Is your phone ringing off the hook with customer inquiries? Drowning in a sea of voicemails and missed calls? It might be time to give your business a voice agent with the power of AI.
From Lindy’s accurate and versatile agents to ElevenLabs' expressive voice technologies, this round-up will help you make an informed choice.
In this post, we'll explore the world of AI voice agents, breaking down what they are, how they work, and which ones reign supreme in 2025.
You'll also learn:
- Key differences between AI voice agents and virtual assistants
- Industries and tasks are best suited for AI voice agents
- Benefits (and limitations)
- How to choose the right AI voice agent for your needs
What is an AI voice agent?
An AI voice agent is a program that can understand and respond to human speech. These voice agents use some seriously impressive technology like natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to get what you're saying and respond in a way that makes sense.
They can do things like answer your questions, provide information, and even complete tasks, all through the power of your voice.
Think of those times you've called a company and interacted with an automated system. That's a basic example of an AI voice agent in action. But these days, they're getting much more refined, capable of handling in-depth conversations and even mimicking human emotions.
The 10 best AI voice agents: TL;DR
Here's the short and sweet version of our top picks:
- Lindy: Best overall AI voice agent for its ease of use, versatility, and features.
- Vapi: Best for businesses seeking a complete voice automation platform with omnichannel support.
- ElevenLabs: Best for generating emotionally rich and expressive AI voices.
- Deepgram: Best for highly accurate speech recognition in AI voice agent applications.
- OpenAI's Whisper: Best open-source speech recognition system for customizable AI voice agent development.
- Bland: Best for generating custom and expressive AI voices with easy integration options.
- Synthflow: Best for building and deploying AI voice agents for automating phone calls and other voice interactions.
- Retell AI: Best for analyzing and summarizing customer conversations to boost AI voice agent performance.
- Cognigy: Best low-code platform for building refined AI voice agents and chatbots across multiple channels.
- Murf.ai: Best for generating studio-quality AI voices with a focus on creating engaging and unique agent personas.
How we chose the best AI voice agents
Choosing the "best" of anything can be tricky. But when it comes to AI voice agents, some key factors really matter. We've carefully evaluated the top contenders based on the following criteria:
- Intelligence and adaptability: A good AI voice agent should be able to understand and respond to a wide range of requests, even if they're phrased in different ways. It should also be able to learn and adapt over time.
- Ease of use: The best AI voice agents are user-friendly and intuitive, even for those who aren't tech-savvy. They should be easy to set up, customize, and use, so you can focus on what matters most — your business.
- Real-time collaboration and assistance: AI voice agents can be powerful tools for collaboration, allowing teams to work together, even when they're in different locations. They can provide real-time assistance, answer questions, and even automate tasks.
- Automation features: One of the biggest benefits of AI voice agents is their ability to automate tasks. The best platforms offer a wide range of automation features, allowing you to simplify workflows, save time, and reduce errors.
- Searchability and organization: AI voice agents can help you keep your information organized and readily available. They should offer robust search capabilities, allowing you to quickly find the information you need, when you need it.
- Multi-language support: In today's globalized world, multi-language support is essential. The best AI voice agents can communicate in multiple languages, allowing you to connect with customers and colleagues around the world.
Other important factors we considered
Beyond the core features, we also took a closer look at some extras that can make a big difference in the overall user experience.
We considered things like how well the AI voice agent plays with other tools and devices. We also looked at security features to keep your data safe, customization options to make the agent fit your needs, and of course, how those pricing plans stack up.
The 10 best AI voice agents for 2025
1. Lindy
Lindy is a no-code platform with a powerful AI voice agent already set up.
The easy-to-use interface also lets you build custom AI voice agents and automate other types of business workflows. Lindy connects your favorite apps and communicates with you through almost any platform to get your work done.
Key features
- Inbound and outbound phone calls: Lindy can answer incoming calls, engage in natural conversations with callers, and make outbound calls to leads from your provided list. Just set up a Lindy (how AI agents are called) and you’re ready.
- Transfer calls to different numbers: Lindy can reroute calls to another number based on specific logic or situations, such as when a customer asks to speak to a human representative.
- Provides accurate answers: Lindy can access your knowledge base to provide the right answers to caller questions. The knowledge base can include Google Docs with common FAQs, company website URLs, files, and PDFs.
- Extra functionalities: With Lindy’s AI phone agents, you can handle conversations at scale. You can do survey outreach, set up your own contact center so users get instant support, and have Lindies act as international fleet coordinators.
Ideal users
Lindy is an excellent choice for various teams and businesses. Sales teams will find it useful for automating outreach, consultation requests, and other outbound campaigns.
Customer support teams can use Lindy to automate support, booking inquiries, and lead qualification workflows. Any business looking to save time and improve customer satisfaction with an AI-powered inbound calling agent will find Lindy to be a valuable asset.
Pricing
Free plan available with limited features. Paid plans start at $49 per month with more credits and each phone number costs $10 per month. Per-minute rates are determined by both the country and the selected AI language model.
Bottom line
Lindy is an ideal solution for those looking to use voice agents to automate many aspects of their operations, including sales outreach, lead generation, and enrichment. Its ability to connect with multiple apps and platforms makes it a versatile app for speeding up workflows.
So, yes it can do AI voice agents, but her capabilities go far beyond handling calls. We highly recommend you check out the Lindy Academy and learn how many areas of your business can be optimized with Lindy.
2. Vapi
Vapi is an AI-powered voice automation platform designed to simplify customer interactions. It offers tools for building voice assistants, automating call center tasks, and creating interactive voice response (IVR) systems.
Key features
- Voiceflow integration: Vapi's integration with Voiceflow allows for the creation of complex conversation flows and logic, enabling the development of highly intelligent AI voice agents.
- Omnichannel support for voice interactions: Vapi enables voice agents to interact with users across multiple channels, including phone calls, web chat, and social media, providing a consistent experience.
- Real-time analytics: Vapi offers real-time analytics that track key metrics, allowing businesses to monitor the performance of their AI voice agents for maximum efficiency.
Ideal users
Vapi is best suited for businesses looking to automate sales, customer service, and support interactions through voice. Its massive suite of tools and integrations makes it a valuable asset for companies seeking to streamline their customer interactions.
Pricing
Vapi charges $0.05 per minute with phone numbers costing $2 per month for most businesses. The enterprise version has custom pricing based on specific needs and usage.
Bottom line
While Vapi provides a complete suite of voice automation tools, its reliance on the Voiceflow platform could limit flexibility for those seeking a more independent solution.
3. ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs excels in generating expressive AI voices, adding a new dimension to human-computer interaction. Its voices go beyond basic text-to-speech, conveying nuanced emotions that make AI agents sound more natural and engaging.
Key features
- Emotionally rich voices for natural AI interactions: ElevenLabs specializes in creating voices that convey a wide range of emotions, making AI agents sound more human-like and empathetic.
- Multilingual support for global voice agent deployment: ElevenLabs supports numerous languages and accents, enabling businesses to create AI voice agents that cater to diverse audiences worldwide.
- Voice cloning for personalized agent personas: ElevenLabs offers voice cloning capabilities, allowing businesses to create AI agents with unique voices, enhancing brand identity and user engagement.
Ideal users
ElevenLabs is a good choice for those seeking high-quality, expressive AI voices for their applications, including voice assistants, chatbots, and content creation. Its ability to generate nuanced emotions makes it a valuable tool for creating engaging and human-like AI interactions.
Pricing
ElevenLabs offers a free trial. Paid plans start at $5 per month for the most basic of functionalities.
Bottom line
ElevenLabs produces impressive AI voices, but its focus is primarily on voice generation rather than complete voice agent solutions. Integration with other conversational AI platforms may be required for building fully functional voice agents.
4. Deepgram
Deepgram is a speech recognition and understanding platform that uses deep learning to transcribe and analyze audio data. While not a voice agent platform itself, Deepgram's accurate speech-to-text capabilities are essential for building effective voice agents.
Key features
- High-accuracy speech recognition: Deepgram's deep learning models provide exceptional accuracy in transcribing speech, making sure that AI voice agents can understand user requests clearly.
- Customizable models for industry-specific voice agents: Deepgram allows for the training of custom speech recognition models, enabling businesses to create AI voice agents tailored to specific industries or use cases.
- Real-time transcription: Deepgram's real-time transcription capabilities allow AI voice agents to respond instantly to user requests, creating a frictionless and interactive experience.
Ideal users
Deepgram is ideal for developers and businesses building voice agents, virtual assistants, or any application that requires accurate and efficient speech recognition. Its high accuracy and customizable models make it a versatile tool for various use cases.
Pricing
Deepgram offers a free trial (with $200 credit) and usage-based pricing plans. They also offer a Growth plan and an Enterprise offering for larger businesses.
Bottom line
Deepgram provides a key component for AI voice agents with its speech recognition engine. However, it requires integration with other tools to handle natural language understanding and dialogue management for complete voice agent functionality.
5. OpenAI's Whisper
Whisper is an open-source speech recognition system developed by OpenAI. Known for its impressive accuracy and multilingual support, Whisper can be a valuable tool for building AI voice agents.
Key features
- Multilingual capabilities: Whisper's support for a wide range of languages empowers developers to build AI voice agents that cater to different linguistic needs and global audiences.
- Strong performance in challenging acoustic environments: Whisper's ability to accurately transcribe speech even in noisy environments ensures reliable voice input for AI agents in real-world scenarios.
- Open-source flexibility for custom voice agent development: Whisper's open-source nature allows developers to modify and adapt the speech recognition system to their specific requirements, fostering innovation.
Ideal users
Whisper is ideal for developers and researchers seeking a powerful and flexible speech recognition system for building AI voice agents or other speech-based applications. Its open-source nature and multilingual capabilities make it a valuable tool for diverse projects.
Pricing
Whisper is an open-source project, making it free to use.
Bottom line
Whisper offers a strong foundation for speech recognition in AI voice agents. However, as with Deepgram, it requires integration with other conversational AI components to create fully interactive voice agents.
6. Bland
Bland is an AI voice generation platform for large companies that focuses on creating customizable and expressive voices for various applications.
Key features
- Diverse voice styles for varied AI agent personas: Bland offers a wide selection of voices with different ages, genders, and accents, allowing developers to create unique AI agent personas.
- Emotional inflection for more human-like interactions: Bland lets users adjust the emotional tone of the generated voices, making AI agent interactions sound more natural and engaging.
- Easy integration for voice agent development: Bland provides APIs and SDKs for direct integration with various platforms and tools, simplifying the process of adding AI voice capabilities to applications.
Ideal users
Bland is a good option for enterprises seeking to boost their apps with natural-sounding and AI voices. Its diverse voice styles and emotional inflection capabilities make it a suitable choice for creating engaging user experiences.
Pricing
Bland offers a free trial. However, you’ll need to talk to sales to get a quote.
Bottom line
Bland provides an enterprise-friendly platform for generating AI voices, but its features may not be as extensive as some competitors. Plus, its focus on voice generation may require integration with other tools for complete voice agent functionality. Lastly, their pricing is not transparent, as you’ll need to request info in order to get it, instead of checking it yourself.
7. Synthflow
Synthflow is a no-code platform aimed at enterprises and agencies that enables users to create and utilize AI voice agents for automated phone calls and other voice interactions.
Key features
- Natural language understanding: Synthflow's voice agents can understand and respond to complex user requests in a conversational manner, enabling more natural and efficient interactions.
- Customizable workflows: Users can design custom conversation flows and integrate them with various business systems, ensuring that AI voice agents align with specific business needs.
- Real-time analytics: Synthflow provides detailed analytics on voice agent performance and customer interactions, allowing businesses to monitor and improve their AI-powered solutions.
Ideal users
Synthflow is best for those who want to automate customer service, sales, and support interactions through AI-powered voice agents. Its natural language understanding and customizable workflows make it a complete solution for facilitating customer interactions.
Pricing
Synthflow doesn’t offer free trial options. Their plans start at $29 per month for 50 minutes, however, there’s a massive jump to $450 per month to 2,000 minutes per month.
Bottom line
Synthflow is a comprehensive option for using and building AI voice agents. However, its platform has a steeper learning curve compared to some no-code alternatives from our list.
8. Retell AI
Retell AI focuses on analyzing and summarizing customer conversations to provide valuable insights for businesses. While not a voice agent platform itself, Retell AI can be used to enhance voice agent performance by understanding customer needs and preferences.
Key features
- Conversation summarization: Retell AI can automatically summarize key points and topics from customer conversations, providing valuable insights for businesses to understand user needs.
- Sentiment analysis: It can identify customer sentiment and emotions expressed during conversations, letting AI voice agents respond more empathetically.
- Integration with voice platforms: Retell can integrate with various voice agent platforms to provide deeper insights into customer interactions, allowing businesses to tailor their AI-powered solutions for better user experiences.
Ideal users
Retell AI is great for businesses looking to better understand customer conversations and improve the effectiveness of their voice agents. Its conversation summarization and sentiment analysis capabilities provide valuable insights for improving AI-powered interactions.
Pricing
Retell AI’s pricing structure is purely a pay-as-you-go model. They do, however, offer an enterprise plan (as low as $0.05 per minute) and their pricing page has a handy price estimation tool.
Bottom line
Retell AI offers valuable tools for analyzing customer conversations, but it requires integration with other platforms to build and deploy AI voice agents. Its pay-as-you-go pricing model may also be a drawback for some users.
9. Cognigy
Cognigy's low-code platform helps users build voice agents and chatbots that engage in natural conversations across multiple channels. Its graphical conversation builder and omnichannel support make it a versatile tool for businesses seeking to automate customer interactions.
Key features
- Omnichannel support: Cognigy allows users to deploy voice agents across various channels, including phone, webchat, and messaging apps, ensuring a consistent user experience.
- Natural language understanding: Cognigy's voice agents can understand complex user requests and engage in natural conversations, providing a human-like interaction.
- Graphical conversation builder: Cognigy provides a user-friendly interface for designing and managing voice agent interactions, making it accessible to users with varying technical expertise.
Ideal users
Cognigy is best suited for those seeking a platform for creating and using AI voice agents across multiple channels. Its low-code approach and graphical conversation builder make it a versatile tool for automating customer interactions.
Pricing
Cognigy doesn’t publicly disclose its pricing information. In order to know how much they charge, you’ll need to book a demo or contact sales.
Bottom line
Cognigy is a powerful platform for building AI voice agents, but its lack of transparency when it comes to pricing is a deterrent. Plus, its feature set is much more limited than other solutions in our list.
10. Murf.ai
Murf.ai is a versatile AI voice generator that enables users to create lifelike voiceovers for various applications. While not strictly a voice agent platform, Murf.ai's high-quality voices and extensive customization options make it a valuable tool for generating voices for interactive AI agents.
Key features
- Studio-quality voices with a focus on AI agents: Murf.ai offers a wide range of voices suitable for different AI agent personas, ensuring a natural and engaging interaction for users.
- Customizable voice styles for distinct personalities: Users can fine-tune voice parameters to create unique personalities for their AI agents, enhancing the feeling of a genuine conversation.
- Voice cloning for personalized agent experiences: Murf.ai allows for voice cloning, enabling businesses to create AI agents that sound like real people, further personalizing the user experience.
Ideal users
Murf.ai is best for developers and businesses seeking to create engaging and unique voices for their AI agents, virtual assistants, or other voice-based applications.
Pricing
Murf.ai offers a free trial and various subscription plans starting at $19 per month.
Bottom line
Murf.ai excels at generating high-quality AI voices but lacks the built-in conversational capabilities of a dedicated voice agent platform. Users might need to integrate Murf.ai with other tools to achieve full voice agent functionality.
AI voice agents vs. virtual assistants: What’s the difference?
AI voice agents are a type of virtual assistant that only focuses on voice-based interactions. They excel at understanding and responding to spoken language, making them ideal for tasks like automating phone calls or providing voice-activated assistance.
Virtual assistants can perform various types of tasks, including text-based interactions, task management, and information retrieval.
To illustrate the differences more clearly, let's take a look at this handy chart:
What industries or tasks are AI agents best suited for?
AI agents are rapidly changing the way we work and live. They're popping up in all sorts of industries, taking on tasks that used to require human intervention. But what exactly are they best at? Let's dive in and explore a few areas where AI agents are making a difference:
Customer service
AI agents can handle a flood of customer inquiries all at once, providing instant support and allowing human agents to focus on more complex issues.
They can answer common questions, troubleshoot simple problems, and even direct customers to the appropriate department. It's a win-win: Happier customers and less stressed-out support teams.
Sales and marketing
AI agents can personalize their outreach based on individual customer data, making your marketing campaigns more targeted and effective. Plus, they never complain about having to make another cold call.
Operations and logistics
Behind the scenes of any successful business are smooth operations. AI agents can help streamline tasks like scheduling deliveries, managing inventory, and predicting potential bottlenecks.
They can analyze data, spot trends, and even automate routine tasks, freeing up your team to focus on strategic initiatives.
Human resources
Onboarding new employees, answering policy questions, scheduling training sessions — these are just a few of the HR tasks AI agents can handle.
They provide consistent and accurate information, ensuring a positive employee experience from day one. This allows HR professionals to focus on more strategic initiatives like talent development and employee engagement.
Finance
AI agents can be your financial whizzes, analyzing data, detecting fraud, and even offering personalized financial advice.
They can help you make informed investment decisions and manage your finances more effectively. It's like having a personal finance expert at your fingertips.
Benefits of using an AI voice agent
AI voice agents offer a whole host of benefits that can seriously boost your bottom line and improve customer satisfaction. Here are just a few:
- Available 24/7/365: Your AI voice agent never sleeps or takes a break. They're always ready to answer the phone, no matter the time of day or night. This means your customers can get instant support whenever they need it, even if it's 3 AM on a Sunday.
- Consistent quality: Say goodbye to inconsistent customer service. AI voice agents always deliver the same high level of service, every single time. They follow your scripts and guidelines to a T, guaranteeing a consistent experience for every customer.
- Efficiency to the max: AI voice agents can handle repetitive tasks like answering FAQs or qualifying leads with incredible speed and accuracy. This frees up your human team to focus on more complex and strategic tasks, boosting overall efficiency.
- Scalability: Need to handle a sudden surge in customer calls? No problem! AI voice agents can easily scale up or down to meet your needs, making sure you're always prepared for anything.
- Insights from cold hard data: AI voice agents can collect valuable data about customer interactions, providing insights into customer behavior, preferences, and pain points.
What are some limitations of AI voice agents?
AI voice agents can improve the way businesses interact with customers, but they're not without their limitations. Let's explore some common challenges and how Lindy can overcome them:
Understanding complex language and accents
AI voice agents sometimes struggle with long and unusual sentences, regional accents, or industry-specific jargon. This can lead to misunderstandings and frustration for callers.
Lindy's advanced natural language understanding capabilities and customizable knowledge base can help overcome this challenge. By training Lindies on industry-specific terminology and diverse speech patterns, businesses can guarantee accurate and efficient communication.
Maintaining context in long conversations
AI voice agents sometimes struggle to stay accurate during a long conversation. This can lead to repetitive questions or irrelevant responses. The benefit of a tool like Lindy is that it uses deep learning to maintain more context. You also can customize Lindy workflows so you could ask the agent to naturally summarize the phone call at key points to help avoid this.
Data security and privacy
As AI voice agents collect and process user info, data security is paramount. Businesses must make sure that their AI voice agents comply with relevant regulations and protect sensitive information.
Lindy prioritizes data security and privacy, providing businesses with a secure platform for their AI voice agent interactions. Lindy is both SOC2 and HIPAA compliant as well as offering AES-256 encryption — meaning data is encrypted both at rest and in transit.
Try a free AI voice agent right now
Tired of playing phone tag with leads and customers? Lindy's AI voice agents handle calls, answer questions, and schedule meetings, all while sounding completely natural and engaging.
But Lindy's talents go beyond just making calls. She can also help you automate tasks, gather insights from customer conversations, and streamline your workflows. Think of her as your AI-powered secret weapon for boosting productivity and customer satisfaction.
Ready to take your operations to the next level with your very own AI voice agents? Take Lindy for a spin with a free trial today.