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008 Agent vs Retell AI

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. 008 Agent starts at $0.39, Retell AI at $0.07. Only Retell AI has a free tier. Only Retell AI ships a public API.

008 AgentVoice AI agents that answer calls, update CRMs, and run scripted actions, billed per minute plus a monthly seat.Retell AIBuild and run AI phone agents that book, qualify and transfer calls, billed by the minute.

Side by side

Fact008 AgentRetell AI
CategoryVoice Agents & Phone AIVoice Agents & Phone AI
Pricing modelPaidFreemium
Starts at$0.39 minute$0.07 minute
Public APINoYes
PlatformsWebWeb, API
Company008Retell AI Inc.
Launched—2023
Last verifiedSep 1, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

008 Agent

008 Agent's pitch is speed of setup for voice agents that can actually take actions mid-call, not just transcribe. The per-minute pricing with an optional monthly instance fee rewards high call volume and penalizes low, sporadic usage.

Pros

  • Agents can take real actions - tickets, CRM updates, web search - not just talk
  • Entry tier has no monthly commitment, only per-minute usage
  • Built-in integrations with common CRM and helpdesk tools

Cons

  • No published flat-rate plan for predictable monthly budgeting at low volume
  • Company location isn't disclosed, though the site defaults to a Spanish-language version with a Spanish contact number
  • Per-minute pricing makes costs harder to forecast than a seat-based plan

Retell AI

One of the more honest voice-agent stacks: the pricing page breaks out infrastructure, TTS and LLM cost per minute so you can predict a call's cost instead of guessing. Telephony choice is wide and the concurrency allowance is generous. The catch is that per-minute billing plus add-ons makes a busy contact centre expensive fast, and the cheap end of the range only holds if you pick the cheap models.

Pros

  • Per-minute cost broken down by voice infrastructure, TTS provider and LLM on the public pricing page
  • Telephony via SIP trunking, Twilio and Vonage plus n8n, HubSpot, Make and Go High Level integrations
  • 20 concurrent calls included before any concurrency charge
  • Voice, chat and SMS agents share one platform and API
  • HIPAA path exists via a signed BAA covered in the terms of service

Cons

  • Cost per minute more than quadruples between the cheapest and most capable model combinations
  • Knowledge base, denoising, PII removal and branded caller ID are all metered extras
  • No flat-rate plan, so a spike in call volume lands straight on the invoice

Which one fits

Choose 008 Agent if you need

  • Teams that want a voice agent live quickly without a dev sprint
  • Businesses with high call volume that benefits from the discounted per-minute tiers
  • Companies already using Zendesk, Salesforce, or HubSpot

Choose Retell AI if you need

  • Teams replacing an outbound qualification or booking script
  • Contact centres that already have Twilio, Vonage or SIP trunking
  • Developers who want per-minute cost visibility before launch

More comparisons

All 008 Agent alternatives →Browse all Voice Agents & Phone AI →