Best AI Cold Calling Software: Voice Agents and AI Dialers

The best AI cold calling software depends on who talks. If reps want more live conversations, an AI-assisted dialer such as Orum or Nooks fits. If an agent should hold the first call, compare voice agent platforms. Dograh is the open-source one, and you can self-host it or run it on Dograh Cloud.

Key Takeaways

• Dialers put a rep on every answered call. Voice agents hold the conversation.
• Every voice agent here needs written consent for sales calls to mobiles.
• Only Dograh runs on your own servers without a sales contract.

Two very different products sell as AI cold calling software, and the wrong one changes who talks to the prospect. We compare the tools in one table, Dograh included, then cover hosted voice platforms and dialers that keep reps on every call. For where these fit, see our guide to AI outbound sales calls.

Two kinds of AI cold calling software

Two different products sell under this name. An AI-assisted dialer rings many numbers at once and puts a rep on the line when a person answers, skipping voicemails and dead lines. A voice agent holds the whole conversation, qualifies the prospect and hands only ready buyers to a rep.

The choice depends on what your reps should spend their day on. A team that wants every prospect to hear a human voice needs a dialer, and the AI only speeds up the dialing. A team that wants reps to talk only to qualified buyers needs a voice agent, and it takes on the first call, the follow-ups and the voicemail. Our guide to AI dialers covers how power, parallel and AI dialers work.

Most of this roundup ranks voice agent platforms, because that is where the products differ most. Dialers get their own section near the end.

How we compared the tools

We judged each voice agent platform on five points. These are whether you can read and run the code, where it runs, the price on the vendor's own page, how many calls it handles at once, and the controls a cold calling program needs, such as retries and calling hours. Every price below comes from the vendor's own pricing page.

Consent is the same for all of them. The FCC's 2024 ruling on AI-generated voices treats an AI voice as an artificial voice under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). So a sales call any of these agents places to a mobile or home line generally needs prior express written consent, a signed agreement that names the number. Settle your consent wording with counsel before you pick a tool, since no product changes that answer.

Treat promised results with care too. The FTC has proposed a settlement with Air AI, an AI calling vendor, over earnings and refund claims the agency says misled business buyers. The order still needs court approval. Run your own test calls before you sign anything.

AI cold calling software in one table

Dograh is the only one here that runs on your own servers without a sales contract. The hosted platforms keep call records on the vendor's cloud unless an Enterprise plan says otherwise.

Dograh: open source, with campaigns built in

Dograh's code is open under BSD-2-Clause, so you can read it, run it on your own servers with Docker Compose, or use Dograh Cloud. Enterprise adds on-prem or private cloud installs, data residency, SSO and audit logs.

Cold calling lives in Campaigns. You upload a CSV, and each column becomes a variable the greeting can use. Retries can follow a busy signal, no answer or voicemail. Call Schedule keeps calls inside the hours you set for one time zone. A Circuit Breaker pauses the campaign when too many calls fail. A traffic split sends part of the list to a second agent version, so you can test two openings side by side.

On the call, the agent can leave a voicemail message or hang up, a choice you make per agent. When a buyer wants a person, Transfer Call works on Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, Cloudonix and Asterisk ARI. The rep's phone rings first, and the buyer joins the line only after the rep picks up. Each call can end with an outcome code such as do_not_call, which you export or send to your own system before the next list goes out.

For a sales team, the call flow, the CRM tools and the phone lines all run in Dograh's orchestration layer. The speech and language models are a separate layer your team picks and pays for with its own keys.

Running it on your own servers carries no per-minute platform fee, though every campaign still pays for the servers, the model keys and each phone minute it dials. Dograh Cloud adds a 1¢-a-minute platform fee on top.

What it leaves to you is concrete. CRMs connect through HTTP API tools and webhooks. Self-hosting means your team runs the servers. Reps who want to talk to every prospect need a dialer next to it.

Open Source Alternative to Vapi / Retell

Self-hosted voice agent platform — no per-minute fees

dograh-hq/dograh

Star on GitHub

Hosted voice agent platforms

The other voice agent platforms are closed source and run on the vendor's cloud. Their prices differ more in structure than in size.

Vapi and Retell AI

Vapi charges $0.05 a minute for hosting and passes model costs through at the provider's price, with carrier fees on top. The Core plan at $29 a month includes 10 concurrent calls, and HIPAA support is a $2,000-a-month add-on. Agents are built mostly in code, which suits developers. Our Vapi pricing breakdown adds up a full minute.

Retell AI lists $0.07 to $0.31 a minute depending on the models, and $0.055 of each minute is its voice infrastructure. Every account can run 20 calls at once at no charge, and each concurrent line added past that costs $8 a month. Batch calls, its tool for outbound lists, add $0.005 per dial. Our Retell AI pricing guide breaks down each part.

Bland AI and Synthflow

Bland AI bundles the models into one per-minute rate, $0.14 on the free Start plan, $0.12 on the $299 Build plan and $0.11 on the $499 Scale plan. Plans cap calls per day at 100, 2,000 and 5,000, and every outbound attempt costs at least $0.015, failed ones included. See our Bland AI pricing breakdown for transfers and limits.

Synthflow sells its platform as an annual enterprise agreement, priced by call volume and setup, with no free plan or per-minute rate. Its page lists SOC 2 Type 2, ISO/IEC 27001, HIPAA and GDPR, which matters for regulated sales teams.

11x

11x sells AI workers rather than a platform you build on. Its Julian agent contacts, qualifies and books meetings over voice and chat, with SMS, WhatsApp and email follow-up. Pricing comes through a demo. It fits a company that wants a finished AI sales worker and not a builder.

AI dialers for teams that keep reps on every call

If your reps should talk to every prospect who picks up, a dialer is the better buy. The AI here skips voicemails and dead lines and summarizes calls, while the rep does the talking.

Orum prices by package and seats, with a 9-seat minimum and a free trial of 500 dials. It offers parallel and power dialing, voicemail drop, AI call summaries and objection detection for coaching.

Nooks quotes each customer. Its dialer runs several lines at once with AI answer detection, automated voicemail drops and two-way CRM sync.

CloudTalk is a business phone system that adds AI voice agents on top. Its page lists prices in euros, with the AI Specialist plan at €349 a month for 1,000 minutes.

Picking your AI cold calling software

Start from who should talk to the prospect. If it is always a rep, choose a dialer such as Orum or Nooks. If an agent should take the first call, choose a voice agent platform.

Among voice agents, pick by where the platform runs and how you pay. Dograh suits teams that want the code, their own servers or Dograh Cloud, and campaign controls in one place. Vapi suits developers who write agents in code. Retell AI and Bland AI fit teams happy on a hosted per-minute rate, and Synthflow and 11x fit companies buying under one contract.

Whichever you pick, run a small campaign to a consented list first and listen to every call before you scale.