Retell pricing. And the alternative you own.
Retell is great for managed agents at some scale. Here is what it costs per minute, and when owning your stack keeps more of the margin.
What Retell is.
Retell is a managed voice-AI platform aimed at teams that want a hosted agent with solid call handling and less prototype-first tooling than Vapi. Like every managed platform, you rent the agent per minute and Retell is the one billing.
Retell all in
$0.13 to $0.31 / min
Retell starts around $0.07 per minute as a base fee, with STT, LLM, TTS, and telephony stacked on top, landing around $0.13 to $0.31 per minute all in. White-labeling comes through wrapper plans that run $79 to $499 per month.
Typical estimates. Check Retell's pricing page before you commit.
You rent it. You never own it.
The economics are the same as any rented platform: you do not own the code, you cannot set your own margin freely, and the per-minute fee never goes away. Your best customers are the ones costing you the most in platform fees.
When owning wins.
If you are building a product you intend to grow, owning the stack on LiveKit means the per-minute platform fee disappears and every minute you sell above your provider cost is margin you keep, not margin you rent.
Honest take.
To prototype fast without touching infrastructure, Retell is a fine start. To build a business you own and grow, the per-minute fee becomes the biggest tax on your margin.
Own the code and the margin.
Bill your clients through your Stripe instead of paying Retell on every minute.
One note when it opens. No spam.