{
    "title": "Retell AI Alternatives 2027: 10 Paid, Free & Open-Source",
    "url": "https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/retell-ai/",
    "summary": "The best Retell AI alternatives in 2027 are Vapi (best overall, $0.05/min hosting fee), ElevenLabs Agents (best free plan) and Pipecat (best open source, BSD-2-Clause). Retell AI itself starts at $0.07-$0.31/min. Zekai checked these prices on vendor pages on 11 Nov 2026; 7 more are compared below, including 2 with a free plan and 2 open source.",
    "tool": {
        "name": "Retell AI",
        "starting_price": "$0.07-$0.31/min",
        "free_plan": "$10 in free credits",
        "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
        "pricing_url": "https://www.retellai.com/pricing"
    },
    "task": "AI voice agent",
    "prices_checked": "2026-11-11",
    "date_modified": "2026-11-11",
    "alternatives": [
        {
            "name": "Vapi",
            "type": "Free",
            "starting_price": "$0.05/min hosting fee",
            "free_plan_limit": "$5 free credits, 4 concurrent calls",
            "best_for": "Developer-first voice API with bring-your-own models",
            "difference": "Charges a flat $0.05/min hosting fee and passes model costs through at cost, with a $29/mo Core plan raising concurrency from 4 to 10 calls.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://vapi.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://vapi.ai",
            "zekai_score": 9.2,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/vapi/"
        },
        {
            "name": "ElevenLabs Agents",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$6/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "15 call minutes, 4 concurrent calls",
            "best_for": "Voice agents built on ElevenLabs voices",
            "difference": "Sells agents as monthly plans with bundled call minutes (15 on Free, 75 on Starter) and charges $0.08 per minute for calls included in a plan.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://elevenlabs.io/pricing/agents",
            "website": "https://elevenlabs.io/agents",
            "zekai_score": 9.2,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/elevenlabs/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Bolna AI",
            "type": "Free",
            "starting_price": "from $0.06/min",
            "free_plan_limit": "$5 in free credits on sign-up",
            "best_for": "Low per-minute rate, India-focused calls",
            "difference": "Pay-as-you-go starts at $0.06 per minute and drops to about 4.5 cents with larger top-ups; a one-time Pilots plan sells 12,000 minutes for $500.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://www.bolna.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://www.bolna.ai",
            "zekai_score": 5.9,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/bolna-ai/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Bland AI",
            "type": "Free",
            "starting_price": "$0.14/min",
            "free_plan_limit": "Start plan, no card, 100 calls a day",
            "best_for": "High-volume outbound calling with daily call caps",
            "difference": "Publishes tiered plans: Start at $0.14/min with 100 calls a day, Build at $0.12/min plus a $299 monthly platform fee with 2,000 calls a day.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://www.bland.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://www.bland.ai",
            "zekai_score": 7.7,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/bland-ai/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Stammer AI",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "$49/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "Agencies reselling white-label voice agents",
            "difference": "Bundles chat and voice agents under one plan and offers a $99/mo Pro White Label tier so agencies can resell agents under their own brand.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://stammer.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://stammer.ai",
            "zekai_score": 7.3,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/stammer-ai/"
        },
        {
            "name": "PolyAI",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "$49/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "Contact-centre voice agents with business plans",
            "difference": "Lists Essentials at $49/mo, Plus at $199/mo and Scale at $299 per location, plus a developer Model API at 2 cents per minute.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://poly.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://poly.ai",
            "zekai_score": 8.1,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/polyai/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Synthflow",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "Not checked",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "Enterprise-contract voice agent deployments",
            "difference": "Sells only through an annual enterprise agreement with custom concurrency planning; its pricing page says there is no free plan or trial and no rate by the minute.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://synthflow.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://synthflow.ai",
            "zekai_score": 7.4,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/synthflow/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Pipecat",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "BSD-2-Clause",
            "best_for": "Python framework for real-time voice agents",
            "difference": "Python framework where you assemble speech-to-text, LLM and text-to-speech services into a pipeline and run the agent process on your own infrastructure.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "repository": "https://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/pipecat/",
            "zekai_score": 7.5,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/pipecat/"
        },
        {
            "name": "LiveKit Agents",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "Apache-2.0",
            "best_for": "Realtime agents on WebRTC infrastructure",
            "difference": "Agent framework that joins calls as a participant on LiveKit's WebRTC server, which is itself open source, and supplies its own turn-detection models under a separate licence.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "repository": "https://github.com/livekit/agents",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/livekit-agents/",
            "zekai_score": 7.5,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/livekit-agents/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Vocode",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "MIT",
            "best_for": "MIT-licensed library for phone-call voice apps",
            "difference": "MIT-licensed Python library for voice LLM apps over phone calls, Zoom or system audio; the repo says it is looking for community maintainers.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "repository": "https://github.com/vocodedev/vocode-core",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/vocode/",
            "zekai_score": 5,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/vocode/"
        }
    ],
    "faq": [
        {
            "q": "What is the best alternative to Retell AI in 2027?",
            "a": "Vapi is the best overall Retell AI alternative on this page ($0.05/min hosting fee). For no cost, ElevenLabs Agents has a free plan (15 call minutes, 4 concurrent calls). To self-host, Pipecat is open source (BSD-2-Clause)."
        },
        {
            "q": "Is there a free version of Retell AI?",
            "a": "Yes. Retell AI has a free plan: $10 in free credits. Paid plans start at $0.07-$0.31/min, checked on 11 Nov 2026."
        },
        {
            "q": "Is there a 100% free alternative to Retell AI?",
            "a": "Yes. Pipecat, LiveKit Agents, Vocode are open source and free to self-host. Vapi, ElevenLabs Agents, Bolna AI, Bland AI have a free plan with limits, shown in the table."
        },
        {
            "q": "What is cheaper than Retell AI?",
            "a": "Bolna AI starts at from $0.06/min, against $0.07-$0.31/min for Retell AI, as listed on each vendor's pricing page on 11 Nov 2026."
        },
        {
            "q": "How much do Retell AI alternatives cost for a team of 5?",
            "a": "If each of 5 people buys the entry paid plan, at the prices Zekai checked on 11 Nov 2026, the monthly cost is ElevenLabs Agents $30/mo, Stammer AI $245/mo, PolyAI $245/mo. Team and business plans can cost more per seat. The Zekai Cost Finder on this page recalculates for any team size."
        },
        {
            "q": "Which is better, Vapi or Retell AI?",
            "a": "Charges a flat $0.05/min hosting fee and passes model costs through at cost, with a $29/mo Core plan raising concurrency from 4 to 10 calls. Choose Vapi if you want to pick every model and provider yourself and pay hosting as a separate line. Stay with Retell AI if you prefer one blended per-minute rate with 20 concurrent calls included on every account."
        },
        {
            "q": "Why are people leaving Retell AI?",
            "a": "The documented reasons are: Beyond the 20 concurrent calls included on every account, extra capacity costs $8 per concurrent call per month (11 Nov 2026); Third-party ElevenLabs voices add $0.04 to $0.10 per minute, against $0.015 per minute for the platform's default text-to-speech voices (11 Nov 2026). Each is sourced in the section above."
        },
        {
            "q": "What is better than Retell AI?",
            "a": "It depends on the job: Vapi suits developers who want to choose each model, ElevenLabs Agents suits teams wanting bundled monthly minutes, and Pipecat suits teams that want to self-host."
        }
    ],
    "publisher": "Zekai (zekaiwork.com) — independently reviewed; prices read on vendor pages on the dates shown.",
    "licence": "Free to quote with a link to https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/retell-ai/. Bulk copying or republishing the dataset is not permitted."
}