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AI Voice & Speech Comparison

Retell AI vs. Rev

At a glance

At a glance

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

Rev

Best for

Best for teams who need a transcript accurate enough to be relied on in court or in the record, with a human pass available on top of the machine one.

  • Freelancers
  • Small and mid-sized
  • Enterprise

Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.

Full Comparison

Criterion Retell AI Rev
Starting price 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 tier, then from $25.49 / seat / month The $25.49 Essentials rate is billed annually at $305.90 a year; paid monthly it is $29.99. Pro is $47.99 billed annually or $59.99 monthly. Human services are bought separately by the minute or page and are pooled across seats at account level. The Rev AI developer platform is billed per hour of audio instead, from $0.10 an hour on Reverb Turbo.
Free trial $10 in free credits, no contract and no commitment; 20 concurrent calls are included Free plan with 45 AI transcription and caption minutes a month, plus free Rev AI credits worth 5 hours of Reverb transcription
Commercial use Yes, usage-based Not stated
Output Voice agents for inbound and outbound phone calls and web calls, plus chat agents over SMS and a web widget Transcripts, captions, subtitles and case documents
API Yes, REST API with Node.js and Python libraries, webhooks and an MCP server Yes, Rev AI for asynchronous and streaming speech-to-text, plus a human transcription API
Languages 57 languages listed for text-to-speech and 55 for speech recognition, each with the providers that cover it 57+ languages for the Rev AI speech-to-text API; 37+ on the Pro subscription; human captions in English and Spanish and subtitles in 17 languages
Hosting Cloud on AWS; the vendor states it does not currently operate services within the European Union Cloud or on-premises for the Rev AI platform
Voice cloning 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 No, Rev works only on incoming speech and does not synthesise or clone voices
Real-time use 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 Yes, a streaming speech-to-text API for live audio alongside asynchronous transcription of recorded files; human services are turnaround-based rather than real-time
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 No dubbing or synthesised speech. Translation is text-only, at $0.002 to $0.025 per minute through the API depending on standard or premium, plus human subtitles at $6.49 to $15.99 a minute
Editing and controls 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 Transcript editor with clipping, multi-file evidence analysis with citations, image analysis, a document editor exporting to Word and PDF, AI templates for chronologies and affidavits, and API-side custom vocabulary, forced alignment with word-level timestamps, topic extraction and sentiment analysis
Consent and trust 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 SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR and PCI compliant with data encrypted at rest and in transit, a stated 99.99% uptime, and on-premises deployment for the API; the Unlimited subscription adds HIPAA and CJIS compliance, SSO and a dedicated specialist
MCP-ready stated Yes No
Deployment Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based more entries Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise
Onboarding Documentation and knowledge base Documentation and knowledge base
Company size Small and mid-sized, Enterprise more entries Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
Integrations more entries Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, Genesys Cloud, Five9, Avaya, Amazon Connect, HubSpot, Make, n8n, GoHighLevel Clio

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 Retell AI From $0.07 / minute of calls Rev Free tier, then from $25.49 / seat / month
  • Free trial Retell AI $10 in free credits, no contract and no commitment; 20 concurrent calls are included Rev Free plan with 45 AI transcription and caption minutes a month, plus free Rev AI credits worth 5 hours of Reverb transcription
  • Deployment Retell AI Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based Rev Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise
  • Company size Retell AI Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Rev Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
  • Hosting Retell AI Cloud on AWS; the vendor states it does not currently operate services within the European Union Rev Cloud or on-premises for the Rev AI platform

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

The trade-offs

Strengths and Limitations

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

Rev

Strengths

  • Human transcription at a stated 99%+ accuracy alongside the machine tier
  • Developer API priced per hour of audio, from $0.10 on Reverb Turbo
  • Runs on-premises as well as in the cloud on the API side
  • Free credits worth 5 hours of transcription, with no card required

Limitations

  • Speech-to-text only, no text-to-speech, dubbing or voice cloning
  • The subscription is built around legal and investigative work, which is dead weight for other uses
  • The free plan covers 45 minutes a month and English only
  • Human services are charged on top of the subscription rather than included

Plans

Pricing

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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Rev

  • Free $0 45 AI transcription and caption minutes a month, English only, up to 5 files analysed at once, document editor and mobile app.
  • Essentials $25.49 Per seat per month billed annually at $305.90, or $29.99 billed monthly. Up to 3 seats, 5,000 AI minutes per seat per month in English and Spanish, up to 10 files analysed and 10% off human services.
  • Pro $47.99 Per seat per month billed annually at $575.88, or $59.99 billed monthly. Up to 5 seats, 10,000 AI minutes per seat per month across 37+ languages, up to 50 files analysed, image analysis, Clio integration and 15% off human services.
  • Unlimited Not stated Custom pricing. Unlimited seats and AI minutes, up to 500 files analysed, HIPAA and CJIS compliance, SSO and a dedicated specialist.
  • Rev AI pay-as-you-go $0.10 Per hour of audio on Reverb Turbo; Reverb is $0.20 an hour and foreign-language transcription $0.30 an hour across 56+ languages. Whisper Fusion and Large are $0.005 a minute. Human transcription through the API is $1.99 a minute. Insights are priced separately: language identification and forced alignment $0.003 a minute, topic extraction and sentiment analysis $0.0008 per 10 words, translation $0.002 to $0.025 a minute. Free credits equivalent to 5 hours of Reverb transcription to start.
  • Human services From $1.99 Per minute for human transcription and for human captions, with up to 15% off on a subscription. Legal rough drafts are $2.25 a page and legal premium transcripts $2.50 a page. Global subtitles run $6.49 to $15.99 a minute depending on the language, across 17 languages.
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What users say

Review Scores · opens after launch

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.

Rev

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

Retell AI https://www.retellai.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-13

Rev https://www.rev.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-04

This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.