Best AI Cold Calling Agents of 2026
AI voice agents that place outbound sales calls, ranked on all in cost per minute, dialing volume, compliance tools and how much building they need.
By , research by the BestBots team ยท Updated Oct 19, 2026
Fact checked against each company's published pricing, documentation and verified user ratings. How we score
Retell AI is the best AI cold calling agent for most sales teams: it publishes every per minute cost, includes 20 concurrent calls free, and lets a non engineer build and test a call script. Bland is simpler if you want one all in rate ($0.14 a minute), and Telnyx is cheapest at about $0.06 a minute if you have developers.
Our top picks
We compared eight AI voice platforms that place outbound calls, using their pricing pages, docs and review listings as of October 2026. Every price links to its source, and scores follow our rubric.
Before you buy: the consent rule
AI cold calling has a legal problem that email does not. On February 8, 2024, the FCC unanimously ruled that calls using AI generated voices are "artificial" voice calls under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The TCPA requires the called party's prior express consent for artificial or prerecorded voice calls to cell phones and residential lines, unless an exemption applies.
In practice that means:
- Cold calling consumers with an AI voice, without consent, is the riskiest use. Lead lists bought from a data vendor do not carry your consent.
- Calling people who opted in is the safest use. Speed to lead calls to someone who just filled in your form, appointment reminders and reactivation calls to past customers who agreed to calls are where most teams start.
- B2B is not a free pass. Most business to business calls are exempt from the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule, but the TCPA's artificial voice rule still covers cell phones, and many owners and reps list a mobile number.
- Time windows still apply. The FTC bars telemarketing calls to consumers before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m.
This is not legal advice. Have counsel review your script, consent language and Do Not Call scrubbing before the first campaign. Thoughtly is the only pick here that lists a TCPA and state Do Not Call compliance review in a plan.
How to choose
Three numbers decide which platform fits.
- All in cost per minute. Headline rates hide the LLM, the voice and telephony. Bland includes all three in $0.14. Retell's $0.055 becomes $0.07 to $0.31. Vapi's $0.05 becomes about $0.08 at the cheapest. Telnyx states about $0.06 all in. Model it on your own script.
- Concurrency and daily limits. Outbound campaigns dial in parallel. Retell includes 20 lines free, Telnyx 500, Bland 10 on Start (and 100 calls a day), Vapi 4.
- Who builds it. Retell and ElevenLabs have visual builders. Vapi and Telnyx are API first. Synthflow and Thoughtly sell to teams who want the vendor involved.
Then check transfers to a live rep, voicemail detection, caller ID branding (Retell charges $0.10 per branded outbound call) and CRM write back.
Our picks, in detail
- Starting price
- $0.055 per minute
- Per minute cost
- $0.055 voice infra plus LLM ($0.0016 to $0.32), voice ($0.015 to $0.10) and telephony ($0.015 US Twilio or Telnyx)
- Concurrency
- 20 concurrent calls free, then $8 per line per month
- Telephony
- Retell numbers via Twilio, Vonage, or your own SIP trunk at no Retell charge
Retell prices every piece on one public page: $0.055 per minute for voice infra, $0.005 per batch dial and $0.10 per branded outbound call, with 20 concurrent calls free. Its drag and drop builder, testing and QA tools let a sales ops lead build a script without engineers, and it carries 4.9 on Trustpilot from 810 reviews.
Pros
- Every component is priced on one public page, so you can model cost before you sign up
- 20 concurrent calls included free, where Vapi includes 4 and ElevenLabs Pro includes 20 only on a $99 plan
- SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR and ISO 27001 listed with no compliance surcharge
- Drag and drop flow builder plus testing and QA tools, and a quick start that gets a phone agent live in about 15 minutes
Cons
- The $0.055 headline excludes the LLM, the voice and telephony, so quotes based on it understate the bill
- Premium voices and add ons stack: ElevenLabs v4 is $0.10 per minute and AI QA another $0.10
- Language coverage is not listed as a number; you check the dashboard
- Some Trustpilot reviewers report 1.5 to 2.5 second pauses and slow support replies
Skip it if you want one flat rate; once you add an LLM, a voice and telephony, the real cost lands at $0.07 to $0.31 per minute per Retell.
- Starting price
- $0.14 per minute
- Per minute cost
- $0.14 Start, $0.12 Build, $0.11 Scale per connected minute; models and telephony included
- Concurrency
- 10 Start, 50 Build, sized to volume on Enterprise
- Telephony
- Bland numbers included in the minute rate, or bring your own Twilio
Bland's $0.14 per connected minute on the free Start plan includes the models and Bland's own phone numbers, so there is nothing else to add up. The $299 Build plan drops the rate to $0.12, raises the limit to 2,000 calls a day and 50 at once, and it lists SOC 2 Type II and 40+ languages.
Pros
- One connected minute rate covers speech, LLM and voice, so there is no token math
- Runs its own models with self hosted and on premises options; customer data does not train other models
- SOC 2 Type I and II, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR and ISO 27001 listed, plus a FedRAMP badge, with BAAs and DPAs
- Forward deployed engineers build the first agents; Bland says most go live in two to six weeks
Cons
- At $0.14 per minute it costs more than a budget Retell, Vapi or Telnyx stack
- Start plan caps you at 100 calls per day, which blocks real outbound volume
- Transfer minutes ($0.03 to $0.05) are billed on top when calls move to a human on Bland numbers
- Per minute rates rose from a flat $0.09 to $0.11 to $0.14 in December 2025, and the public page and billing docs list different tiers
Skip it if you only need a few hundred minutes; Start caps you at 100 calls a day and 10 at once.
- Starting price
- $0.05 per minute
- Per minute cost
- $0.05 including STT and TTS; about $0.06 all in with Kimi and carrier, per Telnyx
- Concurrency
- 500 concurrent calls on pay as you go
- Telephony
- Licensed carrier in 45+ countries; SIP inbound from $0.0032 and outbound from $0.005 per minute plus $0.002 platform fee
Telnyx is a licensed carrier, so its $0.05 per minute covers orchestration, speech to text and text to speech, and it states about $0.06 all in with its hosted model and carrier fees. Pay as you go includes 500 concurrent calls and HIPAA on every plan.
Pros
- About $0.06 per minute all in, the lowest complete rate published by any platform compared
- HIPAA included on every plan and SOC 2 Type II certified
- 500 concurrent calls on pay as you go, far above Retell's 20 or Vapi's 4
- Owns the network and GPUs, which is how it claims sub 200 ms latency
Cons
- The no code builder is a natural language instruction editor, simpler than Retell's flow canvas
- 30+ prebuilt integrations, fewer than Synthflow's 200+
- Trustpilot reviews (3.2 from 650) cover all of Telnyx and cite slow account verification
- Telnyx pages disagree on specs: the product page says sub 200 ms and 80+ languages, the sign up page says sub 500 ms and 100+ languages
Skip it if nobody on your team can build an agent; Telnyx is a developer platform first.
- Starting price
- $0.05 per minute
- Per minute cost
- $0.05 hosting plus STT ($0.0095 to $0.0099), LLM ($0.0077 to $0.0452) and voice ($0.0146 to $0.0238)
- Concurrency
- 4 free, 10 on Core, 30 on Pro, extra lines $10 per month
- Telephony
- Free Vapi numbers, SIP and WebRTC, or Twilio ($0.008 inbound, $0.014 outbound), Vonage ($0.00814) or Telnyx ($0.0055) per minute
Vapi charges $0.05 per minute for hosting and passes the models through at cost, which puts its cheapest published stack near $0.082 per minute on free Vapi telephony. You can swap transcription, LLM and voice providers freely and run outbound campaigns through the API.
Pros
- Lowest platform fee among the big self serve tools at $0.05 per minute, with models at cost
- Free Vapi telephony and SIP transport removes the separate carrier line item
- Bring your own providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Groq and multiple voice and speech vendors
- Vapi says it has 1M+ developers and 2.5M+ agents launched, with Amazon Ring, Intuit and ServiceTitan named as customers
Cons
- HIPAA is a $2,000 per month add on, which wipes out the per minute savings for small healthcare teams
- Only 4 concurrent calls without a package
- Free tier support is a Discord community
- Trustpilot score is 2.4 from 15 reviews, citing latency pauses and billing surprises
Skip it if you need many lines at once; only 4 concurrent calls come free, then $29 a month for 10 or $10 per extra line.
- Starting price
- $0.08 per minute
- Per minute cost
- $0.08 per minute, no ElevenLabs telephony fee, LLM and carrier extra
- Concurrency
- 4 Free, 6 Starter, 10 Creator, 20 Pro, 30 Scale, 40 Business; burst at $0.16 per minute
- Telephony
- Native Twilio integration, SIP trunk, batch outbound calling; no ElevenLabs telephony fee
ElevenLabs Agents gives you 5,000+ voices across 31 languages and batch outbound calling over Twilio or SIP, at $0.08 per minute after the minutes bundled in each plan. The $99 Pro plan includes 1,238 agent minutes and 20 concurrent calls.
Pros
- Flat $0.08 per extra minute on every plan and no ElevenLabs telephony fee
- 5,000+ voices across 31 languages, the widest voice library of the platforms compared
- Visual workflow builder, knowledge base with RAG, tools and custom LLM support
- Free plan with 15 minutes and 4 concurrent calls to prototype
Cons
- LLM cost is extra and shown only inside the product, so the all in rate is not published
- HIPAA BAAs require Enterprise
- Going over your concurrency limit doubles the rate to $0.16 per minute
- Trustpilot score is 3.0 from 1,188 reviews, mostly about credits and billing across ElevenLabs products
Skip it if you need to see the all in rate up front; LLM usage and your carrier are billed on top, and going over concurrency doubles the rate to $0.16.
- Starting price
- Quote only
- Per minute cost
- Not published
- Concurrency
- 10 Flex, 100+ Scale, custom Enterprise
- Telephony
- Not published
Thoughtly's Scale plan lists a TCPA and state Do Not Call compliance review, which is the single biggest legal risk in AI cold calling, plus 100+ concurrent calls and a Salesforce integration. Enterprise adds a HIPAA BAA and SOC 2 Type II.
Pros
- Built around lead response: calls a new lead seconds after a form submit
- Voice and SMS in one agent
- TCPA and state DNC compliance review on the Scale tier
Cons
- No published prices at any tier
- SOC 2 and HIPAA are gated to upper tiers
- Few public reviews to judge support
Skip it if you want to see a price first; every Thoughtly tier is quote only.
- Starting price
- Quote only
- Per minute cost
- Not published; contracts from $30,000 per year
- Concurrency
- Custom, planned per contract
- Telephony
- Synthflow native telephony, SIP trunking, Cisco, Avaya, Genesys, RingCentral
Synthflow plugs into Genesys, Avaya, Cisco and RingCentral as well as its own telephony, and lists HubSpot, Salesforce and GoHighLevel integrations, so outbound agents can run inside an existing call center stack. It lists SOC 2, PCI DSS and HIPAA.
Pros
- 200+ integrations including HubSpot, Salesforce, GoHighLevel, Zapier and Cal.com
- Connects to Cisco, Avaya, Genesys and RingCentral contact center stacks
- SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR and ISO 27001 with EU and US hosting
- Synthflow reports 500M+ calls processed
Cons
- No public per minute price; the floor is $30,000 a year
- Trustpilot reviewers (4.1 from 215) report slow support and billing after cancellation
- The sub 100 ms latency claim is far below what any other vendor publishes, and Synthflow does not say how it is measured
Skip it if you are a small team; contracts start at $30,000 a year.
- Starting price
- $600 per month
- Per minute cost
- Not published
- Concurrency
- Not published
- Telephony
- Not published
Amplemarket bundles a B2B database with 200M verified mobile numbers, email sequences, a dialer and its Duo Voice agent, so calling, data and email live in one tool. Startup is $600 a month for 2 users with 600 phone credits per user per year.
Pros
- Data, mobile numbers, sequences, dialer and deliverability in one contract
- Duo AI writes personalized emails, watches buying signals and drafts replies
- Deliverability tools (domain health, warmup, mailbox recommendation) on every plan
- Free trial on all plans
- SOC 2 Type II, with encryption keys managed in Google Cloud KMS
Cons
- Entry plan requires an annual term at $600 a month, or $7,200 a year
- Growth and Elite are quote only
- Its Trustpilot profile is unclaimed with zero reviews, so there is little independent signal
- Duo Inbox draft replies and Duo Voice are not on the Startup plan
Skip it if aI calling is the main job; Duo Voice is listed on the custom priced Growth plan, not on Startup.
What it costs
Here is what 2,000 connected minutes a month costs on each platform's cheapest published setup. Expect roughly 1,000 to 4,000 dials to produce that many connected minutes, depending on your list and how long calls run.
| Platform | Pricing basis | 2,000 minutes a month | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telnyx Voice AI | $0.05 plus model and carrier | about $120 | Telnyx states about $0.06 all in |
| ElevenLabs Agents | $99 Pro, 1,238 minutes, then $0.08 | about $160 plus LLM and carrier | Twilio outbound adds about $28 |
| Vapi | $0.05 hosting plus pass through | about $193 | about $0.082 a minute plus $29 Core for 10 lines |
| Retell AI | $0.055 plus LLM, voice, telephony | about $199 | budget stack about $0.095 a minute plus batch dials at $0.005 |
| Bland | $0.14 all in on Start | $280 | Build: $299 plus $0.12 a minute = $539, for 50 lines |
| Synthflow | Contract | from $2,500 a month | $30,000 a year minimum |
| Thoughtly, Amplemarket | Quote only | not published | Amplemarket Startup is $600 a month for 2 users |
For comparison, a full time SDR's salary alone runs several thousand dollars a month, but a rep also researches, writes and closes. AI calling replaces dialing and first touch qualification, not the whole job. Per minute rates for every voice platform are tracked in the AI Price Index and explained in AI voice agent cost per minute.
What AI cold calling does well
- Speed to lead. Calling a web lead within a minute of the form fill, around the clock, is the highest return use and the cleanest on consent.
- List qualification. Asking three or four qualifying questions and routing hot leads to a rep.
- Reactivation. Calling past customers or stale leads who agreed to hear from you.
- Booking. Retell, Vapi and Synthflow connect to Cal.com, Google Calendar and CRMs to book a meeting on the call.
Where it falls short
- Objection handling. Scripts break on unexpected pushback, and prospects can tell.
- Latency. Some Retell reviewers on Trustpilot report 1.5 to 2.5 second pauses; Vapi and Retell claim 500 to 600 ms. Test on a real line.
- Carrier labeling. High volume outbound from new numbers gets flagged as spam likely. Branded caller ID and number rotation help but cost extra.
- Brand risk. One viral recording of a bad AI call can cost more than the campaign earned.
AI cold caller vs AI SDR
An AI cold caller places phone calls. An AI SDR mostly writes and sends email and LinkedIn messages, researches accounts and books meetings, and some add a phone step. If your buyers live in their inbox, start with an AI SDR such as AiSDR or Reply.io; see what an AI SDR is and the best AI SDR tools. If your buyers pick up the phone, such as home services, insurance and local businesses, a voice agent fits better.
Red flags
- "Unlimited calls" claims with no per minute rate. Every serious platform meters minutes or contracts volume.
- No consent tooling. If a vendor cannot explain how it handles opt outs and Do Not Call scrubbing, walk away.
- Headline rate quotes. Ask for the all in rate with your chosen LLM and voice.
- Annual contracts before a pilot. Synthflow starts at $30,000 a year; run a paid pilot on another platform first if you are unsure.
How we picked
We started from the voice platforms sales teams search for when they want AI to make outbound calls, then kept those that support outbound dialing and publish either a price or a clear plan structure. For each, we opened the pricing page, docs and review listings and recorded only what they say. We did not place test calls, so we do not grade voice quality. Factors and weights are on how we score; the broader field is in best AI voice agents.
Frequently asked questions
Can AI make cold calls?
Yes, technically. Platforms like Retell, Bland and Vapi dial lists, talk in a synthetic voice, qualify the lead and book a meeting or transfer to a rep. Legally, the FCC treats AI voices as artificial voices under the TCPA, so calls to consumers and to cell phones generally need prior express consent.
Is AI cold calling legal?
It depends on who you call and what consent you hold. Since the FCC's February 2024 ruling, AI voice calls fall under the TCPA's artificial voice rules, which require prior express consent for calls to cell phones and residential lines. Business to business calls are mostly exempt from the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule, but not from the TCPA when the number is a cell phone. Have counsel review your setup.
How much does an AI cold caller cost?
On published rates, about $0.06 to $0.14 per connected minute all in. Bland is $0.14 per minute with everything included, Retell lands at $0.07 to $0.31 depending on model and voice, and Telnyx states about $0.06 all in. A rep doing the same 2,000 minutes would cost far more in salary alone.
What is the best AI sales agent for cold calling?
Retell is the best fit for most sales teams because it prices every component publicly, includes 20 concurrent calls and has a visual builder. Bland is simpler if you want one all in rate, and Telnyx is cheapest per minute if you have developers.
Do AI cold callers sound human?
The best voices are close, and ElevenLabs has the largest library with 5,000+ voices. But latency, interruptions and odd answers still give AI away on longer calls. Many teams disclose the AI in the opening line, which also builds trust.
Can AI cold calling agents transfer to a human rep?
Yes. Retell, Bland, Vapi and Synthflow all support warm transfers to a phone number or SIP line. Bland bills transfer minutes at $0.05 on Start and $0.04 on Build.
How many calls can an AI agent make at once?
It depends on the plan. Retell includes 20 concurrent calls free, Bland 10 on Start and 50 on Build, Vapi 4 free, ElevenLabs 4 to 40 by plan, and Telnyx 500 on pay as you go.
Should I use an AI SDR instead of an AI cold caller?
If your buyers answer email and LinkedIn more than the phone, yes. AI SDR tools like AiSDR and Reply.io's Jason work email and LinkedIn first. See our guide to the best AI SDR tools and our explainer on what an AI SDR is.