Agentic Index
ElevenLabs Conversational AI vs Vapi (2026)
ElevenLabs Conversational AI and Vapi both power production voice agents, differentiated by what they bundle: ElevenLabs packages its industry leading voices with agent minutes in subscription tiers (free with fifteen minutes, Starter at 6 dollars up to Business at 990 dollars a month, overage at eight cents a minute, LLM and telephony billed separately), while Vapi is the neutral orchestration layer at five cents a minute platform fee with every component, including ElevenLabs voices if you want them, billed at provider cost. Choose ElevenLabs when voice quality is the product, Vapi when you want one orchestration layer with freedom across every provider.
| At a glance | ElevenLabs Conversational AI | Vapi |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Customer support agent | Agent infrastructure |
| Entry price | Free tier (15 agent minutes/mo); paid from $6/mo Starter up to $990/mo Business; overage $0.08/min; Enterprise custom | Usage based · $0.05/min platform fee + provider costs |
| Free / trial | Free tier: 15 agent minutes/mo, 4 concurrent calls, no commercial license | Free trial credits to start; usage based thereafter |
| Pricing confidence | public exact | public partial |
| Feature |
V
Vapi
|
|
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Partial |
| 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 |
V
Vapi
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
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 | Usage based · $0.05/min platform fee + provider costs |
|
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 |
|
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 cloned brand voices are your differentiation.
- Subscription tiers from 6 dollars a month fit early stage budgeting.
- You are already an ElevenLabs customer for other voice work.
Choose Vapi if
- Provider neutrality lets you mix best of breed speech, model, and telephony.
- Passthrough pricing keeps you at market rates as providers compete.
- Compliance add ons and committed volume contracts fit enterprise procurement.