Tired of wasting countless hours figuring out which AI voice tool to use when Vapi AI offers just not your specific needs? I've been there—drowning in feature lists, confusing pricing tiers, and reviews that contradict each other. It's enough to make anyone's head spin.
By the end of this article, you'll know exactly which AI tool deserves your money and attention.
For each alternative, we'll cover:
Core features and capabilities
Real pricing (including the hidden fees)
Actual user experiences
Why Ringly.io is the better choice ; )
Built for e-commerce
With experience in both AI and e-commerce, we set out become the best AI phone agent platform for online stores.
Stupid-simple user interface
Super easy to work with, and you can set up things even if you're not tech savvy. If you create a free account you can see it for yourself though!
Quick and easy setup
Pre-built AI phone agents and will have your online store automated in minutes- not hours.
Vapi Alternatives Summary
Product
Key Advantage Over Vapi
Notable Features
Price
Ideal For
Ringly.io
Complete solution with both human and AI agents working together - no sacrificing quality for automation
- Human agent backup when AI can't handle calls
- Pre-tested templates to get started fast
- Better emotional intelligence in conversations
Starting at $21/mth with flexible pricing
Businesses that need reliable customer service without the technical headaches
Retell AI
Better security certifications and real-time analytics than Vapi's developer-focused approach
- SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR certified
- Real-time call monitoring
- SIP trunking for easy integration
$0.07-$0.31/minute (pay-as-you-go) Enterprise: as low as $0.03/minute
Security-conscious companies that need compliance and detailed analytics
Bland AI
Simpler setup with background noise options that Vapi doesn't offer
- Background tracks (cafe, office sounds)
- Three AI models for different complexity
- Voice customization options
$0.09/minute standard Enterprise: custom pricing
Small businesses wanting fast setup without needing developers
Poly AI
Enterprise-grade solution with everything handled for you, unlike Vapi's DIY approach
- Advanced natural language processing
- Handles thousands of simultaneous calls
- Seamless integration with existing systems
Enterprise-only at approximately $0.25/minute
Large enterprises willing to pay premium for a fully-managed solution
Synthflow
Pre-built templates and workflows that work immediately, unlike Vapi's build-it-yourself approach
Companies that need a working solution today without developer resources
TL;DR - What's the best Vapi alternative?
To save you the time, we'll give it to you straight: It's Eleven Labs. Throughout our analysis, we found that it offers the most natural-sounding voices with better multilingual support and more flexible pricing for businesses of all sizes.
Ready for the full breakdown? Let's dive in.
What is Vapi's voice AI phone platform?
Vapi burst onto the scene in San Francisco back in 2020, founded by Jordan Dearsley and Nikhil Gupta. Think of it as the behind-the-scenes superhero for voice AI applications.
In just a few years, they've built an impressive community of 100,000 developers who use their infrastructure to create voice-powered apps and services.
While regular folks benefit from what's built on Vapi, the product itself is designed specifically for developers who want to add voice capabilities to their software without starting from scratch.
Top user complaints of Vapi
Limited International Number Support: Non-US users have expressed frustration over the lack of local number support, incurring additional costs.
Account Management Frustrations: Users struggle with account cancellations and payment information removal, leading to billing and privacy concerns.
Bot-Heavy Support Experience: While some users appreciate the human support, the automated chatbots handling account or billing queries can be frustrating.
Technical Complexity: Vapi’s focus on API access and flexibility makes it more suited to technical users, posing a steeper learning curve for non-technical teams.
Still Maturing: Vapi is still evolving as a younger product, and its technology continues to improve.
What to look for in top Vapi alternatives (depends on use case)
Global Phone Number Support - You want a service that offers local numbers worldwide without breaking the bank. This is huge if you're running an international business.
Hassle-Free Account Management - Look for voice AI platforms where changing plans, canceling, or updating payment info is dead simple. Life's too short for billing headaches.
Real Customer Support - The best services have actual people ready to help when things go sideways, not just chatbots sending you in circles.
User-Friendly AI platform - Even if you're not a coding wizard, you should be able to set things up without a computer science degree. Great tools work for both developers and regular folks.
Reliable Service Quality - Pick a mature AI call platform that's been battle-tested and won't leave you hanging when you need it most.
Fair, Transparent Pricing - Nobody likes surprise bills. Find a service with clear pricing that scales as you grow.
#1 – Ringly.io – Best Vapi AI alternative for conversational AI agents
Best for: Online businesses & e-commerce stores that don't want to deal with customer service but just scale.
Product Hunt rating: 4.8/5 stars
Founded in 2024 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, by Maurizio Isendoorn and Ruben Boonzaaijer, Ringly.io is revolutionizing e-commerce customer service with AI phone agents.
Designed for online businesses, Ringly handles customer calls on autopilot—solving support issues, recovering abandoned carts, and even boosting sales—at just 20% of the cost of human agents.
With 1,300+ customers, Ringly.io is the go-to solution for e-commerce stores looking to scale without scaling their support team. With award-winning technology (BubbleCon 2024's "Most Innovative App"), Ringly.io transforms your phone system into a revenue-driving powerhouse—without the headaches of traditional call centers.
AI features that make Ringly.io the #1 Vapi alternative
No-code setup, instant results – Ringly.io is ready to go in minutes. Just add your website, docs, or text—no engineering required—and your AI phone agent instantly understands your business. It even updates automatically as your website changes.
AI-powered sales & support – Ringly.io does both inbound and outbound. Recover 35%+ of abandoned carts with automated follow-up calls, provide real-time order tracking from Shopify, and convert more customers with personalized AI-driven conversations—not just reactive support.
Advanced analytics for smarter decisions – Ringly.io gives you real-time call data, customer intent tracking, and performance reports—helping you optimize support and sales strategies.
Scalable pricing without enterprise contracts – Ringly.io offers transparent, scalable pricing—pay for what you use, no locked-in contracts. Also, Ringly.io lets you create a free account instantly and start making calls today.
Ringly.io cons:
Not built for large enterprise call centers – Best for e-commerce and SMBs rather than massive enterprise call centers with complex IVR needs.
Outbound calls require consent – Unlike human agents, AI outbound calling requires opt-in compliance, which varies by region.
No custom code options – The Ringly.io platform is designed to easily create no-code ai phone agents, but less friendly for developers with more technical expertise that need tools like custom code options.
"it stands out significantly ahead"- Bertrand, Director. We are at the initial stage of testing and have made only a few calls so far. Consequently, I have rated the product with four stars for now. However, I must express that the product has shown significant promise. When compared to competitors, it stands out significantly ahead.
"This is such a great product"- Jim Miranda, Founder. This is such a great product. I have been with you for less than a week and already closed 3 deals with it."
"It really sounds like a human"- Laix, Founder. Tried Ringly.io today and the quality of the phone calls surprises me! It really sounds like a human, and it reacts really fast. Will need to deploy it in action to see the full capabilities.
Best for: Developers that want to build AI voice agents
G2 rating: 4.6/5 (12 reviews)
Founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2023 by Todd Li, Evie Wang, Bing Wu, Weijia Yu, and Zexia Zhang, Retell AI is crushing it as the go-to platform for lightning-fast AI voice agent creation.
With over 3,000 businesses already on board, they're helping developers build human-like voice agents in just one day instead of months - a total game-changer for contact centers looking to level up their operations without the usual headaches.
Features
Multilingual & Multi-Country Support: Retell helps businesses talk to customers worldwide in their own languages. Vapi also shines here with support for over 100 languages.
Telephony Integration: Retell connects easily to your phone systems with SIP trunking. Vapi takes a different approach as an API-first platform, giving you more ways to customize but requiring more technical know-how.
Data Security and Compliance: Retell offers serious protection with SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR certifications. Vapi offers HIPAA compliance as an add-on service.
Real-Time Monitoring & Analytics: Retell gives you live insights to see how your customer service is doing. Vapi focuses more on giving developers tools rather than ready-made analytics.
Cons
Multilingual & Multi-Country Support: Retell helps businesses talk to customers worldwide in their own languages. Vapi also shines here with support for over 100 languages.
Telephony Integration: Retell connects easily to your phone systems with SIP trunking. Vapi takes a different approach as an API-first platform, giving you more ways to customize but requiring more technical know-how.
Data Security and Compliance: Retell offers serious protection with SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR certifications. Vapi offers HIPAA compliance as an add-on service.
Real-Time Monitoring & Analytics: Retell gives you live insights to see how your customer service is doing. Vapi focuses more on giving developers tools rather than ready-made analytics.
Retell Pricing
Pay-as-you-go: $0.07–$0.31 per minute with $10 free credits, 20 concurrent calls, 10 free knowledge bases, and Discord support.
Enterprise: Custom pricing (as low as $0.03/minute), 50+ concurrent calls, Slack support, compliance features, and onboarding help.
Vapi Pricing:
Startup Plan: $0.05/minute + provider costs with free credits and bring-your-own API keys option.
Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing with higher limits and priority support.
Add-ons: $2-$5,000/month for extras like phone numbers, more calls at once, and HIPAA compliance.
Reviews
"Made our customer service smarter and faster" - Utkarsh M. We’ve been using Retell to build these voice agents for our customer service, for over a year. It’s so natural, people don’t even realize it’s not a human half the time. The responses are super quick too, like you’re having a real convo. It’s actually helped us cut down on how many calls our team has to take, and customers are definitely happier..less hold time and better answers. If you’re on the fence about trying it, just do it.
"Extremely slow customer service on discord even when unannounced API changes break product" - Jerry Y. The product is the same as others on the market -- we would switch instantly if there were no switching cost, these guys are not a reliable vendor.
3. Bland AI
Best for: Enterprise companies that want to streamline customer support and sales
Product Hunt rating: 3.0/5 (10 reviews)
Founded in San Francisco in 2023 by Isaiah Granet and Sobhan Nejad, Bland AI is an innovative platform designed to build artificial intelligence-powered phone calling agents that efficiently handle the bulk of enterprise call volume.
Bland AI is built for large enterprises that want to automate their customer support and sales operations, offering enterprise scalability and integrate seamlessly with crms. The platform stands out with its advanced capabilities like memory functionality across calls, conversational pathways, high-accuracy transcription, context-aware summarization, and confidence scoring.
Features
Voice Options: Pick from different voices with options to change gender, accent, and tone to match your brand. Sound more like YOU.
Three AI Models: Choose what fits your needs - basic for simple stuff, turbo for the complex calls. Vapi takes a different approach by letting you bring your own AI models instead.
Custom Instructions: Tell the AI how to talk and act, though it's more about giving commands than getting specific results. Vapi gives you deeper customization through its API.
Background Sounds: Add coffee shop or office noise to make calls feel more real. Pretty cool touch!
Connect to Other Tools: Hook up to your data during calls, but you'll need some tech skills. Vapi also offers this "tool calling" feature to connect with your systems.
Languages: Works with 28 languages. Vapi blows this away with over 100 languages!
Answering Calls: Takes incoming calls with custom greetings, but setup isn't simple. Vapi offers similar features but focuses more on giving you the building blocks.
Cons
Reliability Problems: Many users say the AI sometimes goes silent or gets cut off mid-call. AWKWARD! Vapi is newer but focuses heavily on its API reliability.
Hard to Set Up: People complain about spending hours trying to make it work right. Vapi is even more technical since it's built for developers, not beginners.
Poor Support: Users say Bland's customer service doesn't respond quickly or solve problems well. Vapi users have similar complaints about too many chatbots handling support.
Not Quite Human: Bland struggles with sensitive conversations where a real person would be better. Both Bland and Vapi are still working on making AI calls feel more natural.
Pricing
Bland AI Pricing:
Standard: $0.09/minute with basic voices and up to 100 calls per day. Good for small businesses.
Enterprise: Custom pricing with better AI models and more calls allowed. For bigger companies.
Custom: Custom pricing with all the fancy features plus extras built just for you. For businesses that need everything perfect.
Vapi Pricing:
Startup Plan: $0.05/minute plus whatever your providers charge. Comes with free credits to start.
Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing with higher limits and better support.
Add-ons: $2-$5,000/month for extras like phone numbers, handling more calls at once, and special security features.
Reviews
"Extremely impressed" - Casper Boutens. Extremely impressed by Bland, the team is improving their product every week, they offer great support and all by all great phone calls made by their AI.
"Doesn't work at all" - Albert Salgueda. Doesn't work at all. I call and it doesn't speak, it gets interrupted... still not there.
4. Poly AI
Best for: Large enterprises that need a tailored AI solution.
Gartner rating: 4.6/5 (13 reviews)
Founded in 2017 in London, UK, Poly AI is an enterprise-grade conversational ai platform known to handle customer service calls with natural language processing conversations. It was created by Nikola Mrkšić, Tsung-Hsien Wen, and Pei-Hao Su, who met while researching spoken dialog systems at Cambridge’s Machine Intelligence Lab.
Today, Poly AI serves 100+ enterprise customers, allowing businesses with unique business requirements to automate phone support at scale. Known for its advanced AI models and industry-specific solutions, it’s a go-to for companies looking to streamline inbound calls without sacrificing customer experience.
Ps. Wasn't Poly AI a chatbot? Yes, there was a private AI chatbot platform called Poly.AI, but they changed their name to PolyBuzz.
Features
AI capabilities: Uses fancy AI to actually get what people are saying and respond like a human would. Vapi is more about giving you the tools to build this voice bot yourself.
Talks Many Languages: Works with over 40 languages. Pretty good! But Vapi AI excels goes even bigger with 100+ languages.
Never Sleeps: Helps customers 24/7, no matter when they call. Vapi AI provides this too, but you need to set it up yourself.
Plays Nice With Your Stuff: Easily connects to the systems you already use. Vapi AI enhances this approach to voice assistant building with their flexible API-first approach.
Handles Big Volume: Can talk to thousands of people at once without breaking a sweat. Vapi offers similar scaling but you pay extra for more concurrent calls.
Understands and Speaks: Listens to voice commands and talks back clearly. Vapi focuses more on giving developers control over these features.
Cons
Voice Sometimes Changes: People complain the AI voice can suddenly sound different mid-conversation. Weird! Vapi lets you bring your own voice models.
Basic Reports: Doesn't give you deep insights into your customer calls. Vapi is also light on built-in analytics.
Hard to Make It Your Own: Doesn't let you customize enough for specific industries. Vapi wins here with its API approach - you can customize everything.
EXPENSIVE: Many businesses say it costs too much, especially as you grow. Vapi starts cheaper but costs climb with add-ons.
Can't Try Before You Buy: You have to book a sales call just to see how it works. Vapi lets you start with free credits and pay as you go.
Pricing
Poly AI Pricing:
For Big Companies Only: No public prices - you have to talk to sales.
No Self-Service Option: Can't just sign up and start using it.
This isn't on their website, but $0.25 was mentioned in a blog.
Vapi Pricing:
Startup Plan: $0.05/minute plus provider costs. Includes free credits to start.
Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing with higher limits and better support.
Add-ons: $2-$5,000/month for extras like phone numbers, more concurrent calls, and HIPAA compliance.
Poly AI feels like an expensive restaurant where you need a reservation and there are no prices on the menu. Vapi is more like a food truck with a clear menu, but those extra toppings add up fast!
Reviews
"Conversational assistant of the highest quality" - Verified enterprise customer. The assistant itself is lifelike and constantly learning. The time saving it allows our staff onsite is the real value add. In comparison, competitor offerings seem robotic make customers feel like they are not being cared for.
"App is working slow" - Sagar R, Senior Recruitment Consultant. Sometimes the app is working slow and it will take time to initiate any command.
5. Synthflow AI
Best for: Small and medium-sized businesses looking for a powerful conversational ai platform.
Product Hunt rating: 4.7/5 (201 reviews)
Founded in Berlin, Germany in 2023 by Albert Astabatsyan, Hakob Astabatsyan, and Sassun Mirzakhan-Saky, Synthflow AI offers a great conversational AI voice. With over 1,000 users, they're helping businesses stop missing calls and start making more money with their conversational ai technology designed for SMEs.
Their human-like voice AI agents don't just follow scripts—they actually understand what callers want and handle everything from appointments to customer questions without a human needing to step in.
Features
Sounds Human: Handles customer interactions twists and turns naturally. Vapi gives you the tools to build this, but you're doing more work yourself.
Ready-to-Use Templates: Grab pre-built voice assistants to enhance customer voice interactions. Vapi is more "build it yourself" with their API approach.
Built-In Workflows: Comes with processes already set up. Vapi expects you to create these yourself using their tool-calling features.
Connects to Everything: Works with 200+ business tools! Vapi focuses on giving you API access to connect what YOU want.
Speaks 20+ Languages: Optimized for different languages. But Vapi DOMINATES here with 100+ languages!
Always On: AI works 24/7 without breaks. Vapi offers this too, but it's about HOW you build it.
Cons
CRAZY Expensive: Prices jump between plans and minutes disappear fast. Vapi starts at just $0.05/minute (compared to Synthflow's $0.58/minute starter plan!)
Hit or Miss Quality: Users say calls can fade in and out. Vapi is newer but focuses on API reliability.
Software Bugs: Freezes up and loses your work. Vapi is more technical but doesn't have these interface complaints.
Slow Support: Takes forever to get help. Vapi users complain about too many chatbots handling support issues.
Fake "Free Trial": Not enough free minutes to really test it. Vapi gives you actual free credits to start.
Pricing
Synthflow Pricing:
Starter: $29/month for 50 minutes ($0.58/minute!)
Pro: $375/month for 2,000 minutes ($0.19/minute)
Growth: $750/month for 4,000 minutes ($0.19/minute)
Agency: $1,250/month for 6,000 minutes ($0.21/minute)
Enterprise: Custom pricing for big businesses
Vapi Pricing:
Startup Plan: $0.05/minute plus provider costs. Includes free credits.
Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing with higher limits and better support.
Add-ons: $2-$5,000/month for extras like phone numbers and more concurrent calls.
Here's the truth: Synthflow is like buying a fancy restaurant meal with everything included but at PREMIUM prices. Vapi is like getting ingredients at wholesale prices - cheaper, but you need to know how to cook!
Reviews
"Is a very good platform" - Alejandro Palacios. Is good, easy to use, I like the videos for guide.I've just started to use, hope this keep going well. I would like to see some other languages.
"Synthflow support is non existent" - Andrew Vernon. I used Synthflow for testing purposes to compare it against other VoiceAI platforms. Their support is non existent. I sent and email and opened a support ticket and none were answered. There's no way we could go ahead, what if we had issues, how long would the response times be.
What is best voice AI solution? (Our Top 3)
After diving deep into these voice applications, it's clear that while each platform has its strengths, some stand out from the pack. The right choice depends on your business needs, technical skills, and budget.
Based on our research, here are our top 3 Vapi alternatives:
Ringly.io - The clear winner for most businesses with its no-code setup, human-AI hybrid approach, and incredibly affordable pricing starting at just $0.05/minute. It bridges the gap between automation and personal touch that other platforms miss.
Retell AI - Perfect for developers who need strong security compliance and powerful integration capabilities. While more technical, it offers excellent multilingual support and real-time monitoring.
Bland AI - Great for enterprises wanting a simple setup with unique features like background noise options and multiple AI models, though reliability issues kept it from the top spot.
Want to experience the best Vapi alternative without the technical headaches? Ringly.io offers a free trial with 10 minutes of AI calls - no credit card needed. See why 1,300+ businesses trust us to handle their customer conversations.