The best Vapi alternative for most businesses is Retell AI, which ranks one place above Vapi in our best AI voice agents, includes a free HIPAA BAA and has a visual flow builder. ElevenLabs Agents, our top pick, is faster and simpler to price. Bland AI charges one all-in rate, Telnyx and Deepgram cost less per minute, OpenAI's Realtime API gives one speech-to-speech model, and LiveKit Agents is the open-source option for teams that want to host everything themselves.
Why people look for Vapi alternatives
HIPAA is expensive
Vapi charges $2,000 a month per organization for HIPAA-eligible handling. Retell AI offers a BAA for free on every account. A clinic using 3,000 minutes a month would pay about $462 on Retell's recommended setup, against about $2,245 or more on Vapi.
The bill is hard to predict
A Vapi minute has up to five parts: hosting, transcriber, model, voice and carrier. Trustpilot reviewers complain about provider costs they did not expect. Bland AI's single all-in rate is easier to budget.
Reliability and support complaints
Vapi scores 2.4 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 15 reviews, with reports of multi-second pauses, dashboard edits not saving and slow replies from support. Developers on Product Hunt are far happier, but production teams also ask for better failure tracing.
The visual builder is gone
Vapi retired Workflows on 18 August 2026. Teams that relied on a drag-and-drop call map now need to rebuild as code-heavy Squads, or move to Retell's Conversation Flow or Synthflow's no-code designer.
Vapi alternatives at a glance
Tool
Best for
Price from
Free plan
Our score
Vapi for comparison
Developers who want to choose every model and voice
by Retell AI · from $0.07/min plus model and phone line; $10 free credit · free plan
8.2/10
Retell is the closest like-for-like switch. It is also billed per minute with no subscription ($0.055 platform fee, $0.015 to $0.040 for the voice, plus the model and a $0.015 US phone line), but it includes 20 concurrent calls, a drag-and-drop Conversation Flow builder and a free, self-serve HIPAA BAA. It holds SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 reports. The trade-off is a fixed menu of models and voices, and a slower median reply (1,740 ms) than Vapi in the independent phone test.
Versus Vapi:Free BAA and a visual builder, but less provider choice and slower replies.
by ElevenLabs · from Free (15 minutes); $0.08/min plus model; plans from $6/month · free plan
8.3/10
ElevenLabs Agents is our top-ranked voice agent platform. It charges one $0.08-a-minute rate on every plan for speech and voice, with the model billed on top, and monthly plans simply prepay minutes and raise concurrency from 4 to 40 lines. In the Openbenchmarks phone test it replied faster than Vapi (1,424 ms median against 1,558 ms) and was the most consistent of the five platforms. You give up Vapi's freedom to mix providers, and burst calls above your limit cost $0.16 a minute.
Versus Vapi:Faster, simpler pricing and better voices, but locked to ElevenLabs speech.
#3 · Best for high-volume calling with one predictable rate
Bland AI
by Bland AI · from Free Start plan at $0.14/min; Build $299/month at $0.12/min · free plan
7.8/10
Bland AI is the opposite of Vapi's pick-every-part approach. Its per-minute rate already includes the language model, real-time transcription and premium voices, with no token charges or provider pass-throughs. The free Start plan costs $0.14 a minute with 10 concurrent calls and 100 calls a day; Build costs $299 a month plus $0.12 a minute with 50 lines and 2,000 calls a day. Transfer time is billed separately, and Enterprise adds a BAA, SSO and data residency.
Versus Vapi:One simple rate instead of five parts, but less control over models.
#4 · Best for cost-focused teams that want the phone carrier and AI together
Telnyx Voice AI Agents
by Telnyx · from $0.05/min voice engine plus model and phone line
7.8/10
Telnyx is a phone carrier with its own network, so calls do not hop between separate vendors. Its $0.05-a-minute voice engine includes orchestration, speech-to-text and text-to-speech, and a model hosted on Telnyx GPUs adds about $0.006 a minute. Telnyx puts a typical production agent at about $0.06 a minute including telephony, well below a typical Vapi setup. It posted the fastest median reply (1,296 ms) in the Openbenchmarks test, though that test's funding is undisclosed. Templates and integrations are fewer than Vapi's.
Versus Vapi:Cheaper and faster on its own network, with a smaller ecosystem.
by Deepgram · from $0.075/min pay-as-you-go ($0.068 on Growth) · free plan
7.4/10
Deepgram packages its speech recognition, Aura voices and a language model into one real-time connection for $0.075 a minute pay-as-you-go, billed by connection time. That is often less than a Vapi setup once you add Vapi's $0.05 hosting fee to provider costs. New accounts get $200 of free credit, and you can bring your own model ($0.059 a minute) or your own model and voice ($0.050). Like Vapi, it is developer-first, but it has no phone numbers or dashboard builder of its own.
Versus Vapi:Lower bundled price, but even less built-in tooling than Vapi.
by OpenAI · from $32 per million audio input tokens, $64 per million output (gpt-realtime-2.1)
7.3/10
OpenAI's Realtime API replaces the transcriber, model and voice chain with one model that listens and speaks directly, which cuts hand-offs and lets the voice carry tone. gpt-realtime-2.1 costs $32 per million audio input tokens and $64 per million output; the mini model is $10 and $20, and cached input is far cheaper. You pay by token, not by minute, so budgeting is harder. It is a model rather than a platform, and many teams run it inside Vapi or LiveKit instead of on its own.
Versus Vapi:One natural-sounding model, but no dashboard, analytics or call flows.
#7 · Best for teams that want an open-source framework they can self-host
LiveKit Agents
by LiveKit · from Free to self-host; LiveKit Cloud Ship $50/month · free plan
LiveKit's Agents framework and media server are fully open source, so you can run voice agents on your own servers and pay only your model and speech providers. If you would rather not host it, LiveKit Cloud's free Build plan includes 1,000 agent session minutes and 5 concurrent sessions, and Ship costs $50 a month for 5,000 minutes, then $0.01 a minute, with 20 sessions. Every plan includes one free US number. It is code-first, so it suits the same developer teams that choose Vapi.
Versus Vapi:Open source and cheap to host, but you build and run more yourself.
Export each assistant's system prompt, tool definitions and structured output schemas from the API before you cancel, and keep them in version control.
If your numbers live in Twilio, Vonage or Telnyx, repoint them to the new platform instead of porting. Free Vapi numbers cannot be moved.
Download recordings and transcripts you need before your retention window ends: 14 days without a package, 30 on Core.
Recreate your Simulations or Test Suites as test calls on the new platform and compare reply time and task success on the same scripts.
Cancel Core or Pro and any HIPAA add-on before the next monthly renewal, and remove unused prepaid credit settings such as auto-reload.
Vapi's own charge for running a call, $0.05 a minute. Speech, model, voice and phone costs are added on top.
Pass-through pricing
The platform bills you what each outside provider charges, without adding its own markup.
Speech-to-text (transcriber)
The part of a voice agent that turns the caller's speech into text for the AI to read.
Squad
Vapi's way of linking several AI assistants in one call, each handling one stage and passing the caller on with the conversation so far.
Zero data retention (ZDR)
A setting where the vendor does not keep call recordings or transcripts beyond what is needed to process the call.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Vapi?
Retell AI for most businesses, because it adds a free HIPAA BAA, 20 free call lines and a visual flow builder at a similar per-minute cost. ElevenLabs Agents is our top-ranked platform overall.
Is there an open-source alternative to Vapi?
Yes. LiveKit's Agents framework is open source and can be self-hosted, with LiveKit Cloud available from free (1,000 agent minutes) if you prefer hosting.
Which Vapi alternative is cheapest?
Telnyx says a production agent costs about $0.06 a minute on its network, and Deepgram's bundled Voice Agent API is $0.075 a minute. A typical Vapi setup runs about $0.08 to $0.14.
Is Retell AI better than Vapi?
It ranks one place higher in our best AI voice agents ranking, mainly for compliance, pricing clarity and builder tools. Vapi is faster in the independent test and gives developers more provider choice.
What replaced Vapi Workflows?
Vapi retired Workflows on 18 August 2026 and recommends Squads, where several assistants hand callers to each other, or a single Assistant for simple agents. If you want a visual builder, Retell AI's Conversation Flow is the closest alternative.
Sources
Every fact on this page comes from public information. Vendor figures are labelled as vendor claims.