Retell AI vs Simple Phones

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

Simple Phones

Worth a look for a small service business that keeps missing calls and cannot justify a receptionist. At $97 for 100 calls you are buying per call, not per seat, so the math only works if your inbound volume is predictable.

Pros

• +Setup is genuinely quick: forward a number, describe the business, go live
• +Full transcript and log per call, so you can audit what the agent actually said
• +Zapier and webhook output fits alongside an existing CRM instead of replacing it
• +Month-to-month billing with a 14-day trial

Cons

• −Entry price is high next to per-minute voice platforms aimed at builders
• −No publicly documented developer API; integration means webhooks or Zapier
• −Small unfunded team, so roadmap depth and support scale are unproven
• −The site says little about which speech or language models sit underneath

Is Retell AI cheaper than Simple Phones?

They charge in different units, so there is no like-for-like answer: Retell AI starts at $0.07/min, Simple Phones at $97/mo. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it.

Does Retell AI or Simple Phones have a free tier?

Retell AI has a free tier; Simple Phones has paid plans only.

Which has a public API, Retell AI or Simple Phones?

Retell AI ships a public API, as of our last verification. A public API for Simple Phones is not confirmed by us — check its developer docs before you plan an integration.