Voice AI technology has evolved from experimental to essential. As more companies seek to automate customer interactions and streamline operations, two platforms have emerged as leaders in the AI voice agent space: Retell AI and PolyAI. But which solution truly delivers the flexibility, performance, and value that modern enterprises need?
This in-depth comparison cuts through marketing jargon to examine what each platform actually offers, where they excel, and which might be the better fit for your organization's voice automation needs. If you're evaluating AI voice apps for your business, this analysis will help you make an informed decision based on capabilities, pricing, and enterprise readiness.
Before diving into specific features and capabilities, it's essential to understand the fundamental difference in how these Poly and Retell approach voice AI.
PolyAI: The Enterprise Voice Assistant Specialist
PolyAI positions itself as a specialized voice agent provider that builds custom voice assistants for customers rather than offering a platform for self-development. Since its founding in 2017, PolyAI has established itself with enterprise-grade voice assistants for customer service primarily.
The company takes a managed service approach, working directly with clients to design, build, and implement voice assistants that integrate with their existing systems. This concierge-level service includes creating custom voice personas, designing conversation flows, training on company-specific knowledge, and handling integrations with backend systems.
PolyAI's team of experts leads the development process, collaborating with clients to create a voice assistant that embodies their brand and meets their specific requirements. Once the solution is made, clients can access an agent studio that allows for limited building and customization options. The company typically co-creates the agent with the client and produces AI voice assistants that handle only 50% of calls successfully.
Retell AI: Enterprise Ready, Figma Style Voice AI Agent Builder Platform
In contrast, Retell AI (YC-incubated in 2023) offers a Figma style AI voice agent builder platform that empowers small teams and enterprises alike to build, test, deploy, and monitor their own voice agents. The company provides the tools, infrastructure, and customizability for technical and non-technical teams to create custom voice experiences without relying on external experts for implementation.
Retell's low-code, drag and drop building approach enables rapid experimentation and iteration, allowing businesses to configure and deploy voice agents in minutes to a couple of days. This self-service model puts control in the hands of the client's team, making it possible to quickly adjust and optimize voice agents as needs evolve.
This fundamental difference in philosophy, managed service versus self-service platform, represents a key decision point for organizations evaluating these solutions. Conversational AI solutions must be carefully evaluated to ensure the longevity and flexibility required to remain competitive in today's automation centric business environment.
Both Retell AI and PolyAI offer conversational AI voice agents, but their approaches to intelligence and control differ significantly.
Retell AI provides a low-code platform that puts you in control of your AI's brain. The platform provides the most cutting edge LLMs, allowing you to choose and switch between various models, including your custom LLM, giving you the flexibility to optimize cost versus accuracy based on your specific use case. Proprietary custom LLM capability is rare in the industry and allows for greater customization of your voice agent's intelligence.
Retell's agents maintain context throughout conversations using advanced LLM capabilities, enabling them to handle complex conversation naturally. The platform also features knowledge base syncing that automatically updates your AI with content from websites or documents, keeping information current without manual reprogramming.
PolyAI, in contrast, utilizes a proprietary dialogue management system combined with their own NLU (natural language understanding) models. NPL and NLU models, compared to Retell's LLM dialogue management, are a relatively outdated technology that can inhibit agents efficiency and quality, as LLMs continue to advance at a rapid pace. While Poly's in-house dialogue management approach delivers consistent conversational quality, it limits your ability to leverage the latest advances in AI or customize the underlying intelligence. PolyAI's system excels at understanding intent without predefined lists, but you're locked into their technology stack rather than having the freedom to experiment with different AI models and conversation flows.
For businesses that want granular control over their voice agent's intelligence and the ability to quickly adapt with the newest, evolving AI capabilities, Retell AI offers significantly more flexibility and customization options.
When it comes to managing calls at scale, both platforms offer robust capabilities, but with different strengths.
Retell AI stands out with its comprehensive call handling features for both inbound and outbound scenarios. The platform offers batch calling with virtually no concurrency limits, making it ideal for large outbound call campaigns like lead qualification, sales follow-ups, and appointment reminders. Its Branded Caller ID feature displays your company name on recipients' phones, improving answer rates and creating a professional impression.
Retell also provides warm transfer capabilities, allowing the AI to seamlessly hand off calls to human agents when needed, complete with full conversation context. The platform connects to telephony via SIP trunking with out-of-box connectors for providers like Twilio, Vonage, and Telnyx, making it easy to use existing phone numbers and carrier services.
PolyAI has built its reputation on handling complex inbound customer service calls for large enterprises. Its platform integrates with major contact center platforms like Genesys, Cisco, and Avaya, which is valuable for organizations with established call center infrastructure.
However, PolyAI's capabilities for outbound calling are less emphasized in their marketing and feature set. There is absolutely no open information about call concurrency or batch calling capabilities leaving it ambiguous as to whether the platform can handle multi-call campaigns or even multiple calls at once.
For organizations looking for versatility in handling both inbound and outbound calls with transparent capabilities to call at scale, Retell AI delivers a more comprehensive telephony solution.
The ability to tailor voice agents to your specific business needs is crucial for successful deployment and adoption, with both platforms offer drastically different customizability in the agent building suite.
Retell AI emphasizes flexibility across its entire platform. Beyond LLM selection, Retell provides an intuitive web agent builder for designing call scripts and logic without coding knowledge. For more technical teams, the Voice AI API and software development kits allow for deep customization and integration with existing systems.
The platform shines with its extensive integration capabilities. Retell connects to scheduling tools (like Cal.com), automation services (Make, n8n), and can be extended via webhooks and API calls to interact with virtually any business system. This modular approach means you can build voice agents that seamlessly interface with your CRM, ticketing system, or proprietary databases.
Combined with voice AI integrations from ElevenLabs, PlayHT, and OpenAI, agents built on Retell AI have a large selection of cutting edge AI voices and models that maintain brand voice while speaking naturally.
PolyAI takes a more managed approach to customization. The company typically co-creates the agent with the client, including designing a custom "on-brand" voice persona. While this ensures quality, it means less direct control over the voice agent's development and iteration. PolyAI does integrate deeply with enterprise systems, but these integrations are usually implemented as part of their service rather than tools for clients to configure themselves.
This fundamental difference between self-service flexibility and managed implementation means a world of difference for businesses that need their AI agents as agile and dynamic as their busines. Retell empowers your team to experiment, iterate, and adapt quickly, while PolyAI offers a more guided experience that may require their involvement for significant changes.
For businesses that value agility and want to maintain control over their voice agent's evolution, Retell AI's customization approach offers greater autonomy and adaptability.
Perhaps the starkest contrast between these platforms lies in their pricing models.
Retell AI offers transparent, published pricing that follows a pure usage-based model with no platform licensing fees. You pay only for the resources and minutes consumed:
Additional features like knowledge bases, branded caller ID, and extra concurrency have modest, clearly defined costs. New users receive $10 free credit (about 60 minutes of call time) to experiment without commitment. For enterprises with higher volumes, Retell offers volume discounts, along with increased concurrency limits.
PolyAI uses a usage-based pricing model but keeps exact numbers private. The company states that ongoing use of its voice assistant is charged on a per-minute basis, inclusive of support and maintenance. However, PolyAI does not publish standard rates, rather interested customers must request a demo and discuss pricing with sales.
This lack of transparency makes it difficult to budget or compare costs without engaging in a sales process. Industry insights suggest PolyAI's enterprise-focused model comes with correspondingly higher price points, appropriate for large deployments, but potentially prohibitive for smaller operations or pilots.
For organizations that value predictable costs and the ability to start small and scale gradually, Retell AI's transparent pricing model offers significant advantages in financial planning and ROI assessment.
Both platforms have addressed the enterprise requirements for security, compliance, and reliability, though with different emphases.
Retell AI demonstrates its enterprise readiness with:
The platform has proven its capabilities with clients like Gifthealth (45-50% call automation) and Everise (65% containment of internal IT helpdesk calls), demonstrating effectiveness across various industries.
PolyAI has established credibility with major enterprise deployments, offering:
PolyAI's longer market presence has allowed it to build an impressive list of enterprise references, including Marriott International, PG&E, Caesars Entertainment, and major financial institutions. Their track record shows consistent performance improvements for clients, with automation rates of 30-70% depending on use case complexity.
While both platforms offer enterprise-grade security and reliability, Retell AI's greater transparency about uptime commitments and technical specifications gives operations teams clearer expectations for performance and availability.
Retell AI is ideal for:
PolyAI may be better suited for:
Prefer a white glove solution?
Don't sacrifice flexibility! For enterprise teams Retell AI offers a comprehensive white glove solution to automate call operations with Retell. It takes roughly 4 weeks for development and deployment with an additional 4 weeks for quality assessment and refinement. Contact sales to find out if Retell's white glove solution is right for your team.
For SMB and small teams, Retell AI offers certified partners that will build your businesses call automation workflow on Retell, giving you the custom service you need without losing flexibility for the future.
While PolyAI has built a strong reputation serving large enterprises, Retell AI has quickly gained traction with over 3,000 businesses adopting the platform. The reasons for this rapid growth are clear:
Companies like Gifthealth and Everise have achieved impressive results with Retell, with automation rates of 45-65% and significant operational savings. One client saw a 25% increase in call success rates compared to human agents after implementing Retell, and a 3× boost in profitability per lead in a sales context.
Whether you’re scaling support, qualifying leads, or handling high call volume, this tool helps you visualize the real impact Retell AI's phone agents can have on your bottom line. Try it now and see what automation could unlock for your business and team.
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The voice AI landscape continues to evolve rapidly, making flexibility and adaptability crucial factors in platform selection. Retell AI delivers the perfect combination of enterprise reliability and innovative agility—allowing you to build voice agents that meet today's needs while easily evolving for tomorrow's challenges.
With transparent pricing, powerful customization options, and proven performance, Retell AI enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of conversational AI without the traditional barriers of cost, complexity, and commitment.
Get started today with Retell AI's free trial credit and experience firsthand how our flexible, powerful conversational AI platform can transform your business's call operations.
Revolutionize your call operation with Retell.
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