Best for
Best for realistic long-form narration, dubbing and voice cloning.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Voice & Speech Comparison
ElevenLabs vs. Retell AI
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for teams putting AI voice agents on real phone lines and testing them before they meet customers.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | ElevenLabs | Retell AI |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free tier; Starter from ~$5 / month Commercial rights start with the paid Starter tier. API from around $300 per million characters at low volume. | From $0.07 / minute of calls Pay as you go, quoted by the vendor as $0.07 to $0.31 per minute for voice agents depending on the models, telephony and add-ons chosen, plus from $0.002 per message for chat agents. Enterprise is quoted by sales. |
| Free trial | Free tier, restricted | $10 in free credits, no contract and no commitment; 20 concurrent calls are included |
| Commercial use | From the paid Starter tier | Yes, usage-based |
| Output | Realistic narration, voice cloning from a sample of around one minute, 70+ languages, dubbing | Voice agents for inbound and outbound phone calls and web calls, plus chat agents over SMS and a web widget |
| API | Yes | Yes, REST API with Node.js and Python libraries, webhooks and an MCP server |
| Hosting | Not stated | Cloud on AWS; the vendor states it does not currently operate services within the European Union |
| Voice cloning | Yes, from a sample of around one minute | Yes, custom voices can be added by searching ElevenLabs community voices, importing an existing clone or training one from uploaded recordings, with Inworld, Cartesia, MiniMax, ElevenLabs and Retell's own platform clones as providers; up to 100 custom voices per account |
| Real-time use | Yes. Eleven Flash v2.5 is built for real-time use at around 75 ms latency, Eleven v3 Conversational runs at around 280 ms, Scribe v2 Realtime transcribes at around 150 ms, and the ElevenAgents platform runs live voice agents over phone, chat and messaging channels | Yes, live inbound and outbound phone calls and browser web calls, with a proprietary turn-taking model, batch calling for campaigns and live monitoring that lets a human listen in or step in |
| Languages | 70+ languages on Eleven v3 and Eleven v3 Conversational, 32 on Flash v2.5 and 29 on Multilingual v2; speech to text with Scribe v2 covers 90+ | 57 languages are listed for text-to-speech and 55 for speech recognition, and a language needs a provider on both sides to be usable. An agent runs either in a single language or as a multilingual agent across a chosen set |
| Speech-to-speech and dubbing | Yes, speech-to-speech and dubbing | A call runs as spoken conversation by chaining speech recognition, a language model and text-to-speech; dubbing of existing recordings is not part of the product |
| Editing and controls | Stability set to Creative, Natural or Robust, speed from 0.7x to 1.2x, audio tags such as [whispers] or [excited] to direct delivery, a seed value for repeatable output, and pronunciation set through IPA, phoneme tags or an uploaded pronunciation dictionary | Single and multi-prompt agents or node-based conversation flows, knowledge bases, expressive mode for emotion and emphasis, custom pronunciation with IPA, CMU, Pinyin or Jyutping, denoising and interruption sensitivity, voicemail and IVR handling, plus a playground, simulation tests, A/B testing and post-call analysis |
| Consent and trust | Professional voice cloning is gated behind technological verification of the speaker, cloning of celebrity and other high-risk voices is blocked, and an AI Speech Classifier tells whether a clip was made with ElevenLabs | HIPAA compliant, SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 certified and GDPR compliant, with a BAA and a DPA including EU standard contractual clauses available for self-signing at no extra fee. Per-agent data retention runs from 1 day to 2 years, PII can be excluded from what is stored, and recording URLs can be signed. Services are not currently operated inside the EU |
| MCP-ready | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | Email helpdesk, Community forum | Not stated |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | more entries Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | more entries Twilio, Genesys Cloud, Five9, Vonage, LiveKit, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, ServiceNow, Jira, Slack, Telegram, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Cal.com, Calendly | Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, Genesys Cloud, Five9, Avaya, Amazon Connect, HubSpot, Make, n8n, GoHighLevel |
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The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price ElevenLabs Free tier; Starter from ~$5 / month Retell AI From $0.07 / minute of calls
- Free trial ElevenLabs Free tier, restricted Retell AI $10 in free credits, no contract and no commitment; 20 concurrent calls are included
- Company size ElevenLabs Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Retell AI Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
- Commercial use ElevenLabs From the paid Starter tier Retell AI Yes, usage-based
- Output ElevenLabs Realistic narration, voice cloning from a sample of around one minute, 70+ languages, dubbing Retell AI Voice agents for inbound and outbound phone calls and web calls, plus chat agents over SMS and a web widget
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
ElevenLabs
Strengths
- Most realistic voice and cloning
- 70+ languages on the v3 models
- Speech-to-speech and dubbing
- Strong API
Limitations
- Commercial use only from the paid Starter tier
- API pricey at high volume
- Credits are shared across every product and roll over for at most two months
Retell AI
Strengths
- Usage-based per-minute pricing with no contract and $10 in free credits to start
- Testing tooling built into the product: playground, simulation runs, batch tests and A/B splits of live traffic
- Custom voices can be cloned or imported across several voice providers
- HIPAA, SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 and GDPR, with BAA and DPA available for self-signing at no extra fee
Limitations
- The per-minute rate varies widely with the models, telephony and add-ons chosen, so the entry rate is not the rate to budget with
- The vendor states it does not currently operate services within the European Union
- Retell-managed phone numbers cover the US and Canada only; elsewhere a number has to be brought in
- Building and running an agent assumes developer work; there is no packaged seat-based plan
Plans
Pricing
ElevenLabs
- Free $0 Restricted, no commercial rights.
- Starter ~$5 Per month. Commercial rights start here.
- API From ~$300 Per million characters at low volume.
Retell AI
- Pay as you go $0.07 Per minute and up, quoted by the vendor as $0.07 to $0.31 per minute for voice agents and from $0.002 per message for chat agents. Includes $10 in free credits and 20 concurrent calls, with no contract.
- Enterprise Not stated Contact sales. Custom pricing for higher volumes, with dedicated support and implementation, custom compliance terms covering HIPAA, SSO and a DPA, no cap on concurrent calls and a dedicated server option.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
ElevenLabs
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Retell AI
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
ElevenLabs https://elevenlabs.io · checked against the official source on 2026-08-21
Retell AI https://www.retellai.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-13
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.