Head to head
Retell AI vs Vapi
Written By Research Team
AI Outbound Calling
Fact Checked
All pricing verified against vendor documentation
Updated
Higher score
Retell AI
The most granular, itemised pricing in the category — and the easiest honest cost model to audit.
Retell publishes a full component breakdown: voice infrastructure, TTS, each LLM, and every add-on priced separately. That is unusual and genuinely pro-buyer — you can model your real cost per minute before signing anything. It is also the most generous free start, with $10 in credits and 20 concurrent calls at no cost. The trade-off is that the headline '$0.07–$0.31/min' is a wide band, and your actual rate depends entirely on which model you pick.
Vapi
The cheapest published platform rate and the most developer-flexible — if you can live with the compliance gap.
At $0.05/min Vapi has the lowest published platform rate here, and bringing your own model keys can take model cost to zero. For engineering teams it is the most composable option. But read the compliance row carefully: the self-serve Build tier has no SOC 2, no SSO and no RBAC, HIPAA is a $2,000/mo add-on, zero data retention is another $1,000/mo, and call history is kept only 14 days. Those controls arrive on the annual Scale contract.
Side by side
| Criterion | Retell AI | Vapi |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 84/100 | 76/100 |
| Rank | #4 | #5 |
| Type | Autonomous AI agent | Autonomous AI agent |
| Pricing model | Published | Published |
| Headline cost | $0.07–$0.31/min depending on voice and model, from $0 with $10 free credits | $0.05/min on Build, plus model costs at cost (or $0 with your own keys) |
| Concurrency | 20 free concurrent calls; additional concurrency $8/mo each | 10 included, +$10/line/mo; custom on Scale |
| Free trial | $10 in free credits and 20 free concurrent calls | No stated trial credits; signup via dashboard |
| Certifications | SOC 2 certified, HIPAA-ready, Custom SSO, Dedicated server on Enterprise | SOC 2 (Scale tier only), HIPAA ($2,000/mo add-on), PCI (Scale), SSO & RBAC (Scale only) |
Score by criterion
| Criterion | Max | Retell AI | Vapi |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing transparency | 20 | 18 | 15 |
| Outbound capability | 20 | 17 | 16 |
| Compliance & security | 20 | 15 | 12 |
| Integrations & extensibility | 15 | 12 | 14 |
| Time to first call | 15 | 14 | 11 |
| Scale & reliability | 10 | 8 | 8 |