Convoso AI Agent Alternatives: Dialer-First or Agent-First

Convoso AI agent alternatives are divided into agent-first platforms and dialer-first products. Dograh is the open-source agent-first platform that ships ready to use and works beside your dialer, and Bland, Retell AI and Vapi are the hosted agent-first options. Five9, Aircall and VICIdial with an agent are the dialer-first options.

Key Takeaways

• Convoso's agent needs Convoso's dialer, while agent-first Dograh works beside yours.
• Agent-first platforms bill talk minutes, so the connect rate drives the bill.
• Calling consent rules apply to AI voices whichever platform you choose.

Convoso's Voice AI Agent is now generally available, and it works with Convoso's own dialer. We cover why teams look elsewhere and compare every option in one table, then turn to Dograh before the dialer-first and agent-first rivals, a priced outbound month and the calling rules.

Why teams look for a Convoso alternative

The search usually starts with Convoso's own launch. Convoso announced in a release dated 3 November 2026 that its Voice AI Agent became generally available on 2 November 2026. The release describes a no-code builder, an Auto Workflow feature that drafts qualification workflows from a team's historical call recordings, a choice of AI models and voices, and an agent built natively into Convoso.

Two more details matter for a buyer. The agent integrates with the Convoso Dialer Platform and connects over standard SIP and RTP, and if the primary AI model fails, calls move to a backup model. So the agent is part of Convoso's platform, and a team on another dialer would move its dialing to Convoso to use it.

Convoso sells the agent mainly on annual plans, by quote, with no free trial. Our Convoso AI voice agents review covers its compliance tools, the pricing questions to ask and how to run an open agent beside VICIdial, so this post stays on the alternatives.

Convoso AI agent alternatives compared

Every alternative starts from one of two places. A dialer-first product is a dialer with an AI agent added, so pacing, lists, rep seats and reporting come from the same vendor as the agent. An agent-first platform is the AI agent itself, and you point a dialer or a carrier at it. The dialer stays whatever you run today.

The table sets each option against that split. Convoso sells by quote, so its row shows how you buy instead of a price. Dograh gets the next section, and the rival dialers and agents follow it.

Dograh: an open-source Convoso alternative to self-host

Dograh is an open-source AI voice agent platform under the BSD-2-Clause license, with its code on GitHub, and it sits on the agent-first side of the split. It comes as a whole product: a visual flow builder, telephony, call transfer, call history, and QA that scores each step of every call, on test calls and live ones.

For outbound it works two ways. It can place calls itself from an uploaded list through Campaigns, with retries from 0 to 10, a delay of 30 seconds to an hour between attempts, and calling hours set by weekday in one time zone per campaign. Or it can take answered calls from the dialer you already run, and pacing across human reps stays with that dialer.

With VICIdial, the agent connects through Asterisk ARI. The VICIdial integration docs cover ending the customer leg, transferring to an in-group and updating lead fields.

For a qualified lead, Transfer Call dials the rep first and connects the caller only when the rep answers. A busy line, no answer or a timeout returns to the agent as transfer_failed, so the call continues. It works on Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, Cloudonix and Asterisk ARI, and on Exotel the agent books a callback request instead.

The opening line of an outbound call is where wording matters most, so a pre-recorded clip can play your approved opening or disclosure in a real voice on every call.

Self-hosting uses Docker Compose on a server with at least 8 GB of RAM and 4 vCPUs, outbound runs on your own carrier account, and Dograh Cloud is the managed version. Self-hosted Dograh has no per-minute platform fee, but servers, model keys and phone minutes still cost money. Dograh Cloud charges a 1¢-a-minute platform fee. That comes to $200 in the 50,000-dial month priced further down. The models are your call as well: Dograh's own, any supported provider on your key, or open-weight models you host, and call audio stays on your servers only with open weights.

Self-hosted, the platform runs 10 calls at once by default, raised with one setting, and Dograh Cloud's pay as you go includes 10. Running it yourself is real work for an outbound team. Your people keep the server and database up and apply each upgrade, and the open-source edition comes with community support while custom SLAs come with Enterprise.

Dialer-first alternatives

The dialer-first side suits teams whose day is shaped by human reps. If most calls still go to people and the agent qualifies leads before a handoff, the dialer's pacing and compliance tools carry the weight, and the agent is one more feature.

Most outbound teams looking past Convoso land on one of a few dialer-first options. Five9 sells Core at $159 per seat a month with a 50-seat minimum, with the dialer included and AI Agents sold as an add-on. That fits a large blended center that wants dialer and agent from one vendor.

Aircall sells AI Voice Agents as a standalone product from $99 a month, at $0.29 a minute pay as you go or in bundles, with seats priced separately. It suits a smaller sales team that wants a simple phone system with an agent on top rather than a full predictive dialer.

Whichever you pick, ask the same question you would ask Convoso: which models run the agent, and can you change them later without changing the dialer?

Open Source Alternative to Vapi / Retell

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

dograh-hq/dograh

Star on GitHub

Agent-first alternatives

The agent-first side suits teams whose calls are mostly handled by the agent. Billing follows talk minutes instead of seats, you choose the models and the voice, and the agent keeps working if you change dialers. The trade is that you wire the dialer or carrier to the agent yourself.

The other agent-first platforms differ most in how they cap and bill outbound volume, so read the limits as closely as the rate. A daily call cap or a per-dial fee can matter more than a cent on the minute price.

Bland bundles its own models into one rate. Its Build plan costs $0.12 a minute plus $299 a month, with 50 calls at once, 2,000 calls a day and 1,000 an hour, and you can bring your own carrier. The Start plan, at $0.14 a minute, caps you at 100 calls a day, which rules it out for a real campaign.

Retell AI charges $0.055 a minute for voice infrastructure, plus $0.005 for each dial placed through its Batch Call feature, with 20 calls at once included. Batch and dialer calls never use Retell's burst capacity, so plan the campaign around the included number or buy more lines.

Vapi charges a $0.05 a minute hosting fee, with models billed at cost and the phone line from your own provider, and sets concurrency by package.

Our roundup of AI cold calling software compares these platforms on the sales features around the call. The 50,000-dial month further down asks a narrower question: what one outbound month costs on each.

Other open-source options

The open-source dialer route keeps the dialer you may already run. VICIdial is a free predictive dialer built on Asterisk, and an AI agent can sit beside it to take answered calls and hand qualified ones to an in-group. Our guide to pairing an open-source predictive dialer with an AI agent walks through that handoff.

Frameworks such as LiveKit Agents and Pipecat are open source as well, but they are code libraries. The phone wiring, the builder, call history and QA are left for your engineers to build, which suits a team that wants to make its own agent product rather than run one.

One month of 50,000 dials on each

A labeled example shows how talk-minute billing plays out. A team dials 50,000 numbers a month, 20% connect, and each connected call lasts two minutes. That is 10,000 connected calls and 20,000 talk minutes. The rows show each platform's own line, with models, voice and phone still to add where noted.

Two checks change the picture. Bland's 2,000-a-day cap covers this list if you dial every day of the month, about 1,670 a day, but spread over 22 weekdays the same list needs about 2,270 a day, which is over the cap. And the connect rate decides which bill grows faster. A seat-priced dialer costs the same at 10% or 30% connects, while every agent-first line above doubles if talk minutes double.

Calling rules move with you

Switching platforms does not change the calling rules. The FCC has ruled that AI-generated voices are "artificial" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), so the FCC's declaratory ruling brings AI calls under the consent rules in 47 CFR 64.1200. Have your counsel confirm what consent each list needs before the first campaign runs.

Retry policy is the other rule a team owns. How many times you call a lead, how far apart and at what hours is a business decision, and the platform's job is to enforce the limits you set and record every attempt. Write those limits down before you compare platforms, because they set how many dials and talk minutes you will actually pay for.

When staying on Convoso makes sense

Staying put is the right call for many outbound floors. If your reps already dial on Convoso, most calls still go to people and the agent only qualifies leads before a handoff, switching on Convoso's own agent is the shortest path. Pacing, lists and compliance tools stay where your team knows them, and nobody has to wire a new dialer or carrier to an agent.

What moving off Convoso takes

Plan the move before you change a single campaign. The calling rules come with you, so have counsel confirm the consent on each list and write down your retry limits first, because those limits set the dials and talk minutes you will pay for.

Then set the campaign's retries and calling hours to match those limits, and test before any lead hears it. Run the new flow on test calls from the editor so QA scores each step, then check every transfer over a real phone call, because a browser test call cannot run a transfer. Start with one list, compare the agent's qualified leads with your reps', and widen from there.

Picking your Convoso AI agent alternative

The choice comes down to which part you buy first and who will run it. If you want the agent first, with open source, your own models and phone line, and the option to keep your current dialer, start with Dograh, self-hosted or on Dograh Cloud. If a large blended center wants dialer and agent from one vendor, look at Five9, and if a smaller team wants a simple phone system with an agent on top, look at Aircall. If you want a hosted agent and accept its caps, price Bland, Retell AI and Vapi on your own talk minutes, and if your engineers want to build the agent product themselves, start from LiveKit Agents or Pipecat.

Whichever you lean toward, run one real list through it before you move a campaign, and price it on talk minutes rather than dials.