Vapi
Depends
Confidence: Medium
Buy Vapi if you have engineers to build, tune, and monitor custom voice agents at scale.
Comparison
Vapi vs ElevenLabs
Vapi and ElevenLabs both land on Depends.
ElevenLabs
Depends
Confidence: High
Buy if you produce audio content or embed AI voices in a product and can absorb usage-based costs at volume.
| Compare | Vapi | ElevenLabs |
|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Depends | Depends |
| Best for | Developer teams building custom voice agents | YouTubers and podcasters needing lifelike narration |
| Who it's not for | Non-technical founders wanting plug-and-play phone bots | High-volume TTS on a budget . bills spiral |
| Privacy | HIPAA and PCI compliance documented with a live Trust Center; one supply-chain incident disclosed June 3, 2026.⁴ | No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed. |
| Support quality | Users report integrations broken for months | No evidence in sources |
| Public sentiment | Developers praise latency and flexibility, but Reddit and Trustpilot skew negative on setup effort, cost, and integration reliability.⁵ | Reviewers praise voice quality as best-in-class but repeatedly flag pricing and credit burn as the top complaint. |
| Biggest gotcha | $0.05/min platform fee excludes model and telephony; real per-call cost is higher10 | Usage-based credits plus overage fees make real monthly cost unpredictable at scale |
Pick Vapi when
- Developer teams building custom voice agents
- High-volume inbound/outbound call products
- Regulated callers needing HIPAA/PCI
- Startups with engineering resources
When Vapi is not a fit
- Non-technical founders wanting plug-and-play phone bots
- Small teams without engineers to debug integrations
- Buyers needing reliable out-of-box CRM integrations
- Cost-sensitive ops without usage monitoring
Pick ElevenLabs when
- YouTubers and podcasters needing lifelike narration
- Self-published audiobook authors
- Product teams embedding voice via API
- Multilingual voiceover at scale
When ElevenLabs is not a fit
- High-volume TTS on a budget . bills spiral
- Anyone needing on-prem or self-hosted voice
- Casual users who only need a few clips a month
Sources
- Vapi Pricingvapi.aiofficial
- Vapi Trust Centersecurity.vapi.aisecurity
- HIPAA Compliancedocs.vapi.aisecurity
security
- Trustpilot reviews of vapi.aitrustpilot.comreview
- G2 reviews of Vapig2.comreview
review
- GoHighLevel integration broken (Reddit)reddit.comreview
- Vapi hits $500M valuation (TechCrunch)techcrunch.comnews
- Vapi AI Pricing 2026: The Real Cost Per Minutecloudtalk.ioreview
- Vapi Reviews on Product Huntproducthunt.comreview
- Vapi vs ElevenLabs (Retell AI)retellai.comreview
review