Agentic Index
ElevenLabs Conversational AI vs Retell AI (2026)
ElevenLabs Conversational AI and Retell AI are both strong picks for production voice agents, priced on different philosophies: ElevenLabs bundles agent minutes into subscription tiers (free with fifteen minutes a month, Starter at 6 dollars, up to Business at 990 dollars a month, overage at eight cents a minute, with the language model and telephony billed separately on top), while Retell is pure pay as you go with no platform fee, voice engine at seven to eight cents a minute plus your choice of LLM and telephony, commonly landing thirteen to thirty one cents a minute all in, with enterprise volume rates near five cents. ElevenLabs leads on voice quality and brand voices; Retell leads on developer control and transparent unit economics.
| At a glance | ElevenLabs Conversational AI | Retell AI |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Customer support agent | Customer support agent |
| Entry price | Free tier (15 agent minutes/mo); paid from $6/mo Starter up to $990/mo Business; overage $0.08/min; Enterprise custom | Pay as you go from $0 ($10 free credits); voice engine $0.07 to $0.08/min plus LLM and telephony billed separately; Enterprise custom |
| Free / trial | Free tier: 15 agent minutes/mo, 4 concurrent calls, no commercial license | $10 in free credits and 20 concurrent calls to build and test, no card |
| Pricing confidence | public exact | public partial |
| Feature | ||
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Partial | Partial |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Free tier (15 agent minutes/mo); paid from $6/mo Starter up to $990/mo Business; overage $0.08/min; Enterprise custom | Pay as you go from $0 ($10 free credits); voice engine $0.07 to $0.08/min plus LLM and telephony billed separately; Enterprise custom |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public — exact | Public — partial |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
hybrid (subscription tiers with included agent minutes, then per minute overage) | usage (per minute across voice engine, LLM, and telephony components) |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
High variable cost | High variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tierTrial
|
Free tierTrial
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Mixed |
Choose ElevenLabs Conversational AI if
- Voice quality and voice cloning are the product differentiators for your brand.
- Bundled subscription tiers from 6 dollars a month simplify early budgeting.
- You are already using ElevenLabs voices elsewhere in your product.
Choose Retell AI if
- Transparent per minute economics matter for modeling support costs at scale.
- Choosing your own LLM and telephony stack gives you control and leverage.
- Enterprise volume rates near five cents a minute fit your call volumes.