Launched 2023 · Verified Oct 15, 2026

Retell AI

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Voice Agents & Phone AI Write a reviewUnited StatesEffect85/ 100

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Build and run AI phone agents that book, qualify and transfer calls, billed by the minute.

voice agentsphone automationcall centeroutbound callingFreemium · from $0.07/min

Listed on EffectHub · Aug 23, 2026

Web · API

Screenshot of the Retell AI website — retellai.com as we captured it — our own screenshot, not the vendor’s press image.

Pricing

Pricing model: Freemium
Paid options from: $0.07/min
Billing: Metered · per minute

Pay-as-you-go: $0.07 to $0.31 per voice minute, built from $0.055 voice infrastructure plus the TTS ($0.015 to $0.10) and LLM you pick (for example Claude 5 Sonnet $0.064, GPT 5.5 $0.16). Chat agents from $0.002 per message; 20 concurrent calls included, then $8 per extra a month; phone numbers $2 a month; $10 free credit on signup, Enterprise quoted.

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Overview

About Retell AI

Retell AI is a platform for building phone and chat agents that answer or place calls on their own. You assemble an agent from a prompt, a knowledge base and tools, attach a number over Twilio, Vonage or SIP, and the agent handles booking, lead qualification and warm transfer to a human, with batch outbound campaigns on top. Retell AI Inc. is a San Francisco company from Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch. Billing is usage-based rather than per seat: roughly $0.07 to $0.31 per voice minute depending on which speech and LLM providers you pick, plus $2 a month per phone number and add-ons like PII removal at a cent a minute. New accounts get $10 of credit.

Platforms: Web · API
API: Yes
Last verified: Oct 15, 2026

Verified sources

Pay-as-you-go $0.07-$0.31 per minute for voice agents and $0.002+ per message for chat agents, $10 in free credits; Enterprise custom pricing (15 October 2026)retellai.com ↗
Component rates: Retell voice infra $0.055/min, TTS $0.015 (Retell, Minimax, Cartesia, OpenAI voices) to $0.10 (ElevenLabs v3/v4), LLM e.g. Claude 5 Sonnet $0.064/min, GPT 5.5 $0.16/min; phone numbers $2/month; first 20 concurrent calls free then $8 each per month; knowledge base $8 each after 10 free (15 October 2026)retellai.com ↗
Retell AI, San Francisco, founded 2023, Y Combinator Winter 2024 (as cited 15 October 2026)ycombinator.com ↗

Fact check

Is Retell AI legit?

We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.

Domain registered: Jun 17, 2023 (3 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar GoDaddy.com, LLC, looked up Sep 6, 2026
TLS certificate: Issued by Google Trust Services, valid until Nov 26, 2026Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 15, 2026
Last checked: Oct 15, 2026The site answered
On the market since: 2023The vendor's own material, read by us
Operated by: Retell AI Inc., United StatesOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026

How we collect these records

Editorial verdict

Pros & cons of Retell AI

high confidence

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

Best for

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

Not for

Anyone wanting a fixed monthly bill
Single-operator businesses that just need voicemail triage

Watch out: The advertised $0.07/min floor assumes the cheapest Gemini model and basic TTS; a Claude or GPT-5-class agent with a knowledge base sits near the top of the range.

#10inVoice Agents & Phone AI· of 35 tools, ranked by rating and popularity

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