Agentic Index
PolyAI vs SoundHound (2026)
PolyAI and SoundHound both sell enterprise voice AI that answers real phone lines, through sales with no public rates: PolyAI bills per minute of speech processed with entry contracts estimated in the six figures annually, tuning and support bundled, strongest in hospitality, banking, and utilities customer service, while SoundHound sells usage based enterprise contracts spanning its full voice stack including the Amelia conversational AI platform, with deep roots in restaurants, automotive, and ordering. Match the vendor to the vertical: customer service call automation favors PolyAI; ordering, automotive, and embedded voice experiences favor SoundHound.
| At a glance | PolyAI | SoundHound |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Voice agent | Customer support agent |
| Entry price | Custom; per-minute, ~6-figure/yr | Contact sales |
| Free / trial | — | — |
| Pricing confidence | contact only | contact only |
| Feature |
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 | Partial |
|
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. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
Partial | Partial |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
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. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
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 | Partial |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Partial | 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
PolyAI
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Custom; per-minute, ~6-figure/yr | Contact sales |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Contact only | Contact only |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
— | usage |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium 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 |
— | Sales call |
Choose PolyAI if
- Customer service call automation in your vertical is the exact use case.
- Per minute pricing with tuning bundled simplifies the ongoing relationship.
- Multilingual voice quality on service calls won your evaluation.
Choose SoundHound if
- Ordering, automotive, or embedded voice is your actual domain.
- The full voice stack from recognition to agent matters to your build.
- Enterprise references in your industry derisk the platform.