Industry insights
A practical comparison of Retell AI and Vapi for teams building voice AI agents: pricing, developer experience, compliance, latency, reviews, and when neither is the right fit.
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Retell AI and Vapi both sit in the voice AI builder category. They are useful when an engineering team wants to assemble, test, and operate custom phone agents with control over models, providers, telephony, and call logic.
The difference is the kind of builder each platform favors. Retell packages more of the voice-agent workflowWorkflowAn automated, multi-step process — usually triggered by an event (form fill, new lead) and orchestrating one or more voice / SMS / email actions. into a platform experience. Vapi stays closer to an SDK and orchestration layer for teams that want maximum provider flexibility. If you are choosing between them, the real question is not which one is more advanced. It is whether you want a more managed voice AI platform or a thinner developer layer you can wire into your own stack.
This comparison is based on current public pricing pages, official product pages, Thoughtly compare pages, G2 profiles, Trustpilot availability, forum/search evidence, and independent comparison pages reviewed in June 2026.
| Category | Retell AI | Vapi |
|---|---|---|
| Best fit | Teams that want a production voice-agent platform with templates, testing, analytics, and pay-as-you-go pricing | Engineering teams building custom voice experiences with provider-level control |
| Primary buyer | Developers, automation teams, AI voice implementers | Developers, product engineering, platform teams |
| Core product | AI voice agent platform for phone-call automation | Voice AI agent platform / SDK for building and deploying custom agents |
| Pricing | $0.07–$0.31 per minute for AI voice agents; enterprise custom pricing | Usage-based Build plan with model costs passed through; Scale annual contract |
| Compliance | Public site states HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR | Scale plan lists SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI, SSO, RBAC; HIPAA add-on listed at $2K/month |
| Reviews | G2 shows 4.8/5 from 2,555 reviews | G2 shows 4.2/5 from 3 reviews; Trustpilot page found but scrape was blocked |
| Key strength | More packaged call automation workflow with templates, analytics, simulations, and broad public review base | Provider flexibility, fast developer setup, BYO model/voice stack, and enterprise customer proof |
| Key limitation | Total cost can be hard to forecast once LLM, TTS, knowledge base, PII, telephony, and add-ons stack | Engineering owns more of the integration, reliability, CRM sync, compliance architecture, and operating model |
I weighted five criteria: production readiness, developer experience, pricing transparency, provider flexibility, and operational ownership. A cheap voice-agent minute is not enough if the team still needs to build CRM write-backCRM write-backUpdating the CRM after an interaction with call outcomes, transcripts, qualification answers, notes, appointments, dispositions, and next-step fields., handoff rules, fallbackFallbackA safe backup path used when the caller says something unexpected, an integration fails, or the agent cannot confidently complete the intended step. handling, compliance controls, and monitoring around it.
I also separated public vendor claims from buyer evidence. Retell has a large G2 review base, so its public rating carries more signal. Vapi has a much smaller G2 profile, so individual review comments are useful but should be treated as directional rather than a broad market consensus. That matters; otherwise a comparison like this turns into vibes wearing a blazer.
Retell's public pricing page says teams can start at zero and pay only for usage, with AI voiceAI voiceAn artificially generated, natural-sounding voice produced by a TTS model. Thoughtly supports a library of AI voices and brand-specific cloning. agents listed at $0.07–$0.31 per minute and custom enterprise pricing available. Its pricing page also lists full platform access, pre-built agent templates, call analytics, transcripts, simulation testing, webhooks, API access, 20 free concurrent calls, and community/email support on pay-as-you-go.
That range is helpful, but it also exposes the main watch-out: Retell cost is not just one platform fee. Teams need to forecast the actual mix of voice infrastructure, model choice, TTSText-to-Speech (TTS)The system that turns the agent's generated text into spoken audio — the voice the caller actually hears., knowledge baseKnowledge baseA structured source of business information, FAQs, policies, product details, or procedures that an AI agent can use to answer accurately. usage, denoising, PIIPersonally Identifiable Information (PII)Any data that can identify an individual — name, phone, SSN, account number. Voice agents must redact and protect PII per privacy law. redaction, phone numbers, concurrency, SMS, and other add-ons. Retell is a strong option when engineering wants flexibility and is comfortable modeling a stacked usage bill.
Vapi's current pricing page frames pricing as usage-based on the Build plan and annual contract on Scale. It states that model costs are passed on to the customer, lists 60+ included minutes, 10 call concurrency with $10 per line per month, email and Discord community support, custom voices/model access, HIPAAHIPAAThe US health privacy law that governs protected health information. Healthcare voice and SMS workflows must handle PHI with appropriate safeguards. at $2K/month, and Zero Data Retention at $1K/month. The Scale plan adds fixed platform fee, committed volume, volume-based per-minute pricing, enterprise-grade controls, data residency, priority provider access, SLA support, and a dedicated account team.
Vapi can look cheaper at the platform layer, but the real cost is the full stack: Vapi plus model, voice, telephony, compliance add-ons, lines, monitoring, and the engineering time to assemble the rest. For teams already staffed to build voice infrastructure, that tradeoff can be attractive. For teams that want one predictable operating budget, both products require careful modeling before production.
Vapi is the more developer-shaped product. Its public site describes building and deploying voice agents at scale, with docs-first onboarding and provider flexibility as the center of gravity. G2 describes it as a fast way to build voice AI agents with real-time streaming, tool calling, flexible APIs, and many supported languages.
Retell is also technical, but it presents more packaged workflow around the core voice agentVoice agentAn autonomous, conversational interface that interacts with humans over the phone — answering, qualifying, and routing calls without human staffing.: pre-built templates, simulation testing, transcripts, call analytics, webhooks, API access, batch calling, call transfer, knowledge base, IVRIVRInteractive Voice Response — a phone menu system that routes callers using keypad or spoken inputs. AI agents often replace or augment rigid IVR trees. navigation, branded caller ID, and post-call analysis. That gives implementers more platform surface before they start wiring custom services around the agent.
Choose Vapi when your engineering team wants lower-level orchestration and provider choice. Choose Retell when the team still wants developer control but prefers more of the voice-agent lifecycle packaged inside the vendor platform.
Both companies sell low-latency voice AI and both can support serious production use cases. Retell's homepage positions it as an AI voice agent platform for automating calls, with human-sounding agents, task execution, and scale. Vapi's homepage emphasizes building and deploying agents that can handle support, lead qualificationLead qualificationThe process of capturing fit signals — intent, urgency, location, eligibility, consent, and availability — before routing a lead to the right next step., and appointment scheduling, and cites enterprise customer usage from companies including Ring, Intuit, ServiceTitan, and New York Life.
Public review evidence is uneven. Retell has a large G2 profile: 4.8/5 from 2,555 reviews, with 93% five-star reviews shown at the time of research. That is not proof that every deployment is flawless, but it is a meaningful signal that many buyers are getting value.
Vapi's G2 profile is much smaller: 4.2/5 from 3 reviews. One G2 reviewer praised Vapi's configuration flexibility and low cost, but said latencyLatencyThe delay between a caller speaking and the agent responding. Lower latency makes AI voice conversations feel more natural. was unpredictable, sometimes 800–1000ms and sometimes 4–5 seconds. Because the sample is small, treat that as a risk to test, not a universal verdict. If latency consistency matters, run your own call tests under your expected model, voice, region, and telephony setup before signing either vendor.
Retell's official homepage states HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR compliance. Its pricing page positions enterprise for organizations needing higher reliability, tighter compliance, and dedicated support.
Vapi's pricing page lists SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI, SSO, RBAC, data residency, support SLA, and a dedicated account team on Scale. It also lists HIPAA at $2K/month and Zero Data Retention at $1K/month. That means compliance buyers should not compare only per-minute pricing; they should compare the specific plan and add-ons required to meet procurement, security, and legal requirements.
For regulated teams, the practical checklist is the same for both vendors: request the BAA or DPA, confirm data retention, verify call recordingCall recordingCapturing audio from a phone conversation for review, QA, training, compliance, dispute resolution, or supervised retention. rules, review subprocessors, test PII redaction, and document how escalations and failed-agent events are handled.
This is where both platforms can be the wrong answer for revenue teams, even if they are good voice AI tools. Retell and Vapi are built around voice-agent construction. They can integrate with external systems, but the buyer usually owns the surrounding revenue workflow: CRM write-back, field mapping, routing logic, appointment booking, attribution, SMS/email follow-upEmail follow-upEmail follow-up is the process of sending timely, context-aware replies or reminders that keep an inbound lead moving toward qualification, scheduling, or handoff., retry cadences, reporting, and human handoffHuman handoffThe moment an AI agent transfers context, call details, and the next step to a human rep, licensed specialist, or support team. design.
For an engineering-led product team, owning that logic may be the point. For a RevOps team trying to convert inbound leads, it is often avoidable work. A working phone agent is not the same as a production lead-conversion system.
That is the gap Thoughtly is built for: voice, SMS, email, CRM syncCRM syncCRM sync is the two-way flow of lead records, conversation notes, outcomes, and next steps between an AI agent platform and a CRM so human teams inherit current pipeline instead of manual updates., workflow execution, and compliant lead follow-upLead follow-upThe calls, texts, and emails sent after a lead raises their hand, with the goal of reaching them quickly and moving them to a booked or transferred conversation. in one platform for high-consideration inbound funnels. If your comparison is really about converting leads rather than building voice infrastructure, compare both tools against Thoughtly's lead-conversion platform.
If your team needs to call, text, email, qualify, book, route, and update the CRMCRMThe system of record for leads, contacts, deals, and activity. Thoughtly reads from and writes to your CRM continuously. after every inbound inquiry, neither Retell nor Vapi is the cleanest fit. Both can be part of that stack, but both leave your team responsible for assembling the full conversion motion.
Thoughtly is the better fit when the buyer is RevOps, growth, admissions, enrollment, insurance, mortgage, healthcare, home services, or another high-consideration funnel where speed-to-lead and persistent follow-up matter more than owning voice infrastructure. Thoughtly is not the best fit if your engineering team wants to build a custom voice platform from primitives. That is Vapi territory, and often Retell territory too.
Retell is better if you want a more packaged voice-agent platform with templates, testing, analytics, transcripts, and a large public review base. Vapi is better if you want a more developer-native orchestration layer and your team is comfortable owning more of the stack.
Not necessarily. Vapi's platform layer can look inexpensive, but its pricing page says model costs are passed through and lists add-ons such as HIPAA and Zero Data Retention. Retell lists $0.07–$0.31 per minute for AI voice agents. The cheaper option depends on minutes, model choice, voices, telephony, compliance requirements, support tier, and engineering cost.
Neither is ideal for non-technical teams. Retell has more platform packaging, but both are fundamentally technical products. If RevOps or marketing needs to own lead follow-up without engineering, a revenue-focused platform like Thoughtly is usually a better fit.
No. They can connect to external systems, but they do not replace CRM, attribution, multichannel nurturing, or sales workflow management. Teams should budget for integration and operational design around either platform.
Both can support regulated deployments on the right plan, but the details matter. Retell publicly states HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR. Vapi lists SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI, SSO, RBAC, data residency, and add-on pricing for HIPAA and Zero Data Retention. Procurement teams should verify current contracts, subprocessors, retention, call recording, and BAA/DPA terms directly.
