AiSewak vs self-serve voice AI APIs: Vapi, Retell, Bolna, ElevenLabs and Sarvam
Vapi, Retell AI, Bolna, ElevenLabs Agents and Sarvam AI are platforms you build on — you assemble the pipeline, operate it and own the compliance review. AiSewak is a managed deployment for citizen-scale Indian-language programmes: we build, run and compliance-review the agent with your department or campaign. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions.
- 5 platforms
- Vapi, Retell, Bolna, ElevenLabs Agents, Sarvam — each cell cites their own docs
- Managed vs self-serve
- The actual axis this page compares, not a feature scorecard
- ₹4–10/min
- What AiSewak quotes in practice, depending on call volume
- Fetched 2026-10-06
- Every competitor fact dated to when we read it
Every platform compared here is a legitimate way to build a voice agent, and three of them — Bolna, Sarvam and, for some languages, ElevenLabs — genuinely compete on Indian-language coverage. What differs is who does the work between signing up and a citizen hearing an answer in their own dialect, with the right compliance disclosures, on a line that holds up during an election week or a scheme launch.
A self-serve platform hands you a dashboard or an API key: you design the conversation, choose the languages, wire the telephony, test the interruption handling, and run the compliance review yourself, on every release. That is the right trade for a team with engineering capacity building a product they intend to own.
AiSewak sells the alternative: we run the pipeline, review every conversation for compliance, and are the ones awake at 6am on polling day. That costs more per minute than most of the rows below, and it should — you are paying for the work, not the API call. Below is what each platform actually publishes, not what either side's marketing implies.
When a self-serve API is the better choice
If you have an engineering team, a defined use case, and want to own the pipeline end to end, build directly on one of the platforms below rather than hiring a managed vendor for it. You will get more control, a lower unit cost at volume, and a published rate card you can budget against today instead of waiting for a quote.
Bolna is the strongest fit if the calls are in Hindi, Hinglish or another Indian vernacular and the use case is commercial outreach or support rather than a government programme — it publishes 10+ vernacular Indian languages and a per-minute rate starting near ₹5.52 (6¢), with India-specific data residency already documented.
Sarvam AI is the strongest fit if the work is building Indic-language voice infrastructure itself — its models are trained specifically on Indian languages and dialects, and its component APIs (speech-to-text, text-to-speech) are priced in rupees per unit, cheaper to reason about than a blended per-minute rate.
Vapi, Retell AI and ElevenLabs Agents are the strongest fit for a non-government product — customer support, sales qualification, appointment booking — where English or a handful of major world languages cover the caller base and a published per-minute or credit-based rate lets you forecast cost before you have a single customer.
What none of the five platforms' own documentation shows, as of the pages fetched for this comparison, is a built-in ECI AI-disclosure control, a TRAI DLT registration workflow, or booth-level field telemetry for an election or governance programme. If your deployment needs those specifically, that gap is the actual reason to look at a managed vendor instead of building it yourself — not a claim that the platforms are deficient outside that use case.
Compared on the criteria that actually decide a citizen-scale build
Every AiSewak cell cites the repo file it comes from. Every competitor cell cites the vendor's own page, fetched 2026-10-06 — where a capability was not found on the pages fetched, the cell says so rather than assuming it is absent.
| Criteria | AiSewak | Vapi | Retell AI | Bolna | ElevenLabs Agents | Sarvam AI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who it's for | Government departments, election campaigns and social-impact programmes needing citizen-scale reach, managed end to end. | Developers and startups assembling a custom voice agent from component APIs, usually for a business product. | Developers building and deploying voice agents on a hosted builder, typically for sales and support. | Indian developers and businesses building voice agents for vernacular-language customer outreach and support. | Developers building conversational agents on ElevenLabs' voice and LLM stack, for any market. | Developers and enterprises building Indic-language voice agents and pipelines on Sarvam's own models. |
| Deployment model | Managed — AiSewak's team builds, operates and compliance-reviews the agent with your department or campaign. | Self-serve dashboard or API; you build, configure and operate the assistant (docs.vapi.ai/quickstart/introduction). | Self-serve dashboard or API; you build and operate the agent (docs.retellai.com). | Self-serve, no-code or developer API; a paid Forward Deployed service is also offered (bolna.ai). | Self-serve dashboard or API; you build and operate the agent (elevenlabs.io/docs/eleven-agents/overview). | Self-serve hosted Voice Agents platform (agent canvas) or model API; you build and operate the agent (sarvam.ai/products/voice-agents). |
| Indian languages & dialects, incl. mid-call switching | Hindi plus the 22 scheduled languages, with regional registers — Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Marwari, Mewari, Magahi, Santhali and others — and mid-call switching when the caller changes language (web/lib/seoLandings/multilingual.ts, web/lib/stateLandings.ts). | Automatic multilingual detection via the transcriber (Deepgram, Google or Gladia); no Indian regional-dialect handling found on the pages fetched (docs.vapi.ai/customization/multilingual). | Hindi (hi-IN), Marathi and Kannada each supported by at least one speech provider; no regional-dialect or mid-call-switch behaviour found on the pages fetched (docs.retellai.com/build/language-support). | 10+ vernacular Indian languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Hinglish; dialect-level handling not found on the pages fetched (bolna.ai). | 31 languages on the Agents platform; no Indian-dialect specifics found on the pages fetched (elevenlabs.io/docs/eleven-agents/overview). | States Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi "and more", with models trained on Indian languages and dialects; mid-call switching not described on the page fetched (sarvam.ai/products/voice-agents). |
| Bhashini integration | Yes — a server-side MeitY ULCA pipeline client, used per language alongside commercial models where it's the better fit (web/lib/bhashini.ts; see /multilingual-ai-voice-agent-india). | Not publicly documented. | Not publicly documented. | Not publicly documented. | Not publicly documented. | Not publicly documented as a Bhashini integration specifically — Sarvam operates its own independently trained Indic models rather than the MeitY stack. |
| ECI AI-disclosure (2024 synthetic-media advisory) | Shipped on by default — every agent discloses it is an AI at the start of the call (web/lib/seoLandings/shared.ts, COMPLIANCE_FAQ). | Not publicly documented as a built-in control. | Not publicly documented as a built-in control. | Not publicly documented as a built-in control. | Not publicly documented as a built-in control. | Not publicly documented as a built-in control. |
| TRAI TCCCPR 2018 / DLT registration | Outbound calling is built around TRAI TCCCPR 2018 and DLT registration as a default control, not an add-on (web/lib/seoLandings/cost.ts, shared.ts). | Not publicly documented. | Not publicly documented. | Not publicly documented. | Not publicly documented. | Not publicly documented. |
| DPDP Act 2023 data residency | DPDP-aligned by default; Indian data residency, including on-premise or private-cloud deployment, available on request (web/lib/seoLandings/best.ts). | Not publicly documented for India specifically; HIPAA-compliance tier mentioned on the pricing page, which is a US framework (vapi.ai/pricing). | Not publicly documented for India specifically; an enterprise compliance tier is mentioned without naming DPDP (retellai.com/pricing). | India and USA-specific data residency, including on-premise deployment, stated directly on the homepage (bolna.ai). | Not publicly documented for India specifically on the pages fetched. | Headquartered in Bengaluru; the product page states conversation data is "protected by default" and "private", without a named DPDP residency guarantee on the page fetched (sarvam.ai/products/voice-agents). |
| Booth / field telemetry (election & campaign use) | Yes — conversations are tagged to a polling booth, with issue frequency and sentiment aggregated by booth for a campaign war room (web/lib/seoLandings/elections.ts, politicians.ts, stateLandings.ts). | Not a documented feature; not built for election-specific fieldwork. | Not a documented feature; not built for election-specific fieldwork. | Not a documented feature; not built for election-specific fieldwork. | Not a documented feature; not built for election-specific fieldwork. | Not a documented feature; not built for election-specific fieldwork. |
| Human handoff | Warm transfer to a seat with the transcript, identified reason and language attached — never a restart (web/lib/seoLandings/best.ts). | Blind and warm call transfer, plus multi-assistant "squads" handoffs with context preserved, documented as a configurable tool (docs.vapi.ai/tools/transfer-call). | Warm transfer documented among its telephony features, alongside IVR navigation and DTMF capture (docs.retellai.com). | "Transfer call to a human agent instantly when needed," stated directly on the homepage (bolna.ai). | Agent transfer and transfer-to-number system tools, documented as configurable (elevenlabs.io/docs/eleven-agents/overview). | The product page states the agent workflow supports handoffs, without detailing what context is carried over (sarvam.ai/products/voice-agents). |
| Telephony | Terminates on your existing number via SIP trunk or an ACD connector — answering first, or only on queue overflow (web/lib/seoLandings/best.ts). | Vapi-provided number, dedicated SIP trunking (paid tiers), or bring your own Twilio/Telnyx number (vapi.ai/pricing, docs.vapi.ai). | SIP trunk or supported telephony providers (docs.retellai.com). | SIP Trunk APIs plus named integrations for Twilio, Plivo and Vobiz (bolna.ai/docs). | SIP trunk, a native number, or named integrations — Twilio, Vonage, Telnyx, Plivo, Exotel, Bandwidth, Sinch; Exotel is the one India-focused provider named (elevenlabs.io/docs/eleven-agents/overview). | Stated generically as integrating "seamlessly with telephony systems"; specific providers not named on the page fetched (sarvam.ai/products/voice-agents). |
| Pricing model | Quoted per deployment; in practice roughly ₹4–10 per minute depending on connected-call volume, with telephony, language and integration cost itemised (see /ai-voice-agent-cost-india). | Component pricing — transcriber, LLM and voice provider, plus Vapi's own hosting fee (from $0.05/min on pay-as-you-go); $29–$999+/month plans add concurrency, support and compliance tiers (vapi.ai/pricing). | $0.07–$0.31 per minute all-in on the published calculator for pay-as-you-go; enterprise pricing is custom (retellai.com/pricing). | From 6¢ (≈₹5.52) per minute pay-as-you-go, down to roughly 4.2¢/min on a bulk pilot tier (bolna.ai/pricing). | Credit-based plans from $0/month (10k credits) up to $1,100+/month (6M credits); per-minute conversational-AI cost depends on the model and voice selected (elevenlabs.io/pricing). | Component APIs priced per unit — e.g. speech-to-text around ₹30/hour (≈₹0.50/minute), text-to-speech ₹3 per 1,000 characters; no single published all-in per-minute rate for the hosted Voice Agents platform was found (sarvam.ai/api-pricing). |
| Build effort | Scoped and delivered by AiSewak's team end to end — you review and approve the agent rather than build it. | You design, build, test and operate the agent yourself, including language QA, compliance review and telephony wiring. | You design, build, test and operate the agent yourself on the hosted builder or API. | You design, build, test and operate the agent yourself, or pay for Forward Deployed help. | You design, build, test and operate the agent yourself on the hosted builder or API. | You design, build, test and operate the agent yourself, on the agent canvas or the component APIs directly. |
| Best fit | A government department, election campaign or social-impact programme needing citizen-scale Indian-language reach with compliance built in, without running the pipeline itself. | An engineering team building a custom voice product wanting granular control over every provider in the stack. | A team wanting a hosted builder with warm transfer, IVR navigation and DTMF handling, for sales or support use cases. | An Indian business wanting a no-code or developer-friendly vernacular voice agent at a published per-minute rate. | A team where voice naturalness matters most, building a conversational product in a major world language. | A team building Indic-language voice infrastructure itself, on India-trained models priced per component. |
AiSewak is a managed deployment partner, not a self-serve platform — the comparison above is deliberately about who does the work, not a feature checklist. Every "not publicly documented" means exactly that: not found on the vendor's own pages as fetched on 2026-10-06. It is not a claim that the capability is absent, and a vendor's sales team may confirm more than their public docs do.
Call a live agent before you decide
These are running agents, not recordings. Open one, press call and speak to it in Hindi or English — the same stack that runs the deployments described above.
Baisa — Hindi, Marwari and Mewari understood
Call it and interrupt it in the first turn. This is the dialect-handling claim in the table above, not a transcript.
Open the demo →Siya — open-domain questions
Ask something the script could not have anticipated and listen to what it does when it does not know.
Open the demo →Van Dhan — Santhali on Bhashini
The Bhashini integration row above, running live, with its own published readiness limits.
Open the demo →Go deeper
DPDP, TRAI and ECI compliance, explained
The three compliance rows in the table above, with the actual statutory text behind each one.
AI voice agent vs a government IVR
A different comparison than this page — the legacy system most government lines are actually running today.
What actually drives a government voice-helpline's cost
The cost structure behind the pricing row above, broken into its real components.
AI voice agent cost in India
Why AiSewak quotes a range rather than a flat rate, and the six drivers that move the number.
Related pages: Best AI voice agent in India — the category comparison · Versus a human call centre · Multilingual AI voice agents for India · Outbound calling compliance in India · What it costs, and why we quote
Frequently asked questions
What's the actual difference between AiSewak and a self-serve voice AI API like Vapi or Retell?
Who does the work. Vapi, Retell AI, Bolna, ElevenLabs Agents and Sarvam AI are platforms you build on — you design the conversation, wire the telephony, test the languages and run the compliance review, on every release. AiSewak is a managed deployment: our team builds, operates and compliance-reviews the agent with your department or campaign. Neither is a feature gap in the other; they are different divisions of labour, and the right choice depends on whether you have the engineering capacity and want to own the pipeline.
Can I just build this myself on Vapi, Retell, Bolna, ElevenLabs or Sarvam instead of hiring a managed vendor?
If you have an engineering team and a defined use case, yes — all five publish usable docs and a rate card, and Bolna and Sarvam specifically target Indian languages. What none of their public documentation shows, as of the pages fetched for this comparison, is a built-in ECI AI-disclosure control, a TRAI DLT registration workflow, or booth-level field telemetry for an election or governance programme — if your deployment needs those specifically, budget the engineering time to build them, or look at a managed vendor instead.
Do Vapi, Retell, Bolna, ElevenLabs or Sarvam support Indian regional dialects, not just Hindi?
Bolna and Sarvam both state Indian-language training explicitly — Bolna names 10+ vernacular languages including Hinglish, and Sarvam names nine major Indian languages "and more" with models trained on Indian languages and dialects. Retell AI's own language-support table lists Hindi, Marathi and Kannada with at least one speech provider each. Vapi and ElevenLabs Agents document broad multilingual support but no Indian-dialect specifics were found on the pages fetched. None of the five documents mid-call language switching the way AiSewak's Indian-language pages do — ask for a recorded call in the actual dialect before assuming it works.
Is Bhashini integration available on any of these self-serve platforms?
Not that we found documented. AiSewak runs a server-side MeitY ULCA pipeline client used per language alongside commercial models (web/lib/bhashini.ts). Sarvam AI operates its own independently trained Indic models rather than the government Bhashini stack. If Bhashini specifically — rather than Indic-language support generally — is a requirement, verify directly with the vendor rather than assuming either way.
Which of these platforms is DPDP-compliant with Indian data residency?
Bolna states India and USA-specific data residency, including on-premise deployment, directly on its homepage. Sarvam AI, headquartered in Bengaluru, states conversation data is private by default without naming a specific DPDP residency guarantee on the page we read. Vapi, Retell AI and ElevenLabs Agents did not have an India-specific data-residency page among those fetched for this comparison — ask directly before a government deployment. AiSewak ships DPDP-aligned controls by default and offers Indian data residency, including on-premise or private-cloud deployment, on request.
Which Indian languages does the voice agent speak?
Hindi plus the 22 scheduled languages, and the regional variants that decide whether a call actually lands — Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Marwari, Mewari, Magahi, Santhali and others. Agents run on a mix of Indic-first models and the MeitY Bhashini stack, and a single agent can switch language mid-call when the person on the other end does.
How much do Vapi, Retell, Bolna, ElevenLabs and Sarvam actually cost per minute?
Retell AI publishes $0.07–$0.31/minute all-in on its calculator. Bolna starts near 6 cents (about ₹5.52) per minute, down to roughly 4.2 cents on a bulk pilot tier. Vapi prices by component — transcriber, LLM, voice — plus its own hosting fee from $0.05/minute, typically blending higher. ElevenLabs bills by credits on monthly plans rather than a flat per-minute rate. Sarvam prices its component APIs per unit rather than publishing one all-in voice-agent rate. AiSewak quotes per deployment, typically ₹4–10 per minute depending on call volume, with every line item — telephony, inference, language work, compliance review — shown rather than bundled.
Is an AI voice agent legal for outreach in India?
Yes, within a well-defined set of rules. The agent must disclose that it is an AI at the start of the call (ECI's 2024 advisory on synthetic media), outbound calling must respect TRAI TCCCPR 2018 and DLT registration, personal data must be handled under the DPDP Act 2023, and IT Rules 2021 govern the content itself. Election deployments additionally require registration with the ECI or the state CEO as a political advertiser. AiSewak ships these controls switched on by default rather than as an add-on.
Bring your dialect and your compliance constraint
If a self-serve platform genuinely fits your use case better — and for a lot of use cases, one of the five above will — we will tell you so on the call. If you need citizen-scale reach with compliance built in and do not want to run the pipeline yourself, that is what we do.
Every AiSewak agent identifies itself as an AI at the start of the call, never asks for an OTP or a payment, and honours DND. Election deployments require ECI / state CEO registration as a political advertiser.