One AI Build

Retell AI vs Vapi

Neither publishes a price. Both make you talk to sales before you learn what it costs.

Both pages checked by August 19, 2026
Retell AIAI only
Pricing not published
no published plan
Developer-oriented platform to build, test, deploy and monitor AI voice and chat agents, billed a la carte per minute: a Retell voice-infrastructure rate plus a separately priced text-to-speech voice, a separately priced LLM and separately priced telephony.
VapiAI only
Pricing not published
no published plan
Developer platform for building voice AI agents: Vapi hosts the orchestration layer and charges a per-minute hosting fee, while you pick and pay for your own speech-to-text, LLM, text-to-speech and telephony providers and write the assistant, tools and server hooks yourself.

The differences that matter

  • Retell AI offers a trial (New accounts start with $10 in free trial credits, no payment method required. You'll only need to add one if you want to purchase a phone number.); Vapi advertises none.

Feature by feature

CapabilityRetell AIVapi
Live transferYesYes
Books appointmentsYesYes
Text follow-upYesYes
Outbound callsYesYes
SpanishYesYes
Human backupNoNo
Call recordingsYesYes
TranscriptsYesYes
Spam screeningunstatedunstated
Custom voiceYesYes
APIYesYes

"unstated" means the vendor doesn't claim it in their own documentation. It is not the same as no — it means nobody will put it in writing.

Retell AI plans

PlanPublished priceIncludesOver that
Pay-as-you-go$0.07-$0.31/min for AI Voice Agents——
EnterpriseCustom Pricing for AI Voice Agents——

Vapi plans

PlanPublished priceIncludesOver that
Build$0.05 / min——
ScaleFixed Platform fee and committed volume(annual billing)——

Retell AI sources

Vapi sources