Best Vapi Alternatives of 2026
Seven voice agent platforms to consider instead of Vapi, ranked on all in per minute cost, concurrency, HIPAA, builder and fit for teams leaving Vapi.
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 Vapi alternative for most teams: its budget stack costs about $0.0946 a minute against Vapi's $0.0818, but it includes 20 concurrent calls instead of 4, HIPAA with no $2,000 add on and a no code builder next to the API. If cost per minute is all that matters, Telnyx Voice AI lands near $0.06 a minute all in.
Our top picks
Why people look for Vapi alternatives
Vapi is the most flexible developer platform for voice agents: $0.05 a minute hosting, every model at cost and free transport. The reasons teams look elsewhere come from its own pricing page:
- HIPAA costs $2,000 a month and cannot be combined with zero data retention.
- 4 free concurrent calls. More lines cost $10 each or $29 for Core's 10.
- SLA floor. The 99% uptime SLA needs Pro at a $999 a month minimum.
- Assembly required. You choose and tune transcription, LLM and voice yourself.
- Reviews. 2.4 on Trustpilot from 15 reviews.
If you are a developer who values provider control above all, read the Vapi review and Vapi pricing first.
How to choose
- Want included HIPAA and concurrency with a builder: Retell AI.
- Want the lowest bill at volume: Telnyx Voice AI.
- Voice quality matters most: ElevenLabs Agents.
- Want one vendor running all models: Bland AI.
- Live on Twilio already: Twilio ConversationRelay.
- Optimizing every cent as a developer: Millis AI.
- Enterprise contact center: Synthflow.
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 costs about $0.0946 a minute on a budget stack, close to Vapi's $0.0818, but includes 20 concurrent calls free against Vapi's 4 and lists SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA with no add on, where Vapi charges $2,000 a month. It has a no code flow builder plus an API and 4.9 on Trustpilot from 810 reviews, against Vapi's 2.4 from 15.
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 need the lowest possible per minute rate at very high volume; Telnyx is cheaper.
- 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 lands near $0.06 a minute with an LLM and carrier fees. Pay as you go includes 500 concurrent calls and HIPAA on every plan, and Telnyx owns its carrier network and GPUs.
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 you want Vapi's depth of provider choice and SDKs; Telnyx's builder is simpler.
- Starting price
- $0.08 per minute
- Pricing model
- monthly plan with included minutes, then per minute
- Per minute cost
- $0.08 per minute, no ElevenLabs telephony fee, LLM and carrier extra
- Voices
- 5,000+ voices across 31 languages
ElevenLabs bundles agent minutes into plans, 1,238 minutes for $99 on Pro and $0.08 a minute after, with 5,000+ voices in 31 languages and 20 concurrent calls on Pro. If you already route Vapi to ElevenLabs voices, going direct removes a layer.
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 HIPAA without an Enterprise contract, or want LLM costs inside one rate.
- 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, $0.14 a minute on Start down to $0.11 on Scale, that includes telephony. It lists SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI DSS with on premises options, and its engineers build your first agent.
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 cost per minute is the priority; Bland is the most expensive published rate here.
- 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 voice to Twilio calls at $0.07 a minute plus standard Twilio voice, and you bring your own LLM. For developers who use Vapi mainly as glue on top of Twilio, it removes a vendor.
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 orchestration features such as tools, testing and analytics built in.
- Starting price
- $0.02 per minute
- Pricing model
- per minute, pay as you go
- Per minute cost
- $0.02 base plus STT $0.0043, LLM and per character TTS
- Latency
- Millis claims 500 to 600 ms
Millis AI lists a $0.02 a minute base rate, speech to text at $0.0043 and LLMs from fractions of a cent, with text to speech billed per 1,000 characters by provider. For developers optimizing every line item, its platform fee is less than half of Vapi's.
Pros
- $0.02 per minute base fee, the lowest headline rate found
- Custom LLMs carry no LLM charge
- Wide choice of TTS vendors
Cons
- Public changelog shows no updates after April 2025 and the site footer reads 2024
- Pricing docs list older models such as GPT-4 Turbo and GPT-3.5
- No published telephony, concurrency or compliance details
Skip it if you need published compliance, concurrency terms or telephony pricing; Millis lists none of them.
- 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 is a no code platform with 200+ integrations and connectors for Genesys, Avaya, Cisco and RingCentral, and lists SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR and ISO 27001 with EU and US hosting. It suits enterprises that outgrow a developer toolkit.
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 developer or small team; contracts start at $30,000 a year.
Price comparison at a glance
| Platform | Published rate | Budget all in per minute | Free concurrency | HIPAA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vapi | $0.05 hosting plus models | About $0.0818 | 4 | $2,000 a month |
| Retell AI | $0.055 infra plus components | About $0.0946 | 20 | Included |
| Telnyx Voice AI | $0.05 incl. STT and TTS | About $0.06 | 500 | Included |
| ElevenLabs Agents | $0.08 after plan minutes | $0.08 plus LLM and carrier | 4 Free, 20 Pro | Enterprise |
| Bland AI | $0.11 to $0.14 all in | $0.11 to $0.14 | 10 Start | Listed |
| Twilio ConversationRelay | $0.07 plus Twilio voice | About $0.0785 plus LLM | Account limits | Not stated on pricing |
| Millis AI | $0.02 base plus components | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| Synthflow | From $30,000 a year | Not published | Contracted | Listed |
A worked comparison: a healthcare line at 30,000 minutes a month with 20 concurrent calls. Vapi: about $2,454 in usage, $129 for Core plus 10 lines and $2,000 for HIPAA, $4,583. Retell: about $2,838 with 20 lines and HIPAA included. Telnyx: about $1,800 with HIPAA included. ElevenLabs Business: $990 for 12,375 minutes plus 17,625 at $0.08, $2,400, plus the LLM and an Enterprise contract for a BAA. All tracked prices are on the AI Price Index.
Who should stay on Vapi
Stay if you are a developer who wants to pick every provider, run on SIP, WebSockets or WebRTC at no transport fee and keep costs at the floor, and you do not need HIPAA or more than a handful of lines. Compare head to head on Retell AI vs Vapi, Vapi vs Bland AI, Vapi vs Synthflow and ElevenLabs Agents vs Vapi.
How we picked
We started from Vapi's published prices and the reasons developers leave, then ranked the voice agent platforms in our database on four questions: is the all in per minute cost published and competitive, how much concurrency and compliance is included, how strong is the builder and API, and how strong are 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 Vapi?
Retell AI for most teams: a similar budget per minute cost (about $0.0946 against $0.0818), 20 free concurrent calls instead of 4, HIPAA with no add on and a no code builder alongside the API. For the lowest all in cost, Telnyx at about $0.06 a minute.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Vapi?
Telnyx says a production agent costs about $0.06 a minute all in, and Millis AI lists a $0.02 a minute base rate. Both are cheaper than Vapi's $0.05 hosting plus pass through models.
Which Vapi alternative includes HIPAA?
Retell and Telnyx include HIPAA at no extra cost. Bland lists HIPAA with BAAs. ElevenLabs offers BAAs on Enterprise. Vapi charges $2,000 a month.
Is Retell better than Vapi?
For most buyers, yes on published facts: more free concurrency, included HIPAA, a no code builder and far stronger public reviews. Vapi is cheaper per minute on its lowest components and gives developers more provider control. See Retell AI vs Vapi.
Is there an open source Vapi alternative?
None of the platforms in our database is open source. Twilio ConversationRelay plus your own LLM is the closest build it yourself option among the vendors we track.
Why do people leave Vapi?
The usual reasons are the $2,000 a month HIPAA add on, only 4 free concurrent lines, the $999 Pro minimum for an SLA, and support complaints; Vapi scores 2.4 on Trustpilot from 15 reviews.