10 best Air.AI alternatives for small businesses

Air AI has gained a lot of popularity in recent years as a voice agent that can hold 40-minute conversations. But is it too good to be true?

Well… you have to consider the price tag. And the lack of shared inboxes. And the fact that it’s more focused on outbound sales than managing inbound customer conversations.

If you’re wondering if there’s a service that better suits your business, this guide breaks down 10 of the best Air AI alternatives. It includes pricing, features, pros, and cons — plus why Air AI users move on to competitors.

Comparing the best Air.AI alternatives

Here’s how the best Air AI alternatives stack up:

1. Quo (formerly OpenPhone): Best Air AI alternative for small and growing businesses

Pros

• Fully featured business phone system
• Sona AI is available on every plan
• Shared team inbox with Sona conversation history
• No additional hardware required
• 7,000+ integration capabilities

Cons

• Can’t verify accounts through two-factor authentication*

*Nearly all virtual phone numbers share this problem. For safety reasons, companies like Facebook, Uber, and Google rarely let you authenticate accounts through a virtual phone number.

Quo is a business phone system with built-in calling, texting, and everything you need to manage all your customer communication in one place. Unlike Air AI’s voice assistants, it doesn’t rely on another provider — it works on its own.

It provides unlimited calls and texts to anyone in the US and Canada, plus access to Sona, our AI agent, on every plan. Sona can greet missed callers, collect voicemails and callback info, and answer FAQs during and after business hours.

With Quo and Sona, you can also:

• Record Sona-handled calls on any plan. In contrast, Air AI charges credits to record calls, which can add up quickly depending on your call volume.

• Get AI call transcripts and summaries at the end of every call. Air AI doesn’t automatically provide AI-generated call transcripts or summaries, so you won’t get post-call insights or context unless you manually listen to the recording. That’s not the case with Quo.
• Access existing contacts from your phone system so there’s no need to manually import data. This isn’t the case with standalone apps like Air.AI, where you have to upload contacts yourself (and ultimately add more steps to your setup).
• Get started in 15 minutes or less. There’s no complicated process or training needed — just give Sona some context about your business by uploading a document, PDF, or URL. 
• Automatically log calls with Quo’s HubSpot integration with a clear “Handled by Sona” label and an AI-generated summary. You can also log calls handled by Sona into other CRMs using the Quo API or Make integration.

Quo is much more than an AI answering service — we’ve designed each of our plans to help you collaborate better with your team. That’s why on every tier, you can:

• Stop calls and messages from falling through the cracks by turning any number into a shared phone number. This allows multiple team members to text and call from the same phone number with just their cell phone and a WiFi connection.
• Keep team members in the loop with internal threads and comments. That way, you can leave notes and ask questions directly underneath calls, texts, and recordings, and tag coworkers in relevant threads so it’s easier to get their attention.
• Respond to customers faster with message automations. You can set up scheduled texts in the recipient’s time zone, create message templates with snippets, and enable auto-replies during and after business hours.

Try Quo free for seven days and set up a test call with Sona.

Key features of Quo

• Access to Quo’s Sona on every plan
• Texting automations like scheduled texts, snippets, and auto-replies
• AI-generated call transcripts and summaries
• Third-party integrations with CRMs
• Shared phone numbers

• AI call tagging
• Phone menus

Quo pricing 

Quo’s pricing includes:

• Starter: $15 per user per month for shared numbers and inboxes, support for SMS and MMS, calling and messaging to US and Canadian numbers, on-demand call recording, voicemail transcriptions, thousands of automations via Zapier and Make, and more
• Business: $23 per user per month for automatic call recording, AI call transcripts and summaries, phone menus, CRM integrations like HubSpot and Salesforce integrations, custom ring orders, call forwarding, and more
• Scale: $35 per user per month for AI call tags, a dedicated account manager, audit log, and more

Our AI agent, Sona, is available as an add-on to any plan:

• $49 per month for 50 calls per month*
• $0.99 per additional call

*Calls under 15 seconds don’t count toward this amount

2. Synthflow: Best for booking appointments

Pros

• Multiple languages supported
• Unlimited AI agents

Cons

• Not a true business phone system
• Upgrading gets expensive fast
• Max of 50 minutes on the base plan

Synthflow lets you set up AI voice agents for inbound and outbound calls. They can send follow-up texts, book appointments, and route customer calls to the correct rep. You can also try before you buy, since Synthflow offers a 14-day free trial.

But keep in mind Synthflow isn’t a true business phone system, even though it lets you buy phone numbers. You still need a separate phone system for your human representatives to call and text customers directly. This means your conversations will be split between two different platforms.

Synthflow may also be difficult to scale. For example:

• The Starter plan includes 50 call minutes for $29 per month. The next tier up costs $375 per month, which means there’s not much middle ground for growing brands.
• You can only invite team members to your account if you upgrade to the Pro plan. This means you have to pay 10x more per month just to collaborate with your coworkers.
• Need extra minutes beyond your monthly cap? You’ll have to upgrade from the base plan, then pay an extra $0.12 to $0.13 per minute.

If you don’t want to choose between a voicemail vs an answering service, Synthflow might fit the bill. But if you want a simpler AI voice agent system that lets you collaborate with your team, you may want to look for another Air.AI alternative.

Key features of Synthflow

• No-code AI voice agent platform
• 14-day free trial
• SMS support
• Appointment booking
• Call routing

Synthflow pricing

Synthflow offers five pricing plans to choose from:

• Starter: $29 per month for 50 minutes (no additional minutes available), five concurrent calls, and unlimited assistants
• Pro: $375 per month for 2,000 minutes (then $0.13 per minute), team access, and 25 concurrent calls
• Growth: $750 per month for 4,000 minutes (then $0.12 per minute), 25 subaccounts, and 50 concurrent calls
• Agency: $1,250 per month for 6,000 minutes (then $0.12 per minute), unlimited sub-accounts, and 80 concurrent calls
• Enterprise: Starting at $0.08 per minute (volume-based pricing) for custom integrations, over 200 concurrent calls, and SIP trunking

3. Vapi: Best for developers

Pros

• APIs and SDKs are available
• Supports complex call handling

Cons

• Confusing pricing structure
• HIPAA compliance costs $1,000 per month
• Customer support costs $2,000 per month

Vapi is a voice AI platform designed for developers who want to build, test, and deploy conversational agents. Each plan offers enterprise-grade reliability and latency, plus flexible APIs and SDKs so you have more control over your voice agents.

But because Vapi was built specifically for developers, it doesn’t include a built-in phone system. You’ll need to purchase a separate platform, connect it to Vapi, then monitor your integration to ensure it’s running as expected.

Another consideration is Vapi’s pay-as-you-go pricing model — it costs $0.05 per minute on top of your business phone system. This isn’t ideal for businesses with high call volumes. You could always purchase a bundled plan, but keep in mind you’ll still pay extra for overage minutes.

Vapi gets even more expensive if you have specific use cases or want more support from the team. Need HIPAA compliance? That’s $1,000 extra per month. And if you want customer support, prepare to pay $2,000 per month.

Key features of Vapi

• Pay as you go on the base plan
• Slack support
• HIPAA compliance
• 40+ native integrations
• Access to APIs and SDKs

Vapi pricing

Vapi offers four pricing plans:

• Ad-Hoc Infra: Pay as you go for 10 concurrent calls, seven days of call retention, and integrations with Make and Zapier
• Agency: $400 per month for 3,000 bundled minutes (plus $0.18 per minute over), 50 concurrent calls, and unlimited call retention
• Startup: $800 per month for 7,500 bundled minutes (plus $0.16 per minute over), and 100 concurrent calls
• Enterprise: Custom pricing for unlimited bundled minutes, unlimited concurrent lines, enterprise integrations, and “forward-deployed support”

You’ll have to purchase add-ons for HIPAA compliance ($1,000 per month) and access to the customer support team ($2,000 per month).

4. Goodcall: Best for in-house call centers

Pros

• Unlimited minutes on every plan
• Custom CRM integrations (requires upgrade)

Cons

• Not a full business phone system
• Three team members max on the base plan
• Per-user pricing

Goodcall lets you automate customer service and sales calls with custom AI agents. It also comes with unlimited minutes on every plan, so you don’t have to worry about usage caps. Goodcall provides integrations with tools like HubSpot and Zapier to help speed up your workflows.

Goodcall also offers features like automatic call recording and can play a disclosure message at the start, so callers are aware of being recorded. But make no mistake: Goodcall isn’t a full business phone system. Customer conversations will be split across platforms, and you’ll have to switch between systems to gather context when it’s time to follow up.

With Goodcall,  you can only have three team members on the Starter plan ($59 per user per month). If you want more, you’ll have to upgrade to the Growth plan — nearly double the price for just six additional team members ($99 per user per month).

Another limitation? You can only reach so many customers. With Goodcall, you can only serve a max of 100 unique customers per month. After that, you’ll need to pay an additional charge of $0.50 per customer.

Key features of Goodcall

• Unlimited minutes

• Appointment booking functionality
• Zapier integrations
• Google Voice integration
• Automatic call recording

Goodcall pricing

Goodcall has four plans to choose from:

• Starter: $59 per user per month (three-user max) for unlimited  minutes, seven days of call and customer details, and up to 100 unique customers
• Growth: $99 per user per month (nine-user max) for 30 days of call and customer details, and up to 250 unique customers
• Scale: $199 per user per month for unlimited call and customer details, and up to 500 unique customers (50-user max)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing for in-house call center support and CRM integrations

You can always serve more customers per month by paying $0.50 per additional customer.

5. Lindy: Best for pre-built complex AI agents

Pros

• AI agents can make outbound calls
• Pre-built templates for setting up workflows

Cons

• Not a traditional phone system
• $19.99 per additional user
• Meeting recording requires an upgrade

Lindy is an AI platform that lets you build custom AI agents that automate phone calls, emails, and meetings. You can also tap into pre-built workflow templates on any plan — like sales or recruitment workflows — that are already set up and you can activate in one click.

Like other types of AI agents, Lindy can help you take calls outside of business hours. This helps prevent you from losing out on customers just because you’re off the clock. You can also handle outbound calls at scale, like if you’re conducting a survey that requires calling a lot of customers.

Keep in mind, Lindy isn’t a traditional phone system — the only thing it offers is AI agents. If your team needs to speak or text with customers, you’ll need to do so through a separate business phone provider.

It doesn’t help that Lindy is a fairly expensive AI virtual receptionist provider, especially as you start needing more features and services. For example:

• You’ll need to upgrade to the Business plan if you want to record meetings ($299.99 per month)
• You’ll also have to upgrade to the Business plan if you want priority support
• If you want Lindy to build AI agents for you instead of doing it yourself, you’ll have to contact sales for a custom quote

Lindy works well if you want to build complex AI agents without the headache and learning curve of doing it yourself. But if you’re looking to prioritize scalability and competitive pricing, you may want to consider another Air.AI alternative.

Key features of Lindy

• Schedule meetings
• 30+ languages
• CRM integrations like HubSpot and Salesforce
• Customizable templates
• Voice selection

Lindy pricing

Here’s how much Lindy’s AI-powered virtual receptionist costs:

• Free: $0 per month for up to 400 tasks and a one million character knowledge base
• Pro: $49.99 per month for up to 5,000 tasks, a 20 million character knowledge base, and access to webhooks
• Business: $299.99 per month for up to 30,000 tasks, priority support, and unlimited phone calls ($0.20 per minute)
• Custom: Custom pricing for custom AI agent implementation, a dedicated account manager, and a workflow satisfaction guarantee

Keep in mind additional users cost another $19.99 per seat per month.

6. VoiceGenie: Best for upselling

Pros

• Automated cross-selling and upselling 
• Inbound and outbound agents are available

Cons

• Upgrading can be pricey
• No built-in phone system
• Limited to a max of 16 team members

VoiceGenie lets you build AI voice bots designed to automate handling customer calls. Its biggest claim to fame is spotting upselling opportunities. For example, its AI voice bots can offer relevant add-ons or upgrades to customers while on a call — helping you maximize sales without needing to hire additional team members. 

Many customers also use VoiceGenie to qualify leads, invite contacts to events like webinars, and answer frequently-asked questions. 

But VoiceGenie struggles to scale alongside growing teams. For example:

• The Starter plan ($200 per month) only includes 1,000 minutes. If you want more, you’ll have to upgrade to the Growth plan, which costs $350 per month for 2,500 minutes.
• And speaking of team members, you can only have up to 10 unless you upgrade to the Elite plan, which costs $1,000 per month.

The most frustrating aspect is that VoiceGenie doesn’t include a built-in phone system. You’ll have to buy a number through a third-party service like Plivo, then manually connect it via integrations.

Key features of VoiceGenie

• Answers frequently asked questions
• Live meeting bookings
• Automate customer follow-ups
• Call reports and insights
• Voicemail detection (identifies and skips)

VoiceGenie pricing

VoiceGenie has four different plans depending on how many minutes you need:

• Trial: $50 per month for 250 minutes, 10 human associates, and customer support within 24 hours
• Starter: $200 per month for 1,000 minutes
• Growth: $500 per month for 2,500 minutes and premium support within 10 hours
• Elite: $1,000 per month for 5,000 minutes, 16 human associates, and 24/7 priority technical support

You can also purchase additional minutes in bundles of 250 for $50.

7. AI Rudder: Best for local and regional accents

Pros

• Conversational AI with customizable accents
• Collect customer information

Cons

• No transparent pricing
• Confusing plans and features
• Limited user reviews

AI Rudder is a platform that lets you build AI voice agents that use natural language processing, automatic speech recognition, and text-to-speech. This allows your AI agents to speak naturally in more than 15 languages, including regional and local accents.

AI Rudder’s agents can make and receive inbound and outbound customer calls. They can also manage repetitive tasks like collecting customer information and providing warranty information to customers on the phone.

That said, AI Rudder doesn’t share pricing on its website, so you’ll have to contact its sales team to request a demo and find out how much it costs. It’s also hard to compare AI Rudder to other Air AI alternatives, since there aren’t many user reviews available online.

Key features of AI Rudder

• Inbound call management 
• Lead generation and outreach (e.g., telemarketing and appointment confirmations)

• Local and regional accents
• Concurrent calls
• API

AI Rudder pricing

AI Rudder doesn’t publicly list its pricing online. The only way to get a quote and potentially test the product is to contact the sales team.

8. Insighto AI: Best for the healthcare industry

Pros

• White labeling (requires upgrade)
• Intelligent call routing

Cons

• No voice cloning on the base plan
• Limited to one team member on the base plan
• Pay-as-you-go pricing ($0.06 per minute)

Insighto AI is a communication platform that lets you build and deploy AI chatbots and voice agents trained on your own data. You can also route calls through an AI-powered IVR that lets callers choose a menu option. Once they do, AI agents take over — helping with appointment scheduling, prescription refills, or lab result updates. Insighto AI is also SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR-compliant, so it meets strict privacy standards — making it a strong fit for healthcare practices. You can also connect Insighto AI with over 1,000 tools like Zoho and Google Calendar to streamline repetitive tasks in your workflow.

Insighto lets you clone your own voice, which gives your AI voice agents a personalized touch. Just keep in mind this isn’t available on the base plan: you’re required to purchase an add-on first that costs $149 per month.

If you want more than 15 concurrent calls, you’ll need to upgrade to the Turbo plan ($149 per month).

Keep in mind Insighto follows a pay-as-you-go model on top of any add-on you buy. This means you might pay a minimum of $39 per month plus $0.06 per minute to use the service, which will add up quickly the more your business grows.

Key features of Insighto AI

• AI IVR
• Answer FAQs
• Smart call routing
• Multi-channel support 
• Multi-language support (50+ languages)

Insighto AI pricing

Insighto AI uses a pay-as-you-go model starting at $0.06 per minute.

Then, you can purchase one of four optional booster plans that come with additional features:

• Power: $39 per month for 10 bots, 15 concurrent calls, email support, and essential integrations
• Turbo: $119 per month for 50 bots, 30 concurrent calls, voice cloning, setup support, and advanced integrations
• Ultra: $199 per month for unlimited bots, 50 concurrent calls, premium onboarding, and custom integrations
• Enterprise: Custom pricing for volume-based discounts and premium onboarding

9. Bland: Best for enterprises

Pros

• 99.99% uptime
• Real-time analytics

Cons

• Steep learning curve
• Additional numbers cost $15 per month
• No transparent pricing

Bland AI is a standalone artificial intelligence phone calling platform that helps enterprise brands launch agents from their own servers. It offers 99.99% uptime, which is helpful if you can’t afford inconsistency when communicating with customers.

Like Air AI, Bland can recall past interactions with customers and have more personalized conversations. You can also buy separate phone numbers for different departments. Just keep in mind these cost an additional $15 per month, which is three times the cost of other phone systems like Quo (and far more complicated to set up).

There are a few other tools worth mentioning here, like Bland’s sentiment analysis or automatic call recording features. But these might be underwhelming in exchange for the price — Bland charges $0.09 per minute for all voice calls, which can add up quickly if your team handles a high volume of long-winded calls.

Past users also indicate that setup took hours, and the results didn’t live up to the demo quality. For an enterprise brand, this might not be a problem. But for a startup or small business, it might be time-consuming and frustrating.

Key features of Bland

• API
• HubSpot and Salesforce integrations

• Campaign analytics
• Warm transfers
• Call recording

Bland pricing

Bland doesn’t list its pricing publicly — aside from its $0.09 per-minute call rate.

To get a quote, you’ll need to contact sales.

10. Retell AI: Best for debt collection

Pros

• Warm call transfers
• Connect to telephony using Retell SIP Trunking

Cons

• Confusing usage-based pricing
• Extra knowledge bases cost $8 each per month
• Batch calls require a paid add-on

Retell AI is an AI agent platform that lets you build, deploy, and monitor AI agents that integrate with your company’s pre-existing workflows. You can sync the platform with your existing knowledge base, so the AI agents always have access to the latest information about your company.

Retell also supports warm transfers between AI and your team so they can take calls when they need to answer more complex questions. But keep in mind it’s not a replacement for a true business phone system — you’ll have to connect an existing phone service so team members can call and text your customers. 

You should also know Retell AI’s pricing is usage-based, which means costs start as high as $0.07 to $0.31 per minute. If you want cheaper rates, you’ll need to upgrade to its Enterprise plan, which requires you to reach out to sales for pricing.

Unfortunately, many of Retell’s best features require expensive add-ons. Want uptime SLAs? You’ll need to upgrade to the Enterprise plan. Want to call customers from verified phone numbers? That’s $100 per month.

Bottom line: Compared to other Air AI alternatives that start at $5 per additional number per month, Retell AI isn’t the most cost-effective AI agent platform.

Key features of Retell AI

• Call history dashboard
• Uptime SLA (requires upgrade)
• Batch calling (requires paid add-on)
• Call transfers
• IVR

Retell AI pricing

Here’s what you can expect from Retell AI’s pricing plans:

• Pay-as-you-go: $0.07-$0.31 per minute, 20 concurrent calls, HIPAA/BAA compliance, community and email support
• Enterprise: As low as $0.03 per minute, support for 50+ concurrent calls, uptime SLAs, access to private Slack, and prompt engineering support

Just keep in mind this doesn’t include add-on costs such as verified phone numbers ($100 per month) and concurrent calls ($8 extra per concurrent call).

Why businesses move to Air.AI alternatives

Air AI lets you automate inbound and outbound phone calls with advanced AI agents that run 24/7. Each call can last up to 40 minutes, with humanlike conversations and “infinite memory” so agents can remember past calls and have more personalized conversations.

But that doesn’t mean Air.AI is a perfect platform. If you look a little closer, you’ll see it isn’t designed for most growing brands.

Here’s why Air.AI is rarely the right fit for small businesses:

Pricing isn’t publicly listed

Air AI doesn’t share any pricing on its website, which means you won’t know how much it costs to get started (or how many extra fees might show up later). You can’t even contact the sales team for a quote — there’s no landing page or email available online.

The only way to see real numbers is to sign up for a “free” account, which requires your credit card information up front. You’ll see an option to choose from a list of prices that give you “credits” to use, but it’s not very clear what they do or how many you need.

Keep in mind you’ll be required to provide your phone number as well and agree to be contacted for future sales conversations.

No free trial

If the lack of transparent pricing wasn’t frustrating enough, there’s also no way to try Air AI before you buy. This means you’ll have to make an investment without knowing if it’s the right fit for what your business needs. 

Sure, you can find product demos online, but there’s nothing on its website that gives you a true look at what you get (and what you won’t).

And speaking of things you won’t get with Air AI…

You need to pay for credits to record calls

Want to record incoming calls? That’s not included with Air AI. Instead, you’ll need to pay for per-minute credits, which aren’t transparently listed anywhere on the website.

Even if you do pay for call recordings, keep in mind there are:

No AI transcription or summaries

Air AI doesn’t provide AI-generated transcriptions or summaries. This means you can’t get written recaps of who said what, so you’ll need to manually listen to every call recording. Otherwise, you’ll have to purchase a third-party call recording app and transcribe your voice calls separately. 

Doesn’t offer a built-in phone system

Air AI doesn’t offer a built-in phone system, so you’ll have to forward calls to it from your existing service provider. 

In other words, everyone on your team who needs to follow up with full customer details (like text interactions or past phone calls) will have to switch between Air AI and your business phone system.

This slows down your response time, making it harder to provide context and leads to a clunkier sales process — not ideal for fast-growing startups.

Users say promised refunds never came

Another less-than-ideal point: Air AI has a history of not refunding users after poor experiences. Multiple users report paying thousands of dollars, being promised refunds, and never receiving their money back — even after months of follow-up.

This reviewer said they’re still waiting on their refund:

And this reviewer resorted to legal action:

Quo: The best Air.AI alternative

Air AI makes a lot of big promises — and to its credit, it delivers on some of them.

But if your goal is to optimize your phone system, provide a better customer experience, and implement call reduction strategies without paying enterprise-level prices, it may not be the best fit for your business.

That’s why thousands of businesses sign up for Quo instead: the easiest way to get an AI agent alongside a business phone system. All you need is a WiFi connection and your existing device — no extra hardware, coding experience, or machine learning models required. You’ll also get access to additional AI tools, like AI call tags, which automatically label calls after they end based on the conversation.

First, sign up for a seven-day free trial to confirm OpenPhone is a fit for your team. Then, test call Sona in the Quo web or desktop apps to see our user-friendly phone answering service in action.