ElevenLabs vs Retell vs Vapi: Voice AI Platforms Compared

Which voice AI platform is best?

It depends on who is building and what the agent needs to do. Here is the short version:

• Pick ElevenLabs if the voice is your brand and you want one platform that handles voice, listening, turn taking, knowledge and testing.
• Pick Retell if you want a business-friendly builder with booking and transfers ready to go, and compliance paperwork matters.
• Pick Vapi if you have developers who want to swap every component and control the stack in code.

How do ElevenLabs, Retell and Vapi compare at a glance?

Which platform has the lowest latency?

All three are fast enough for natural phone calls, and the language model you pick matters more than the platform. A big model that thinks for a second will feel slow on any of them.

Vapi's documentation targets roughly 500 to 700 milliseconds voice to voice. ElevenLabs does not headline a single end-to-end number on the pages we checked, but it owns its speech models and turn taking in-house, which removes a hop between vendors. In practice the gap between the three is small next to the effect of prompt length and model choice.

Which platform has the best voices?

ElevenLabs, and it is not especially close. That is no surprise, since text to speech is the company's core product. Its agent docs list more than 10,000 voices, 31 languages for agents and 70+ languages for text to speech, plus voice cloning and voice design.

The interesting part is that Retell and Vapi both let you use ElevenLabs voices too. You pay a little more per minute for them on those platforms, but it means voice quality alone should not force your choice.

How does telephony work on each platform?

All three can answer and place real phone calls. The difference is how much is bundled.

• ElevenLabs has a native Twilio integration, SIP trunking for your existing carrier and batch outbound calling. It also supports WhatsApp. Telephony is billed at cost.
• Retell sells phone numbers at about $0.015 per minute and lets you bring your own SIP trunk for free. It includes 20 concurrent calls, then charges $8 per extra slot per month, per its pricing page.
• Vapi passes through carrier costs, for example Twilio at about $0.008 per minute inbound and $0.014 outbound. Pay-as-you-go accounts get 4 concurrent calls, and extra lines cost $10 each per month, per its pricing page.

Which integrations do they support?

Booking and CRM updates are where most agents earn their money, so this matters.

ElevenLabs agents can use webhook tools, client tools, code tools and MCP servers, plus a built-in knowledge base with retrieval. You can connect a custom LLM, run automated tests, A/B test versions and review analytics. Anything with an API, including GoHighLevel, HubSpot and most calendars, can be wired in.

Retell ships ready-made booking with Cal.com and Google Calendar, call transfer that passes context to the person picking up, and a visual flow builder. Its receptionist page lists SOC 2 Type I and II, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR.

Vapi is built for developers who want to own the pieces. Its docs put it plainly:

You can swap any of those three, point it at your own server for the language model and call tools over HTTP. That is powerful if you have engineers, and a lot of decisions if you do not.

How much do ElevenLabs, Retell and Vapi cost?

Prices below were checked in November 2026. All three charge a platform fee and then pass through some or all of the other costs.

Vapi's own example puts 1,000 minutes at roughly $82 to $129 all in. Retell's range of $0.07 to $0.31 per minute works out to about $70 to $310 for the same 1,000 minutes, with the top end driven by premium models. ElevenLabs lands in a similar band once you add the model and phone line. For most small businesses, the choice of LLM decides the bill more than the platform does.

Who should choose which platform?

• Local service businesses and clinics that want a great-sounding AI receptionist: ElevenLabs, or Retell if you want to manage it yourself in a visual builder.
• Healthcare and regulated teams: compare Retell's compliance list and Vapi's HIPAA tier, ask ElevenLabs about its terms for regulated data, and get a BAA in writing.
• Developers and agencies building many custom agents: Vapi for maximum control, ElevenLabs if you want the voice stack handled for you.
• GoHighLevel shops: any of the three can connect. See our GoHighLevel AI voice agent guide.

Why we build mainly on ElevenLabs

For the agents we build at Virtual Horizons, the voice is usually the first impression of a business, so quality wins. ElevenLabs also keeps speech, turn taking, knowledge base and testing in one place, which means fewer vendors to debug when a call goes wrong. We connect those agents to calendars, CRMs like GoHighLevel, and SMS through Twilio.

That said, the platform is maybe 20% of the result. The other 80% is the script, the booking logic and the handoff. If you want to see how that comes together, read about the AI sales agent or our voice agent service.

Roenic Natarelli

Founder, Virtual Horizons

Roenic runs Virtual Horizons and is a Base44 Legend Partner, Ambassador and Community Pillar, Base44 Shark Tank winner and multiple-time Vibe Sprint winner. The studio builds web and mobile apps, AI voice agents and automations, with more than 10 apps live on the App Store and Google Play. More about us