Retell AI Pricing in 2026: The $0.07 Bundle and Why It Often Beats Vapi
Retell publishes a $0.07 per minute bundled rate that includes STT, LLM, TTS, and the platform layer. Add telephony and you land at $0.085 to $0.20 per minute all-in. For typical sales deployments this beats Vapi's component-stacked cost by a meaningful margin. Here is the breakdown for the 2026 procurement cycle.
Last verified May 2026. Retell pricing changes periodically; always confirm before purchase.
$0.07/min
Bundled (platform + STT + LLM + TTS)
$0.014-$0.03/min
Telephony pass-through
$0.085-$0.13/min
All-in typical (mid-stack)
$0.04-$0.05/min
Enterprise (500K+ min/mo)
§What the Bundled $0.07 Per Minute Actually Includes
Retell's strategic bet is that most developers building voice agents do not want to assemble five providers; they want a single per-minute number for the whole stack and to focus on prompt engineering, business logic, and CRM integration. The $0.07 bundle is what that bet looks like at retail.
Included in $0.07/minute bundled rate
- + Retell platform: orchestration, VAD, interruption handling, function-calling, recording delivery
- + STT: Deepgram Nova-2 by default; AssemblyAI as alternative at no per-minute uplift
- + LLM: GPT-4o-mini, Claude Haiku, Gemini Flash, or equivalent default tier
- + TTS: ElevenLabs Turbo v2.5, PlayHT, or equivalent default tier
- + Call recording and transcription to your destination (Webhook, S3, GCS)
- + Knowledge base ingestion and retrieval (RAG) up to 100MB per agent
- + Function calling and tool use (CRM lookups, calendar booking)
- + Multi-language out of the box (40+ languages on default TTS, varies by voice choice)
Adds uplift beyond $0.07/minute
- + Premium LLM (GPT-4o full, Claude Sonnet 3.5/3.6): $0.06 to $0.12 per minute uplift
- + Premium TTS (ElevenLabs Multilingual v2, custom-cloned voices): $0.06 to $0.10 per minute uplift
- + Telephony pass-through (Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage): $0.014 to $0.03 per minute outbound, $0.0085 inbound
- + Phone number rental (US local): $1 to $2 per month per number, plus carrier A2P 10DLC registration fees
- + Knowledge base above 100MB: tiered enterprise pricing
- + Concurrent call capacity above 100 concurrent: enterprise reserved capacity tier
§All-In Cost: Three Reference Sales Stacks
For sales deployments, the realistic 2026 per-minute all-in cost on Retell sits in a tight band of $0.085 to $0.20 depending on LLM and TTS choice. The bundled rate compresses the per-component variability that dominates Vapi's stack.
| Component | Budget | Mid | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retell bundle | $0.07 | $0.07 | $0.07 |
| LLM uplift | $0 (default) | $0.04 (GPT-4o-mini upgrade) | $0.12 (GPT-4o full) |
| TTS uplift | $0 (default) | $0.04 (ElevenLabs Turbo) | $0.10 (ElevenLabs Multi v2) |
| Telephony | Telnyx $0.005 | Twilio $0.014 | Twilio $0.014 |
| Per-minute total | $0.075 | $0.164 | $0.304 |
| Per 5-min call | $0.38 | $0.82 | $1.52 |
The Retell-vs-Vapi math: The mid stack on Retell costs $0.164 per minute. The equivalent mid stack on Vapi costs $0.208 per minute. The $0.044 per-minute gap is around 21 percent savings on Retell at the mid tier. At 50,000 minutes per month that is $2,200 per month, or $26,400 per year. The savings narrow at the budget tier and at the premium tier where component pricing dominates the bundle benefit.
§Monthly Volume Math for Sales Teams
| Scenario | Monthly min | Retell mid | Vapi mid | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pilot: 3K min | 3,000 | $492 | $624 | $132 (21%) |
| Mid: 15K min | 15,000 | $2,460 | $3,120 | $660 (21%) |
| High: 50K min | 50,000 | $8,200 | $10,400 | $2,200 (21%) |
| Scale: 250K min (enterprise tier kicks in) | 250,000 | $32K-$38K | $45K-$55K | $13K-$17K (28-31%) |
The savings percentage holds steady at around 20 percent at standard volume and widens to nearly 30 percent at enterprise volume where Retell's bundle negotiation with STT and LLM providers compounds. The flip side: Retell offers less component flexibility (BYOK is limited; custom STT routing is harder; custom telephony pipelines beyond Twilio and Telnyx require enterprise contact). Teams that need fine-grained control over each component should still evaluate Vapi.
§Latency Reality Check
Retell publishes a 250 to 400ms first-token-to-first-audio latency for the standard inbound configuration. This is competitive with the best Vapi configurations and reflects Retell's tight integration of Deepgram streaming STT with their orchestration layer.
The latency band widens for outbound calls because the carrier setup time (Twilio's outbound dial sequence) adds 1 to 3 seconds before the AI's first turn. For inbound qualification this is invisible; for outbound cold call openings, the prospect may hear silence at the start of the call and hang up before the AI speaks. Mitigations: pre-recorded greeting, ringback before answer detection, optimised SIP trunk routing.
Premium LLM choices (GPT-4o full, Claude Sonnet 3.5/3.6) add 200 to 500ms to the model-reasoning portion of latency. For complex objection handling this is worth the latency hit; for simple appointment-booking the budget LLM at sub-300ms total is the better experience trade-off.
§Retell vs Bland vs Vapi: Pricing Summary
| Platform | Headline rate | All-in typical | Monthly minimum | Strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retell AI | $0.07/min bundled | $0.085-$0.20/min | None | Best bundle value; lowest latency |
| Vapi | $0.05/min platform | $0.25-$0.33/min | None | Best component flexibility |
| Bland AI | $0.09-$0.14/min | $0.10-$0.30/min | Plan-based | Built-in dialer + sequencing |
| Synthflow | $375-$900/mo + $0.08/min | $0.08-$0.23/min | Plan-based | No-code friendly; flat plans |
For pure cost-per-minute on sales workloads, Retell wins on most realistic configurations. The full head-to-head is at Vapi vs Retell.