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An AI voice agent is simple: artificial intelligence that can understand and respond to your speech, making conversations possible.
We know: the idea that AI voice agents are changing everything shouldn’t be breaking news. An innovation like talking to a computer will change our businesses and lives. But we’re just starting to figure out how this might change the world, especially for sales teams.
How will AI voice agents solve repetitive calls? Or extend your limited customer support hours? Respond immediately to incoming leads? Follow up with lost leads? What can an AI voice agent currently do, and how can you leverage that?
Let’s explore what the best AI voice agents currently are, what they aren’t, and why they matter by exploring the best AI voice agent tools available on the market.
What is an AI Voice Agent?
An AI voice agent is an automated system that utilizes voice recognition and language processing to engage in realistic conversations with users.
What is an AI voice agent? Think of it as a phone assistant that never sleeps. Or something akin to the computer from Star Trek: a database you can converse with.
How it works: AI uses speech recognition (speech-to-text) technology to convert your spoken language into text. It then processes that text with its database to provide an output. AI can then use TTS (text-to-speech) to throw the reply back at you in audio format—often within the space of a few seconds.
AI voice agent capabilities: AI voice agents can handle and route incoming calls, answer frequently asked questions, qualify leads by a set of variables you decide, book appointments, or escalate issues to human reps.
Why AI voice agents matter: AI voice agents mean instant leverage. They can scale customer support teams and free up human resources to focus on key portions of sales workflows. If there’s any manual or repetitive task that an AI voice agent can reasonably solve, including on the customer-facing side, it’s a massive opportunity for any company.
AI Voice Agents Benefits and Use Cases
24/7 availability. Imagine never missing a lead or support call simply because it’s 2 a.m. and the lead is calling from the other side of the world. That’s the instant benefit of an AI voice agent you put to work on your phones.
Scalability. If an AI voice agent can handle inbound or even outbound calls to a certain degree, you’re not limited to a single caller. You can continually offer a personalized experience on your calls as long as you have a capable AI voice agent in place.
Consistency: AI voice agents are largely predictable. Maybe it won’t be quite as warm or even funny as your best sales or customer service reps, but it will always be professional or polite. You can’t offend an AI voice agent or make it have a bad day.
Cost savings: With the right AI voice agent service in place, you can reduce the need for large support or sales teams. That cost savings alone can make enormous AI voice agent investments worth it in the long run.
Data and insights. Voice agents transcribe calls for automatic logging, transcripts, and analytics. You can use these to further optimize the quality of the information your agents provide.
We’re still just scratching the surface of what the best AI voice agents are capable of. But some of the key use cases include:
Customer support: Imagine an inbound agent that handles FAQs or pulls info from your existing knowledge base. You can have your sales reps focus exclusively on outbound calls.
Sales and lead qualification: An AI voice agent can work outbound, calling up leads and asking qualifying questions or booking demos. It can then make the updates within a CRM so you have qualified leads without lifting a finger.
Recruiting and HR: AI voice agents can screen candidates or schedule human-to-human interviews, sending reminders both to your HR and to the recruits.
Collections and payment reminders: No one likes to call people up asking for an unpaid invoice to be paid. But AI voice agents don’t mind.
How We Assessed These AI Voice Agents
To curate this list, we applied an evaluation framework focused on the needs of B2B sales teams. Each tool was tested (or demo-reviewed when live testing wasn’t available) for core capabilities like inbound and outbound call handling, speech recognition accuracy, natural-sounding text-to-speech, CRM and workflow integrations, analytics, and overall reliability.
We compared pricing structures—including free tiers, minute-based plans, and enterprise options—against likely call volumes to surface the true cost of ownership. We also considered ease of setup (no-code vs. developer-first), scalability, compliance standards (SOC2, HIPAA, GDPR), and the quality of support and documentation. Finally, we weighed each platform’s unique differentiators—such as omnichannel features, voice cloning, or advanced sentiment analysis—so readers can match the right solution to their specific sales use case.
Lindy is a simple “just-enter-a-prompt” solution for creating, managing, and sharing agents, advertising itself as “your first AI employee.” That extends to AI agents for a variety of purposes, but it includes customer support and sales features.
Key Distinguishing Features
AI voice agent handles sales calls, support tickets, and even client onboarding
Making and taking real phone calls
Assign multiple-task prompts, having Lindy place each call one by one
Knowledge base lookup for handling FAQs
Pros
Integration with Slack for simple workflows, follow-ups, and team participation
Very realistic and natural-sounding conversation flow
Interacts with your back-end database, even updating it in real time
Cons
Call features not included in the free plan
You’ll have to set up a dedicated (and paid) phone number to use the call features
Pricing
$0 for the free version; $29/month, $199/month, and then custom pricing for enterprise clients. See pricing here.
Implications for B2B Sales Teams
Lindy makes for an easy setup to get an AI voice agent on your team instantly, and the free trial makes it ideal for poking around to see what an agent can do before you make the full price commitment.
Vapi: Best for Omnichannel and Cross-Channel Support
Advanced voice features for developers, Vapi offers multi-channel extensions so developers and more technical users can deploy voice agents that reflect more complicated FAQs and workspaces.
Key Distinguishing Features
Multimodal agents: Vapi’s agents can switch between voice calls and SMS in the middle of a conversation
API integrations are abundant on their developer-first platform
Lots of support for extensions like CRMs and Twilio, as well as the ability to build custom logic flows
Pros
Built-in AI conversational guardrails to avoid the “AI hallucination” problem
SOC2, HIPAA, PCI compliant—great for regulated industries like healthcare and finance
Boasts 99.99% uptime and “enterprise-grade” reliability
Requires technical know-how and resources to get up and running
Pricing
Its usage-based pricing means $0.05 / minute on calls, so if you’re a startup that needs a predictable plan for a certain amount of minutes, you may have to think volume-based instead.
Implications for B2B Sales Teams
Vapi helps sales teams who have to respond to a lot of technical questions, so this will be audience-dependent. Do you have B2B sales with highly technical clients? If not, Vapi might not be for you.
A platform for turning text into realistic speech, it also supports voice cloning so you can create your own custom voice if you want an extra-personal touch. Though not a full “voice agent,” you can plug in ElevanLabs for a more customized speech output.
Key Distinguishing Features
Realistic speech, sometimes with emotional nuance and intonation
Voice cloning and custom voices so you can sample a voice, especially if founder-led
Multi-lingual/dubbing support, meaning it works internationally and across many languages
Integrate ElevenLabs into your product via APIs to power voice agents
Pros
One of the best resources for natural-sounding text-to-speech
Works well for outbound calls or realistic-sounding voicemail intake
Maybe best for cloning a specific personality or voice
Cons
Not a full voice agent, so you will have to integrate it with other resources via API
Costs will tend to accumulate with higher-volume use
Pricing
$0/month for anyone who wants to try its speech-to-text or basic agent functionality, as well as plug-in API access; $11/month for professional voice cloning.
Implications for B2B Sales Teams
You may love the quality of the text-to-speech or voice cloning, but if you want sales features with an agent that handles intake, analytics, or database integration, ElevenLabs is not the full-solution suite for you.
Deepgram: Best for Highly Accurate Speech Recognition
Highly capable, it will be incredibly useful for any B2B sales team that wants to outsource and analyze with an AI voice agent. But do you have the budget to handle its features?
OpenAI Whisper: Best Open-Source Speech Recognition
Website: https://openai.com/
What It Does / Who It’s For
OpenAI’s Whisper feature works well for people familiar with OpenAI tech like ChatGPT and is one of the best AI voice agent open source solutions on the market. If you have a lot of transcripts to get through, OpenAI can help.
Key Distinguishing Features
Multilingual/translation support, handling multiple languages, and translating non-English into English
Trained on a large dataset, so it can handle issues like thick accents and filtering out background noise
API/open source functionality to integrate with your existing AI infrastructure
Pros
Low cost and easy to scale, even if you have a lot of speech to transcribe
Great for international use cases with a variety of languages and incoming calls
API version is easy to plug into your existing systems to supplement other AI voice agent features
Cons
Not a full AI voice agent suite, so don’t expect it to make any sales for you
If you’re worried about handling issues like background noise or different languages from incoming prospects, OpenAI Whisper is an effective add-on solution, but not a complete one.
Enterprise-targeted AI voice agents, especially aimed at automated voice calls—along with 24/7 support to keep you up and running.
Key Distinguishing Features
No-code platform that’s great for businesses that want to build AI voice agents the easy way
Visual workflow builder to design your call flows according to your company practices
Pricing plans that scale and allow for concurrent calls if your demand increases
Pros
Easy to start and iterate thanks to the no-code approach
AI components are mostly included, minimizing API and engineering needs
Easy to scale thanks to the pricing structure
Cons
The costs can add up if you expect higher call volumes, which may require planning
The downside of fewer APIs is less control over features and plugins
Pricing
Pricing includes the Pro Plan, offering 2,000 minutes at $375/month. That includes up to 25 concurrent calls, the workflow builder, and additional costs like $0.002 per workflow.
Implications for B2B Sales Teams
A great option for unloading heavy work onto voice agents for routine calls, though the lack of customization might eat into your long-term plans.
Building AI voice agents to make or take phone calls, schedule follow-ups, or even answer questions and transfer calls to live reps.
Key Distinguishing Features
No-code agent builders and APIs give you flexibility without the need for engineering
Real-time voice conversations can take call intake off your hands
SOC, HIPAA, GDPR support
Pros
High quality of conversation for natural, humanlike phone calls
Can qualify leads before your sales rep speaks to them
Can handle calls concurrently if you want to build your call capacity
Self-service pricing to begin, meaning $0 for the subscription
Cons
May have to upgrade to Enterprise usage if you find the no-code solutions lacking
Handling unusual conversations may require more engineering on your part
Pricing
Pricing is $0 to start, including $0.07+/minute for AI voice agents and $0.002+/message for AI chat agents. This includes pre-built functions and analytics, but you’ll have to upgrade to Enterprise if you want more control.
Implications for B2B Sales Teams
A great way to dip your toes into the AI agent waters, though you can expect that if you want the agents to grow with your company, the “$0 to start” logic won’t hold up.
Cognigy is one of the leading enterprise AI voice agents, ideally for contact centers with large voice or chat needs, routing conversations to the appropriate personnel.
Key Distinguishing Features
Omnichannel agents and voice connectivity to bring big teams together and handle large call volumes
Conversational memory and plenty of “context switching” logic to handle omnichannel functions
Largely enterprise-grade, which means you’ll need to establish heavy call volume needs before using
Pros
Powerful and flexible enough to handle large-scale conversations across multiple channels
The omnichannel memory can make it easy for your reps to look up a user’s history
Gathers plenty of analytics to help you build and optimize your voice agent performance
Cons
A steeper learning curve, especially for custom/advanced flows
Opaque, enterprise pricing may gatekeep the smaller companies
Pricing
Pricing with Cognigy is some of the most opaque of those on our list; you may have to book a demo to start getting details.
Implications for B2B Sales Teams
If you have a contact center’s worth of sales calls to take and make, it can be a great solution—but it’s not going to be your entry into AI voice agents.
Generating organic-sounding, human-like voices for text-to-speech purposes—but not necessarily for building a full suite of AI voice agent services.
Key Distinguishing Features
Large voice library to choose from, including over 200 voices
Voices respond quickly for natural conversation flows
APIs and integration features for embedding voice into apps or real-time voice agents
Pros
High-quality, natural sounding voices
Good for scaling voice content including voiceovers and outbound calls
Can clone voice to create synthetic versions of real voices at your company
Cons
Limited features in the free/lower price tiers
Pricing
$0/month to start, $19/month for the Creator Plan, and $66/month for Business. In Business, you can have up to 500 projects, 96 hours of voice generation per year, and audio-to-text features.
Implications for B2B Sales Teams
If you find you enjoy a voice agent but don’t like how it sounds, consider Murf.ai as an option for making a more natural surrounding voice on top of your existing features with its API integrations.
How to Choose the Right AI Voice Agent
Step 1: Define Your Use Case
AI voice agents do a lot. But what will they do for you? Consider the list of features that are important to you first:
Inbound calls (answering calls)
Outbound calls (prospecting and qualifying)
Scheduling calls and booking appointments
Transcriptions
Voice analytics
Customer sentiment evaluations
Step 2: Decide on No-Code vs. Developer-First
“No-code” solutions are typically drag-and-drop builders that anyone can use. And while these are great if you’re a technophobe, you may want the added control that comes with API-first solutions like Deepgram. The key question: Do you have the resources to handle the latter? If not, opt for no-code.
Step 3: Evaluate Voice Quality
If you pride yourself on the human touch, your voice agents should be higher-quality. You may need to use API integrations to plug in solutions like Elevenlabs or Murf.ai.
Step 4: Look at AI Voice Agent Pricing vs. Volume
AI voice agent pricing can be deceiving. If a low entry pricing tier entices you, remember that you might use up all your available “minutes” on a voice agent quickly.
So narrow your choices down to a few options, then compare the tiers based on what you actually plan on using. You may find that the lower-cost option may be the one that initially appeared most expensive.
Step 5: Pilot and Iterate
Ultimately, there’s no substitute for learning on the job. Try a small use case (like building an AI voice agent for after-hours intake) and give it a few weeks to see if there are any bugs. Measure the time you save and ask: if this worked, what else can you start to outsource?
Find the Best AI Voice Agent for Small Businesses Like Yours
You don’t have to be an enormous company to use AI voice agents and save time. In fact, the best AI voice agent for small business solutions doesn’t require you to have a million sales a month, either.
You just have to find the right tool and put it to work.
Using this list, we encourage you to follow a few steps. First, start small. Pick a simple use case, like AI chat support, and roll it out. Test a tool by signing up for a free plan or trial, making it risk-free. Then track the time you save or the leads you capture to see if a more ambitious pricing plan is worth the investment.
And if you want to boost how many leads you get, no matter which AI voice agent you use, don’t forget to try out a free trial of Close CRM.