Best ElevenLabs Agents Alternatives of 2026
Seven voice agent platforms to consider instead of ElevenLabs Agents, ranked on all in per minute cost, HIPAA, concurrency, builder and fit for teams leaving ElevenLabs.
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 ElevenLabs Agents alternative for most teams: every component is priced publicly, 20 concurrent calls and HIPAA are included, and you can still use ElevenLabs voices at $0.04 to $0.10 a minute. Developers who want full provider control should pick Vapi, and the lowest all in cost is Telnyx at about $0.06 a minute.
Our top picks
Why people look for ElevenLabs Agents alternatives
ElevenLabs has the best voice library in voice agents, with 5,000+ voices and a proprietary turn taking model. The reasons teams look elsewhere come from its own pricing page:
- $0.08 is not all in. LLM usage is billed on top, and your carrier bills separately.
- No volume discount. Every plan bundles minutes at $0.08, the same as overage.
- HIPAA is Enterprise only.
- Burst costs double. Calls above your concurrency limit cost $0.16 a minute.
- Billing complaints. ElevenLabs scores 3.0 on Trustpilot from 1,188 reviews across its products.
If voice quality is the product, read the ElevenLabs Agents review and ElevenLabs Agents pricing before switching.
How to choose
Our picks, in detail
- Starting price
- $0.055 per minute
- Pricing model
- per minute, pay as you go
- 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)
- Latency
- About 600 ms, per Retell's homepage
Retell publishes every component: $0.055 infra, LLMs from $0.0016 a minute and voices from $0.015, including ElevenLabs Flash at $0.04 if you want to keep those voices. A budget stack is about $0.0946 a minute, 20 concurrent calls are free and HIPAA has no surcharge, where ElevenLabs needs Enterprise for a BAA. It holds 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 ElevenLabs' full 5,000 voice library with no per voice markup.
- Starting price
- $0.05 per minute
- Pricing model
- per minute, pay as you go plus optional monthly packages
- 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)
- Latency
- Under 500 ms average, per Vapi's homepage
Vapi charges $0.05 a minute hosting and passes models through at cost, including ElevenLabs voices at $0.0146 to $0.0238 a minute, for about $0.0818 to $0.1289 all in. You choose every provider and run over free Vapi telephony, SIP, WebSockets or WebRTC.
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 HIPAA cheaply; Vapi charges $2,000 a month.
- Starting price
- $0.05 per minute
- Pricing model
- per minute, pay as you go
- Per minute cost
- $0.05 including STT and TTS; about $0.06 all in with Kimi and carrier, per Telnyx
- Latency
- Sub 200 ms, per Telnyx
Telnyx charges $0.05 a minute including speech to text and text to speech, and says a production agent costs about $0.06 a minute with an LLM and carrier, about a quarter less than ElevenLabs' $0.08 before LLM. HIPAA is included on every plan and pay as you go allows 500 concurrent calls.
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 voice quality is your top priority; Telnyx routes to many engines but is built around cost and network.
- Starting price
- $0.14 per minute
- Pricing model
- per connected minute plus optional platform fee
- Per minute cost
- $0.14 Start, $0.12 Build, $0.11 Scale per connected minute; models and telephony included
- Telephony
- Bland numbers included in the minute rate, or bring your own Twilio
Bland runs its own speech, LLM and voice models and bills one rate that includes telephony, from $0.14 a minute on Start to $0.11 on Scale. It lists SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI DSS and claims its phone trained voice beats ElevenLabs in its own realism benchmark.
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 want the lowest per minute cost or to choose your own LLM.
- Starting price
- Quote only
- Pricing model
- annual enterprise contract
- Per minute cost
- Not published; contracts from $30,000 per year
- Latency
- Synthflow claims sub 100 ms
Synthflow adds a no code Flow Designer, its own telephony and connectors for Genesys, Avaya, Cisco and RingCentral, with SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR and ISO 27001 in its contracts.
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 not an enterprise; contracts start at $30,000 a year.
- Starting price
- Quote only
- Pricing model
- per minute, contract
- Per minute cost
- Not published; per minute contract
- Latency
- Under 300 ms (Dialog-RSN-1) or 280 to 600 ms (Dialog-RAVEN-3.5), per PolyAI
PolyAI runs on its own audio native dialog model with under 300 ms responses and reports 90% end to end resolution on its largest deployments. Its per minute contracts include ongoing tuning, maintenance and 24/7 support.
Pros
- Runs on its own dialog models: Dialog-RSN-1 (under 300 ms, 3.7% word error rate) and Dialog-RAVEN-3.5 for chat and multilingual
- Reports 90% end to end resolution on its largest deployments, 100M+ calls a year and 99.994% trailing uptime
- SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS and GDPR with US, UK, EU and APAC data residency; data never trained on without opt in
- Per minute contracts include ongoing tuning, maintenance and 24/7 support; Dialog Studio, ADK, MCP and APIs for teams that build
Cons
- No published per minute rate or minimum
- Built for large brands, not small teams
- HIPAA status is not stated on the pages we reviewed
- Benchmarks such as Dialog-Eval are PolyAI's own
Skip it if you want self serve pricing or to build agents yourself on a budget.
- Starting price
- $0.07 per minute
- Pricing model
- per minute, pay as you go
- Per minute cost
- $0.07 plus Twilio voice ($0.0085 inbound, $0.014 outbound) plus your LLM
- Voices
- Google, Amazon Polly and ElevenLabs Flash voices
ConversationRelay adds speech recognition and voices, including ElevenLabs Flash voices, to Twilio calls at $0.07 a minute plus Twilio voice, with your own LLM. It keeps everything in one Twilio account.
Pros
- Runs inside your existing Twilio account, numbers and call flows
- Choice of Deepgram or Google speech recognition and Google, Amazon or ElevenLabs voices
- Bring any LLM, since your app generates the reply text
Cons
- No builder, no prompt editor, no included LLM: you write and host the agent logic
- $0.07 covers only speech in and out, so all in cost runs higher than Telnyx
- Latency and HIPAA details are not stated on the ConversationRelay docs page
Skip it if you want a packaged agent builder with testing and analytics.
Price comparison at a glance
| Platform | Published rate | Budget all in per minute | Free concurrency | HIPAA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs Agents | $0.08 after plan minutes | $0.08 plus LLM and carrier | 4 Free, 20 Pro | Enterprise |
| Retell AI | $0.055 infra plus components | About $0.0946 | 20 | Included |
| Vapi | $0.05 hosting plus models | About $0.0818 | 4 | $2,000 a month |
| Telnyx Voice AI | $0.05 incl. STT and TTS | About $0.06 | 500 | Included |
| Bland AI | $0.11 to $0.14 all in | Same | 10 | Listed |
| Twilio ConversationRelay | $0.07 plus Twilio voice | About $0.0785 plus LLM | Account limits | Not stated on pricing |
| Synthflow | From $30,000 a year | Not published | Contracted | Listed |
| PolyAI | Quote, per minute | Not published | Contracted | Not stated |
A worked comparison at 15,000 minutes a month on US inbound Twilio, with a budget LLM. ElevenLabs Business: $1,200 plus $127.50 Twilio plus the LLM, about $1,477 at $0.01 a minute. Retell budget stack: about $1,419 with telephony included. Vapi budget: about $1,227 on free Vapi telephony plus Core. Telnyx: about $900. If you keep ElevenLabs v4 voices on Retell ($0.10), Retell rises to about $2,694. All tracked prices are on the AI Price Index.
Who should stay on ElevenLabs
Stay if your agents sell on voice (brand characters, entertainment, premium support) and you value its 5,000+ voices, turn taking model, visual workflow builder, tests and experiments, and you do not need HIPAA outside an Enterprise contract. Compare head to head on ElevenLabs Agents vs Vapi.
How we picked
We started from ElevenLabs' published plans and the reasons teams leave, then ranked the voice agent platforms in our database on four questions: is the all in per minute cost published and competitive, is HIPAA available without an enterprise contract, how much concurrency is included, and how strong are the builder and verified ratings. Every price comes from the vendor's own pricing page, checked in October 2026. Nobody paid for placement. See how we score.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to ElevenLabs Agents?
Retell AI for most teams: published component pricing, 20 free concurrent calls, HIPAA with no surcharge and the option to keep ElevenLabs voices at $0.04 to $0.10 a minute. Telnyx is the pick for the lowest all in cost.
Is there a cheaper alternative to ElevenLabs Agents?
Yes. Telnyx says a production agent costs about $0.06 a minute all in, and Vapi's cheapest stack is about $0.0818. ElevenLabs is $0.08 a minute before the LLM and carrier.
Which ElevenLabs alternative includes HIPAA?
Retell and Telnyx include HIPAA with no surcharge, Bland and Synthflow list HIPAA, and Vapi sells it for $2,000 a month. ElevenLabs offers BAAs on Enterprise only.
Can I use ElevenLabs voices on other platforms?
Yes. Retell lists ElevenLabs Flash, Multilingual v2, v3 and v4 voices at $0.04 to $0.10 a minute, Vapi passes ElevenLabs voices through at $0.0146 to $0.0238, and Twilio ConversationRelay offers ElevenLabs Flash voices.
Is Vapi better than ElevenLabs Agents?
For developers who want provider choice and the lowest per minute cost, Vapi. For teams that want great voices, a visual workflow builder and bundled minutes with concurrency, ElevenLabs. See ElevenLabs Agents vs Vapi.
Why do people leave ElevenLabs Agents?
The usual reasons are LLM costs on top of $0.08 a minute, HIPAA only on Enterprise, burst pricing at $0.16 a minute above concurrency limits, and billing complaints on Trustpilot, where ElevenLabs scores 3.0 from 1,188 reviews across its products.