Sistava vs Retell AI
AI Voice and Phone
Sistava vs Retell AI
Retell AI is a developer-oriented platform for building conversational agents with around 600ms turn-taking latency on voice, which is genuinely best-in-class for the category. It is not voice-only: they sell AI-powered conversations across web and in-app chat, SMS workflows, and an MCP server for managing agents from Cursor or Claude Desktop. Honest concession: on raw voice quality and latency, a tuned Retell agent will beat a generalist platform. Sistava is built for a different shape of buyer: someone who wants a worker whose job continues after the conversation ends, with persistent memory, task boards, file drive, and thousands of app integrations.
Profile
- Pricing
- Pay-as-you-go, no monthly minimum: $0.07+/min base plus LLM and telephony (~$0.13-$0.31/min all-in), and AI Chat Agents from $0.002/msg. $10 free credits, 20 concurrent calls included, extra concurrency $8/call/month. Add-ons: Knowledge Base +$0.005/min and $8.00/KB/month with the first 10 free, PII Removal +$0.01/min, AI Quality Assurance $0.10/min after 100 free minutes, Branded Call +$0.10 per outbound call, phone numbers $2.00/month.
- Founded
- 2023, San Francisco (Y Combinator)
- Funding
- $5.1M Seed (Alt Capital and Y Combinator). Reportedly profitable.
- Focus
- Developer-friendly voice, chat, and SMS agent builder with ~600ms latency
Why Sistava
- If voice latency and turn-taking are the deciding factor, Retell AI is the better pick. Sistava is the better pick when voice is one of several things a single employee does for you.
- Retell AI is API-first; you write code to define the conversation and the integrations. Sistava is hire-first: brief the employee, they figure out the steps.
- Sistava retains memory across calls and across channels (the same employee remembers what was emailed yesterday and said on the call today). Retell AI keeps per-call context.
- Sistava offers predictable flat monthly pricing ($49-$399). Retell AI meters per minute for voice with separate LLM and telephony components, per message for chat, and adds line items for knowledge bases, PII removal, quality assurance, and branded calls.
- Sistava ships browser automation, task boards, and file Drive so the same worker can update your CRM, file the call notes, and post to Slack after hanging up. Retell reaches into your stack too, with CRM and contact-centre integrations plus n8n, Make and Zapier, but the unit of work stays the conversation rather than the job around it.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Retell AI | Sistava |
|---|---|---|
| Voice agent builder | Full AI workforce | |
| Core product (~600ms latency) | Deepgram STT/TTS | |
| Voice, telephony, web and in-app chat, SMS | Voice, chat, browser, email, thousands of apps | |
| ✗ | ✓ | |
| ✗ | ✓ | |
| Per-call context | Persistent across calls and channels | |
| ✗ | ✓ | |
| ✗ | ✓ | |
| CRM, contact centre, telephony, n8n, Make, Zapier, Cal.com | Thousands of native + MCP | |
| MCP server for managing agents | ✓ | |
| Multiple languages | Multi-language | |
| HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR | PII detection, approval gates | |
| ✗ | ✓ | |
| $0.13-$0.31/min voice, chat from $0.002/msg | Flat $49-$399/mo |