Agentic Index
Parloa vs PolyAI (2026)
Parloa and PolyAI are the two enterprise grade conversational AI platforms large contact centers shortlist, and both are six figure commitments: Parloa sells custom consumption based contracts tied to the complexity of agent work, with third parties citing minimums around three hundred thousand dollars a year and no free trial, while PolyAI bills per minute of speech processed with entry contracts estimated in the six figure range annually, bundling proactive tuning, maintenance, and around the clock support into the rate. Both are sales and scoping processes, not products you trial; evaluate on voice quality in your languages, integration depth with your contact center stack, and how each prices your projected volumes.
| At a glance | Parloa | PolyAI |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Customer support agent | Voice agent |
| Entry price | Consumption based (contact for pricing) | Custom; per-minute, ~6-figure/yr |
| Free / trial | — | — |
| Pricing confidence | contact only | contact only |
| Feature |
P
Parloa
|
P
PolyAI
|
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Full / Explicit |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
No / Not documented | 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. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
| 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 |
P
Parloa
|
P
PolyAI
|
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Consumption based (contact for pricing) | Custom; per-minute, ~6-figure/yr |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Contact only | Contact only |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
— | — |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
High variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
No free tier
|
No free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
— | — |
Choose Parloa if
- Consumption pricing tied to work complexity matches how you think about agent value.
- An AI agent management platform across channels, not only voice, is the scope.
- Deep contact center integrations for large operations are the requirement.
Choose PolyAI if
- Voice first customer experience with lifelike conversation is the priority.
- Per minute pricing with tuning and support bundled simplifies the contract.
- Proven multilingual deployments in hospitality, banking, and utilities match your industry.