--- Title: "The 15 best AI voice agents for phone support in 2026" Url: "https://devrev.ai/blog/best-ai-voice-agents-phone-support" Published: "2026-10-22" Last Updated: "2026-10-22" Author: "DevRev Editorial" Category: "Blog, Computer" Excerpt: "Most voice agents are sold on how human they sound. We read 15 vendors’ own pages to see which can finish a call, and what each one bills for it." Reading Time: 22 --- # The 15 best AI voice agents for phone support in 2026 **TL;DR** - Among AI voice agents, our pick is Computer, by DevRev, for support teams whose calls should end in a refund, an order change, or a fix. The same agent also answers chat and email. - If your phones already run on Zendesk voice, test Zendesk’s own voice AI agents first. If developers will build and price the agent themselves, start with Retell AI or Vapi. - Five of the 15 (Zendesk, Genesys, Retell AI, Vapi, and Bland AI) publish a list rate you can turn into a call price, and no two count the same thing. Ask every vendor what it bills for a call that ends with the problem still open. A caller phones about a double charge on their card. The voice agent greets them warmly, reads back the amount, and promises that the billing team will follow up by email. No refund arrives, so the next morning the same caller is back in the queue, waiting for a person to do what the agent couldn’t. Many AI voice agents are pitched on how human they sound and billed on how long they talk. Callers judge a phone call on neither. So we compared these 15, ours included, on three questions: can the agent act on the call, what happens when it can’t, and what does one finished call cost? ## How do the 15 AI voice agents compare? All 15 can act on a call, from Do Not Call requests to card payments, and differ most on what the handoff carries, which telephony they run on, and how they bill. Each cell rests on that vendor’s own pages, first read on September 25, 2026, and read again on October 16, 2026. This is desk research: we read documentation, pricing pages, and customer stories, and didn’t place test calls. Each Reddit or G2 quote (G2 is a software review site) is one practitioner’s experience, linked and dated, and agents without one drew no phone-support comment worth quoting. | Agent | Best for | Latency and interruptions | Languages | Telephony | Acts or answers | Handoff | Pricing | Compliance | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Computer | One agent across phone, chat, and email | Low latency, barge-in; no figure | Up to 70 | SIP, Amazon Connect, Twilio | Acts across systems mid-call | Conversation, diagnosis, actions taken | $30 Pro on our Computer site; “Contact us” on devrev.ai; credits | SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA | | Fin Voice | Teams already on Fin | Fin cites 0.43s off time to first audio; baseline not named | 29–30, pages differ | Intercom Phone, SIP, CCaaS | Acts via voice Procedures | Transfer with summary | Custom | SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001 | | Decagon | High-volume consumer brands | Handles interruptions; no figure | 70+ | SIP, Amazon Connect, RingCentral | Acts: returns, disputes | Transfer with summary | Not published | SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS | | Sierra | Payments by phone | Handles interruptions; no figure | 55+ | Amazon Connect, Five9, Genesys, Twilio (partner logos) | Acts: card and ACH payments | Routing with summary | Outcome-based, not published | PCI, FedRAMP High | | PolyAI | Voice-first service lines | Sub-300ms model; barge-in on | 24+ to 75+, pages differ | Five9, NICE, Twilio, Genesys, SIP | Acts: payments, claims | SIP transfer with context | Per minute, not published | SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS | | Parloa | Regulated contact centers | Barge-in; no figure | 140+ | Avaya, Five9, Genesys, Amazon Connect | Acts via APIs | Structured data | Per minute, not published | SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA | | Zendesk | Zendesk voice (Talk) teams | Filler phrases during lookups | 53 | Zendesk voice only | Acts: API calls, lookups | Ticket with transcript | Per resolution plus minutes | SOC 2, ISO 27001 | | Genesys | Genesys Cloud shops | “End-of-turn” detection announced | Not published for voice | Genesys Cloud Voice, BYOC | Acts: records, transactions | Inside Genesys, with summary | Seat plus tokens | SOC 2, PCI DSS, FedRAMP | | Five9 | Five9 shops | Interruption detection; no figure | 10 in Europe at launch | Five9 carrier, BYOC | Acts: authentication | Full conversation | Quoted; no public price | SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA | | Talkdesk | AI on any contact center | Handles interruptions; no figure | 36 agentic voice, 46 intent-based | Talkdesk, or others via SIP | Acts: orders, returns | Inside Talkdesk or SIP headers | Seat plus unpriced usage | SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA | | Retell AI | Developers wanting a price | About 600ms | Per provider | SIP, Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage | Acts via functions | Cold, warm, agentic warm | $0.07–$0.31 a minute | SOC 2, HIPAA | | Vapi | Developers building their own stack | Pages differ: under 500ms, about 800ms | Per provider | Vapi SIP, Twilio, Telnyx | Acts via tools | Blind or warm | $0.05 a minute plus providers | SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI | | Bland AI | A bundled per-minute rate | Sub-400ms, per Bland | 40+ | Your Twilio, SIP, CCaaS | Acts via tools | Warm on Enterprise | $0.14 a minute, or $0.12 plus $299 a month | SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS | | Synthflow | Telephony included | Not published | 30+ | Own telephony or SIP | Acts via HTTP, MCP | Cold, warm, summary | From $30,000 a year | SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS | | Regal | Outbound and inbound on one line | Not published | Over 30 | SIP into NICE, Genesys, Five9 | Acts: Do Not Call requests | Cold or warm | Quoted; about $0.20 a minute, per its blog | SOC 2, HIPAA | ## The 15 best AI voice agents for phone support ### 1. Computer, by DevRev – the voice agent built to finish the call it answers ![Screenshot for 1. Computer, by DevRev – the voice agent built to finish the call it answers](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/c3a88f31fc30baf785c35047ca38fcea210b8b66-624x546.png) We built Voice AI, our AI voice agent for phone support, as a channel of Computer’s Customer Agent, so the agent on the phone is the one already working your chat and email, drawing on the same Shared Memory, with no separate knowledge base to build. On our [Voice AI page](https://devrev.ai/voice-ai), it’s “a new channel on Computer’s Customer Agent, not a separate product to bolt on.” A pleasant voice that can’t see the order is just a polite hold queue, so we spent our effort on what the agent can reach while the caller is still on the line. Our [launch post](https://devrev.ai/blog/voice-ai) describes Computer reading error logs, pulling order states, and acting across connected systems mid-call. The goal is “taking a single conversation from diagnosis to resolution without a handoff.” When a call does need a person, it hands off “with the entire conversation, the diagnosis so far, and the actions already taken.” Voice AI’s actions run in the systems you’ve connected to Customer Agent. It connects over Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) through Amazon Connect, Twilio, and the other major platforms, and you keep your numbers. Our [voice resolution post](https://devrev.ai/blog/voice-ai-resolution) explains the guardrail: under Safe Actions, sensitive changes “remain permissioned, logged, and reversible.” Our published proof for the agent itself comes from chat, at BILL, a US financial technology platform for payments, accounts payable, and financial workflow automation used by small and midsize businesses. [BILL’s story](https://devrev.ai/customers/bill) is where we publish the numbers: a proof of concept that ran 200,000 real customer queries reached a 70% AI resolution rate, and full deployment across its segments took 15 weeks. That work ran in chat, in-product, web, and mobile, so the 70% describes those channels. We haven’t published a phone resolution rate yet. Announcing Voice AI in July 2026, our new Voice AI product lead put the problem this way: “A call can sound polished and still be a poor experience if the agent cannot reach the information needed to solve the problem. Customers do not care which system holds the answer. They care whether they have to repeat themselves, wait for a transfer, or call back again.” – Jennifer Heape, who leads Voice AI product at DevRev, in our [Voice AI launch announcement](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/07/23/3332209/0/en/devrev-launches-voice-ai-with-shared-organizational-memory-across-agents.html) [This DevRev livestream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOjHNX6MwWk) asks the question behind this whole list: Voice AI can talk, but can it resolve? The livestream ran on July 30, 2026, on DevRev’s YouTube channel. **Best for –** Support teams that want phone calls finished by the agent that already resolves their chat and email. **Pricing –** Computer runs on consumption-based credits, across three plans: Mini, Pro, and Max. Pro, where Agent Studio lives, is listed at $30 a month on [our Computer site](https://computer.io/pricing), with a discount for annual billing, and Pro and Max both read “Contact us” on our devrev.ai [pricing page](https://devrev.ai/pricing). **Limitations** - Voice AI sits on top of your telephony and your contact center as a service (CCaaS) platform. Our voice resolution post says it “isn’t positioned as a replacement for a CCaaS platform.” So keep Amazon Connect, Twilio, or your SIP provider. - As of October 16, 2026, we don’t publish a latency figure or a per-call rate for Voice AI. So ask for both in the demo. - Setup is quickest for teams already on Computer: about two hours with Customer Agent in place. Teams starting fresh need up to two weeks, per our Voice AI page. **Verdict –** Choose Computer if your callers need the problem fixed while they’re still on the line. To hear Computer take a call on your own data, handoff included, [book a demo](https://devrev.ai/request-a-demo). ### 2. Fin Voice – Salesforce-owned since September 2026, sold to select customers ![Screenshot for 2. Fin Voice – Salesforce-owned since September 2026, sold to select customers](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/1344fda4b1af9fdd8b8c64abe91e89a6c2e722dc-624x624.png) [Fin](https://fin.ai/) is the company that used to be Intercom, and it [renamed itself in May 2026](https://venturebeat.com/technology/intercom-now-called-fin-launches-an-ai-agent-whose-only-job-is-managing-another-ai-agent). Salesforce [completed its acquisition of Fin](https://www.citybiz.co/article/901402/salesforce-completes-fin-acquisition-adding-30000-customers-to-ai-service-platform/) on September 10, 2026, so Fin Voice now comes from a Salesforce company. The Fin Voice 2 page pitches it against interactive voice response (IVR) phone trees: an agent that answers right away and resolves “without IVR menus or long hold times.” Fin’s deployment guide adds that it hands off “to the right agent with full context.” It runs on Intercom Phone itself, and the guide names nine more platforms it connects to, including Amazon Connect, Talkdesk, CXone, Aircall, Dialpad, Twilio Flex, Zoom Phone, Genesys, and Five9. **Best for –** Teams already running Fin on chat and email who want the same agent on the phone. **Pricing –** Custom. Fin’s pricing page puts tickets, email, live chat, WhatsApp, and SMS under its public per-outcome rate. Fin Voice, by contrast, is “offered on a custom pricing plan,” and Fin bills phone usage on its own. **Limitations** - The deployment guide says Fin Voice “is currently limited to select customers partnered with our Sales team.” - Per the guide, Fin switches on Apex Flash, its fast voice model, for “existing Fin Voice customers in English-language, US-hosted workspaces.” **Verdict –** Fin Voice makes sense when Fin already runs your chat and you want one vendor on every channel. A phone line you need to price before a sales call is the wrong fit. ### 3. Decagon – consumer-scale voice with a named million-call customer ![Screenshot for 3. Decagon – consumer-scale voice with a named million-call customer](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/cc7a0c88641894f8154f37c4b607c76f4a9271f2-624x466.png) [Decagon](https://decagon.ai/)’s voice launch post says its voice agents run on the same “brain” as its chat product. Its voice page lists 70+ languages, detects the caller’s language on its own, and transfers calls with a short summary. Its integrations page covers SIP trunking, Amazon Connect, and RingCentral. Decagon’s evidence is a customer with a lot of phones: its case study on Chime, a financial technology company that offers fee-free banking services, says Chime handles over a million calls a month through Decagon Voice, at “consistently nearly 70% resolution” by Decagon’s count. **Best for –** High-volume consumer brands with repeatable call types that want an enterprise vendor to build with them. **Pricing –** Decagon doesn’t publish a price. It prices per conversation or per resolution. **Limitations** - There’s no self-serve sign-up, so every path starts with a demo. - Rollout is vendor-assisted, with a forward-deployed team on every engagement. - It’s aimed at enterprises, so a 20-seat support team is outside its stated audience. **Verdict –** Decagon is a strong buy for a consumer brand with a million calls and a budget for a build partner. Too much ceremony for a small team. ### 4. Sierra – the voice agent that takes payments over the phone ![Screenshot for 4. Sierra – the voice agent that takes payments over the phone](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/573cfbba54d11b6dd993577890dc5b051a086de9-624x624.png) [Sierra](https://sierra.ai/) runs voice as a channel of its agent platform. Its voice page pitches “real-time resolutions” in place of IVR menus across 55+ languages. Sierra agents take card and Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments by phone, and its trust page lists Payment Card Industry (PCI) and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High among its certifications. Sierra is careful about where it starts: per its customer story, the new agent at Virgin Media O2, a UK mobile and broadband provider, covers “routine broadband fault calls which represent a small proportion of total call volumes.” **Best for –** Large enterprises in regulated industries that need payments taken on the call. **Pricing –** Outcome-based and not published. Sierra’s pricing post describes outcomes it agrees with each customer upfront. **Limitations** - Sierra’s partners page shows Amazon Connect, Five9, Genesys, and Twilio among the “partners that power and connect to Sierra,” but it doesn’t say how each connection works. Ask which one you’d run on and what the handoff carries. - Its language count varies by page: 55+ on the voice page, 59 on its product page. **Verdict –** Sierra suits calls that end in a payment, for teams whose compliance review starts with the trust page. It doesn’t publish a price, so plan on a pilot before you see one. #### What G2 reviewers say A reviewer at a mid-market entertainment company runs both Sierra’s chat and voice models and describes what the voice agent, which runs on a large language model (LLM), takes off the queue. G2 marks the review as incentivized: “Sierra is reducing our overall handling time and time spent pre-queue by circumventing traditional IVR. The LLM AI is able to answer many common questions without requiring a live agent.” [Verified user in entertainment. G2, July 2026 ↗](https://www.g2.com/products/sierra/reviews/sierra-review-13140596) ### 5. PolyAI – the voice-first specialist ![Screenshot for 5. PolyAI – the voice-first specialist](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/b9436fe6b53463adb00ada5a849d44002fb7ff0e-624x390.png) [PolyAI](https://poly.ai/) builds for the phone first. Its docs quote sub-300ms latency, a model-level figure, and its barge-in post says every new deployment ships with barge-in enabled. Its integrations docs cover Five9, NICE CXone, Twilio, Amazon Connect, Genesys, and custom SIP. PolyAI’s story on Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG\&E), a utility that supplies natural gas and electricity across the northern two-thirds of California, says its agent saved 35,000 labor hours and lifted customer satisfaction (CSAT) by 22% on outage calls. **Best for –** Enterprise service lines, such as utilities, hotels, and banks, where the phone is the main channel. **Pricing –** Per minute, with no rate published. PolyAI’s pricing page says the per-minute price includes performance improvements, maintenance, and 24/7 support. **Limitations** - Dynamic number insertion (DNI) pooling, a rotating number pool for passing call data, is set up with a PolyAI account manager. - Multilingual speech settings for languages with diacritics can’t be self-served. **Verdict –** PolyAI is built for a high-stakes service line where voice is the whole job. Teams that want one agent across chat, email, and phone will find it a narrower fit. ### 6. Parloa – enterprise contact centers, with a published automation number ![Screenshot for 6. Parloa – enterprise contact centers, with a published automation number](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/6fe7c4820ffc91f7d0886ffba2a869f298c84f74-624x577.png) [Parloa](https://www.parloa.com/)’s platform builds and runs AI agents for enterprise contact centers. Its integrations page lists Genesys, Amazon Connect, Cisco, Avaya, Five9, Talkdesk, and RingCentral, among others. Its own case study publishes the number this list is about: at OBI, a home improvement retailer with stores across Europe, Parloa reports a “20% automation rate (calls resolved end-to-end by AI agents)” and 99% routing accuracy. **Best for –** Regulated enterprise contact centers in insurance, finance, and healthcare that want routing and resolution in one agent. **Pricing –** Per minute for voice, with no rate published. Parloa says outcome-based pricing “is supported when it makes sense.” **Limitations** - Product documentation sits behind a login. - It serves Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises, with partner-assisted rollouts. One practitioner’s recommended enterprise stack scopes Parloa to their simpler calls: “Parloa is good for simple voice automation (identification, authentication, and simple queries from FAQ/websites).” _u/Popular_Army_8356._ [r/customerexperience, July 2026 ↗](https://www.reddit.com/r/customerexperience/comments/1v4q5c3/best_ai_agent_platforms_for_enterprise_contact/ozfk1jm/) **Verdict –** Parloa fits a large contact center that wants a clean route and a clear resolution number. Mid-market teams will find it hard to get through the door. ### 7. Zendesk – the natural fit for teams already on Zendesk voice ![Screenshot for 7. Zendesk – the natural fit for teams already on Zendesk voice](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/243749851da0076cc12298a7954ab0a4de46fb8b-624x384.png) [Zendesk](https://www.zendesk.com/)’s voice AI agents became generally available on September 1, 2026, to every eligible customer with Zendesk voice (Talk), with no sign-up. The agent answers on your Zendesk phone line, acts through API calls, and leaves a ticket with the transcript, summary, and detected intent. Zendesk bills per verified resolution: you pay the resolution fee only when an LLM check marks the call resolved at hangup, and the per-minute AI connection fee either way. That check can’t see whether the caller rings back tomorrow, though. **Best for –** Support teams whose phones, tickets, and agents already live in Zendesk. **Pricing –** Zendesk’s pricing page lists $1.50 for each committed automated resolution and $2.00 for each pay-as-you-go one. Each agent seat includes 5–10 automated resolutions a month. Its Talk pricing adds $0.005 a minute while the AI agent is on a US local line. **Limitations** - It isn’t available with Talk Partner Edition. Zendesk says Zendesk Contact Center support is “planned for a future release.” - A call can carry telephony, AI connection, and recording charges on top of any resolution. - Zendesk’s voice AI agent docs rule out emergency triage. **Verdict –** On Zendesk voice already? Switch it on and measure it. For anyone else, it means adopting Zendesk’s help desk too. ### 8. Genesys – agentic AI inside the contact center you already run ![Screenshot for 8. Genesys – agentic AI inside the contact center you already run](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/6528325f3784989d59a8f75fc2061f5b5607c1db-624x351.png) [Genesys](https://www.genesys.com/) puts its Agentic Virtual Agent inside Genesys Cloud. There it can update records and process transactions, then hand off with an AI summary. Unlike Five9 and Talkdesk, Genesys publishes a rate for the AI agent itself, though pricing a call still takes a spreadsheet. Seats run from $75 to $240 a user a month, billed annually, and Genesys meters the agent on top at 1.2 tokens an interaction. **Best for –** Contact centers already on Genesys Cloud that want AI agents without adding a vendor. **Pricing –** Seat plus tokens: $1.00 a token month to month, per Genesys’s pricing hub. A named-user organization gets 250 tokens a month included, per the pricing page. **Limitations** - Using the agent requires the Genesys Cloud AI Experience license. - Genesys says its native voice enhancements are due between November 2026 and January 2027. - Its own docs note agentic virtual agent performance “may vary across languages.” **Verdict –** Buy it if Genesys is your contact center. Moving to Genesys just to get it would be a lot of contact center to buy for one agent. ### 9. Five9 – voice AI agents for Five9 shops, arriving in Europe ![Screenshot for 9. Five9 – voice AI agents for Five9 shops, arriving in Europe](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/89c9f852d77a87b4362502b957f414922c18264b-624x353.png) [Five9](https://www.five9.com/)’s AI Agents page describes agents that authenticate callers and pass the full conversation to a live agent on transfer. Five9 sells two tiers: scripted intelligent virtual agent (IVA) flows where the answer must match every time, and AI agents where flexibility helps. **Best for –** Enterprises already running Five9 that want AI agents on the same routing and reporting. **Pricing –** Quoted. Five9 no longer publishes seat prices, and AI Agents has no published price either, so both come from sales. **Limitations** - In Europe, Five9 Voice AI Agents arrive on November 3, 2026, in 10 languages. **Verdict –** Stable ground for a Five9 estate adding AI. Until the add-on has a published price, budget time for the quote. #### What G2 reviewers say A director of customer care at a mid-market company describes moving callers off a menu tree onto Five9’s IVA, its scripted tier rather than AI Agents. G2 notes the reviewer was invited to review on the seller’s behalf. “Five9 has helped us move from a traditional IVR to utilization of IVA with Natural language.” [Nicole D., Director of Customer Care at a mid-market company. G2, February 2026 ↗](https://www.g2.com/products/five9-intelligent-cloud-contact-center-platform/reviews/five9-intelligent-cloud-contact-center-platform-review-12349800) ### 10. Talkdesk – AI agents that can sit on another vendor’s contact center ![Screenshot for 10. Talkdesk – AI agents that can sit on another vendor’s contact center](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/bbee12a4269464929078b82ca661b200d8a22c9c-624x400.png) [Talkdesk](https://www.talkdesk.com/)’s Autopilot puts AI Agents for voice on your phone line to handle orders, returns, and billing. Talkdesk’s help-center FAQ says it will run on top of another vendor’s contact center over SIP. Handoffs to other platforms pass intent and context in the call’s SIP headers. **Best for –** Contact centers that want AI agents without migrating their telephony first. **Pricing –** Seats with voice on Talkdesk’s pricing page run from $105 to $225 a user a month. Autopilot’s help-center overview says it “has additional usage costs,” with no published rate. **Limitations** - Talkdesk’s AI languages page lists 36 languages for agentic voice and 46 for intent-based voice, so check yours there. - In intent-based flows, API calls can’t exceed five seconds. One team on Talkdesk hit a handoff gap: the support rep who picks up can’t see a live transcript while the call is in progress. “In Talkdesk, we can see transcriptions only after the call, which is not useful for our use case.” _u/thisissivamani._ [r/CustomerService, September 2025 ↗](https://www.reddit.com/r/CustomerService/comments/1ndxkj6/need_help_urgently/ndkmvyv/) **Verdict –** Talkdesk makes a sensible bridge if you want AI on the phones this quarter and a migration next year. Ask for a live-transcript demo at handoff. ### 11. Retell AI – a per-minute price you can model before a sales call ![Screenshot for 11. Retell AI – a per-minute price you can model before a sales call](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/3231864af0f54150c8a73663b617dca1df2c3989-624x351.png) [Retell AI](https://www.retellai.com/) publishes almost all of its pricing, down to a component breakdown and billing to the second. Its homepage claims about 600ms latency, and its transfer docs offer cold, warm, and agentic warm transfers. Retell’s case study on Anker, the charging and consumer electronics brand, reports an 80.4% case resolution rate on tier-1 post-sales support, by Retell’s count. **Best for –** Teams with a developer or two who want a self-serve voice agent and a price they can model today. **Pricing –** Pay as you go at $0.07 to $0.31 a minute on Retell’s pricing page, with 20 concurrent calls free and $8 a month for each one after that. **Limitations** - Retell bills silence and hold time, because the speech engine keeps listening. - Retell’s compliance page says it doesn’t operate services in the European Union today. **Verdict –** Retell AI is the pick for builders who want a price and a working agent this week. EU teams that need in-region hosting should ask about data residency before they build. #### What G2 reviewers say A solo founder building an AI receptionist for medical clinics in Dubai runs it on Retell and says call transfers work reliably. The catch so far is numbers: with no UAE or Middle East numbers available, the clinics’ calls are forwarded from US numbers. “Retell gave us a production-ready voice layer in days.” [Verified user in hospital and health care. G2, March 2026 ↗](https://www.g2.com/products/retell-ai/reviews/retell-ai-review-12551263) ### 12. Vapi – the voice stack for developers who like to choose parts ![Screenshot for 12. Vapi – the voice stack for developers who like to choose parts](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/e5e9456dae0b846108cc8d48cf16ed81238e4bb7-624x351.png) [Vapi](https://vapi.ai/) calls itself “voice agents for builders.” You pick the “speech-to-text,” the model, and the voice, and Vapi runs them. You choose every part, so when a call breaks, your developers trace it across each provider. **Best for –** Engineering-led teams that want to assemble and tune their own voice stack. **Pricing –** Vapi’s pricing page lists $0.05 a minute in hosting plus each provider’s list price, support packages from $29 a month, and HIPAA-eligible handling as a $2,000-a-month add-on. **Limitations** - Without a support package, you get four concurrent calls. - Function calling needs a server URL your developers run. - Its five traditional warm-transfer modes, including a spoken summary, work on Twilio calls. An independent builder who runs Vapi on inbound calls fills its gaps from the backend: “I use Vapi for incoming calls, and have no complaints. All necessary functionality lacking in Vapi you can connect via n8n on backend, via webhooks.” _u/andrewkass._ [r/VoiceAutomationAI, March 2026 ↗](https://www.reddit.com/r/VoiceAutomationAI/comments/1rl9cw9/help_me_choose_the_right_voice_ai_platform_for_an/o8r0874/) **Verdict –** Vapi rewards teams with engineers and opinions. Without someone to own a server URL, it’s more stack than you need. ### 13. Bland AI – one rate for the model, speech, and voice ![Screenshot for 13. Bland AI – one rate for the model, speech, and voice](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/f130ecdd33827431f3322bafe642df7fcf2baaeb-624x422.png) [Bland](https://www.bland.ai/) runs its own model and speech stack and folds them into one per-minute price. Its docs claim sub-400ms response latency, and its homepage lists 40+ languages and sells both inbound and outbound call agents. The pitch is fewer invoices. Bland’s story on the Idaho Housing and Finance Association (IHFA), which administers affordable housing programs and services home loans in Idaho, credits Bland with saving $750,000 a year by retiring the IVR, by Bland’s count. Bland’s pages disagree on telephony, though. Its pricing FAQ says telephony “is billed separately, on your own carrier or Bland’s at pass-through cost,” while its homepage FAQ says one per-minute rate covers telephony too. **Best for –** Teams that want a single per-minute rate and a vendor that builds the first agent with them. **Pricing –** $0.14 a minute on Start, with no platform fee, or $0.12 a minute on Build with a $299 monthly fee. Enterprise pricing is custom. **Limitations** - Warm transfer requires an enterprise account. - Start caps you at 100 calls a day and 10 at once. - A business associate agreement (BAA) for HIPAA is Enterprise-only. **Verdict –** Bland AI is good value if one simple rate beats a warm handoff for your team. Before launch, test what the agent does when it misunderstands a caller. #### What G2 reviewers say A reviewer at a mid-market company replaced its phone menus with Bland and found the platform “a little complex” at first, with Bland’s team helping them get up and running: “We automated our IVR systems, enhancing customer support with high-quality AI voice, and saving significant costs.” [Ben S., mid-market company. G2, February 2026 ↗](https://www.g2.com/products/bland/reviews/bland-review-12397677) ### 14. Synthflow – enterprise voice with its own telephony ![Screenshot for 14. Synthflow – enterprise voice with its own telephony](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/e1d978e8c08f0111756d8b8b440e028d0d68c57d-624x597.png) [Synthflow](https://synthflow.ai/) sells an end-to-end platform with in-house telephony and a visual flow designer. Its pricing page now offers enterprise contracts only. The move upmarket is recent: its docs say its older Pro, Growth, and Agency plans “are no longer sold.” **Best for –** Enterprises and business process outsourcers (BPOs) that want telephony and the agent from one vendor. **Pricing –** Enterprise contracts from $30,000 a year, scoped to volume and concurrency. **Limitations** - There’s no self-serve plan or published per-minute rate. - Synthflow’s transfer docs say cold transfers “cannot recover from a failure once the destination has been dialed: if the destination does not answer, the call ends.” - Its security docs say personally identifiable information (PII) redaction applies to transcripts and logs, “not the live audio stream.” **Verdict –** Synthflow is worth a look for a BPO that wants one vendor accountable for the whole call. Ask how a failed transfer is handled before you go live. ### 15. Regal – built by contact-center operators, rooted in sales ![Screenshot for 15. Regal – built by contact-center operators, rooted in sales](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/umrbtih2/production/53ccce7ac48346f313b789c95bb3994fa5d2f94b-624x245.png) [Regal](https://www.regal.ai/) says contact-center operators built it, and its customer stories lean toward lead qualification and enrollment. It now sells inbound support, too: in Regal’s case study on eHealth, a private health insurance marketplace where Americans compare Medicare Advantage plans, a support agent helps Medicare beneficiaries “check application status, understand when to expect ID cards, find billing contacts, and process Do Not Call requests automatically.” **Best for –** Enterprise business-to-consumer (B2C) contact centers that run outbound sales and inbound service on the same agents. **Pricing –** Quoted. Regal’s blog says its agents “generally come in at $0.20/min.” **Limitations** - It fits enterprises with 25+ agents and 100,000 minutes a month. - Regal’s forward-deployed engineers run the implementation. **Verdict –** Regal is a strong option if your phones sell as much as they serve. Pure support teams have better fits above. ## What should you ask an AI voice agent vendor before you sign? Ask every vendor on this list for three things before you sign, since a demo shows the vendor’s best call and you’re buying the other 10,000: 1. Ten real calls from last week that ended in a transfer, and everything the person who picked up received. 2. The bill for a call where the caller hung up and rang back the next day about the same problem. 3. One action taken on a live call, such as a refund or a record change, and the log that shows who approved it. The test that settles it: “The one metric a voice agent cannot award itself is whether the customer needed to call back.” Neelabja Adkuloo, Member of Marketing Staff at DevRev, wrote that line in our [voice resolution post](https://devrev.ai/blog/voice-ai-resolution). It’s the question we’d put to every agent here, ours first. Pick ten calls from last week that ended in a transfer, and in a demo we’ll mark which ones Computer could have finished on the line. [Book a demo →](https://devrev.ai/demo) ## FAQ ### What is an AI voice agent? An AI voice agent is software that answers or places phone calls and holds a spoken conversation with the caller. It turns speech into text, uses a language model to decide what to say or do, and speaks the reply. Some also take actions in your systems mid-call and hand off to a person with context. ### How much does an AI voice agent cost per minute? Published rates run from Vapi’s $0.05 a minute, a hosting fee before speech, model, and voice costs, to Retell AI’s top rate of $0.31, as of October 16, 2026. A per-minute price leaves out silence, telephony, and whether the call was resolved. Zendesk bills per verified resolution instead. ### What’s the difference between containment and resolution on a voice call? Containment means the AI handled the call without a person. Resolution means the agent solved the caller’s problem and they didn’t need to call back. A contained call can still end with a caller who gave up. So measure re-contact within a set window, and count only completed answers or actions as resolved. Containment: https://devrev.ai/blog/contact-center-automation. ### Can an AI voice agent transfer a call to a person with context? Most can, but what travels varies. Computer hands off the conversation, the diagnosis, and the actions already taken, while Retell AI offers cold, warm, and agentic warm transfers. Zendesk leaves a ticket with a transcript and summary. Ask each vendor to show you what the receiving person sees. ### Do AI voice agents replace a contact center platform? In most cases, no. Computer, Talkdesk’s Autopilot, PolyAI, and Parloa all work alongside an existing contact center, over SIP or native integrations. Suites like Genesys, Five9, and Zendesk run the agent inside their own platform. Choose based on whether you want to keep your telephony or consolidate onto one vendor.