Voice AI Showdown: ElevenLabs vs Vapi vs Retell vs Bland AI

The Voice AI landscape has exploded in 2025. What started as simple Text-to-Speech (TTS) has evolved into full-blown conversational AI agents capable of handling complex phone calls with human-like latency and emotion.

In this post, we compare four of the heavyweights in the space: ElevenLabs, Vapi, Retell, and Bland AI with the latest 2025 data.

1. ElevenLabs

ElevenLabs is the reigning king of voice generation quality. Their TTS models are widely considered the most realistic and emotionally expressive on the market.

Key Features

• Voice Quality: Unmatched realism and emotional range with 5,000+ voices across 70+ languages
• Voice Cloning: Instant Voice Cloning (Starter plan) and Professional Voice Cloning (Creator+ plans)
• Conversational AI: Full Conversational AI Platform with sub-100ms latency
• Enterprise Features: HIPAA, SOC 2, and GDPR compliance available
• Startup Grants: 12 months free with 33M characters/month for startups

Latency

ElevenLabs has significantly improved latency with their proprietary Flash models and streaming APIs, achieving sub-100ms latency for their Conversational AI platform, making them competitive with dedicated orchestration engines.

Pricing (2025)

• Conversational AI: Starts at $0.08 per minute on Business plans
• Creator Plan: $11/month (first month), then $22/month with 100k credits
• Business Plan: $1,320/month with 11M credits included
• Startup Grants: 33M free credits (worth over $4,000) for 12 months

Best For

Creators, media production, and applications where voice quality is paramount (e.g., audiobooks, high-end virtual assistants).

2. Vapi

Vapi positions itself as the "Serverless Voice AI" infrastructure. It is a developer-first platform designed to orchestrate the entire voice stack (STT, LLM, TTS).

Key Features

• Orchestration: Modular system connecting Transcribers (Deepgram), LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google), and Voice providers (ElevenLabs, PlayHT)
• Tool Calling: Built-in support for agents to call external APIs and functions during conversation
• Developer Experience: Excellent SDKs, CLI tools, and dashboard for managing phone numbers and agent behaviors
• Multi-Assistant Support: "Squads" feature for specialized multi-assistant setups
• Bring Your Own Models: Support for custom STT, LLM, and TTS models including self-hosted options
• Enterprise Features: 99.99% Uptime, HIPAA compliance, volume pricing, dedicated support

Latency

Vapi optimizes heavily for latency, achieving sub-500ms to sub-600ms response times with their edge network and optimized turn-taking logic. Some documentation cites around 800ms for end-to-end processing.

Pricing (2025)

• Platform Fee: $0.05 per minute (prorated to the second)
• Provider Costs: Charged at cost (no markup) - Deepgram ($0.01/min), OpenAI GPT-4 Turbo ($0.20/min), ElevenLabs ($0.04/min)
• Phone Numbers: $2/month for local numbers, $5/month for toll-free
• Free Credits: $10 in free credits for new accounts
• Enterprise: Volume pricing with included minutes and higher concurrency

Best For

Developers building custom voice assistants who want control over the stack without managing the low-level WebSocket glue code.

3. Retell AI

Retell AI is another strong contender in the conversational voice API space, focusing heavily on the telephony aspect and agent building.

Key Features

• Visual Agent Builder: Intuitive drag-and-drop interface for designing conversation flows
• Knowledge Base Integration: Built-in knowledge base for instant, accurate answers across multi-turn conversations
• Telephony Integration: Robust handling of phone calls with native phone number support ($2/month local, $5/month toll-free)
• Enterprise Scale: Designed for high-volume, regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, retail)
• LLM Support: Flexible integration with various LLMs and custom models
• Reliability Focus: Built for consistent, large-scale performance with 99.99% uptime

Latency

Retell boasts ultra-low latency, achieving sub-500ms to 800ms in optimized conditions, making conversations feel very natural with excellent interruption handling.

Pricing (2025)

• Conversational AI Calling: Starts at $0.07 per minute
• Phone Numbers: $2/month for local numbers, $5/month for toll-free
• Enterprise Plans: Custom pricing with volume discounts and dedicated support
• Free Tier: Available for testing and development

Best For

Businesses needing to set up phone agents quickly for customer support, sales, or scheduling.

4. Bland AI

Bland AI creates hyper-realistic phone agents specifically designed for enterprise automation.

Key Features

• Enterprise Scale: Built to handle high volumes of calls with proprietary infrastructure
• Proprietary Infrastructure: They manage their own phone lines and infrastructure to ensure reliability
• Advanced Capabilities: Can navigate phone trees, transfer calls, and handle complex enterprise scenarios
• Human-Level Speed: Optimized for natural conversation flow with excellent interruption handling
• Industry Focus: Specialized for regulated industries requiring high reliability

Latency

Bland AI focuses on "human-level" speed and interruption handling, ensuring agents don't talk over users with response times optimized for natural conversation flow.

Pricing (2025)

• Outbound Calls: Approximately $0.09 per minute
• Inbound Calls: Approximately $0.04 per minute
• Enterprise Plans: Custom pricing with volume discounts and dedicated infrastructure
• Bundled Costs: Often includes all infrastructure costs in per-minute pricing

2025 Pricing Comparison (Latest Data)

Note: Prices are based on 2025 data and may change. Check official pricing pages for latest information.

Verdict

• Choose ElevenLabs if you need the best sounding voice and are building media or content.
• Choose Vapi or Retell if you are a developer building a custom conversational agent and want to mix and match the best models (e.g., GPT-4o with Deepgram and ElevenLabs).
• Choose Bland AI if you are an enterprise looking for a robust, all-in-one solution for phone automation.