Retell AI vs ElevenLabs Agents (2026): Which Is Cheaper on the Same Model?

ElevenLabs Agents is the cheaper of the two on the same model: at 10,000 minutes a month on GPT-5.4 Mini it comes to about $954 with Twilio numbers, against $1,144 on Retell AI with its own voices and phone line. Retell's advantages are one invoice that includes telephony, a HIPAA BAA without an Enterprise contract, and outbound features such as branded caller ID.

Google's AI Overview for this search calls ElevenLabs a voice-generation platform that "also offers conversational tools." That undersells it: ElevenLabs Agents has its own visual workflow builder, retrieval over a knowledge base, tools, transfers and integrations with Twilio, SIP trunks, Genesys and Five9. Retell also sells ElevenLabs' voices inside its own platform, which is where most confusion between the two starts. Our Retell AI guide and ElevenLabs Agents guide cover each product; this page only compares them.

How do Retell AI and ElevenLabs Agents compare at a glance?

Prices and ratings checked September 19, 2026 (Retell and ElevenLabs prices and ElevenLabs' Trustpilot count rechecked September 24) on retellai.com/pricing, elevenlabs.io/pricing/agents, Trustpilot (Retell, ElevenLabs), Gartner Peer Insights and Capterra. Customer names are from Retell's customers page and the ElevenLabs Agents page.

How do Retell and ElevenLabs bill differently?

Retell adds up components. Every voice minute carries $0.055 of voice infrastructure (speech-to-text included), a voice ($0.015 for Retell's own, $0.040 for ElevenLabs voices), a model ($0.0016 to $0.32 a minute) and US telephony at $0.015 on a Retell number. You pay for what you use, with no plan fee.

ElevenLabs sells a bucket. Each plan includes call minutes, and every minute past the bucket costs $0.08 on every plan, from Starter to Business. The model is added per minute at the provider's cost, and telephony comes from Twilio or your SIP carrier. Its help center adds two billing rules: calls are measured on connection duration, "with a 95% discount for periods of silence longer than 10 seconds," and you need prepaid pay-as-you-go credits before you can go past your plan's minutes.

The same model costs very different amounts on each. Retell lists GPT 5.4 mini at $0.024 a minute. ElevenLabs' calculator shows GPT-5.4 Mini at $0.0067 a minute, because it passes the model through. On a 10,000-minute month that's $240 against $67.

What each model rewards. Retell earns a margin on each component, so it gains when you pick a heavier model or a premium voice, and it gives you one invoice with the phone line on it. ElevenLabs earns the $0.08 a minute whatever model you choose, so its incentive is minutes and plan upgrades: every plan works out to the same $0.08 a minute, and the plan fee mainly buys concurrency, seats and knowledge-base capacity. On both, a longer call earns the vendor more whether or not it solved anything.

What does each cost at the same volume, on the same model?

We ran both public calculators on GPT-5.4 Mini. On Retell, 10,000 minutes with Retell's platform voices and telephony came to $1,090, and with ElevenLabs voices it came to $1,340.

ElevenLabs' slider moves in steps and jumps from 9,500 to 11,000 minutes, so we ran it at its nearest step, 9,500. It recommended the Business plan at $990 and priced GPT-5.4 Mini at $63.57 for the month.

That recommendation isn't the cheapest option. Pro costs $99 with 1,238 minutes, and the other 8,262 minutes at $0.08 add $661, for $760 at 9,500 minutes. Below 12,375 minutes, Pro plus overage is always cheaper than Business; above it, the two cost the same to within a few cents, because overage is $0.08 on every plan. Pick the plan by concurrency (Pro gives 20 simultaneous calls, Scale 30, Business 40), not by the calculator's suggestion.

Here is the full comparison at three volumes. Assumptions: 4-minute calls, GPT-5.4 Mini on both, a knowledge base on Retell ($0.005 a minute), and for ElevenLabs, Twilio local numbers ($1.15 a month) receiving calls at $0.0085 a minute. Peak concurrency is under 10 at 1,000 minutes, 20 at 10,000 and 25 at 50,000.

ElevenLabs is the cheaper row at every volume, by about 17% against Retell's platform voices at 1,000 and 10,000 minutes and 32% against Retell with ElevenLabs voices at 10,000. If you'd followed the ElevenLabs calculator to Business at 10,000 minutes, you'd pay $990 + $67 + $87.30 = $1,144.30, the same as Retell's platform-voice bill to the dollar.

What the ElevenLabs rows leave out: outbound calls on Twilio cost $0.014 a minute rather than $0.0085, the Twilio account is a second vendor to manage, and knowledge-base size is capped by plan (100MB of indexed documents on Pro, 500MB on Scale). What the Retell rows leave out: nothing on telephony for US numbers, but international calls cost more per minute and Retell charges $0.10 a minute extra for burst calls above your concurrency limit.

Chat agents. Retell bills per AI message by model: 3,000 web chats with 6 AI replies each is 18,000 messages, or $135 on GPT 5.4 mini, model included. ElevenLabs bills text at $0.003 a message plus the model at cost, and text needs at least the $6 Starter plan. If only the agent's replies count, 18,000 messages cost $54 + $6 = $60 before the model; the pricing page doesn't say whether customer messages count too, which would double the message charge to $108 before the plan fee. Either way, ElevenLabs is cheaper for chat on this model.

How do you build an agent on each?

Both have a visual builder, which is the biggest change in this comparison over the past year.

Retell offers prompt agents (single or multi-prompt) and conversation flow agents. A flow is a canvas of nodes: conversation, function, call transfer, press digit, SMS, logic split, code and end. Retell's Flex Mode compiles a flow into one prompt at runtime so a caller can jump between topics. Its docs list built-in integration tools for HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk and Cal.com, plus MCP.

ElevenLabs' Workflows are a graph of subagent nodes, tool nodes, transfers and end nodes, stored as JSON on the agent so you can also edit them through the CLI and keep them in version control. Its integration list is longer on the support side: Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, Salesforce, HubSpot, ServiceNow, Jira and Google Drive among them, plus WhatsApp and Slack as channels.

For a support team, the practical difference is the channel mix. Retell is built around the phone and adds chat. ElevenLabs Agents runs the same agent across phone, web, WhatsApp and chat apps, so one configuration can cover a voice line and a messaging channel.

How do telephony, transfers and compliance compare?

Retell sells the phone line. Numbers are $2 a month, US calls $0.015 a minute, and you can import your own SIP numbers at no monthly charge. Its transfer tool offers cold, warm and agentic warm transfer (a second AI agent briefs the human before bridging the caller), to a phone number or SIP URI.

ElevenLabs connects to a line you already have: a native Twilio integration, SIP trunking, and guides for Telnyx, Plivo, Vonage, Exotel and Bandwidth, plus contact-center connectors for Genesys and Five9. Its transfer-to-number tool has conference, blind and SIP REFER transfers. The docs set a limit worth planning around: "Warm transfer messages ... are only available when the agent's phone number is imported via the native Twilio integration," and SIP-based transfers don't carry them. If your numbers sit on a SIP trunk and you want the human to hear a summary before taking the call, test that path first.

On compliance, Retell's homepage says it is "Fully compliant with HIPAA, SOC2 Type II, GDPR and ISO 27001," and its plan table ticks HIPAA/BAA on pay as you go. ElevenLabs lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS Level 1, zero retention mode and regional data residency on its Agents page, and puts "BAAs for HIPAA customers" in its Enterprise plan. For a clinic or anyone handling health data at low volume, that difference decides it: Retell will sign a BAA without an Enterprise contract.

Is Retell's comparison page right about ElevenLabs?

Retell's Retell vs ElevenLabs page is marked "Data as of 05/2026," and its Trustpilot scores are "as of 6/9/2026". We checked its pricing rows against both vendors' live pages.

The page is right that Retell sells more phone-specific features as products: verified numbers, branded caller ID and toll-free numbers you buy from Retell directly.

Which one has lower latency?

Retell's homepage says "~600ms latency," citing "independent benchmarks" it doesn't name. ElevenLabs' agent settings show an estimated latency next to each model; in the screenshot from its docs above, Gemini 2.5 Flash shows about 1.02s and Claude Haiku 4.5 about 797ms. Those are model figures, not end-to-end call latency, and neither vendor publishes a shared test. On both, the model you pick moves latency more than the platform does, so compare them with the same model and a real phone line.

What do users say about Retell and ElevenLabs?

Checked September 19, 2026; ElevenLabs' Trustpilot count rechecked September 24. ElevenLabs' ratings cover its whole business, and most of its recent Trustpilot reviews are about text-to-speech and dubbing credits, not agents. The support complaint does carry across products: Ravi Shankar Mishra (India, September 13, 2026) wrote that "their customer support is virtually non-existent" after API problems delayed his project.

Retell's low-star reviews also center on support. Leshawn Clarke (UK, December 22, 2025) wrote that "they have an AI that replies to you instead" and that Retell sends users to Discord; Abdulselam Almnini (Turkey, March 11, 2026) hit an unexplained block on outbound calls to Turkey. On the ElevenLabs side, its Agents page quotes Jannes Koopmann of 3Shape: "We want to ensure that our customers feel understood and not processed." Voice quality is the argument ElevenLabs sells on.

Should you choose Retell, ElevenLabs or neither?

Choose Retell AI if you want the phone line, numbers and concurrency on one invoice with no second carrier account, you need a BAA without an Enterprise contract, or you run outbound campaigns that need verified numbers and branded caller ID.

Choose ElevenLabs Agents if you want the lowest bill on a given model, you already have Twilio or a SIP trunk, you want one agent across phone, web and WhatsApp, or voice quality is the thing your callers notice first. Size the plan by concurrency and let overage cover the rest.

Consider neither if engineers want to pick and pay every provider directly (Vapi is built for that), or you'd rather a vendor build and run the agent for you; our guide to conversational AI platforms covers the managed options.

If most of your support volume is email and chat tickets, a voice platform is the wrong fit. Macha is an AI agent layer on the help desk you already run (Zendesk, Freshdesk, Gorgias, Front, HubSpot or Intercom): agents read and reply inside the ticket, billing is per ticket from $299 a month for 750 tickets, and setup and monitoring by the Macha team are included. It suits teams already on one of those help desks. Macha doesn't answer phone calls; its ElevenLabs integration transcribes audio attachments in tickets so agents can act on voicemails. Our guide to AI agents for customer service covers where voice and ticket agents each fit, and the tiers are on our pricing page.

How we researched this

On September 19, 2026 we read both pricing pages and ElevenLabs' help center with a scripted browser, ran Retell's calculator at 10,000 minutes with both voice options, and ran ElevenLabs' calculator on GPT-5.4 Mini at its nearest step to 10,000 minutes. We read each vendor's docs on builders, transfers, telephony and knowledge-base limits, Twilio's US voice pricing, and Retell's comparison page claim by claim. We read both Trustpilot profiles with a scripted browser, Gartner Peer Insights and Capterra in Chrome, and G2 (Retell 4.8 from 2,638; ElevenLabs 4.5 from 1,213, whole company), all checked September 19, 2026. On September 24 we reread both pricing pages (Retell's voice, model, chat, number and concurrency rates and ElevenLabs' plans were unchanged) and ElevenLabs' Trustpilot profile. We did not build an agent or open an account on either platform, so every cost here is list-price arithmetic, not a bill we paid.

Frequently asked questions

Is ElevenLabs better than Retell AI? For price on a given model and for multichannel agents, ElevenLabs Agents comes out ahead: about $954 against Retell's $1,144 at 10,000 minutes on GPT-5.4 Mini, with WhatsApp and chat apps built in. Retell is better if you want telephony, numbers and HIPAA on pay-as-you-go terms from one vendor.

How much does Retell AI cost? Retell charges $0.07 to $0.31 a voice minute with no plan fee. A realistic support setup (GPT 5.4 mini, platform voice, US telephony, knowledge base) is $0.114 a minute: about $116 for 1,000 minutes, $1,144 for 10,000 and $5,750 for 50,000, including numbers and extra concurrency.

How much does ElevenLabs Agents cost? Plans run from free (15 minutes) to $990 a month (12,375 minutes), and every extra minute costs $0.08. The model is added at cost and telephony is billed by your carrier. On GPT-5.4 Mini with Twilio numbers, 10,000 minutes comes to about $954.

Can I use ElevenLabs voices in Retell? Yes. Retell lists "Elevenlabs Voices" at $0.040 a minute against $0.015 for its own voices, which added $250 to our 10,000-minute month.

How good is Retell AI? Retell holds 4.9 from 814 reviews on Trustpilot, where it invites customers to review. Reviewers praise how fast an agent can be built; the complaints are about support through an AI agent and Discord, and about country restrictions on outbound calls.

Who are Retell AI's main competitors? ElevenLabs Agents, Vapi, Bland and Synthflow are the platforms compared with it most; Retell publishes its own comparison pages against rivals including Vapi, Bland, Synthflow and ElevenLabs.

Is Retell or ElevenLabs cheaper for chat agents? On GPT-5.4 Mini, ElevenLabs is cheaper: $0.003 a text message plus the model at cost and a $6 Starter plan, against Retell's $0.0075 per AI message. For 3,000 chats with 6 AI replies each, that's $135 on Retell and $60 to $114 on ElevenLabs before its model charge, depending on whether customer messages count.

What do people on Reddit say about Retell vs ElevenLabs? The Reddit thread that ranks for this search didn't load for us, so we can't summarize it. The pattern in public reviews we could read: ElevenLabs is praised for voice quality and criticized for support, and Retell is praised for ease of building and criticized for support too.

If your support runs through a help desk rather than a phone line, you can start a Macha trial with $50 of free usage and no card.

Sources: Retell AI pricing · Retell vs ElevenLabs (Retell) · Retell customers · Retell transfer call tool · Retell conversation flow · ElevenLabs Agents pricing · ElevenLabs Agents · ElevenLabs: How much does ElevenAgents cost? · ElevenLabs Workflows · ElevenLabs transfer to number · ElevenLabs RAG limits · ElevenLabs SIP trunking · Twilio US voice pricing · Trustpilot: Retell AI · Trustpilot: ElevenLabs · Gartner Peer Insights: ElevenLabs · Gartner Peer Insights: Retell AI · Capterra: ElevenLabs