Research · 14 articles
Research
Plain-language analysis of the AI voice-agent space, held to the same evidence-first standard as the rest of the site. Every number is dated and links to its source. No vendor spin.
Latest AI voice · changelog Voice AI: August's cuts came out of the free tiers Seventeen days on from our last sweep we re-captured every pricing page in the directory and set the new screenshots against the old ones. Two platforms made a change that matters, and here is the uncomfortable part: neither change moved a single dollar figure, so the automated price comparison we run first saw nothing at all. Both cuts landed on the free tier instead. This edition covers 30 July to 16 August 2026. Read the piece →
- AI voice · analysis When your voice platform goes enterprise-only Between our screenshot on 15 June 2026 and our next one on 11 July, Synthflow deleted every price from its website. No announcement, no email that we saw, no migration notice. In place of a pricing table there is now one card saying contracts start at $30,000 a year and a button that says contact sales. If you build on somebody else's platform, this is the failure mode worth planning for, because it is not a bug and it is not a wind-down.
- AI voice · changelog Voice AI in August 2026: every verified change Our July sweep re-captured every pricing page in the directory and set the screenshots against the previous pair. Three platforms moved their prices, four changed a banner and hoped you would read it as news, and the European Commission quietly published the document that decides whether your voice agent has to announce itself. Here is every change we can show you a capture for.
- AI voice · pricing The cheapest voice AI price is often a data-sharing discount The number at the top of a voice AI pricing page is often the discounted one. Two tricks recur: a lower rate you get only by letting the vendor train on your audio, and a promo price parked where the standing price belongs. Here is how to read past both, with the dated captures that caught them.
- AI voice · pricing AI receptionist vs human: the real cost maths Every blog ranking AI receptionists claims a saving of 93 to 95 per cent, built on a human baseline padded with recruitment, training, turnover write-offs, even the desk and computer. We redo the maths with statutory numbers only (BLS and IRS for the US, ONS and gov.uk for the UK) and set them against our dated AI pricing.
- AI voice · pricing What an AI voice agent really costs per minute The advertised per-minute rate is usually a floor, not a bill. Using the dated prices from our vendor pages, we split a real minute into its five parts and work four pricing shapes through with real numbers, then derive how far each platform's headline sits from the worst case.
- AI voice · compliance HIPAA voice AI: why one BAA is never enough A Business Associate Agreement (BAA) is the signed contract HIPAA requires before a supplier may touch patient data. A composed voice agent hands each call to four or five suppliers in a row, and US health-privacy rules expect a signature at every hop. We quote the regulation, walk one stack hop by hop, price the enforcement and show who across our 27-vendor directory actually signs.
- AI voice · changelog Voice AI in July 2026: every verified price and product change Our July audit sweep re-captured every pricing page in the directory and set the screenshots against June's. One platform removed its public pricing entirely, another killed its free tier, a third put two plans up, and OpenAI renamed its realtime models. Here is every change we verified, with the before and after dated.
- AI voice · buying Credits, characters, bytes: how voice AI pricing actually works Voice AI vendors sell the same product, a minute of finished speech, in at least seven different units. This decoder converts each unit to cost per finished minute and runs an identical 10-minute job through every wrapper, then names the pricing-page traps our dated captures keep catching.
- AI voice · agencies White-label voice agents: the agency options Agencies can sell AI phone agents under their own brand three ways: rent an ops layer like Hermes, resell a finished product through Frontdesk's programme, or build a wrap on Retell or Vapi. Here is what each route costs on the vendors' own dated prices, and what Synthflow's mid-2026 exit from self-serve white-label says about this lane.
- AI voice · law Must you tell callers they're talking to AI? The EU AI Act now requires people to be told when they are talking to an AI system. The duty took effect on 2 August 2026, and the fines for skipping it reach €15 million or 3% of worldwide turnover. The US already polices AI voices through robocall law. Here is what the rules actually say, quoted and dated, and what your voice agent should do about it.
- AI voice · buying ElevenLabs models compared: v3 vs Multilingual v2 vs Flash v2.5 There is no single best ElevenLabs model. The ones it sells do different jobs, one has just been retired, and the fast one is half the price of the rest. Here is what each costs and which to pick for narration, live phone calls, other languages or a tight budget.
- AI voice · buying Best free and trial voice AI: try before you pay Almost every voice-AI platform lets you try it without paying, but 'free' means very different things: a perpetual tier you can keep using, a 14-day trial, a one-off credit, or open source. Here is what each one actually gives you, where the catches are, and which to start with for your job.
- AI voice · research Can people tell an AI voice from a human? The honest answer in 2026: a voice cloned from a real person passes as human almost as often as the real thing. A generic, built-from-scratch AI voice still gets caught. That gap matters more than the headline does.
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