AI Phone Agents: The 5 Most Popular Air.ai Alternatives (2024)

#1: Setter AI - AI Phone Appointment Setter

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Setter AI is a user-friendly platform for creating AI phone appointment setters without any coding or AI knowledge. The software puts high emphasis on usability and speed and does not require the user to touch any code or prompts.

Setter AI is not a general-purpose AI phone caller, but instead focuses on appointment setting as a use-case. While it can still be used for other use-cases (such as cold calls, customer support, etc.) it stands out most for its direct calendar integrations (Calendly, Google Calendar) and Zapier integration. It can be connected to over 6000+ apps (Facebook Lead Ads, Notion, Stripe, …) for a variety of appointment setting use-cases such as quick phone follow-ups on lead form submission for instance. Read more about the importance of cutting lead response time in sales here.‍

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(+) When to choose Setter AI

1. You want to use the AI to book appointments directly to your calendar for you.
2. You do not want to touch any prompt, do not work with a developer team and/or want to get started quickly.
3. You are already using a popular calendar solution (Calendly, Google Calendar) and Zapier.

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(-) When to rather not choose Setter AI

1. You are looking for a general-purpose AI phone agent solution (beyond appointment setting).
2. You want to set up very complex conversations or workflows.
3. You want to control technical components such as the LLM, voice synthesis, phone connection, etc..

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Key Facts

• Send unlimited calls
• Integrates with Calendly, Google Calendar and 6000+ apps via Zapier
• 3 free credits for trial (1 credit = 1 call minute)
• Pricing starts at 99 USD / month with 200 credits included
• 30 day money-back-guarantee
• Per-minute price decreases with higher volume. Book a demo here.

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Call leads in 10 seconds. Never miss an opportunity again.

Setter AI calls up leads in 10 seconds and reduces your lead response time by 99%.

Book a demo

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#2: Bland AI - High-Level Phone Calling Platform

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Bland AI is a developer platform and API for creating AI phone agents. Through its high-level API interface it is highly customizable and serves as a general-purpose solution for setting up complex AI phone agents. The company advertises a wide range of use-cases such as customer support, inbound sales and B2B data collection.

Recently the company has received a lot of attention with a viral billboard campaign: Watch it on X. In this demo Bland AI scores with a competitively low latency. Important to keep in mind though is that functionality of the turbo mode presented in the billboard campaign comes with limited capability (no function calls, meaning the AI can e.g. not book appointments, update your CRM, … mid-call). These come with their slightly higher latency base or enhanced mode instead.

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(+) When to choose Bland AI

1. You want to customize the prompts and train the AI yourself to create complex conversation flows.
2. You want access to a high-level API for abstracting away anything related to AI phone agents (phone connector, voice synthesis, text generation, …).
3. You want to use their low-latency turbo mode and don’t need function calls from the AI.

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(-) When to not choose Bland AI

1. You do not want to touch any prompt, do not work with a developer team and/or want to get started quickly.
2. You don’t have time to dive into the world of AI phone agents or are not technically savvy.
3. You need control over all components related to conversational AI (phone connector, voice synthesis, text generation, …).

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Key Facts

• 2 USD worth of free credits for trial
• $499 per month fixed fee
• Additionally $0.09/minute
• Max 1000 calls /day
• Everything above 1000 calls/day needs an enterprise license starting at $50,000.
• Discord community

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#3: Synthflow AI - Customizable AI Voice Agents

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Synthflow AI is a general-purpose phone agent platform, similar to Bland AI. It advertises various use-cases and industries, such as real estate, recruitment and car dealership. While Bland leans towards positioning itself rather as a developer platform, Synthflow chooses a more user-friendly approach with a simple to use user interface and a lot of guidance, for instance in form of prompt templates for different call goals. While prompting becomes easier this way, the user still needs to touch prompts himself to adjust the AIs behaviour to their desired outcome. Additionally you have to bring your own Twilio account for making phone calls (in opposition to Setter AI and Bland AI) adding up the total cost per minute.

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(+) When to choose Synthflow AI

1. You want to customize the prompts and train the AI yourself to create complex conversation flows for different use-cases.
2. You want to configure the phone calling services (here Twilio) yourself.
3. You want to have access to a variety of prompt templates.

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(-) When to not choose Synthflow AI

1. You seek a flexible pricing option (lowest tier at $29 USD / month, next tier at $450 USD / month).
2. You do not want to touch any prompt, do not work with a developer team and/or want to get started quickly.
3. You don’t have a Twilio account and don’t want to configure the phone connection by yourself.

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Key Facts

• Price tiers: $29 USD / month, $450 USD / month, $900 USD / month, $1,400 USD / month
• Whitelabel solution available for agencies

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#4: Vocode - Open Source Option

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Vocode is another general AI phone agents platform with a developer-centric focus. As the only tool on this list the code of their product is available open source, so it can be used for free when hosted by yourself. At the same time Vocode offers a paid hosted option too. It comes with a lot of flexibility and a broad API.

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(+) When to choose Vocode

1. Clear choice when in need of an open source option or self hosting is desired.
2. You want to customize and configure deeper levels of the conversational AI (voice synthesis, LLM-streams, …).
3. You want to test conversational AI at a low (financial) cost.

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(+) When not to choose Vocode

1. You do not want to touch any prompt, do not work with a developer team and/or want to get started quickly.
2. Using open source software is not a critical requirement of yours.
3. You do not want to deal with handling the various aspects of running a conversational AI (voice synthesis, text generation, …)

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Key Facts

• Open source code
• Free plan available
• Plan Developer a 25 USD / month, 100 minutes of premium conversation time/month and 3 numbers
• By default inbound only (outbound calls on request)

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#5: Retell AI - LLM-Powered Voice AI

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Similar to Synthflow AI and Vocode, Retell AI lets you customize certain technical components of the conversational AI (such as your phone provider and the LLM). They offer an API with broad functionality and put high emphasis on low latency. Again, technical knowledge is preferable and working with prompts is required to create AI phone agents with Retell AI.

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(+) When to choose Retell AI

1. You want to integrate your own LLM-based text generation.
2. You need diverse language options beyond English (Japanese, Hindi, Portuguese, …)
3. You want to edit prompts yourself.

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(+) When not to choose Retell AI

1. You do not want to touch any prompt, do not work with a developer team and/or want to get started quickly.
2. You don’t have time to dive into the world of AI phone agents or are not technically savvy.
3. You want a subscription-based billing model.

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Key Facts

• 10 free call minutes for trial
• $0,08 USD - $0,31 USD cents per minute (based on set up)
• Up to 10 concurrent calls (on the non-enterprise plan)

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