Retell vs ElevenLabs (2026): Which should enterprises buy?
Samuel Oram-Jones, 11 min read
Retell and ElevenLabs both sell platforms for building a voice AI agent, but Retell sells a flow builder on other companies' models while ElevenLabs sells agents on voices and speech models it builds itself. This comparison covers what each runs on, how each bills, what each offers on security and deployment, and where Bland fits, as of November 2026.
Which is better, Retell or ElevenLabs?
Bland is the better pick than either Retell or ElevenLabs for enterprise phone calls as of November 2026, because Bland builds and runs its own language, speech, and transcription models, and Enterprise customers get dedicated orchestration and dedicated GPUs run by Bland. Between the two, Retell suits a team that wants a visual flow editor and ElevenLabs suits a team that already has a language model to attach.
Retell hands its language model and transcription to other companies, and ElevenLabs builds its voices and transcription but, in Custom mode, leaves the language model to the customer.
What these rows mean
- AI on each call: This row shows whether the language model, speech, and transcription behind each call belong to the platform or to other companies: Full stack means all three are the platform's own, Outsourced means its language model and transcription come from other companies, and Mixed means it runs some of its own models alongside outside ones. Bland builds and runs its own language, speech, and transcription models, so a call never passes through an outside AI provider. ElevenLabs runs its own speech and transcription, and pairs them with a language model that is one of its own Realtime models (Eleven Realtime v1 Mini or Eleven Realtime v1 Max) or one the customer chooses in Custom mode.
- Language model: A language model decides what an agent says on each turn. Bland builds and runs its own. Retell runs models from other companies, such as GPT, Claude, or Gemini. ElevenLabs offers its own Realtime models (Eleven Realtime v1 Mini and Eleven Realtime v1 Max), and in Custom mode a customer chooses the language model, which is billed on top.
- Audio Realism Bench score, 4 August 2026: Audio Realism Bench is Design Arena's blind listening test, where listeners pick whichever of two voices sounds more like a real person, and a higher score means listeners picked that voice more often. In its published results of 4 August 2026, Bland Speech v3 ranked first among AI voices. Each rival number is the highest-scoring voice model in those results available on that platform.
- iMessage: iMessage lets an agent text customers on a channel they already use. Bland offers it natively on Enterprise.
- HIPAA with a BAA: A Business Associate Agreement, or BAA, is the contract that lets a vendor handle patient information under HIPAA. Bland includes its BAA on Enterprise. Zero Retention only means ElevenLabs' BAA applies only while Zero Retention Mode is on, which limits the language models and analytics a customer can use.
- AI rate per minute: Headline rates cover different things, so a buyer should check what each one includes before comparing them. Bland's self-serve rate covers all of its AI: language model, transcription, and speech. Phone is billed separately at carrier cost, and Enterprise pricing is custom, set with Bland's sales team. Retell advertises $0.07 to $0.31 a minute, and one language model alone lists at $0.384 a minute. ElevenLabs' $0.08 is for call minutes past a plan's allowance, with the language model billed on top.
How do Retell and ElevenLabs differ?
The biggest difference between Retell and ElevenLabs is where the voice comes from. ElevenLabs builds its own speech and transcription models and sells them inside an agent platform, while Retell offers its own platform voices next to voices from ElevenLabs, Cartesia, Minimax, and OpenAI, and runs transcription and language models from other companies. Neither is full stack, which is where Bland differs from both.
Retell overview
Retell is a platform for building and monitoring AI voice and chat agents, billed per minute with the model and voice priced as separate lines. A team chooses a language model such as GPT, Claude, or Gemini, picks a transcription provider such as Deepgram, Azure, Soniox, or AssemblyAI, and designs call flows in a visual builder.
Retell says "We guarantee >99.9% uptime", though its terms of service promise "at least 99.5% uptime". Retell holds SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001:2022, and Retell doesn't offer iMessage agents.
Pros
- A visual builder for call flows
- A free choice of language model, voice, and transcription provider
- A long list of voices, including ElevenLabs, Cartesia, Minimax, and OpenAI
Cons
- Language model and transcription come from outside companies
- Model, voice, and phone each sit on their own line of a bill
- No iMessage agents
ElevenLabs overview
ElevenLabs sells ElevenAgents, a platform for voice and text agents, on top of its own text-to-speech models and Scribe V2 transcription. It also offers its own Realtime models, Eleven Realtime v1 Mini and Eleven Realtime v1 Max, and in Custom mode ElevenLabs says "you choose the LLM, TTS model, and ASR settings yourself". LLM means large language model, the part that decides what an agent says.
ElevenLabs holds SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001:2022, PCI DSS 4.0.1 Level 1, GDPR, HIPAA, and FedRAMP 20x Class A. It adds WhatsApp and SMS channels, and ElevenLabs doesn't offer iMessage agents.
Pros
- Its own voices, text-to-speech, and transcription models
- A Realtime model of its own, or a language model a team picks
- SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA compliance
Cons
- In Custom mode a language model comes from an outside company, billed on top
- No iMessage agents
How do Retell and ElevenLabs handle security and deployment?
Retell and ElevenLabs both hold SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR, and both sell a BAA, a Business Associate Agreement, which is the contract HIPAA requires before a vendor handles patient information. The difference sits in the conditions around it.
ElevenLabs expects a customer to "have executed a BAA and have Zero Retention Mode engaged", and under that mode only an approved list of language models is available. Retell treats payment card data and biometric identifiers as prohibited data unless it agrees otherwise in writing, allows patient information under a signed BAA, and charges $0.01 a minute for PII removal.
As of November 2026, ElevenLabs grades call transcripts only, not audio. Bland's evaluations grade the call audio as well as the transcript, so tone and satisfaction count, and Bland runs its own SIP signaling and media servers with no third-party telephony provider in the path.
On deployment, ElevenLabs says its agent platform runs "inside your own cloud account or your own hardware" on AWS and GCP.
Retell offers VPC, on-premise, and air-gapped deployment as of November 2026.
Enterprise customers get dedicated orchestration and dedicated GPUs run by Bland. Bland also offers a 99.9% uptime SLA on every plan.
Which sounds more human, Retell or ElevenLabs?
Neither Retell nor ElevenLabs has a placing for its own voices on Design Arena's Audio Realism Bench as of 4 August 2026, and Bland Speech v3 ranked 1st of 13 AI voices at 1365, second only to real human recordings.
- #1BlandBland Speech v31365
- 4thOpenAI, on RetellGPT Realtime 21119
- 12thElevenLabsEleven v3Near the bottom938
- Not rankedRetell's own voicesNot ranked
Ranks are among 13 AI voices, and each rival shows the highest listed voice a customer can choose on it, named for the company that made it. Real human recordings scored 1500, at the right edge of this scale. Bars start at 600, not zero. Source: Design Arena's published results.
Retell offers voices from other companies, and the highest of them, GPT Realtime 2 from OpenAI, ranked 4th at 1119. Retell's own platform voices and ElevenLabs Flash, the voice in its sample minute, have no Audio Realism Bench score as of 4 August 2026.
ElevenLabs' Eleven v3 ranked 12th at 938. The test is blind, with vetted native speakers choosing which of two voices reads one script more like a real person. See Design Arena's published results.
How much do Retell and ElevenLabs cost?
Neither headline rate covers a full call. Retell advertises $0.07 to $0.31 a minute with the model and voice priced on top, and ElevenLabs lists $0.08 a minute for call minutes past a plan's allowance with the language model billed separately.
Bland publishes $0.14 a minute on its self-serve Start plan and $0.12 a minute plus $299 a month on self-serve Build for all of its AI, before phone, as of November 2026.
Retell pricing
A minute on Retell with Voice Infrastructure at $0.055, GPT-4.1 at $0.045, an ElevenLabs Flash voice, and Twilio phone minutes comes to $0.155. Retell says billed time scales with prompt length: "Billed Duration = Original Duration × Scaling Factor (rounded up)", so a call with a long prompt bills for longer than it lasts.
- Branded Call: +$0.10 per outbound call
- Verified phone number: $10 a month
- PII Removal: +$0.01 per minute
- Knowledge base: +$0.005 per minute, and $8 a month each after 10
- Safety Guardrails: +$0.005 per minute
- Advanced Denoising: +$0.005 per minute
ElevenLabs pricing
ElevenLabs sells plans with a usage allowance, and says "LLM usage is billed separately on top, based on the model you choose". Elsewhere on the same page it says model fees "will be deducted from your ElevenLabs credits", so a buyer settles in sales which one applies. A minute past the allowance comes to $0.08, or $0.16 when a team exceeds its concurrency limit.
ElevenLabs does not charge extra for telephony, and a connected provider such as Twilio bills its own charges. Its pricing calculator adds a default model at $0.0029 a minute, and a monthly plan sits on top of both.
- Language model: Billed on top in Custom mode, based on the model chosen
- Burst pricing: $0.16 per minute
- Phone: No telephony fee, and a connected provider bills its own carrier charges
Bland pricing
Bland publishes one number per plan, and that number covers its language model, transcription, and speech with no token charges. A minute is $0.14 on the self-serve Start plan, or $0.12 on self-serve Build with a $299 monthly platform fee. Phone is billed separately, on a customer's own carrier or on Bland's at pass-through cost. Enterprise pricing is custom, set with Bland's sales team.
Before phone, three companies set the price behind Retell's total and two behind ElevenLabs', while one sets Bland's.
Bland Start (self-serve): Self-serve Start has no platform fee. Self-serve Build is $0.12 a minute plus $299 a month. Phone and transfers bill separately. Retell: Retell Voice Infra, GPT-4.1, and an ElevenLabs Flash voice, before Twilio phone minutes. ElevenLabs Agents: ElevenLabs call minute plus its pricing calculator's default model, before the customer's own phone provider.
What does each Bland plan include?
Enterprise is the plan regulated teams buy. It adds native iMessage agents alongside SMS and web chat, warm transfers, guardrails, a BAA, SSO, data residency, dedicated orchestration with dedicated GPUs run by Bland, and forward-deployed engineers who work beside a customer's team, with concurrency contracted to its volume and custom pricing.
Why do enterprises pick Bland over both?
Enterprises pick Bland over both Retell and ElevenLabs because one company builds every AI model on a call, its self-serve rate is published, and Enterprise customers get dedicated orchestration and dedicated GPUs run by Bland. Bland has more than 250 enterprise customers and has handled over 1.3 billion calls, and it publishes sub-200ms latency.
A security team reviews one AI company instead of a chain of them.
ElevenLabs bills a language model chosen in Custom mode on top of its call minute, while Retell charges $0.01 a minute for PII removal, so each adds conditions and cost that Bland's single published rate does not.
Bland also runs branded iMessage agents natively on Enterprise, which share pathways with its voice agents, and on Enterprise forward-deployed engineers work beside a customer's team on its first agent.
Use Bland when
- A team wants dedicated orchestration and dedicated GPUs run by Bland
- One company should build the language model and the voice, so a security team reviews one AI company, not several
- Finance wants one published rate that includes the language model
- Patient calls need a BAA without a mode that narrows analytics and models
- Customers should reach an agent over iMessage as well as by phone
Use Retell or ElevenLabs when
- A small engineering team wants to monitor, test, and toggle between different language models and voice vendors
- A team will manage a separate bill for each model, voice, and phone line
- A team already has a language model and will attach it to ElevenLabs voices and transcription models
Where a team's needs point away from either vendor, the reasons come from what each says.
Don't use Retell if:
- Medical or emergency calls, because Retell says its terms disclaim liability for use in medical, emergency, or other safety-critical environments
- Predictable bills, because billed time scales up once an agent passes 4,000 prompt tokens
- Card payments on calls, because Retell gives no PCI status and bars card data unless it agrees in writing
- The most realistic voices, because Bland Speech v3 ranked first among AI voices on Audio Realism Bench on 4 August 2026 at 1365, and Retell's highest voice there ranked 4th at 1119
Don't use ElevenLabs if:
- Need the most realistic voices, because Bland Speech v3 ranked first among AI voices on Audio Realism Bench on 4 August 2026 at 1365, and Eleven v3 ranked 12th of 13 at 938
- Teams that want one company answering for their language model, because for an outside model its terms say "ElevenLabs does not warrant and is not responsible for that Model Option or those terms"
- Teams that want their language model inside the call rate, because it is "billed separately on top, based on the model you choose"
- Teams that can't absorb a spike at twice the price, because past a concurrency limit it has "excess calls charged at double the standard rate"
- Teams that grade calls on tone and satisfaction, because ElevenLabs grades transcripts only, not call audio
Pros
- One AI company on every call, so a security team reviews one vendor
- One published rate for all of its AI, with no token charges
- Dedicated orchestration and dedicated GPUs run by Bland, on Enterprise
- Native iMessage agents on Enterprise, sharing pathways with voice
- Call grading on the audio as well as the transcript
Cons
- Overkill for a small prototype, because Bland is built for production calls at volume
What results look like with Bland
Idaho Housing and Finance Association saves $750,000 a year by replacing its IVR with Bland, which handles 4,000 inbound calls a day and cut average call time by 20%.
"We save thousands of dollars a day."
Greg Blake, Chief Information Officer, Idaho Housing and Finance Association
How was this comparison made?
Retell and ElevenLabs were compared on what each runs on, how each bills, security, deployment, and voice realism, using each company's published pages read on 5 November 2026. Voice scores come from Design Arena's chart of 4 August 2026. Bland vs Retell and Bland vs ElevenLabs go further, as does the comparison hub, and a demo built on a real workflow is the quickest next step.
For the same question about other vendors, read Vapi vs ElevenLabs or Bland vs Retell vs Vapi vs ElevenLabs. An ElevenLabs review covers one of the two in depth, and a Synthflow review covers another rival.
Frequently asked questions
Is Retell better than ElevenLabs?
Bland is the better pick than either Retell or ElevenLabs for enterprise phone calls, because one company builds every AI model on a call. Between the two, Retell suits a team that wants a visual flow editor and ElevenLabs suits a team that already has a language model to attach.
Which costs less, Retell or ElevenLabs?
Retell comes to $0.155 a minute on a sample of GPT-4.1, an ElevenLabs Flash voice, and Twilio phone, and ElevenLabs lists $0.08 for a call minute with its language model billed on top, so neither headline covers a full call on its own. Bland publishes $0.14 a minute on its self-serve Start plan and $0.12 a minute on self-serve Build for all of its AI, before phone.
Do Retell and ElevenLabs support iMessage?
Retell doesn't offer iMessage agents as of November 2026, and ElevenLabs doesn't offer iMessage agents. Bland runs branded iMessage agents natively on Enterprise, which share the same pathways as its voice agents.
Do Retell and ElevenLabs build their own AI models?
Only in part. ElevenLabs builds its own voices, transcription, and Realtime models, but in Custom mode a team chooses the language model. Retell offers some platform voices of its own, while its language model and transcription run on other companies' models. Bland builds and runs its own language, speech, and transcription models.
Does Bland use an open-source model?
No, Bland operates a closed-source model that it developed itself, so its language model isn't an open-source model and no outside AI lab sits behind it.
Is Bland only for outbound calls?
No, Bland runs inbound and outbound calls, including AI receptionist and contact center work, and it also runs SMS and web chat.
Is Bland only for developers?
No, Bland isn't only for developers. Pathways gives teams a visual builder, Norm helps build agents, and on Enterprise forward-deployed engineers build alongside a customer's team.
How much does Bland cost per minute?
Bland costs $0.14 per minute on its self-serve Start plan and $0.12 per minute on self-serve Build, which adds a $299 monthly platform fee, and phone is billed separately. Bland replaced its earlier flat $0.09 rate with these plans in December 2025. Enterprise pricing is custom, set with Bland's sales team.
Does Bland's rate include phone?
No, Bland's rate covers its language model, transcription, and speech, and phone is billed separately, on a customer's own carrier or on Bland's at pass-through cost.
