# Retell AI Alternatives 2027: 10 Paid, Free & Open-Source

Source: https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/retell-ai/
Prices checked: 2026-11-11 (Zekai Price Ledger)

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 | Type | Starting price | Free plan limit | Licence | Best for | Price checked | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retell AI (the tool being replaced) | — | $0.07-$0.31/min | $10 in free credits | — | — | 2026-11-11 | [pricing](https://www.retellai.com/pricing) |
| Vapi | Free | $0.05/min hosting fee | $5 free credits, 4 concurrent calls | — | Developer-first voice API with bring-your-own models | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://vapi.ai) [pricing](https://vapi.ai/pricing) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/vapi/) |
| ElevenLabs Agents | Free plan + paid | $6/mo | 15 call minutes, 4 concurrent calls | — | Voice agents built on ElevenLabs voices | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://elevenlabs.io/agents) [pricing](https://elevenlabs.io/pricing/agents) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/elevenlabs/) |
| Bolna AI | Free | from $0.06/min | $5 in free credits on sign-up | — | Low per-minute rate, India-focused calls | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://www.bolna.ai) [pricing](https://www.bolna.ai/pricing) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/bolna-ai/) |
| Bland AI | Free | $0.14/min | Start plan, no card, 100 calls a day | — | High-volume outbound calling with daily call caps | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://www.bland.ai) [pricing](https://www.bland.ai/pricing) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/bland-ai/) |
| Stammer AI | Paid | $49/mo | No free plan | — | Agencies reselling white-label voice agents | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://stammer.ai) [pricing](https://stammer.ai/pricing) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/stammer-ai/) |
| PolyAI | Paid | $49/mo | No free plan | — | Contact-centre voice agents with business plans | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://poly.ai) [pricing](https://poly.ai/pricing) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/polyai/) |
| Synthflow | Paid | Not checked | No free plan | — | Enterprise-contract voice agent deployments | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://synthflow.ai) [pricing](https://synthflow.ai/pricing) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/synthflow/) |
| Pipecat | Open source | Free (self-hosted) | No limit (self-hosted) | BSD-2-Clause | Python framework for real-time voice agents | 2026-11-11 | [code](https://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/pipecat/) |
| LiveKit Agents | Open source | Free (self-hosted) | No limit (self-hosted) | Apache-2.0 | Realtime agents on WebRTC infrastructure | 2026-11-11 | [code](https://github.com/livekit/agents) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/livekit-agents/) |
| Vocode | Open source | Free (self-hosted) | No limit (self-hosted) | MIT | MIT-licensed library for phone-call voice apps | 2026-11-11 | [code](https://github.com/vocodedev/vocode-core) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/vocode/) |

## How each alternative compares with Retell AI

- **Vapi** (Free, $0.05/min hosting fee, checked 2026-11-11): 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. Switch 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.
- **ElevenLabs Agents** (Free plan + paid, $6/mo, checked 2026-11-11): 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. Switch if you want a no-cost plan with a fixed number of monthly call minutes to prototype on. Stay with Retell AI if you want pure pay-as-you-go billing with no monthly plan and 20 concurrent calls included.
- **Bolna AI** (Free, from $0.06/min, checked 2026-11-11): 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. Switch if you run high call volume and want prepaid minute packs with a lower headline rate. Stay with Retell AI if you need telephony, LLM and voice costs shown as separate itemised components.
- **Bland AI** (Free, $0.14/min, checked 2026-11-11): 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. Switch if you want plan tiers with stated daily call limits and a flat platform fee at higher volume. Stay with Retell AI if you prefer no platform fee and no daily call cap, with usage billed to the second.
- **Stammer AI** (Paid, $49/mo, checked 2026-11-11): 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. Switch if you are an agency that wants to resell voice and chat agents under your own brand. Stay with Retell AI if you only need voice agents billed by the minute with no monthly seat or plan fee.
- **PolyAI** (Paid, $49/mo, checked 2026-11-11): 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. Switch if you run a business or contact centre and want fixed monthly plans per location. Stay with Retell AI if you build agents in code and want to pay only for the minutes you use.
- **Synthflow** (Paid, Not checked): 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. Switch if you want a sales-led annual contract with scoped concurrency instead of self-serve billing. Stay with Retell AI if you want to start on a credit card with published per-minute rates and free credits.
- **Pipecat** (Open source, Free (self-hosted)): 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. Switch if you want to code the voice pipeline yourself in Python and host it without per-minute platform fees. Stay with Retell AI if you want hosted telephony, call logs and a dashboard without running servers.
- **LiveKit Agents** (Open source, Free (self-hosted)): 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. Switch if you want agents running on open-source WebRTC infrastructure you can host on your own servers. Stay with Retell AI if you do not want to operate a media server or manage turn-detection model licences.
- **Vocode** (Open source, Free (self-hosted)): MIT-licensed Python library for voice LLM apps over phone calls, Zoom or system audio; the repo says it is looking for community maintainers. Switch if you want a permissively licensed library and accept community-level maintenance. Stay with Retell AI if you need a vendor-maintained platform with support and uptime commitments.

## Open-source options in detail

- **Pipecat** (https://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat): Licence: BSD-2-Clause
- **LiveKit Agents** (https://github.com/livekit/agents): Licence: Apache-2.0
- **Vocode** (https://github.com/vocodedev/vocode-core): Licence: MIT

## Questions

### What is the best alternative to Retell AI in 2027?
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).

### Is there a free version of Retell AI?
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.

### Is there a 100% free alternative to Retell AI?
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.

### What is cheaper than Retell AI?
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.

### How much do Retell AI alternatives cost for a team of 5?
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.

### Which is better, Vapi or Retell AI?
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.

### Why are people leaving Retell AI?
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.

### What is better than Retell AI?
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.

## Related on Zekai

- [ElevenLabs Agents alternatives](https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/elevenlabs/)
- [Bolna AI alternatives](https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/bolna-ai/)
- [Bland AI alternatives](https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/bland-ai/)
- [Synthflow alternatives](https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/synthflow/)
- [AI for Customer Support & Experience](https://zekaiwork.com/professions/ai-customer-support-experience-automation/)

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Live table, team cost finder and price alerts: https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/retell-ai/