no public price, no free trial, and no self-serve sandbox, so you must go through enterprise sales just to see numbers and can't model TCO before committing. It's also gated to roughly $3M+ revenue operators with 2+ CSRs on ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro, so solo operators, sub-$1M shops, and teams on Workiz or FieldEdge are effectively out of scope. Full Avoca AI pricing →
Published Start/Scale prices require annual commitment, and the headline monthly number is only the platform fee. Actual spend is dominated by per-resolution credits that stack per channel (voice costs ~50 to 60% more per ticket than chat), plus separate per-ticket charges for routing/tagging and automated QA. There is no free trial; you must book a demo, and onboarding is implementation-heavy since the agent has to be wired into your workflows and systems before it resolves anything. Full Lorikeet pricing →
FAQ
What is the best AI voice agent platform?
For developers, Vapi and Retell AI lead on flexibility and latency, billed per minute. For a no-code path, Lindy bundles voice agents into its credit pricing. Bland AI is strong for high-volume outbound calling.
How much do AI voice agents cost per minute?
Platform fees typically run ~$0.05–$0.15/minute, but the real bill adds the LLM, telephony and transcription on top — often $0.10–$0.30/min all-in. Always model expected call minutes; verify live as rates change often.
Can AI voice agents make outbound calls?
Yes — Vapi, Retell and Bland all support outbound calling with telephony integration (e.g. Twilio). Lindy also makes and receives calls via its bundled voice agents.