Retell vs. PolyAI vs. Persistence: An Honest Comparison

Retell: A Fast Way to Prototype

Retell has built a reputation as one of the quickest platforms for getting a voice agent up and running. Developers can go from idea to working prototype in a short amount of time, which makes it a popular starting point for teams testing whether voice AI fits their use case at all. Where Retell tends to show its limits is on the enterprise compliance side. Teams that need HIPAA or SOC 2 assurances as a baseline, not an add-on, often find themselves needing to layer additional tooling or move to a different platform once they are ready for production deployment at scale. Retell is a reasonable place to start when the goal is proving a concept quickly, but it is worth going in with clear eyes about where that speed comes from.

PolyAI: Enterprise Scale, Strong on Paper

PolyAI positions itself as an Agentic Dialog Platform built around Raven, its own model trained specifically for conversational voice at enterprise scale. The platform is aimed at complex use cases that go beyond simple appointment booking or FAQ handling: fraud detection, outage response, medical triage, and multilingual dispute resolution. Its Agent Studio gives non-technical teams a no-code way to build agents, while its ADK framework gives developers a deeper level of control, and compliance defaults including SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS come built in rather than bolted on. On paper, this makes PolyAI a credible option for large organizations with genuinely complicated voice workflows. The catch is that almost none of this is verifiable without talking to sales. There is no public pricing, no self-serve signup, and no free trial, so evaluating PolyAI means committing time to a sales process before you know what it costs. Independent validation is also thin: PolyAI shows a strong rating on G2, but that rating is based on roughly a dozen reviews as of this writing, which is not enough volume to treat as a reliable signal on its own. The reviews that do exist point to natural-sounding voice quality, ease of use, and responsive support as strengths, with some users noting slower response speed in certain interactions as a drawback.

Persistence: Transparent and Accessible by Design

We built Persistence around the idea that enterprise-grade voice AI should not require an enterprise-only sales process to access. Our architecture is designed for sub-100ms latency so conversations feel natural rather than laggy, and HIPAA and SOC 2 compliance are available as part of the platform rather than gated behind a custom enterprise contract. Pricing is published in tiers on our website, so a team can see what a plan costs and what it includes before ever talking to us. That does not make Persistence the right fit for every workflow. Teams with the most complex, multi-system enterprise deployments that PolyAI targets, think fraud detection pipelines tied deeply into existing enterprise infrastructure, may still need the kind of dedicated enterprise engagement that a sales-only model provides. But for the much larger set of teams that want to see pricing, start building, and scale up as they go, that gatekeeping is not something we think should be a requirement.

Pricing Transparency, Compared

The clearest structural difference between PolyAI and Persistence is how each one handles pricing. PolyAI publishes nothing: no plan tiers, no usage rates, no starting price on its website. The only way to get a number is to request a demo and go through a sales conversation. Some third-party blogs estimate that PolyAI contracts commonly start around $150,000 per year with per-minute usage charged on top, but that figure comes from outside estimates, not from PolyAI directly, so it should be treated as a rough signal rather than a confirmed number. Persistence takes the opposite approach: tiered pricing is published on our pricing page, so a team can compare costs against Retell or PolyAI before committing any time to a sales call. Retell sits closer to Persistence here in that its pricing is also visible upfront, which is part of why it remains a common first stop for teams testing the waters. If pricing transparency is a requirement for your evaluation process, that alone rules PolyAI out of consideration until you are ready for a formal enterprise conversation.

Accessibility: Who Can Actually Use It

Pricing transparency and accessibility are related but distinct. A platform can eventually reveal its price and still be inaccessible if there is no way to start using it without a sales cycle first. PolyAI has no self-serve signup and no free trial, meaning a small team, a startup, or even a mid-size company that wants to test the product hands-on before committing has no path to do that. Everything runs through a demo request and a sales conversation, which makes sense for the large enterprise buyers PolyAI is built for, but it also means smaller teams are effectively locked out regardless of budget. Persistence and Retell both allow teams to sign up and start building directly, which matters if your evaluation process depends on hands-on testing before a purchasing decision gets made. If your organization already operates with enterprise procurement processes and long sales cycles as the norm, PolyAI's model will feel familiar rather than restrictive. If you are a smaller team or want to validate a use case before involving procurement, that same model becomes a real barrier.

An Honest Recommendation

None of these three platforms is objectively "best." Each is built around a different assumption about who the buyer is. PolyAI makes the most sense for large enterprises with complex, high-stakes voice workflows, established procurement processes, and the patience for a sales-driven evaluation, particularly if fraud detection, multilingual dispute handling, or deep systems integration are central requirements. Retell makes sense as a fast starting point for teams that want to prototype a voice agent quickly and are not yet prioritizing built-in enterprise compliance. Persistence tends to fit teams that want sub-100ms latency, published pricing, and compliance options like HIPAA and SOC 2 without needing to justify a large contract before they can even see a price. Before choosing, it is worth mapping your own requirements, compliance needs, team size, budget visibility, and willingness to go through an enterprise sales process, against what each platform actually asks of you to get started, rather than picking based on brand recognition alone.

Key takeaways

• PolyAI is a major enterprise voice AI player built on its proprietary Raven model, but it is sales-only with no published pricing and no self-serve trial path.
• Retell remains a fast option for prototyping voice agents, though it is less focused on enterprise compliance out of the box.
• Persistence publishes tiered pricing and offers HIPAA and SOC 2 compliance without requiring an enterprise sales cycle to access it.
• The right choice depends on scale and process: large enterprises with complex, high-stakes use cases may need PolyAI's full-stack approach, while teams that want to move fast and see pricing upfront often fit Persistence better.
• Independent review data on PolyAI is thin (around a dozen G2 reviews), so treat any rating as a starting point for due diligence, not a final verdict.