ElevenLabs Agents alternatives

ElevenLabs Agents is a well-documented conversational AI platform from a company whose first product is voice technology, and many teams are well served by it. The buyers who search for alternatives usually cite the shape of its published pricing rather than any single number. It is sold as subscription tiers — $0 to $990 per month — each bundling included call minutes and a concurrent-call limit (4 concurrent calls on Free up to 40 on Business), with additional minutes at a flat $0.08 and minutes above the concurrency limit at a $0.16 burst rate. The included allotments price out at almost exactly $0.08/minute (illustrative: 3,738 × $0.08 = $299.04 on Scale), so a tier upgrade mainly buys concurrency and features, not a cheaper minute. ElevenLabs Agents pricing, accessed 2026-08-19.

The second structural point is what sits outside the minute. Per the same pricing page, "The LLM model and any telephony are billed separately on top, based on usage" — model fees are deducted from ElevenLabs credits and vary by model, and external-provider telephony is listed "At cost." So the platform layer is computable from public pages, but the complete all-in total is not. None of this is unusual in the category — but if an evaluation stalls on any of these points, the platforms below publish enough detail to compare directly. ElevenLabs Agents pricing, accessed 2026-08-19.

Top alternatives

The list is ordered with our own product first, disclosed transparently. Beyond that ordering, no ranking is implied; the right choice depends on your workload.

1. ThunderPhone (this site)

ThunderPhone is pay as you go with no subscription, seat fee, or concurrency tiers, and each engine rate is the all-in engine price: Spark 2¢/minute, Bolt 5¢/minute, Storm 9¢/minute, with premium voice or language paths adding up to 3¢/minute and the builder displaying the current all-in rate. The catalog publishes a fixed total — 47 languages and 123 voices with automatic mid-call switching — and telephony supports direct VoIP connections or manual SIP configuration for any SIP trunk. Testing tooling includes AI-caller simulations, graded scenarios, regression suites with pass-rate gates, CI execution, and live-traffic A/B experiments (simulations are billable real calls). Public compliance posture: GDPR and HIPAA compliant; customers remain responsible for configuring their workflows, data handling, recordings, and notices.

Fits teams that want the monthly bill computable from minutes alone — model and voice inside the printed rate, no tier or concurrency line items — with regression gates in the release process.

2. Retell AI

Retell is pay as you go with component-based pricing: voice infrastructure at $0.055/minute, the language model adding $0.003–$0.16/minute, text-to-speech adding $0.015–$0.04/minute, and standard telephony at $0.015/minute, for an advertised all-in range of $0.07–$0.31/minute. Twenty concurrent calls are included, with additional concurrency at $8 per concurrent call per month, and SIP trunking carries no charge. Compliance posture per its docs: SOC 2 Type 1 and 2, HIPAA with a signed BAA, and GDPR via a DPA with SCCs. Retell pricing and Retell compliance docs, accessed 2026-08-18.

Fits teams that want usage-based pricing with every component priced on one public page and are comfortable normalizing a configured per-minute total.

3. Vapi

Vapi's Build plan charges $0.05/minute for call hosting, with speech-to-text, language model, and text-to-speech billed at provider cost on top — or $0 with your own API keys. Ten concurrent calls are included, with extra lines at $10/line/month. Compliance features are priced as add-ons: HIPAA compliance is $2,000/month and zero data retention is $1,000/month; the homepage states SOC 2, HIPAA, and PCI compliance (GDPR is not stated on the pages reviewed). Vapi pricing and Vapi HIPAA docs, accessed 2026-08-18.

Fits teams that already hold their own model and voice provider accounts and want pass-through economics with developer-level control over each component.

4. Bland AI

Bland publishes an all-inclusive per-minute rate covering LLM, STT, and TTS, tiered at $0.14/$0.12/$0.11 talk per minute (Start/Build/Scale), with platform fees of $0/$299/$499 per month and 10/50/100 concurrent calls by tier. It advertises 40+ languages and offers self-hosted, customer-VPC, and on-premise deployments. SOC 2 Type II and PCI DSS v4.0 are third-party audited; HIPAA and GDPR are self-attested per its trust page. Bland pricing and Bland trust page, accessed 2026-08-18.

Fits teams that want one bundled per-minute number at higher committed tiers, or regulated-industry deployments where self-hosting options matter.

5. Phonely

Phonely publishes simple self-serve tiers aimed at small businesses: a free tier with 100 minutes, then $50/month and $150/month plans, with overage minutes at $0.25–$0.35/minute. Its pricing page lists SOC 2, GDPR, and PCI, with a HIPAA BAA available at the enterprise level; SIP is listed as an enterprise item, and it maintains public API documentation at docs.phonely.ai. Phonely pricing and Phonely docs, accessed 2026-08-19.

Fits teams that want a small-business phone agent on a flat monthly plan with a low setup surface rather than component-level configuration.

At a glance

All figures are point-in-time published numbers; rerun the arithmetic with your own configuration.

How to evaluate an alternative

• Normalize the total, not the platform layer. Price your expected monthly connected minutes through each platform's full stack — platform fee, model, voice, telephony, add-ons. On pass-through models, the published rate is a floor, not the price.
• Model your concurrency peak. Check the included allowance — and what minutes above it cost — against your busiest hour, not your monthly average.
• Check what a tier locks in. Fixed subscriptions bill whether or not the minutes are used; pay-as-you-go bills only usage.
• Verify language combinations, not totals. Confirm the language-and-voice pairs your callers need, and whether mid-call switching is default behavior or an opt-in tool.
• Test telephony with your real numbers. Confirm SIP trunk or number-import eligibility for your carrier and call direction, and whether SIP requires a specific tier.
• Match compliance claims to your obligations. Distinguish audited attestations from self-attested claims, and check BAA/DPA availability at your tier.
• Trial the testing workflow. Run a simulation on each shortlisted platform and check what test minutes cost — on several platforms, including ThunderPhone, test calls bill as real calls.

FAQ

Why do teams look for ElevenLabs Agents alternatives?

The most-cited reasons in public pricing terms are structural: an effective platform rate of ~$0.08/minute on every self-serve tier, the LLM and telephony billed separately on top based on usage (so the all-in total is not computable from public pages), and concurrency limits set by tier with a $0.16 burst rate above them. ElevenLabs Agents pricing, accessed 2026-08-19.

Is any alternative simply cheaper than ElevenLabs Agents?

No universal answer is defensible, because ElevenLabs' complete total depends on unpublished model and telephony pass-throughs. As illustrative arithmetic at 10,000 connected minutes per month, the ElevenLabs platform layer computes to about $800 (Pro or Scale plus overage) or $990 flat on Business — before LLM and telephony — while ThunderPhone's all-in engines compute to $200, $500, or $900 before premium paths or setup-dependent charges.

Which alternatives publish an all-inclusive per-minute rate?

Bland AI publishes bundled talk rates of $0.14/$0.12/$0.11 per minute by tier, and ThunderPhone publishes all-in engine rates of 2¢/5¢/9¢ per minute with no subscription; premium paths can add up to 3¢/minute. Bland pricing, accessed 2026-08-18.

Which alternative is most similar to ElevenLabs' pass-through billing?

Vapi. It also separates a per-minute platform fee ($0.05/minute hosting) from provider costs, which pass through at cost or at $0 with your own API keys. Vapi pricing, accessed 2026-08-18.

How do the compliance postures compare?

ElevenLabs states SOC 2 and GDPR compliance with HIPAA BAAs for qualifying enterprises and optional Zero Retention Mode. Retell states SOC 2 Type 1 and 2, HIPAA with a BAA, and GDPR via DPA; Vapi lists SOC 2, HIPAA (a $2,000/month add-on), and PCI; Bland's SOC 2 Type II and PCI DSS are audited with HIPAA and GDPR self-attested; Phonely lists SOC 2, GDPR, and PCI with a HIPAA BAA at enterprise. ThunderPhone's public posture is GDPR and HIPAA compliant, with customers responsible for configuring their own workflows and notices. Treat labels as a starting point, not a determination.

Do these platforms support bringing existing phone numbers or SIP trunks?

Broadly yes, per their public docs, with tier caveats: ElevenLabs documents inbound and outbound SIP trunking with concurrency governed by tier; Retell advertises no-charge SIP trunking; Vapi and Bland document BYO SIP paths; ThunderPhone supports manual SIP configuration for any SIP trunk; Phonely lists SIP as an enterprise item. Confirm eligibility for your carrier, number, and call direction before migrating.

Sources and freshness

ElevenLabs Agents claims on this page were checked against its official pages on August 19, 2026, and Phonely facts were recorded the same day — confirm Phonely details against its live pages before relying on them. ThunderPhone pricing and product details reflect its published pricing and documentation as of August 19, 2026. Vendors change pricing and features often, so confirm every claim against the live vendor pages before relying on it.