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Retell AI vs ElevenLabs

A side-by-side look at Retell AI and ElevenLabs — pricing, features and where each one wins. Both are reviewed independently on Curata AI.

Retell AIElevenLabs
SummaryDeveloper-first voice AI platform for building AI phone agents with pay-as-you-go pricing and no commitments.The category-leading AI voice platform for text-to-speech, voice cloning, dubbing and conversational voice agents.
PricingFreemiumFreemium
CategoryVoiceVoice
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, API
Key features
  • Pay-as-you-go voice and chat agent pricing
  • Call transfer, appointment booking and knowledge base integration
  • Post-call analysis and AI quality assurance
  • Webhooks and API access
  • Pre-built agent templates with simulation testing
  • Text to Speech (Eleven v3, Multilingual v2, Flash v2.5)
  • Instant & Professional Voice Cloning
  • Automatic Dubbing & Dubbing Studio
  • Conversational AI / Voice Agents (ElevenAgents)
  • Speech to Speech (Voice Changer)
  • Speech to Text (Scribe v2, Scribe v2 Realtime)
  • Sound Effects & AI Music
  • Developer API with Pay-As-You-Go billing
Pros
  • No commitments or annual contracts on the pay-as-you-go plan
  • $10 in free credits to start building immediately
  • 20 concurrent calls included at no extra cost
  • Simulation testing tools for validating agents before launch
  • Most realistic, human-like voice quality across TTS, cloning and dubbing
  • Genuinely usable free tier plus six paid tiers covering almost any budget
  • Broad language coverage — 70+ languages on the flagship Eleven v3 model
  • ElevenAgents extends the platform into real-time conversational voice AI, not just static audio
  • Well-documented developer API with flexible Pay-As-You-Go billing
  • Responsive customer support, per independent user reviews
Cons
  • Per-minute pricing varies by model/voice choice, making costs harder to predict upfront
  • Enterprise-grade compliance features require the custom Enterprise plan
  • Smaller integration ecosystem than larger platforms
  • Credit-based pricing can feel opaque — failed or regenerated outputs still consume credits
  • Voice cloning quality depends heavily on input audio quality; noisy samples clone poorly
  • Higher tiers (Scale, Business) get expensive quickly for teams needing seats and volume
  • Credit/character pricing makes exact cost estimation harder than flat per-minute pricing

Read the full Retell AI review

Retell AI lets teams build AI voice agents for customer support, sales and appointment scheduling without long-term contracts. Pricing is pay-as-you-go — roughly $0.07-$0.31 per minute for voice agents depending on model and voice choice, plus around $0.002+ per message for chat agents — with $10 in free starter credits and no commitment required. Twenty concurrent calls are included free, with extra concurrency billed per line. An Enterprise plan adds custom volume pricing, a dedicated stable server, HIPAA/BAA support, SSO and role-based access control for regulated deployments.

Retell AI review →Retell AI alternatives →

Read the full ElevenLabs review

ElevenLabs sets the bar for AI voice. Text-to-speech quality across its Eleven v3, Multilingual v2 and Flash v2.5 models is genuinely close to human, Instant and Professional Voice Cloning capture nuance from a short sample, and Automatic Dubbing translates entire videos into other languages while preserving the original speaker's voice and timing. Beyond static audio, ElevenAgents pairs low-latency speech with conversational AI for real-time voice agents, IVR and customer support, while a single well-documented API (ElevenAPI) exposes text-to-speech, speech-to-text, dubbing, sound effects and music generation billed through a shared credit system with optional Pay-As-You-Go top-ups. The platform is used everywhere from indie games and audiobooks to enterprise call centers — for any workflow where voice quality matters, ElevenLabs remains the default choice.

ElevenLabs review →ElevenLabs alternatives →