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Phonely AI 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. Retell AI publishes a starting price ($0.07); Phonely AI does not. Only Retell AI has a free tier. Both ship a public API.

Phonely AIVoice AI agents that answer and route business phone calls around the clock.Retell AIBuild and run AI phone agents that book, qualify and transfer calls, billed by the minute.

Side by side

FactPhonely AIRetell AI
CategoryVoice Agents & Phone AIVoice Agents & Phone AI
Pricing modelContactFreemium
Starts at—$0.07 minute
Public APIYesYes
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, API
CompanyPhonely Ltd.Retell AI Inc.
Launched—2023
Last verifiedSep 1, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Phonely AI

Phonely gives support and sales teams a voice agent that can staff a phone line without a script rewrite for every call. The trial is generous enough to judge call quality, but pricing sits behind a demo call rather than a plan page.

Pros

  • 100 free call minutes to test quality before paying
  • Prebuilt integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, and Google Calendar
  • Compliance claims covering HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2, and GDPR
  • One agent deployable across phone, chat, SMS, and API

Cons

  • No published pricing; a demo call is required for a quote
  • Company country and founding year are not stated on the site

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 Phonely AI if you need

  • Teams replacing overflow call-center capacity
  • Businesses wanting one agent across phone, chat, and SMS
  • Companies already running HubSpot or Salesforce for follow-up

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 Phonely AI alternatives →Browse all Voice Agents & Phone AI →