Building your first conversational AI agent: A beginner’s guide
A simple guide to creating a hyper-realistic conversational AI agent.
Summary
- ElevenLabs and RetellAI.com are conversational AI platforms offering customizable voice agent solutions.
- ElevenLabs builds its own TTS and STT models in-house, reducing latency and improving voice quality.
- RetellAI.com focuses on providing an intuitive agent-building platform with features like appointment booking and knowledge base integration.
- Both platforms support telephony integration and offer tools for API calls and data analytics.
Overview
ElevenLabs and RetellAI.com are advanced conversational AI orchestration platforms that enable businesses to create engaging voice agents. ElevenLabs offers in-house TTS and STT models, providing superior latency and control. At the same time, RetellAI.com emphasizes ease of use with its agent builder and features such as appointment booking and knowledge base management. Both platforms integrate well with telephony systems and provide powerful analytics tools, making them ideal for business use.
Introduction to ElevenLabs and RetellAI.com
Conversational AI orchestration platforms, like ElevenLabs and RetellAI.com, enable developers to create customizable voice agents. These voice agents now handle customer support calls, train 911 dispatchers, and power new journalistic experiences.
Most platforms combine speech-to-text (STT), a large language model (LLM), and text-to-speech (TTS), along with built-in turn-taking and interruption handling, to support natural, human-like conversations. Many companies, like RetellAI.com, partner with other organizations to provide each of these components.
In contrast, ElevenLabs is both a research and product company that creates foundational audio models and offers a packaged solution. This integrated approach allows ElevenLabs to optimize latency by eliminating the need for multiple server calls, providing users with the highest quality TTS and STT in-house.
Feature comparison
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s take a closer look at what each platform has to offer:
| Provider | ElevenLabs | RetellAI.com |
|---|---|---|
| Includes an extensive voice library | Includes an extensive voice library with over 5,000 voices across 32 languages and numerous regional accents. Users can design new voices from a text prompt or clone their own. | Offers a variety of high-quality voices, with pricing starting at $0.07 per minute. |
| Latency | Uses the Flash model, which is the fastest, most human-like TTS available. Also has an advantage for end-to-end latency, saving two server calls through in-house TTS and STT. | Provides lifelike AI conversations with approximately 600ms latency, ensuring smooth interactions. |
| Tools & API Calls | Provides server tools to call third-party apps or APIs to fetch real-time information or take action. Also offers client tools to trigger browser events, run client-side functions, or send notifications to a UI. | Offers an intuitive agent builder with features like call transfer, appointment booking, and knowledge base integration. |
| Languages | Supports 30+ languages. Allows users to set a custom voice or first message for each language. | Supports over 18 languages, enabling agents to communicate in multiple languages and regional accents. |
| Concurrency | Concurrency by tier for ElevenLabs base plans is available here. Custom limits are available to handle scale for the largest enterprises. | Offers 20 free concurrent calls; enterprise plans can scale up as needed. |
| LLM | Allows users to select from leading models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and DeepSeek or integrate their own custom LLM. | Supports integration with custom LLMs, allowing businesses to tailor agents to specific needs. |
| Knowledge Base Management | Allows users to import files, URLs, or plain text to equip their agents with relevant, domain-specific information. | Features auto-sync capabilities with websites or documents, ensuring agents have up-to-date information. |
| Telephony Integrations | Offers PCM 8000 Hz or μ-law 8000 Hz sample rates for integration with any provider. For additional information, refer to the Twilio quickstart guide. | Supports SIP trunking to any telephony provider, offering flexibility in integration. |
| Data Retention | By default, ElevenLabs retains conversation data for 2 years. Users can modify this period to any number of days, unlimited retention, or immediate deletion. | Provides customizable data retention policies, with options for immediate deletion or extended retention periods. |
| Tracking & Analytics | Allows users to review past recordings, transcripts, and call summaries. Offers custom prompts to tag calls based on internal success criteria and extract data from transcripts. | Offers post-call analysis with custom analytics to extract actionable insights from conversations. |
Final thoughts
According to our comparison in this article, both ElevenLabs and RetellAI.com provide solid features for developers looking to create AI-powered voice agents.
ElevenLabs’ key strengths include its extensive voice library, integrated STT and TTS services, and comprehensive language support, making it suitable for diverse applications.
Similarly, RetellAI.com focuses on providing an intuitive agent-building platform with features like appointment booking and knowledge base integration. These features are likely to appeal to businesses seeking enterprise-level voice solutions.
While both platforms have their unique strengths, your final choice depends on your individual requirements, such as the need for in-house model integration, scalability, and customization capabilities.
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