Agentic Index
Retell AI vs Vapi (2026)
Retell AI and Vapi are the closest head to head in developer voice agents, both unbundled and pay as you go: Retell charges no platform fee with a voice engine at seven to eight cents a minute plus LLM and telephony billed separately (all in commonly thirteen to thirty one cents, enterprise volume near five cents), while Vapi charges a five cent per minute platform fee with every component at provider passthrough (all in commonly fifteen to thirty three cents), plus paid HIPAA and zero data retention add ons. They converge on similar real world costs; the decision usually comes down to API ergonomics, latency in your region, and which compliance packaging fits.
| At a glance | Retell AI | Vapi |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Customer support agent | Agent infrastructure |
| Entry price | 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 | Usage based · $0.05/min platform fee + provider costs |
| Free / trial | $10 in free credits and 20 concurrent calls to build and test, no card | Free trial credits to start; usage based thereafter |
| Pricing confidence | public partial | 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. |
Partial | 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. |
Full / Explicit | 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. |
Full / Explicit | 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. |
Full / Explicit | 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 |
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 | Usage based · $0.05/min platform fee + provider costs |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public — partial | Public — partial |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
usage (per minute across voice engine, LLM, and telephony components) | 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 Retell AI if
- Twenty free concurrent calls and ten dollars in credits make evaluation friction free.
- Bundled voice engine pricing with separate LLM choice balances simplicity and control.
- Enterprise rates near five cents a minute with HIPAA and BAA fit your scale plans.
Choose Vapi if
- Full provider passthrough on every layer gives maximum stack transparency.
- You want the largest ecosystem of integrations and community examples.
- Committed volume enterprise contracts match your procurement style.