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AI Voice & Speech Comparison

Hume AI vs. Retell AI

At a glance

At a glance

Hume AI

Best for

Best for apps and content that need expressive, emotionally aware speech and real-time voice interactions.

  • Freelancers
  • Small and mid-sized
  • Enterprise

Retell AI

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 Hume AI Retell AI
Starting price Free tier; paid from $3 / month Paid tiers are metered by monthly TTS characters and EVI minutes. lower value 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 with 10,000 TTS characters and 5 minutes of EVI per month $10 in free credits, no contract and no commitment; 20 concurrent calls are included
Commercial use Yes Yes, usage-based
Output Expressive text-to-speech (Octave) and empathic speech-to-speech (EVI) 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 about 15 seconds of audio 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, Octave 2 streaming with latency as low as about 100ms 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 Octave 2 in 11 languages 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, the EVI empathic voice interface 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 Voice design from text prompts (English), plus emotional expression from context 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 Cloning requires filling out a legal agreement confirming you hold the rights or consent for the sample, and use is bound by Hume's Terms of Use and Ethical Guidelines 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 No stated Yes
Deployment Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based
Support 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 Not stated Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, Genesys Cloud, Five9, Avaya, Amazon Connect, HubSpot, Make, n8n, GoHighLevel

Compare more tools

Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.

The short version

Key Differences

  • Starting price Hume AI Free tier; paid from $3 / month Retell AI From $0.07 / minute of calls
  • Free trial Hume AI Free tier with 10,000 TTS characters and 5 minutes of EVI per month Retell AI $10 in free credits, no contract and no commitment; 20 concurrent calls are included
  • Company size Hume AI Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Retell AI Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
  • MCP-ready Hume AI No Retell AI Yes
  • Commercial use Hume AI Yes Retell AI Yes, usage-based

Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.

The trade-offs

Strengths and Limitations

Hume AI

Strengths

  • Expressive, emotionally aware speech
  • Voice cloning from about 15 seconds and voice design from text prompts
  • Low-latency streaming for real-time voice agents

Limitations

  • Voice design and acting instructions are English only or still in preview
  • Character and EVI-minute caps scale the monthly cost

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

Hume AI

  • Free $0 10,000 TTS characters and 5 minutes of EVI per month.
  • Starter $3 / month 30,000 TTS characters and 40 minutes of EVI per month.
  • Creator $14 / month 140,000 TTS characters and 200 minutes of EVI per month; 50% off the first month.
  • Pro $70 / month 1M TTS characters and 1,200 minutes of EVI per month.
  • Scale $200 / month 3.3M TTS characters and 5,000 minutes of EVI per month.
  • Business $500 / month 10M TTS characters and 12,500 minutes of EVI per month.
  • Enterprise Not stated Custom pricing with unlimited usage.
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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.
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What users say

Review Scores · opens after launch

Hume 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.

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

Hume AI https://www.hume.ai · no check date recorded yet

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.