The "Voice AI" fatigue is real
Someone posted a question in a group I'm in QUESTION: "Is it just me, or does it feel like there are too many Voice AI tools right now? Vapi, Bland, Retell, ElevenLabs, etc. How are you guys deciding which stack to stick with? Trying not to tool-hop and waste time." And this is what I answered... Hope you pick something useful from it. Happy to get your thoughts and inputs ANSWER: The "Voice AI" fatigue is real because these tools often overlap while serving fundamentally different parts of the stack. To stop tool-hopping, you can categorise your decision based on whether you want a lego-set (modular), a finished product (all-in-one), or just the engine (voice quality). How to Choose Your Stack - Vapi: The "Lego Set" for Hardcore Devs Best for: Developers who want total control over every layer—from the LLM (OpenAI, Groq, etc.) to the STT and TTS providers. The Trade-off: It’s "Bring Your Own Key," meaning you manage multiple bills (Twilio, Deepgram, ElevenLabs) while Vapi adds a ~$0.05/min orchestration fee. - Retell AI: The "Production-Ready" Workhorse Best for: Teams that need to go live yesterday with sub-second latency and high reliability. Why it sticks: It handles the messy stuff like interruption handling and natural turn-taking better than most, with transparent pricing around $0.07/min. - Bland AI: The "Enterprise Powerhouse" Best for: High-volume outbound operations (e.g., thousands of calls/day) where you need "Conversational Pathways" to force the AI to follow strict scripts. The Trade-off: It’s less "plug-and-play" for small experimental projects and leans more towards large-scale enterprise automation. - ElevenLabs: The "Golden Voice" Best for: Quality above all else. They are primarily a voice provider that Vapi and Retell use. New Update: They recently launched their own Conversational AI 2.0 stack, allowing you to build simple agents directly in their dashboard without needing a third-party orchestrator.