Which voice agent platform is cheapest per minute in 2026?

On platform fees as of November 2, 2026: Cartesia Managed Agents at $0.03 per minute (launched October 29, 2026, shown on Cartesia's site as reduced from $0.06), then Vapi at $0.05 per minute hosting, Retell at $0.055 per minute voice infrastructure, and ElevenLabs Agents at $0.08 per additional call minute. None of these is the full bill: the language model, telephony and, on Vapi and Retell, speech-to-text or text-to-speech are charged on top, so a realistic all-in rate is roughly $0.07 to $0.30 a minute depending on the LLM.

What does a voice AI agent really cost per minute?

Add the platform fee, the LLM, speech-to-text, text-to-speech and telephony. Retell's own worked example from October 2026 is $0.055 voice infrastructure + $0.04 for GPT 5.1 + $0.015 for a platform voice + $0.015 for a Retell US number + $0.005 for a knowledge base = $0.13 per minute. Vapi's calculator estimates $82 to $129 for 1,000 minutes with Deepgram, OpenAI and ElevenLabs. The LLM is the component that varies most.

Is Cartesia Managed Agents good?

It launched October 29, 2026 ranked first of 30 agents on Artificial Analysis's Speech Agent Arena with a preference Elo of 1115, and Cartesia reports 87.4% accuracy and 90.7% experience on ServiceNow's EVA-Bench, both measured with GPT-5.5 as the reasoning model. It bundles Cartesia's own speech-to-text and Sonic text-to-speech with an LLM you choose, telephony, knowledge bases and outbound batches of up to 5,000 numbers. It is new, so test it on your own call flows before migrating.

Does ElevenLabs charge for LLM and phone costs on top of the per-minute rate?

Yes. ElevenLabs Agents plans include a monthly bundle of call minutes (15 on Free up to 12,375 on the $990 Business plan), additional minutes cost $0.08, burst minutes above your concurrency limit cost $0.16, and the LLM and telephony provider are billed separately based on usage.

Quick Answer

Voice Agent Pricing Per Minute: Cartesia vs Retell vs Vapi

Published: November 2, 2026

The short answer

Cartesia Managed Agents has the lowest platform fee; Vapi and Retell are the most configurable; ElevenLabs is simplest if you want minutes in a subscription. Platform fees as of November 2, 2026:

Platform	Platform fee / min	What it includes	Billed on top	Free start
Cartesia Managed Agents	$0.03 (shown as reduced from $0.06)	STT (Ink), TTS (Sonic), turn-taking, tools, knowledge base	LLM; Cartesia number +$0.014/min	$1 of agent usage (~33 min)
Vapi	$0.05 hosting	Orchestration, testing, monitoring	STT, LLM, TTS at provider cost (no markup); telephony	$5 credits
Retell AI	$0.055 voice infra	Orchestration, turn-taking, audio	LLM, TTS ($0.015+), telephony ($0.015 or $0 BYO SIP)	Credits on sign-up
ElevenLabs Agents	$0.08 additional minute	ElevenLabs STT/TTS, workflows	LLM, telephony; burst minutes $0.16	15 min/month

Prices from each vendor’s pricing page or official pricing guide, read November 2, 2026.

What 10,000 minutes a month costs

The platform fee is the easy part. A rough monthly bill for 10,000 call minutes, before the LLM:

Cartesia: $300 platform + $140 if you use Cartesia phone numbers. Speech is included.
Vapi: $500 hosting + Deepgram STT (~~$95–$99) + ElevenLabs voice (~~$146–$238) at Vapi’s listed pass-through ranges.
Retell: $550 voice infrastructure + $150 platform voices + $150 on a Retell US number ($0 over your own SIP trunk).
ElevenLabs: the Business plan ($990) includes 12,375 minutes; on Scale ($299, 3,738 minutes) the remaining 6,262 minutes at $0.08 add ~$501.

Then add the LLM. Retell lists its standard-tier LLM costs per minute — GPT 5 mini $0.008, GPT 5.1 $0.04, GPT 5.4 $0.08, GPT 5.5 $0.16 — which is $80 to $1,600 for the same 10,000 minutes. The model choice moves the bill more than the platform does; see our current API prices for the token rates behind those numbers.

Cartesia Managed Agents — cheapest, newest

Launched October 29, 2026. Cartesia built the harness and its voice models together: Ink speech-to-text, Sonic text-to-speech and an LLM you pick per agent, with telephony (Cartesia numbers, or your own provider), knowledge bases, tool calls and outbound batches of up to 5,000 numbers. The rate is $0.03 per minute for every agent; Cartesia’s site shows it as down from $0.06, so budget for the higher rate if the reduction is temporary. Every paid plan includes prepaid voice-agent dollars equal to the plan price — Scale at $299/month includes $299 of agent usage.

Quality claims: #1 of 30 on Artificial Analysis’s Speech Agent Arena (Elo 1115, ahead of Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Minimal at 1099 and GPT-Live-1), and 87.4% accuracy / 90.7% experience on ServiceNow’s open EVA-Bench, both run with GPT-5.5 as the reasoning model. 44 languages; mid-call switching between English, Spanish, Hindi, French and Japanese.

Pick it for: high-volume inbound support or outbound campaigns where per-minute cost dominates.

Vapi — most control over the stack

Vapi charges $0.05/min hosting and passes model costs through at cost with no markup, so you can mix any transcriber, LLM and voice. The free tier gives $5 credits, 4 concurrent calls and 14 days of data retention. Success packages add support and limits: Core $29/month (10 concurrent calls, zero data retention), Pro at 10% of the hosting fee with a $999/month minimum (30 concurrent calls, RBAC, 99% uptime SLA). HIPAA costs $2,000/month; extra concurrency is $10 per line per month.

Pick it for: engineering teams that want to swap providers per agent and keep data retention short.

Retell AI — most transparent itemisation

Retell bills $0.055/min voice infrastructure for every agent, plus the LLM, the voice ($0.015 for platform voices, up to $0.10 for ElevenLabs v3/v4) and telephony ($0.015 on a Retell US number, no Retell charge over your own SIP). Retell’s own example totals $0.13 per minute; it advertises $0.07 to $0.31. Phone numbers, concurrency above the included level and extra knowledge bases are fixed monthly items.

Pick it for: contact centres that want a predictable, line-item bill and mature telephony features.

ElevenLabs Agents — minutes in a subscription

Plans bundle minutes: Free 15, Starter 75, Creator 275, Pro $99 for 1,238, Scale $299 for 3,738, Business $990 for 12,375. Extra minutes cost $0.08 on every plan, and burst minutes above your concurrency limit cost $0.16. LLM and telephony are billed separately.

Pick it for: teams that want the ElevenLabs voices and a fixed monthly budget.

How to choose

Lowest cost per minute: Cartesia.
Bring your own STT/LLM/TTS: Vapi.
Line-item billing, SIP-heavy telephony: Retell.
Fixed subscription with premium voices: ElevenLabs.
Before you sign: price the exact LLM you will run, and test turn-taking on recorded real calls. For regression testing the agent you pick, see voice agent regression testing vendors.

Last verified: November 2, 2026.