Retell AI Pricing Explained (2026): What a Minute Really Costs
Retell AI has no platform fee and no contract. New accounts get $10 in free credits, and each minute a voice agent runs costs Retell's $0.055 voice infrastructure fee plus the voice, language model and phone line you pick. Retell's own headline range is $0.07 to $0.31 a minute. Every figure below is from retellai.com/pricing and Retell's docs, read October 21, 2026.
A Retell minute has four parts: 5.5¢ of infrastructure, a voice, an LLM and the phone line. The LLM you pick moves the bill the most, so choose it first and test a few real calls before you scale.
Retell AI's $0.07–$0.31 a minute depends on four choices. Here's every line on a Retell minute (infrastructure, voice, LLM, phone), what 500 to 5,000 minutes a month comes to on Retell's own rates, and the add-ons, concurrency and billing rules that change the total.
What you pay for on every Retell AI minute
Retell voice infrastructure
$0.055/min
Retell's own charge for every minute a voice agent runs, deducted from prepaid credits.
Voice (text-to-speech)
$0.015–$0.10/min
$0.015 for Retell platform, Minimax, Fish, Cartesia, OpenAI and Inworld voices. ElevenLabs voices cost more: Flash $0.04, Multilingual v2 $0.06, v3 Conversational and v4 Turbo $0.08, v3 and v4 $0.10.
Language model
$0.064–$0.16/min
Retell's four recommended models on the standard tier: GPT 5.6 Terra and Claude 5 Sonnet $0.064, GPT 5.4 $0.080, GPT 5.5 $0.16. Other models run from $0.0016 (GPT 5 nano) to $0.384 (GPT 6.1 Sol Ultrafast), and Fast Tier costs more.
Phone line
$0–$0.015/min
No charge on your own SIP trunk or custom telephony. Calls on Retell's Twilio or Telnyx numbers are $0.015/min for the US (Retell lists other countries on its page).
Total per minute
about 13.4¢ to 33.0¢
What a month costs on Retell AI’s own numbers
- 500 min/month$67–$165
- 1,000 min/month$134–$330
- 2,500 min/month$335–$825
- 5,000 min/month$670–$1,650
Retell's own headline range is $0.07–$0.31 a minute across all its voice and LLM choices. These rows use its four recommended LLMs, with your own telephony at the low end and a Retell number at the high end, so a smaller model brings the total down and Fast Tier or a premium model pushes it up. They leave out add-ons, extra concurrency and phone numbers ($2 a month each). Want your own volume and carrier? Try the cost calculator.
Packages and add-ons
Pay as you go
$0 platform fee
$10 in free trial credits (once per email address), full platform access, 20 concurrent calls, HIPAA with a BAA you can self-sign at no extra fee, community and email support. Usage comes out of prepaid credits, which never expire but aren't refundable.
Enterprise
Custom pricing
Volume pricing, custom concurrency starting at 50+ calls, a dedicated stable server and implementation support as add-ons, SSO, role-based access control, custom MSA, DPA and BAA, 24/7 support with a dedicated portal and a named account manager.
Monthly items
From $2/month
Retell phone numbers $2/month each (no charge for your own numbers), verified phone numbers $10/month, Retell SMS $20/month, extra concurrency $8 per call a month above 20, knowledge bases $8/month each beyond the 10 free. Billed to your card at the end of the month, not from credits.
Per-call add-ons
From +$0.005/min
Knowledge base +$0.005/min, advanced denoising +$0.005/min, safety guardrails +$0.005/min, PII removal +$0.01/min, AI quality assurance $0.10/min after the first 100 minutes free. Batch calls +$0.005 per dial, branded caller ID +$0.10 per outbound call, SMS $0.01 per message.
Concurrency burst
+$0.10/min
Optional. Calls above your concurrency limit go through instead of being turned away, with $0.10/min added for the whole call. Burst reaches 3× your limit or your limit + 300, whichever is lower (Retell docs).
How it compares on published pricing
Retell AI- Starting price
- $0 platform fee; $0.07–$0.31/min for voice agents
- Best for
- Teams that want a no-code flow builder plus an API with itemized per-minute pricing
Vapi- Starting price
- $0 to start; $0.05/min Vapi hosting, models billed pass-through at cost
- Best for
- Developers who want to choose their own LLM, transcriber, voice and telephony provider
Bland AI- Starting price
- $0.14/min, $0 platform fee
- Best for
- Teams that want one flat per-minute price with no model pass-through bills
ElevenLabs Agents- Starting price
- Agents: $0.08 per minute
- Best for
- Builders who want ElevenLabs' voices and speech models in one agent pipeline
Ultravox- Starting price
- $0.05/min (first 30 min free)
- Best for
- Developers wanting a speech-native model at a flat per-minute rate
Synthflow- Starting price
- Enterprise contracts from $30,000/year
- Best for
- Businesses wanting a no-code platform on an annual enterprise contract
Cozzo tested: reply time on real phone calls
Median time from the end of the caller’s speech to the agent’s first reply, on each vendor’s default model and voice (Oct 20, 2026). Places are out of 8 platforms tested.
- Retell AI: 1.04 s (tied 1 of 8, 11 calls)
- ElevenLabs Agents: 1.04 s (tied 1 of 8, 11 calls)
- Ultravox: 1.18 s (3 of 8, 11 calls)
- Vapi: 1.56 s (7 of 8, 11 calls)
- Bland AI: 1.86 s (8 of 8, 11 calls)
Not tested yet: Synthflow.
See the full phone-call benchmark → Small samples, so treat close numbers as ties.
What to check before you choose
- Choose the LLM first. Retell's recommended models run from $0.064 to $0.16 a minute, so on 1,000 minutes the LLM alone is $64 to $160. Smaller models cost far less (GPT 5 mini $0.008, Gemini 3.0 Flash $0.016); test them on your real calls before you switch.
- Voices are cheap until they're ElevenLabs. Most voice families are $0.015 a minute; ElevenLabs runs $0.04 to $0.10. On 1,000 minutes, an ElevenLabs v4 voice instead of a Retell platform voice adds $85.
- Long prompts cost more. Retell's docs say prompts over 4,000 tokens (including the transcript, tools and knowledge base results) scale the billed time: 4,800 tokens bills a 60-second call as 72 seconds. Calls under 10 seconds with a dynamic AI-first greeting are billed as 10 seconds.
- Know what's billed. Retell bills to the second with no rounding per call, and silence and hold time count. After a transfer only the phone fee continues, failed calls cost nothing, and voicemail is billed only while the agent is on the line.
- Healthcare? Retell's pricing page shows HIPAA / BAA on pay as you go, and its docs say the BAA is self-signed with no extra fee. Vapi lists HIPAA-eligible handling as a $2,000 a month add-on.
- Compare whole minutes, not headline rates. Vapi's calculator puts its default stack at about 8.2 to 12.9¢ a minute before carrier fees, Bland AI's Start plan is $0.14 a minute with the LLM and voices included (phone billed separately), ElevenLabs Agents is $0.08 a minute plus the LLM, and Ultravox is a flat $0.05 a minute including its model. Our phone-call benchmark adds how quickly each one replied.
Questions people ask
How much does Retell AI cost per minute?
Retell lists $0.07 to $0.31 a minute for voice agents. Each minute is its $0.055 voice infrastructure fee plus your voice ($0.015 for most voices, up to $0.10 for ElevenLabs), your LLM and, on Retell's numbers, $0.015 for US calls. With Retell's recommended LLMs that comes to about 13.4¢ to 33¢ a minute.
Is Retell AI free to start?
Yes. There's no platform fee or contract, and new accounts get $10 in free trial credits, once per email address. After that you buy prepaid credits, which never expire. Every account includes 20 concurrent calls.
Does Retell charge a monthly fee?
Not for the platform. Some items are monthly: Retell phone numbers are $2 a month each, extra concurrency is $8 per call a month above the 20 included, knowledge bases beyond the 10 free are $8 a month each, and Retell SMS is $20 a month. These go on your card at the end of the month.
How does Retell count minutes?
Each call is tracked to the second and charged on your total minutes, with no rounding up per call. Silence and hold time are billed because transcription keeps listening, failed calls aren't, and after a transfer only the phone fee continues.
Does Retell AI support HIPAA?
Yes. Retell's pricing page shows HIPAA / BAA on pay as you go, and its docs say it is HIPAA compliant and SOC 2 Type 1 and 2 certified, with a BAA you self-sign at no extra fee before sending any patient data. Enterprise plans can get a custom BAA.
What happens when I go over 20 concurrent calls?
You can buy more at $8 per call a month, or turn on concurrency burst, which lets extra calls through for an added $0.10 a minute on the whole call. Without either, new inbound calls wait about 40 seconds for a free slot, then go to your fallback number if you set one.
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Prices from vendors' official pricing pages, checked October 21, 2026. Not sponsored; order isn't a ranking.