ElevenLabs vs Vapi

A side-by-side look at pricing, capabilities, pros, cons, and our editorial scores.

	ElevenLabs Audio	Vapi Audio
Tagline	The gold standard for AI voice cloning and TTS.	Developer platform for building, deploying, and scaling production voice AI agents
Category	Audio	Audio
Pricing	Freemium· Free 10k chars/mo; from $5/mo Starter; up to $1320/mo Scale	Freemium· Build (usage-based): $0.05/min platform fee, $0.005/msg SMS/chat, 10 concurrent lines free then $10/line/mo, model/STT/TTS costs passed through at cost. Scale: custom annual contract with volume pricing. Add-ons: HIPAA compliance $2,000/mo, Zero Data Retention $1,000/mo.
Model	ElevenLabs Multilingual v2	Model-agnostic: OpenAI GPT-4o, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Groq, DeepSeek, Llama; STT/TTS via Deepgram, ElevenLabs, PlayHT, Cartesia, Azure
Editorial score	9.4 / 10	—
Use cases	TTSvoice cloningaudiobooksdubbing	AI phone receptionistOutbound lead qualification callsAppointment scheduling and remindersVoice-based customer supportOrder taking and reservationsIVR replacementVoice-driven surveys and market researchDebt collection and payment remindersInsurance intake callsVoice interface for internal tools
Pros	Best-in-class voice quality Hundreds of voices + cloning Multilingual Strong API	Model-agnostic stack lets you swap LLM, STT, and TTS providers per assistant and bring your own API keys Handles the real-time voice plumbing (interruption detection, endpointing, barge-in, backchanneling) that is painful to build from scratch First-class REST API and SDKs across Node, Python, Web, iOS, Android, Flutter, and React Native Built-in telephony: provisions phone numbers, supports SIP trunks, and covers inbound and outbound calls Tool/function calling and 25+ prebuilt integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, Make, Cal.com, etc.) for real workflows Enterprise compliance path: SOC 2, HIPAA (add-on), PCI, SSO, RBAC, Zero Data Retention available Transparent per-minute platform fee with model costs passed through at cost rather than marked up opaquely
Cons	Pro features are pricey Voice clone abuse policy needs care	Total cost is hard to predict because platform fee, LLM, STT, TTS, and telephony are billed separately and stack up HIPAA compliance and Zero Data Retention are paid add-ons ($2,000/mo and $1,000/mo) rather than included Latency and voice naturalness ultimately depend on the third-party providers you choose, not Vapi itself Build plan retains call history only 14 days and chat history 30 days, so long-term analytics require your own pipeline Not a no-code tool — meaningful agents still require prompt engineering, tool wiring, and webhook code Concurrency beyond 10 lines costs $10/line/month, which adds up for high-volume outbound campaigns
Website	elevenlabs.io	vapi.ai

Pick ElevenLabs if

✅ Best-in-class voice quality
✅ Hundreds of voices + cloning
✅ Multilingual
✅ Strong API

Pick Vapi if

✅ Model-agnostic stack lets you swap LLM, STT, and TTS providers per assistant and bring your own API keys
✅ Handles the real-time voice plumbing (interruption detection, endpointing, barge-in, backchanneling) that is painful to build from scratch
✅ First-class REST API and SDKs across Node, Python, Web, iOS, Android, Flutter, and React Native
✅ Built-in telephony: provisions phone numbers, supports SIP trunks, and covers inbound and outbound calls

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