Pricing
Retell AI Pricing Explained: What You'll Actually Pay in 2026
Real-world Retell AI pricing breakdown. Platform fees, per-minute cost, voice costs, phone numbers, and what a finished agent costs to build and run.
The 30-second version
Expect to pay roughly $0.07 to $0.31 per minute of call time, plus a Twilio phone number (~$1–$2/mo) and any add-on voice provider like ElevenLabs (~$0.05–$0.10/min if used). For most SMBs, monthly running cost lands between $50 and $500.
The pieces you're actually paying for
- Retell platform fee: $0.07/min using their default voices, more for premium voices.
- LLM cost (passed through): GPT-4o-mini ~$0.006/min, GPT-4o ~$0.05/min, Claude ~$0.04/min.
- Voice (TTS): Free for stock voices, ElevenLabs adds ~$0.07/min.
- Telephony (Twilio): $0.013–$0.022/min inbound + ~$1.15/mo per US number.
Real examples
Dental office receptionist — 200 calls/mo × 3 min average × $0.15/min = ~$90/mo total run cost.
Outbound lead follow-up — 2,000 calls/mo × 2 min × $0.20/min = ~$800/mo.
High-volume call center — 50,000 min/mo × $0.18/min = ~$9,000/mo. At this scale, negotiate.
Build cost (separate from run cost)
Hiring a consultant to design, build, integrate, and launch an agent typically runs $1,500 to $15,000 depending on complexity. A single-purpose receptionist is on the low end. A full outbound sales agent with CRM hooks, follow-up logic, voicemail handling, and reporting is on the high end.
How to keep costs down
- Use GPT-4o-mini unless you genuinely need GPT-4o reasoning.
- Stick to Retell's stock voices — they're surprisingly good.
- Set a max call duration so runaway calls don't drain budget.
- Use end-call functions aggressively after the agent's job is done.