# Voice AI for Phone Calls - Comprehensive Comparison (January 2026)

## Executive Summary

After extensive research, here's the TL;DR ranking by **voice quality first**, then cost:

### 🏆 Top Tier - Best Voice Quality
1. **ElevenLabs** - Industry-leading naturalness, best emotional range
2. **OpenAI Realtime API (gpt-realtime)** - New flagship model, excellent quality + reasoning
3. **Cartesia Sonic** - Ultra-low latency (40-90ms), very natural, best for real-time

### 💰 Best Value for Quality
1. **Retell AI** - $0.07/min all-inclusive, good quality, easiest setup
2. **Deepgram Voice Agent API** - ~$0.075/min, solid quality, great STT
3. **Bland AI** - $0.09/min outbound, simple pricing, decent quality

### 🔧 Best for Custom/Developer Control
1. **Vapi** - Most flexible, bring-your-own everything
2. **OpenAI Realtime + Twilio** - Full control, native SIP support now
3. **Deepgram + Custom LLM** - DIY stack, best for optimization

---

## Detailed Platform Comparison

### 1. OpenAI Realtime API (gpt-realtime) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

**Voice Quality:** Excellent (4.5/5)
- New gpt-realtime model released with significant improvements
- Speech-to-speech preserves emotional nuance
- Two new voices: Cedar and Marin (most natural yet)
- 82.8% accuracy on Big Bench Audio (vs 65.6% previous)
- Native SIP support for direct phone integration

**Pricing:**
- Audio Input: $0.06/minute ($32/1M tokens)
- Audio Output: $0.24/minute ($64/1M tokens)
- Text tokens: $5/1M input, $20/1M output
- **Effective cost: ~$0.30/minute for typical calls**
- Cached input: $0.40/1M tokens (huge savings for repeated context)

**Real-world cost example (per call):**
- 2 min user speech, 0.5 min AI: ~$0.25/call
- 4 min user, 1 min AI: ~$0.50/call

**Twilio Integration:** Native SIP support now! Direct connection without middleware.

**OAuth/User-Pays:** Yes - users can use their own OpenAI API keys

**Free Tier:** $5 free credits for new accounts

**Pros:**
- Best reasoning + voice in one model
- Native SIP/phone support
- MCP server support for tools
- Image input supported
- Most natural conversations

**Cons:**
- Expensive at scale (~$15k/month for 1000 calls/day)
- Complex token-based pricing
- Audio output is the killer cost

---

### 2. ElevenLabs Conversational AI ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

**Voice Quality:** Best in class (4.7/5 in user studies)
- 44.98% scored "high naturalness" vs competitors
- Industry-leading emotional expression
- Excellent voice cloning (10 seconds of audio)
- Flash v2.5 model optimized for real-time (75ms latency)

**Pricing:**
- **$0.08-0.10/minute** for Conversational AI (after Feb 2025 price cut)
- Creator plan: $22/month (100k characters ~100 min)
- Pro plan: $99/month (500k characters ~500 min)
- Scale plan: $330/month (~4,000 min)
- LLM costs currently absorbed but will be passed on eventually

**Hidden costs:**
- HIPAA compliance: $1,000/month add-on
- Premium voice licensing: variable
- Custom voice creation: one-time credit charge
- Overages: ~$0.09/1k characters

**Twilio Integration:** Direct integration available, well-documented

**OAuth/User-Pays:** API key model, users can have their own accounts

**Free Tier:** 10,000 credits/month free, non-commercial use

**Pros:**
- Absolute best voice quality
- Best voice cloning
- 29+ languages
- Absorbed LLM costs (for now)

**Cons:**
- Not an all-in-one solution (voice only)
- Complex credit-based pricing
- HIPAA very expensive
- 2.8/5 on Trustpilot (billing complaints)

---

### 3. Retell AI ⭐⭐⭐⭐

**Voice Quality:** Very good (4.2/5)
- Choose your TTS: ElevenLabs, OpenAI, Cartesia
- 280ms average response time (good)
- 30+ language support

**Pricing:**
- **$0.07/minute base** (all-inclusive)
- No platform fees
- Includes STT, LLM, TTS, telephony
- HIPAA included in enterprise tier

**10k minute cost: ~$700/month** (vs $1,400+ for Vapi/Twilio)

**Twilio Integration:** Native + SIP/Vonage support

**OAuth/User-Pays:** Bring your own LLM supported

**Free Tier:** Trial available with limited minutes

**Pros:**
- Simplest, most transparent pricing
- 3-minute deployment (no-code builder)
- All components included
- Good analytics dashboard

**Cons:**
- Less flexibility than Vapi
- Limited in UK
- Mixed reviews on GDPR compliance

---

### 4. Vapi ⭐⭐⭐⭐

**Voice Quality:** Depends on providers chosen (up to 4.7/5 with ElevenLabs)
- Ultra-flexible: pick any STT/LLM/TTS combo
- 500-800ms typical latency when tuned
- Excellent endpointing and interrupt detection

**Pricing:**
- Platform fee: $0.05/minute
- + Telephony (Twilio): ~$0.013/minute
- + TTS (ElevenLabs): ~$0.024/minute
- + STT (Deepgram): ~$0.0043/minute
- + LLM (GPT-4): ~$0.045/minute
- **Effective: $0.13-0.33/minute depending on choices**

**10k minute cost: ~$1,300-2,500/month**

**Twilio Integration:** Excellent, native support

**OAuth/User-Pays:** YES - full BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) support for all providers

**Free Tier:** Ad-hoc plan for testing, $500/month minimum for production

**Pros:**
- Maximum flexibility
- Bring your own everything
- Best for developers
- Squads feature for multi-agent

**Cons:**
- Complex pricing, hard to predict
- Developer-heavy (not for non-technical)
- Costs add up fast

---

### 5. Bland AI ⭐⭐⭐½

**Voice Quality:** Good (3.8/5)
- Tuned for fast outbound calling
- 800ms typical latency (slower than competitors)
- Decent quality at price point

**Pricing:**
- Outbound: $0.09/minute
- Inbound: $0.04/minute
- Number rental: $15/month
- **Simple, predictable pricing**

**Twilio Integration:** SIP integration available

**OAuth/User-Pays:** Limited

**Free Tier:** Trial available

**Pros:**
- Simple pricing
- Fast deployment for outbound
- Good for high-volume sales

**Cons:**
- Voice quality not as natural
- 800ms latency (noticeable)
- Limited customization
- 3.0/5 overall rating

---

### 6. Hume AI (EVI) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

**Voice Quality:** Good with emotion awareness (4.38/5)
- Unique: detects and responds to emotional cues
- Octave TTS engine is expressive
- Voice cloning with 30 seconds of audio

**Pricing:**
- Free: 5 EVI minutes/month
- Starter: $3/month (40 min)
- Creator: $14/month (200 min)
- Pro: $70/month (1,200 min)
- Scale: $200/month (5,000 min)
- Business: $500/month (12,500 min)
- **Effective: ~$0.04-0.06/minute at scale**

**Overage: $0.06/minute beyond limits**

**Twilio Integration:** API-based, requires custom integration

**OAuth/User-Pays:** API key model

**Free Tier:** 5 minutes/month + 10k TTS characters

**Pros:**
- Unique emotion-aware capability
- Good for empathetic use cases
- Competitive pricing at scale
- SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA (enterprise)

**Cons:**
- Voice quality ~7% behind ElevenLabs
- Smaller voice library (60+)
- Requires development to integrate
- No built-in phone system

---

### 7. PlayHT ⭐⭐⭐½

**Voice Quality:** Very good (4.3/5)
- Good voice cloning
- Natural narration style
- 100+ voices

**Pricing:**
- Free: 12,500 characters/month
- Starter: $5/month (30k chars)
- Creator: $22/month (100k chars)  
- Pro: $99/month (500k chars)
- Starting at $39/month for premium voices

**Twilio Integration:** API available, not native

**OAuth/User-Pays:** API key model

**Free Tier:** Yes, limited

**Pros:**
- Good value for content creation
- Decent voice cloning
- Easy to use interface

**Cons:**
- Not focused on real-time calls
- Voice cloning quality requires pro plan
- Less suited for conversational AI

---

### 8. Cartesia (Sonic) ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

**Voice Quality:** Excellent for real-time (4.5/5)
- **40-90ms latency** (fastest in market!)
- Very natural, clean voice output
- Emotion and speed modulation
- Hallucination-free guarantee

**Pricing:**
- Free: 20k credits (~20 min)
- Pro: $4/month (100k credits)
- Startup: $39/month (1.25M credits)
- Scale: $239/month (8M credits)
- **Effective: ~$0.03-0.05/minute**

**Ink-Whisper STT: $0.13/hour** (cheapest fast STT)

**Twilio Integration:** Via Voice Agent API or custom integration

**OAuth/User-Pays:** API key model

**Free Tier:** Yes, 20k credits

**Pros:**
- Fastest latency (unmatched)
- Very clean voice output
- Great for real-time
- Competitive pricing
- 3-second voice cloning

**Cons:**
- Smaller language support (15+)
- Newer platform
- Requires integration work

---

### 9. Deepgram + Custom LLM ⭐⭐⭐⭐

**Voice Quality:** Good (4.0/5 for TTS, excellent STT)
- Nova-3 ASR: 150ms TTFT, excellent accuracy
- TTS quality improving rapidly
- Unified Voice Agent API now available

**Pricing:**
- STT: $0.0043/minute (Nova-3)
- TTS: ~$0.016/minute
- Voice Agent API: ~$0.075/minute (STT+LLM+TTS)
- **DIY Stack: $0.03-0.10/minute depending on LLM**

**Twilio Integration:** Excellent, direct integration

**OAuth/User-Pays:** API key model, BYOK supported

**Free Tier:** $200 free credit

**Pros:**
- Best-in-class STT accuracy
- Very transparent pricing
- Full control with DIY
- Good for optimization
- $200 free to start

**Cons:**
- TTS not as natural as ElevenLabs
- Requires more development work
- Gets expensive at scale (per Reddit)

---

### 10. Twilio Native AI ⭐⭐⭐

**Voice Quality:** Decent (3.5/5)
- AI Assistants (alpha): basic voice agents
- Voice Intelligence: transcription + analysis
- ConversationRelay for custom LLM

**Pricing:**
- AI Assistant: $0.10/minute + telephony
- Transcription: $0.05-0.10/minute
- Voice API: $0.0085/minute
- **Total: ~$0.15-0.20/minute for AI calls**

**Integration:** Native (it IS Twilio)

**OAuth/User-Pays:** Account-based

**Free Tier:** 100 free AI messages/month, trial credits

**Pros:**
- Integrated with Twilio ecosystem
- Reliable telephony
- Good for simple use cases
- Enterprise support

**Cons:**
- Alpha product (5 assistant limit)
- Voice quality not competitive
- Limited AI capabilities
- Better to use as telephony + external AI

---

## Cost Comparison at Scale

### 10,000 Minutes/Month
| Platform | Monthly Cost | Per-Minute |
|----------|-------------|------------|
| Retell AI | $700 | $0.070 |
| Cartesia + DIY | $800-1,200 | $0.08-0.12 |
| Hume AI (Scale) | $200 + overages | ~$0.06-0.08 |
| ElevenLabs | $1,000-1,500 | $0.10-0.15 |
| Deepgram Voice Agent | $750 | $0.075 |
| Vapi (optimized) | $1,300-1,500 | $0.13-0.15 |
| Bland AI (outbound) | $900 | $0.09 |
| Twilio AI | $1,500-2,000 | $0.15-0.20 |
| OpenAI Realtime | $2,500-3,500 | $0.25-0.35 |

---

## Recommendations

### For BEST VOICE QUALITY (cost secondary):
**1. ElevenLabs + Vapi/Retell**
- Use ElevenLabs voices with a platform for orchestration
- Best naturalness, emotional range, voice cloning
- ~$0.12-0.18/minute effective

### For BEST BALANCE of quality + cost:
**1. Retell AI**
- $0.07/minute all-inclusive
- Can use ElevenLabs, Cartesia, or OpenAI voices
- Easiest setup, good quality
- Best for: Non-technical teams, fast deployment

**2. Cartesia Sonic (for latency-critical)**
- 40-90ms latency is unmatched
- $0.03-0.05/minute for TTS
- Best for: Real-time conversations where speed matters

### For MAXIMUM CONTROL:
**1. Vapi with BYOK**
- Bring your own API keys for everything
- Users can pay their own costs
- Most flexible architecture

**2. OpenAI Realtime + Twilio SIP**
- Native SIP now supported
- Best reasoning + voice combined
- Full control with gpt-realtime model

### For COST-CONSCIOUS at scale:
**1. Deepgram Voice Agent API** - $0.075/min, solid quality
**2. Hume AI** - ~$0.04-0.06/min at scale tier
**3. Bland AI (outbound)** - $0.04-0.09/min, simple pricing

---

## OAuth / User-Pays Options

| Platform | BYOK Support | Notes |
|----------|-------------|-------|
| Vapi | ✅ Full | Best for user-pays model |
| OpenAI | ✅ Full | Users can use own API keys |
| Retell | ✅ Partial | BYOK for LLM |
| ElevenLabs | ✅ API Key | Separate accounts |
| Deepgram | ✅ API Key | Separate accounts |
| Cartesia | ✅ API Key | Separate accounts |
| Hume | ✅ API Key | Separate accounts |
| Bland | ⚠️ Limited | Enterprise only |
| Twilio | ❌ | Account-based |

---

## Final Verdict

**If I had to pick ONE platform today for best quality phone calls:**

### 🥇 Winner: ElevenLabs voices via Retell AI
- Best-in-class voice quality
- Simple $0.07/min + ElevenLabs markup
- Easy setup, good Twilio integration
- Total: ~$0.12-0.15/minute

### 🥈 Runner-up: OpenAI gpt-realtime
- Best combined reasoning + voice
- Native SIP support now
- Higher cost (~$0.30/min) but best conversations
- Best for complex interactions

### 🥉 Best Budget: Retell AI (default voices)
- $0.07/min all-in
- Good enough quality for most use cases
- Easiest deployment

---

*Research completed January 27, 2026*
