Best for
Best for realistic long-form narration, dubbing and voice cloning.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Voice & Speech Comparison
ElevenLabs vs. Vapi
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for developers putting voice agents on real phone lines for support, lead qualification or scheduling.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | ElevenLabs | Vapi |
|---|---|---|
| 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 $0.05 / minute of calls Build plan, usage-based, plus $0.005 per SMS or chat message. Ten concurrent lines are included and further lines cost $10 / month each. Model provider costs for speech-to-text, the LLM and text-to-speech are passed through at cost, or nothing if you bring your own API keys. |
| Free trial | Free tier, restricted | Not stated |
| 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, web voice, and SMS or chat |
| API | Yes | Yes, REST API, CLI and SDKs |
| Voice cloning | Yes, from a sample of around one minute | Not part of Vapi itself; voices come from connected providers such as ElevenLabs and Deepgram |
| 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 and web conversations at an average latency under 500 ms |
| 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+ | Depends on the providers chosen for a given assistant: automatic language detection and code-switching with Deepgram (100+ languages), Google STT (125+) or Gladia (110+), while Azure, OpenAI Whisper, Speechmatics and Talkscriber run one language at a time; on the voice side Vapi's own voices cover 40+ languages, Azure 140+ and ElevenLabs 30+. The languages an assistant may use have to be listed in its system prompt |
| Speech-to-speech and dubbing | Yes, speech-to-speech and dubbing | Yes, a call runs as spoken conversation by chaining speech-to-text, a language model and text-to-speech, with natural turn-taking |
| 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 | Assistants for a single prompt with tools, Squads for multi-assistant orchestration, tool calls into APIs and databases mid-conversation, plus testing and call observability |
| 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 | SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI compliance with SSO, OAuth and role-based access control; HIPAA is a $2,000 / month add-on and zero data retention $1,000 / month on both plans |
| MCP-ready | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | Email helpdesk, Community forum | Email helpdesk, Community forum |
| 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 | OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, Deepgram, Gladia, ElevenLabs, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, Slack, Google Workspace |
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The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price ElevenLabs Free tier; Starter from ~$5 / month Vapi From $0.05 / minute of calls
- Company size ElevenLabs Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Vapi Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
- Commercial use ElevenLabs From the paid Starter tier Vapi Yes, usage-based
- Output ElevenLabs Realistic narration, voice cloning from a sample of around one minute, 70+ languages, dubbing Vapi Voice agents for inbound and outbound phone calls, web voice, and SMS or chat
- API ElevenLabs Yes Vapi Yes, REST API, CLI and SDKs
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
Vapi
Strengths
- Per-minute pricing with model provider costs passed through at cost
- Bring your own provider keys and the pass-through drops to nothing
- Free choice of speech-to-text, model and voice provider across dozens of options
- Official MCP server lets external AI agents drive Vapi's APIs
Limitations
- HIPAA compliance and zero data retention are monthly add-ons rather than included
- Total cost depends on which model, transcription and voice providers you choose
- Concurrent lines beyond the first ten cost $10 per month each
- A platform to build on, not a finished call-centre product
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.
Vapi
- Build $0.05 Per minute of calls, usage-based, plus $0.005 per SMS or chat message. Ten call concurrency included, additional lines $10 / month each. Model provider costs at cost. Community Discord and email support.
- Scale Not stated Annual contract with a fixed platform fee and committed volume, volume-based per-minute pricing on quote, enterprise features including SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI, a dedicated account team and a custom support SLA.
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.
Vapi
- 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
Vapi https://vapi.ai · checked against the official source on 2026-08-30
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.