Retell vs Bland
Retell AI vs Bland AI for phone agents: component pricing vs an all-in per-minute rate, concurrency limits, telephony options and compliance.
| Retell AI | Bland AI | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Voice AI platform for phone agents with low-latency conversation and telephony integrations. | Platform for building and running AI phone agents for outbound and inbound calling. |
| Type | platform | platform |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Categories | Voice Agent Platforms | Voice Agent Platforms |
| Install | — | — |
| Website | www.retellai.com | www.bland.ai |
Both are listed under Voice Agent Platforms, so they can substitute for each other. Run the same test script — a real phone call, interruptions, a tool call — through both before choosing. Vendor claims change; check pricing on their sites.
Key differences
How the per-minute price is built
Retell prices by component: its voice infrastructure ($0.055/min on its pricing page) plus the LLM, TTS voice and telephony you choose, listed overall as $0.07 to $0.31 per minute. Bland quotes one talk-time rate that includes the LLM, speech-to-text and text-to-speech: $0.14/min on its Start plan (no platform fee) or $0.12/min on Build ($299/month platform fee). Telephony is billed separately.
Model and voice choice
Retell lists a menu of LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, plus speech-to-speech options, and voices from its own platform, ElevenLabs, Cartesia, OpenAI and others, each with its own per-minute price. Bland bundles the model and voices into its rate, so there are no token charges but fewer cost lines to tune.
Concurrency and limits
Retell includes 20 concurrent calls, then charges $8 per extra concurrent call per month. Bland's Start plan allows 10 concurrent calls and 100 calls a day; Build raises that to 50 concurrent calls and 2,000 calls a day; Enterprise is sized to volume.
Telephony
Both work with your own carrier. Retell does not charge telephony for SIP trunking or custom telephony and sells its own numbers at $2/month. Bland supports your Twilio account or SIP trunks, or its built-in Twilio at pass-through cost, and charges a separate rate for transferred minutes ($0.05/min on Start).
Compliance
Both advertise SOC 2 and HIPAA with a BAA. Retell lists HIPAA/BAA, SSO and custom DPAs on Enterprise. Bland lists BAA, SSO and data residency on Enterprise, plus on-prem/VPC deployment.
Which to shortlist
If you want to choose and swap the LLM and voice per agent and see each cost line, Retell's component pricing is easier to reason about. If you want one predictable AI rate per minute and fewer moving parts, Bland's bundle is simpler. Price the same call script on both, including telephony and transfers, before committing.