Developer platform that wires together speech recognition, an AI model and speech generation into a working phone-answering voice agent.
vapi.ai
Alternatives to
Retell AI
Best alternatives to Retell AI in 2026
A support or sales team fielding thousands of routine phone calls a month usually has to choose between hiring more people or accepting long hold times. Retell AI offers a third option: an AI agent that answers the phone, follows a conversation flow, looks things up, and hands off to a human only when it genuinely needs to — configured through a visual interface rather than requiring a team to write custom telephony code. Retell AI is a platform for building, deploying and managing AI voice agents that automate phone calls, aimed at healthcare, financial services, insurance, logistics, retail and hospitality companies with large support and sales operations. It targets around 600ms latency for natural-feeling conversation, supports real-time function calling so an agent can look up information or take action mid-call, offers drag-and-drop agent configuration, a knowledge base with streaming retrieval-augmented generation, batch calling for outbound campaigns, and post-call analysis with AI-driven quality assurance. Pricing is pay-as-you-go at roughly $0.07-$0.31 per minute depending on configuration, with free credits to start and custom Enterprise pricing for larger deployments.
Quick comparison of Retell AI alternatives
| # | Tool | Best for | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Enterprise customers, SaaS developers and voice-agent builders needing phone-based AI agents | — | |
| 2 |  Bland.is | Grand public | — |
| 3 | Therapists, psychologists, and small mental-health practices looking to cut down on session documentation time. | — | |
| 4 | Developers building AI agents, assistants, or multi-tool workflows that need memory to persist and be shared across platforms. | — | |
| 5 | Developers and small-to-mid-size businesses seeking managed AI agent deployment without infrastructure management | — | |
| 6 | Enterprise and mid-market support teams using Freshdesk, Zendesk, Salesforce, or HubSpot; SaaS companies and e-commerce platforms managing high ticket volumes | — | |
| 7 | Développeurs et équipes utilisant des agents de codage IA ayant besoin de contexte factuel sur leur base de code | — | |
| 8 | Développeurs et utilisateurs individuels voulant un assistant IA local, sous leur contrôle total | — | |
| 9 | Chercheurs et ingénieurs en machine learning ayant besoin d'interpréter le comportement interne de leurs modèles | — | |
| 10 | Chercheurs biomédicaux, cliniciens et praticiens de la synthèse de preuves | — | |
| 11 | Équipes coordonnant plusieurs agents IA sur différents outils de collaboration | — | |
| 12 | Chercheurs et utilisateurs souhaitant comparer plusieurs modèles IA ou explorer des idées en branches | — |
#1
- ✓ Bundles STT, LLM, TTS and telephony into one platform
- ✓ Sub-500ms latency target for natural phone conversations
#3
An AI assistant for therapists that listens to a session (in person or on a video call), transcribes it, and writes the clinical note afterward so the therapist doesn't have to.
kith.space
- ✓ Ambient transcription frees the therapist to focus on the client
- ✓ Automated SOAP notes cut post-session admin time
#4
A shared memory service for AI assistants and agents — it remembers facts and context from your conversations across tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor, instead of each tool starting from zero every time.
itsuki.app
- ✓ Shares memory across many AI tools instead of siloing it per-app
- ✓ Structured, source-linked memories with real audit trail
#5
Managed hosting for persistent AI agent bots — isolated runtime, memory, missions, and integrations (GitHub, Slack, Sentry, MCP) so you can hire an AI worker instead of running your own agent infrastructure.
deploy-hermes.com
- ✓ No server or infrastructure setup required to run persistent AI agents
- ✓ Workspace-level approval and credential controls limit blast radius of autonomous actions
#6
AI agent that resolves support tickets automatically on top of Zendesk, Freshdesk, Salesforce or HubSpot, building its own knowledge base and escalating tricky cases to humans, billed per resolution instead of per seat.
useify.ai
- ✓ Layers on top of Zendesk, Freshdesk, Salesforce or HubSpot without forcing a helpdesk migration
- ✓ Per-resolution pricing avoids paying for idle seats or unused agent licenses
#7
A knowledge-graph memory layer that gives AI coding agents persistent, factual context about your codebase, tickets, and docs — without another hosted service.
oynix.dev
- ✓ Real knowledge graph of ownership and dependencies, not just vector search
- ✓ Self-hosted, data in your own database — no mandatory hosted service
#8
A local-first AI assistant that runs entirely on your machine, remembers context across apps and devices, and only acts with your explicit approval.
github.com
- ✓ Runs entirely on your own machine — no data sent to a third party by default
- ✓ Multi-layer memory (working context, episodic, semantic graph, execution history)
#9
A local-first debugging tool that visualizes what's happening inside an AI model — attention, features, and agent steps — without cloud infrastructure.
github.com
- ✓ Covers language models, VLMs, and robot policies in one tool
- ✓ Attention visualization, SAE feature exploration, and agent-step tracing combined
#10
An open-source agentic RAG system that searches 12 biomedical databases and produces a source-cited synthesis of the evidence.
github.com
- ✓ Searches 12 biomedical databases plus citation networks
- ✓ Citation verification step specifically prevents hallucinated references
#11
An open-source, self-hostable platform for coordinating multiple AI agents across Slack, Discord, GitHub, and other tools in shared conversations.
github.com
- ✓ Coordinates multiple AI agents across Slack, Discord, GitHub, GitLab, Telegram, Lark
- ✓ Provider-agnostic — works with Claude, OpenAI, Grok, DeepSeek, and more
#12
A branching, canvas-based chat interface for comparing responses across Claude, GPT, Gemini, and other LLMs.
llmcanvas.chat
- ✓ Branching canvas avoids losing context in long threads
- ✓ Side-by-side comparison across Claude, GPT, Gemini, OpenRouter models
FAQ about Retell AI alternatives
- What is the best alternative to Retell AI in 2026?
- Based on our selection, Vapi is the best alternative to Retell AI in 2026. Developer platform that wires together speech recognition, an AI model and speech generation into a working phone-answering voice agent.. See our full ranking above to compare all options.
- Is Retell AI free?
- Retell AI is a paid tool. Several alternatives in our selection offer free or freemium versions.
- How many alternatives to Retell AI are there?
- mySelectas has listed 12 alternatives to Retell AI in the AI & Machine Learning category. Our selection is updated regularly to include the best options available.