Vapi alternatives

Reachkit makes a cold email tool, not a voice platform, so it isn’t on this list. Every price here was checked in October 2026 against each vendor’s own pages and docs.

Vapi gives developers a lot of control: you pick the transcriber, the model, the voice and the carrier, bring your own keys if you like, and pay those providers at cost. People leave when that control costs more time or money than it saves them. The right pick depends on why you’re leaving:

• Same kind of platform, more calls at once: Retell AI, with 20 concurrent calls included.
• One per-minute rate with the model included: Bland, at $0.14 a minute with no platform fee, or $0.12 on its $299 plan.
• Calling as one part of a bigger set of sales agents: Relevance AI.
• An AI receptionist without writing code: Lindy.
• Reps calling inside email and LinkedIn sequences: Reply.io.
• An AI SDR on email, with humans on the phone: Artisan.
• A large sales team on one contract: Outreach.

If you’re still weighing Vapi itself, the Vapi profile has its full pricing.

Retell AI is the closest swap: a platform for building AI voice agents that answer and place phone calls, with chat and SMS agents alongside. It fits teams that like how Vapi works but want more calls running at once and a builder that needs less code.

Price (October 2026): pay as you go, with no platform fee and no seats. A minute is the sum of its parts: $0.055 for Retell’s voice infrastructure, $0.015 for one of its standard voices, the model’s own rate, and $0.015 for US calls over a Retell number. The headline range is $0.07 to $0.31 a minute, and the calculator’s default lands at $0.11 before telephony. New accounts get $10 of credits once; numbers are $2 a month.

Strengths:

• The first 20 concurrent calls are free, then $8 a month per extra line.
• A drag-and-drop conversation flow builder, plus Conductor, an AI assistant that builds agents and proposes edits for you to approve.
• Two-way contact sync with Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics 365, GoHighLevel and Zoho, set up inside Retell, and an MCP server. MCP is a standard way for AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to use other apps.

Drawbacks: prompts over 4,000 tokens, counting the instructions, tools, knowledge base and conversation so far, stretch the billed duration in proportion, and silence and hold time are billed. Test calls cost the same as live ones. Pay-as-you-go support is community and email; 24/7 support is Enterprise.

Versus Vapi: both price by component, but Vapi passes provider costs through at cost and adds $0.05, while Retell charges $0.055 and sets its own rates for models, voices and telephony. See the Retell AI profile.

Bland is an enterprise voice AI platform that runs on its own speech recognition, language model and voice instead of third-party ones. It fits teams that want a single per-minute price rather than adding up four providers.

Price (October 2026): Start has no platform fee and charges $0.14 a minute, capped at 10 calls at once and 100 calls a day. Build is $299 a month plus $0.12 a minute, with 50 concurrent calls and 2,000 a day. The rate includes the model, speech-to-text and the voice, with “No token charges”. Numbers are $15 a month, and outbound attempts on Bland’s telephony carry a $0.015 minimum charge. Bland’s billing docs also list a $499 Scale plan that its pricing page doesn’t show. On telephony its pages disagree: the homepage says the rate covers it, the pricing page says it’s billed separately.

Strengths:

• One rate is easier to forecast. By our math, 5,000 minutes on Build comes to $899 a month before numbers and transfers.
• Paperwork for regulated buyers: SOC 2 Type I and II, HIPAA-eligible with a BAA on Enterprise, PCI DSS, and FedRAMP 20x Class A since September 2026.

Drawbacks: Bland offers no choice of outside models. The pricing page lists SMS, warm transfers and guardrails as Enterprise-only. Self-serve rates rose from $0.09 to $0.12 (Build) and $0.14 (Start) a minute in December 2025, and public reviews are scarce (about 11 on G2).

Versus Vapi: the opposite bet. Vapi lets you choose every component and bring your own keys; Bland chooses for you and folds it into one price. See the Bland profile.

Relevance AI is a platform for building AI agents and multi-agent “Workforces” for sales, support and operations, and calling agents are one of the things it builds. It fits a team that used Vapi for one step of a sales process and would rather build the research, enrichment and follow-up agents in the same place.

Price (October 2026): the public pricing page shows only Enterprise, priced by sales. Relevance AI’s docs list Pro at $29 a month ($19 billed yearly) and Team at $349 ($234 yearly). Calling and Meeting agents need Team or Enterprise, and per-minute call costs aren’t published. Usage runs on two meters: Actions, one per tool run with failed runs included, and Vendor Credits for model costs. Extra Actions cost $80 per 1,000.

Strengths:

• Model costs pass through with no markup, and every plan can use its own model API keys.
• Open to build on: an API, a JavaScript SDK and a hosted MCP server that works with Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor.

Drawbacks: two meters make the monthly bill hard to predict, and several G2 reviewers call it expensive. The free plan is retired, and while the docs describe upgrading to Pro or Team in the app, the public pricing page offers only a sales call. G2 holds only about 20 reviews.

Versus Vapi: Vapi goes deep on one call: transcriber, voice, carrier, concurrency. Relevance AI goes wide across a sales process, with calling as one agent type among many. See the Relevance AI profile.

Lindy is an AI assistant that works in Slack, email and iMessage, priced per seat. One of its ready-made roles is a receptionist that answers calls, books appointments and texts confirmations. It fits a small business that tried Vapi for a phone line and has nobody to wire up providers.

Price (October 2026): plans start at $29.99 per user for 3,000 credits. For part of October, Lindy’s pricing page also showed a $49.99 entry for 5,000 credits. Tiers go up to $299.99 per user. Every active user is billed, including someone who only mentions Lindy once in Slack. A trial gives $50 of credits for 7 days. Lindy doesn’t publish what a phone minute costs in credits or what a number costs.

Strengths:

• Set up in plain English with no API keys, and for team work in Slack, Lindy waits for a named approver before emails, docs or posts go out.
• Lindy’s current docs say that when credits run out, tasks pause until the next cycle or a top-up instead of running up an overage.

Drawbacks: a task can use anywhere from 2 to 2,500 credits, so costs are hard to predict, and burned credits are the main theme of its Trustpilot reviews (about 40, mostly one-star). The product has changed shape several times since 2024, and the team experience depends on Slack.

Versus Vapi: Lindy gives up Vapi’s control over models, voices and carriers in exchange for a setup that needs no developer. See the Lindy profile.

Reply.io is a sales engagement platform whose sequences mix email, LinkedIn, phone calls and SMS, with an AI SDR called Jason sold separately. It fits sales teams that tried Vapi for outbound calls and decided a person should be on the line, with software lining up who to call and when.

Price (October 2026): Multichannel costs $99 per user a month, or $89 billed yearly, with a LinkedIn seat and Calls & SMS for each user. On the email-only plans, Calls & SMS is an extra $29 a month. Number rental, calls, SMS and phone validation come out of a prepaid wallet. Jason starts at $500 a month billed yearly ($800 monthly). There’s a 14-day trial and no free plan.

Strengths:

• Call steps run inside the same sequences as email and LinkedIn steps, with conditional branches, and a Power Dialer announced on October 6, 2026 works through call lists.
• An official MCP server with 70 tools, plus a REST API and webhooks.

Drawbacks: the per-user price adds up as the team grows, and extra mailbox seats are $29 each. Fees are non-refundable under its terms.

Versus Vapi: Vapi automates the conversation itself. Reply.io automates everything around a call your rep makes. See the Reply.io profile or Reply.io vs Instantly.

Artisan sells Ava, an AI BDR that finds leads, writes and sends email, handles replies and books meetings, with a built-in dialer for your reps. It fits a team that wanted AI to start sales conversations and is happy for that AI to work over email while people take the calls.

Price (October 2026): the main pricing tab is quote-only. The Startups tab lists Intern at $250 a month billed yearly or $280 monthly for 10,000 credits (about 500 leads), and Employee at $600 or $660 for 25,000. The human dialer is $67 per seat a month yearly or $75 monthly. Mailboxes and phone numbers are billed on top at prices Artisan doesn’t publish. A free tier has 300 credits and no campaigns.

Strengths:

• Contact data, buying signals and website-visitor identification are built in, so there’s no separate data contract.
• Replies are handled for you, with qualifying conditions, routing and booking through your own calendar link.

Drawbacks: Artisan’s terms auto-renew and make purchases non-refundable, while one of its comparison pages says “cancel anytime”. Credits per plan were cut during 2026. Reviewers on Trustpilot and Reddit report few positive replies, and one Reddit user called the copy “obviously AI written”.

Versus Vapi: Artisan’s own page says “Ava cannot legally make calls”, so the AI writes and your reps dial. With Vapi, the AI is the one on the phone. See the Artisan profile.

Outreach is a sales engagement platform for B2B teams: sequences, a dialer called Outreach Voice, call recording and coaching, AI agents and forecasting. It fits a larger sales team moving voice work back to reps, with AI handling research and prep around the calls.

Price (October 2026): quote only, priced per seat plus AI credits. Its one public list price is an AWS Marketplace listing under an older package name, at $108,000 a year for 50 seats, about $180 per seat a month, and Vendr puts the median contract at $45,600 a year (February 2026). Credits used past what you bought cost $1.40 each. Outreach Voice plans, sold per user, include 1,000 minutes a month (standard) or unlimited calling within reasonable use (premium).

Strengths:

• One contract covers prospecting, calls, meeting recordings, deals and forecasts, with deep Salesforce sync.
• An MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot, and a 4.3 on G2 from about 3,570 reviews.

Drawbacks: standard terms make orders prepaid and non-cancelable, with yearly auto-renewal. TrustRadius reviewers describe the interface as cluttered, and several Trustpilot reviews from 2023 to 2025 complain about support. There’s no free plan or trial.

Versus Vapi: Outreach’s agents research accounts and prep meetings, and its AI scores calls for coaching; the calls themselves go through people. See the Outreach profile.

Start from the reason you’re leaving, then test with real calls before you move any numbers.

• The bill. Price the same month of calls on Retell AI (line items) and Bland (one rate). If 4 concurrent calls was the real limit, Vapi’s $29 Core package raises it to 10, which may cost less than switching.
• Nobody writes code. Lindy for a receptionist; Relevance AI if someone on the team can build agents in a visual editor.
• Lag or prompt drift. Run the same script on two platforms. Reviews can’t tell you how your agent will sound on your calls.
• Cold outbound calls. US consent rules make AI cold calling risky, so Reply.io, Outreach or Artisan with people on the phone is the safer setup.
• You still want every knob. If picking each provider and bringing your own keys is the point, Vapi is built around exactly that.

One practical note: free Vapi numbers can’t be ported out, so callers who know one will need a new number.

Vapi is a good tool for developers who want to choose every part of a voice agent, and the bill reflects that: the $0.05 is where the cost starts, not where it ends. If your team doesn’t want to manage providers, Retell AI or Bland will get you to a working agent with fewer decisions. Test both on your own calls.

If you were using a voice agent on cold lists, I’d change the plan rather than the platform. Point the agent at people who asked to talk, and start that first conversation another way; for me that’s cold email, which is what Reachkit does. More detail is in the Vapi, Retell AI and Bland profiles.