Ultravox Alternatives Compared (2026)
Ultravox's pricing page now says it has been acquired by Inworld, and its prices haven't changed: $0.05 a minute for its speech-native realtime model after 30 free minutes, SIP at 0.5¢ a minute, a hard cap of 5 concurrent calls on pay as you go, and no hard cap on the $100/mo Pro plan (SIP 0.48¢ a minute). If you want a second option ready, the alternatives below bill differently: other speech-to-speech models priced per token (OpenAI's gpt-realtime-2.1 and gpt-realtime-2.1-mini, Google's Gemini 3.8 Live), platforms where you pick each model (Vapi's $0.05/min hosting fee with providers billed at cost, Retell's $0.07–$0.31/min), ElevenLabs Agents at $0.08/min plus the LLM, and LiveKit's open-source agents framework with 1,000 free agent session minutes on LiveKit Cloud. Prices are from each vendor's own pricing page.
Ultravox's $0.05 a minute already includes its speech model. Before you compare, check whether the other price covers the whole call or just one piece of it.
OpenAI Realtime, Gemini Live, Vapi, Retell AI, ElevenLabs Agents and LiveKit Agents compared with Ultravox on published pricing, now that Ultravox says it has been acquired by Inworld.
OpenAI Realtime API- Starting price
- gpt-realtime-2.1-mini: audio $10 in / $20 out per 1M tokens
- Best for
- Developers building speech-to-speech voice agents directly on OpenAI models
Gemini Live API- Starting price
- Free tier; paid audio ~$0.005/min in, ~$0.018/min out (Gemini 3.8 Live)
- Best for
- Developers who want a realtime speech-to-speech model from Google
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
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
ElevenLabs Agents- Starting price
- Agents: $0.08 per minute
- Best for
- Builders who want ElevenLabs' voices and speech models in one agent pipeline
LiveKit Agents- Starting price
- Free; Ship from $50/mo
- Best for
- Developers building on open-source realtime infrastructure
What to check before you choose
- Compare the whole call, not the headline rate. Ultravox's $0.05/min includes its model. Vapi's $0.05/min is only the hosting fee: transcriber, LLM and voice are billed on top, and Vapi's own calculator estimates about $82–$129 for 1,000 minutes with Deepgram, OpenAI and ElevenLabs. Retell lists $0.07–$0.31/min depending on the voice, LLM and telephony you choose.
- Speech-to-speech alternatives are priced per token. Google publishes per-minute equivalents for Gemini 3.8 Live on its paid tier: about $0.005 a minute of audio in and $0.018 a minute out. OpenAI lists gpt-realtime-2.1-mini at $10 per 1M audio tokens in and $20 out, and gpt-realtime-2.1 at $32 in and $64 out, with no per-minute figure, so run a few of your own calls to see what a minute costs.
- OpenAI also sells GPT-Live 1 voice sessions at $0.05 a minute, billed per second, but backend model and tool usage are charged on top, so it isn't all-in like Ultravox's rate.
- Check concurrency before launch day. Ultravox's pay as you go stops at 5 concurrent calls (Pro removes the hard cap for $100/mo); Vapi starts at 4 (its $29/mo Core package raises that to 10); Retell includes 20 on pay as you go; LiveKit Cloud's free Build plan allows 5 concurrent agent sessions and Ship (from $50/mo) allows 20.
- Keep real callers off free tiers that train on your data. Google marks Gemini's free tier "used to improve our products"; its paid tier isn't.
- Want to host it yourself? LiveKit Agents is open source. On LiveKit Cloud, Build is free with 1,000 agent session minutes and Ship starts at $50/mo with 5,000, then $0.01 a minute. Its turn-detection and adaptive-interruption models are free for agents hosted on LiveKit Cloud; self-hosted agents get a development allowance, then pay $0.50 and $1.20 per 1,000 requests on Ship and Scale.
- Try before you switch: Ultravox's first 30 minutes are free, Vapi gives $5 in credits, Retell $10, ElevenLabs' free plan includes 15 agent minutes, and LiveKit's Build plan includes $2.50 of inference credits (about 50 minutes, LiveKit says).
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Prices from vendors' official pricing pages, checked October 20, 2026. Not sponsored; order isn't a ranking.