Head to head, updated July 2026

DILR Voice vs Retell AI

Retell AI prices every component separately. DILR Voice ships one number. Retell publishes $0.07 to $0.31 a minute, built from voice infrastructure, text-to-speech, the LLM and telephony as separate line items. DILR Voice is a flat $0.14 a minute with all of it inside. On a lean model mix Retell comes in cheaper than us. On a premium mix it is roughly double. Retell also has SOC 2 and a free HIPAA BAA, and we do not.

Built from Retell's own line itemsRetell wins on a lean stackWhen to pick Retell instead

The short answer

Retell has the most transparent pricing page in this market. That is not a backhanded compliment. It publishes the exact per-minute cost of voice infrastructure, each text-to-speech option, each LLM and telephony, so you can model your bill before you sign anything. Almost nobody else does that.

The trade is that you have to do the maths. A lean Retell mix lands near $0.130 a minute, under our $0.14. A premium mix lands near $0.270, about double. Add metered extras (knowledge base, denoising, guardrails, PII removal) and it moves again.

Where Retell beats us outright: certifications. SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2, HIPAA with a BAA Retell signs at no extra fee, and GDPR. DILR Voice has none of those. If a security questionnaire is what stands between you and go-live, Retell answers it and we do not.

Side by side

DILR Voice and Retell AI, on the published facts

Every Retell AI figure below comes from Retell AI's own pricing, docs or trust pages, read in July 2026. Vendors change pricing often, so check the source link before you buy.

 DILR VoiceRetell AI
Headline rate$0.14/min flat on Growth, plus a monthly fee per phone number.$0.07 to $0.31/min, Retell's own published range. The rate depends on which TTS and LLM you pick.
How the rate is builtOne number. Models, speech and platform are inside it.Itemised: voice infrastructure $0.055/min, plus TTS $0.015 to $0.040, plus LLM $0.045 to $0.16, plus telephony $0.015.
StartFree to start with $10 of trial credits, no credit card$10 of free credit for new users. Self-serve, pay as you go.
Phone numbersMonthly fee per number.$2.00/mo standard, $10.00/mo verified.
ConcurrencyIncluded on Growth.20 concurrent free, then $8.00 per concurrency per month.
Metered add-onsRAG knowledge base and post-call automation are included, not metered.Knowledge base +$0.005/min, advanced denoising +$0.005/min, safety guardrails +$0.005/min, PII removal +$0.01/min, AI QA $0.10/min after the first 100 minutes.
HIPAANot offered. HIPAA is Dilr Mira's remit, not Voice's.Yes, with a signed BAA. Retell states there is no additional fee to sign it.
SOC 2No public SOC 2 report.SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2, independently audited for security, availability and confidentiality.
Call compliancePer-country call compliance: DNC checks, consent capture, opt-out recognition and a full per-call audit trail (UK, US, India, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Ireland). No public SOC 2 or HIPAA badge.GDPR compliant with a DPA. Per-country DNC, consent capture and opt-out handling are not published as platform features.
Multi-agentMulti-agent pipeline with handoff.Multi-prompt agents, documented specifically for complex call flows.

Retell figures from retellai.com/pricing and docs.retellai.com compliance, read in July 2026. We have left Retell's language count and latency out of this table on purpose: we could not verify a single published figure for either, and we will not print a number we cannot source. DILR Voice figures from our own product page.

The maths, shown

Retell's price, built from Retell's own line items

Every segment below is a number Retell publishes on its own pricing page. The only thing we added is addition. All three mixes land inside Retell's own published $0.07 to $0.31 range, which is how you know the arithmetic is right.

Cost per minute, as configured

Lean mix is GPT-4.1 with a platform voice. Mid mix is Claude 4.6 Sonnet with a platform voice. Premium mix is GPT-5.5 with an ElevenLabs voice. Telephony is Retell's published US example rate. Metered add-ons are not included in these bars and would push the Retell totals higher.

DILR Voice, one rateRetell voice infrastructureLLMText to speechTelephony
ConfigurationVoice infraLLMTTSTelephonyTotal per minute
DILR Voice, GrowthAll included in one rate$0.140
Retell, lean mix$0.055$0.045$0.015$0.015$0.130
Retell, mid mix$0.055$0.080$0.015$0.015$0.165
Retell, premium mix$0.055$0.160$0.040$0.015$0.270

Read this honestly: the lean mix beats us on price. If you are happy on GPT-4.1 with a platform voice and you do not need the metered add-ons, Retell is cheaper than DILR Voice per minute. Our case is the mid and premium columns, and everything the rate does not show: outbound dialer, per-country call compliance and post-call automation without another bill. Component rates from retellai.com/pricing, July 2026.

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When to pick Retell AI instead

The honest case for Retell AI

A comparison written by one of the two vendors is only worth reading if it says where the other one wins. So here it is, with no hedging.

Retell AI

Managed inbound, itemised pricing, certifications in the box

Where Retell AI genuinely wins

The most granular published pricing of any platform here. Voice infrastructure, each TTS option, each LLM and telephony all carry their own per-minute figure on a public page. A buyer can model total cost without a sales call. That is rare and it is worth something.

SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2, HIPAA and GDPR, with no fee to sign the BAA. Retell explicitly states there is no additional charge to sign its BAA or DPA. Vapi charges $2,000 a month for HIPAA mode. DILR Voice does not offer HIPAA at all. On certifications Retell simply beats both of us.

A lean mix costs less than us. About $0.130 a minute against our $0.14. If inbound on a cheap model stack is the whole job, Retell is the cheaper tool and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Pick Retell AI if

Inbound is your entire use case, you need SOC 2 or HIPAA to clear procurement, or you want to pick each component yourself and pay only for the ones you switch on.

What DILR Voice does not have

The gaps we are not going to hide

Against Retell AI

DILR Voice has no SOC 2 report and no HIPAA. Retell has both, and signs the BAA for free. Retell's lean configuration is also cheaper per minute than our $0.14. We do not let you swap the LLM to cut your rate. And Retell has been in market longer with a larger public footprint than us.

Where that matters

If any of the above is a hard requirement in your buying process, buy the tool that has it. We would rather lose the deal than have you find out in month three. For private, on-premise clinical models that keep patient data in your own environment, see Dilr Mira.

What people actually ask

Straight answers, including the Reddit questions

Is DILR Voice cheaper than Retell AI?
Sometimes, and we will show our working. Retell publishes each cost separately: $0.055 a minute for voice infrastructure, plus text-to-speech at $0.015 to $0.040, plus the LLM at $0.045 to $0.16, plus telephony at $0.015. A lean mix (GPT-4.1 and a platform voice) totals about $0.130 a minute, which is cheaper than DILR Voice at $0.14. A premium mix (GPT-5.5 and an ElevenLabs voice) totals about $0.270 a minute, which is roughly double ours. So Retell wins on a lean stack and DILR Voice wins on a rich one. Both totals sit inside Retell's own published $0.07 to $0.31 range.
How much does Retell AI really cost per minute?
Retell publishes $0.07 to $0.31 per minute, and unlike most vendors it shows you exactly how that range is built: voice infrastructure $0.055/min, text-to-speech $0.015/min for platform voices or $0.040/min for ElevenLabs, the LLM from $0.045/min (GPT-4.1) to $0.08/min (Claude 4.6 Sonnet) to $0.16/min (GPT-5.5), and telephony $0.015/min. Add-ons are metered on top: knowledge base, denoising and guardrails at $0.005/min each, PII removal at $0.01/min. Phone numbers are $2/mo standard or $10/mo verified, and concurrency is free to 20 then $8 each per month.
Does Retell AI charge for HIPAA?
No, and this is a genuine advantage over some rivals. Retell states there is no additional fee to sign its BAA or DPA, and it publishes SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 plus GDPR compliance. For contrast, Vapi lists HIPAA mode as a $2,000 per month add-on. DILR Voice does not offer HIPAA at all, so if you are handling PHI on calls, Retell can serve you and we cannot. Our HIPAA-aligned work is Dilr Mira, private clinical models that run on your own hardware.
What is the best Retell AI alternative in 2026?
It depends on why you are moving. If the metered line items are the problem and you want one predictable rate with inbound, outbound, multi-agent handoff, RAG and per-country call compliance in one platform, DILR Voice at $0.14 a minute is the closest fit. If you want to own your model stack and tune unit economics, Vapi. If you are running high-volume outbound, Bland AI is cheaper above roughly 15,000 minutes a month. If you need no-code, Synthflow. We compare all five in our best AI voice agent 2026 guide.
What do people on Reddit say about Retell AI?
We are not going to tell you, because we cannot verify it. Reddit is not machine-readable for us, so any thread summary or quote we put here would be invented, and that is not a trade we will make on a page about honesty. We have linked live Reddit searches for Retell below so you can read the real threads yourself. We will also note that Retell's Capterra profile showed zero user reviews when we checked it directly in July 2026, so review-site signal on this category is thin in general.
Is Retell AI or DILR Voice better for inbound calls?
Retell is a very strong inbound pick, and if inbound is your whole use case it may be the right one. It is managed, it publishes SOC 2 Type 1 and 2, GDPR and HIPAA with a free BAA, and its multi-prompt agent model is documented for complex call flows. DILR Voice is the better fit when inbound is only half the job: our inbound frontdesk shares agents, the RAG knowledge base and post-call automation with an outbound dialer in the same platform, so you are not running two tools and two bills.
Which has better compliance, DILR Voice or Retell AI?
They cover different things, and Retell wins the part most procurement teams ask about first. Retell has SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2, HIPAA with a free BAA, and GDPR. DILR Voice has none of those badges. What DILR Voice has instead is call-level compliance built into the platform: per-country DNC checks, consent capture, opt-out recognition and a full per-call audit trail across the UK, US, India, Australia, France, Germany, Spain and Ireland. If your blocker is a security questionnaire, Retell answers it better. If your blocker is TCPA or GDPR exposure on the calls themselves, that is what we built.
Does DILR Voice meter its knowledge base like Retell?
No. Retell prices its knowledge base as a $0.005 per minute add-on, along with denoising at $0.005, safety guardrails at $0.005 and PII removal at $0.01 per minute. On DILR Voice the RAG knowledge base and post-call automation are part of the $0.14 rate, not metered extras. That is the core difference between the two pricing philosophies: Retell shows you every component and lets you switch each one off, and we ship one number with everything on.

We do not reproduce Reddit quotes, because we cannot link you to a thread we have verified. Read the live discussion and judge the sentiment for yourself:

Reddit: Retell AI reviewReddit: Retell AI vs alternativesr/AI_Agents: voice AI platforms

Go deeper

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