Vapi is a popular voice agent platform that lets businesses build, test, and deploy conversational AI agents, with the flexibility to plug in your own choice of AI models and providers.
But it also comes with several limitations that make people look for alternatives.
To run each call, Vapi relies on separate providers for telephony, the LLM, speech-to-text (STT), and text-to-speech (TTS). This adds up to separate costs from each provider, makes issues harder to trace, and increases latency, since the conversation has to travel between multiple providers instead of staying in one place.
So if you’ve also found yourself looking for Vapi alternatives, here are 5 options you can consider and choose from.
Comparison of Top Vapi Alternatives
Before we begin reviewing each of them, have a quick look at the comparison table below:
| Alternative Platform | Strengths | Choose for | Pricing | Own network |
| Telnyx | Full-stack telephony network and orchestration ownershipLow-latencyComplianceMultilingual agentsLicensed carrier | You want full control over the telephony network itself without jumping between different vendors, all with predictable pricing. | Pay-as-you-go pricing model, charging $0.05 for the conversational AI base rate (with STT and TTS included in the cost). | ✅ |
| LiveKit | Full developer controlNo platform feeBuilt-in phone callingMetrics, insights, and observability | You want full control over your voice AI agent infrastructure. | Start building for freePaid plans start at $50/month | ❌ |
| Retell AI | Fast, natural-sounding conversationsTelephony integrationCompliance | You want a human-sounding agent that handles your daily business operations like answering calls, booking appointments, and managing reminders or follow-ups. | Pay-as-you-go pricing model with no platform fee$0.07-$0.31/min for AI Voice Agents$0.002+/msg for AI Chat AgentsEnterprise custom pricing is also available | ❌ |
| Voiceflow | Full control over agent designModel flexibility | You want full control over the conversation design process and quality. | A monthly plan fee and a usage-based billing model | ❌ |
| ElevenLabs | Voice qualityConversational agents with human-like soundingUltra-low latency | You also want to have full control over how your agent sounds as you build your agent and its AI logic. | A free tier to start with (TTS, STT, and sound effects included). The paid plans start at $6 per month (Starter plan). | ❌ |
List of Vapi Alternatives: Top 5 Platforms Reviewed
1. Telnyx
Telnyx is a conversational AI platform that helps businesses build and deploy real-time agents, with overall orchestration happening in a single platform.
Telnyx has a different approach compared to most other voice AI platforms. It owns the full stack from the carrier network to the AI voice layer itself, without the need to rely on third-party APIs or multiple vendors.
Strengths:
- Low-latency: Since the inference runs close to its own telephony network, Telnyx provides lower latency than many other alternatives (under 200ms). There is also no need to break down the process between separate STT, LLM, and TTS vendors.
- Compliance: Telnyx supports SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and GDPR, which are especially important for industries working with sensitive customer data such as healthcare or finance.
- Multilingual agents: The agents can provide answers in 80+ languages and dialects.
- Licensed carrier: Telnyx is also a licensed carrier in 45+ countries, giving it another strong position as a Vapi alternative.
Pricing:
Telnyx uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, charging $0.05 for the conversational AI base rate (with STT and TTS included in the cost). As you add more features and add-ons, the prices may vary differently.
Choose if you want full control over the telephony network itself without jumping between different vendors, all with predictable pricing.
2. LiveKit
LiveKit is an open-source cloud platform that provides the necessary infrastructure and tools to build, test, and deploy conversational AI agents.
Strengths:
- Full developer control: You get full control over your agent-building pipeline: from the model you choose (LiveKit’s own model or other AI models like Claude) to choosing how your agents sound or behave.
- No platform fee: You don’t pay for the software itself. You only pay for the infrastructure you need for building your agent
- Built-in phone calling: You can also connect your agent to a phone number so that it also handles incoming and outgoing calls (no manual trunk configuration setups)
- Metrics, insights, and observability: You observe every call, replay sessions, access transcripts, and track latency and quality metrics.
Pricing:
You can start building for free with the basic features you need, then scale up with paid plans starting at $50/month.
Choose if you want full control over your voice AI agent infrastructure.
3. Retell AI
Retell AI is an LLM-based voice agent platform built specifically for phone calls. It handles tasks like answering support questions, booking appointments, transferring calls to a human when needed, and running outbound calls like reminders or follow-ups. So, Retell AI’s main focus is on providing human-like agentic support.
Strengths:
- Fast, natural-sounding conversations: The agent answers calls fluently and smoothly, keeping the conversation feeling as human as possible, all with 600ms latency, then records call insights once it’s done.
- Telephony integration: Retell AI lets you connect the agent to your existing phone numbers or VOIP provider via SIP trunking and keep calls from being flagged as spam with verified numbers.
- Compliance: Retell AI is fully compliant with HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR.
Pricing:
Retell AI uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model with no platform fee on top of usage costs. You only pay for what you use to build the agent, and costs scale up as your needs grow.
- $0.07-$0.31/min for AI Voice Agents
- $0.002+/msg for AI Chat Agents
- Enterprise custom pricing is also available
Choose if you want a human-sounding agent that handles your daily business operations like answering calls, booking appointments, and managing reminders or follow-ups.
4. Voiceflow
Voiceflow is a conversational AI platform for building, testing, and deploying chat and voice agents, especially useful for handling lead generation and support operations, with latency under 500ms.
Strengths:
- Full control over agent design: Decide how the agent responds, whether it follows a strict workflow or thinks on its own, and what knowledge base or data it draws from.
- Model flexibility: You can pick whichever AI model you want (GPT, Claude, or Gemini) instead of being stuck with just one, and swap models without rebuilding your agent.
Pricing:
Voiceflow offers a monthly plan fee and a usage-based billing model, instead of a per-minute rate. You can start testing the platform through its free tier and subscribe to Pro, Business or Enterprise plans as your needs scale up. Each plan offers its own features and monthly credits, with add-ons also available for additional capacity.
Choose if you want full control over the conversation design process and quality.
5. ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs is an AI voice generator and voice AI agent platform that provides AI voice infrastructure covering generative audio, voice cloning, along with TTS, STT, and conversational agents.
Strengths:
- Voice quality: ElevenLabs is a platform with a strong focus on voice and audio creation and customization. Through its ElevenCreative platform, you can generate audio materials, music, videos and voiceovers.
- Conversational agents with human-like sounding: Its ElevenAgents platform lets you build, customize, and deploy voice agents that handle inbound calls and messages in over 70 languages. On top of the voice engine, it adds the ability to answer using your own data and connect to outside tools used by your team.
- Ultra-low latency: ElevenLabs keeps the conversational latency ultra-low with its Eleven Flash feature.
Pricing:
ElevenLabs offers a free tier to start with (TTS, STT, and sound effects included). As you need more features, you can subscribe to the paid plans, which start at $6 per month (Starter plan).
Choose if you also want to have full control over how your agent sounds as you build your agent and its AI logic.
Final Thoughts
AI agents have become an integral part of business workflows, so, choosing a reliable conversational AI platform is more important than ever.
Vapi is a solid option if you don’t mind relying on separate providers for each part of the pipeline, but it’s worth exploring the alternatives to find a platform that better fits your infrastructure needs.
As covered above, each alternative brings its own strengths, with Telnyx standing out as the only tool that owns its own telephony network, freeing you from the added vendor costs and delays that come with Vapi.
Since most of these tools offer free tiers, it’s worth testing a few before committing to one.
