{"slug":"elevenlabs-agents","name":"ElevenLabs Agents","domain":"elevenlabs.io","verdict":"As of 2026-07-18, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok collectively rank ElevenLabs Agents #3 of 9 for speech-to-speech apis for real-time voice assistants (one of 5 leaderboards it appears on). Source: https://modelsagree.com/product/elevenlabs-agents (modelsagree.com, CC BY 4.0).","best_rank":3,"categories":5,"brief":{"category":"best-speech-to-speech-apis-for-real-time-voice-assistants","title":"Best Speech-to-Speech APIs for Real-Time Voice Assistants","rank":3,"of":9,"top":"OpenAI Realtime API","day":"2026-07-19","why":[{"t":"Best-in-class voice quality and expressiveness","m":["ChatGPT","Claude","Gemini","Grok"],"q":"Best-in-class voice quality and voice cloning"},{"t":"Full real-time agent platform","m":["ChatGPT","Claude","Grok"],"q":"wrapped in a full conversational agent API"},{"t":"Telephony, workflow, and observability tooling","m":["ChatGPT","Claude"],"q":"telephony and SIP integrations, workflow tooling, observability, evaluations, and broad client SDK support"},{"t":"Production scale across 70+ languages","m":["Grok"],"q":"low-latency interactions in 70+ languages; proven in production customer support and scalable deployments"}],"gap":[{"t":"Native end-to-end speech-to-speech","m":["Claude","Gemini","Grok"],"q":"Native end-to-end speech-to-speech"},{"t":"Strong reasoning and tool calling","m":["ChatGPT","Claude","Grok"],"q":"strong reasoning and tool calling"},{"t":"Deepest integration ecosystem","m":["Claude"],"q":"the ecosystem (LiveKit, Pipecat, Twilio integrations) is the deepest of any option"}],"fix":[{"t":"Pipeline latency trails native models","m":["Claude","Gemini","Grok"],"q":"Slower response times due to pipeline latency compared to native models"},{"t":"Expensive for high-volume use","m":["ChatGPT","Claude","Gemini"],"q":"expensive per-minute pricing that scales poorly for high-volume customer service"},{"t":"Less model-level control","m":["ChatGPT","Grok"],"q":"teams needing maximum model-level control or lowest unit cost may outgrow it"}]},"entries":[{"slug":"best-speech-to-speech-apis-for-real-time-voice-assistants","title":"Best Speech-to-Speech APIs for Real-Time Voice Assistants","rank":3,"of":9,"score":8,"appearances":4,"modelRanks":{"ChatGPT":3,"Claude":3,"Gemini":5,"Grok":5},"reason":"The strongest turnkey choice for production voice agents, combining highly expressive voices, low-latency streaming, telephony and SIP integrations, workflow tooling, observability, evaluations, and broad client SDK support","reasons":[{"model":"ChatGPT","reason":"The strongest turnkey choice for production voice agents, combining highly expressive voices, low-latency streaming, telephony and SIP integrations, workflow tooling, observability, evaluations, and broad client SDK support"},{"model":"Claude","reason":"Best-in-class voice quality and voice cloning wrapped in a full conversational agent API (turn-taking, interruption handling, RAG, tool calls, telephony), with LLM flexibility — you bring GPT/Claude/Gemini as the brain; ideal when voice naturalness is the product."},{"model":"Gemini","reason":"Unmatched voice quality and expressiveness, offering incredibly realistic human-like delivery (including laughter and sighs) alongside high-fidelity voice cloning."},{"model":"Grok","reason":"Exceptional voice quality, expressiveness, and cloning with solid real-time agent platform for low-latency interactions in 70+ languages; proven in production customer support and scalable deployments."}],"fixes":[{"model":"ChatGPT","fix":"It is a more opinionated hosted pipeline than a frontier native speech-reasoning API, so teams needing maximum model-level control or lowest unit cost may outgrow it"},{"model":"Claude","fix":"It's a cascaded STT→LLM→TTS orchestration rather than true end-to-end speech-to-speech, so latency and prosody-awareness trail native audio models, and per-minute pricing is steep for high-volume use."},{"model":"Gemini","fix":"Slower response times due to pipeline latency compared to native models, and expensive per-minute pricing that scales poorly for high-volume customer service."},{"model":"Grok","fix":"Pipeline-based (STT+LLM+TTS orchestration) leads to higher end-to-end latency vs native S2S; less seamless for deep reasoning/tool use without additional layers."}],"updated":"2026-07-18","api":"https://modelsagree.com/api/v1/best/best-speech-to-speech-apis-for-real-time-voice-assistants.json"},{"slug":"best-ai-voice-agent-for-customer-support","title":"Best AI voice agent for customer support","rank":4,"of":9,"score":7,"appearances":2,"modelRanks":{"ChatGPT":4,"Claude":1},"reason":"The most complete self-serve voice agent platform in 2026 — best-in-class TTS/voices, built-in STT and LLM orchestration, RAG knowledge bases, tool calling, SIP/Twilio telephony, agent testing/evals, and 30+ languages, so a typical support team can ship a production phone agent in days without stitching vendors together; assumes the practitioner wants a managed end-to-end stack rather than composing their own.","reasons":[{"model":"Claude","reason":"The most complete self-serve voice agent platform in 2026 — best-in-class TTS/voices, built-in STT and LLM orchestration, RAG knowledge bases, tool calling, SIP/Twilio telephony, agent testing/evals, and 30+ languages, so a typical support team can ship a production phone agent in days without stitching vendors together; assumes the practitioner wants a managed end-to-end stack rather than composing their own."},{"model":"ChatGPT","reason":"Outstanding voice quality and multilingual range, backed by visual workflows, telephony, tool calling, guardrails, analytics, A/B experiments, and unusually strong automated conversation testing."}],"fixes":[{"model":"ChatGPT","fix":"Voice and LLM costs are separately metered, and contact-center integration depth trails PolyAI."},{"model":"Claude","fix":"Model/pipeline flexibility is thinner than developer-first rivals — you're largely inside ElevenLabs' stack, and heavy custom conversation logic or deep CCaaS/CRM workflows take more work than on purpose-built contact-center products."}],"updated":"2026-07-15","rank_history":{"days":["2026-07-14","2026-07-15"],"ranks":[4,null]},"api":"https://modelsagree.com/api/v1/best/best-ai-voice-agent-for-customer-support.json"},{"slug":"best-voice-agent-platform","title":"Best voice agent platform","rank":4,"of":9,"score":5,"appearances":2,"modelRanks":{"ChatGPT":4,"Claude":3},"reason":"End-to-end conversational AI platform riding the best TTS in the market — agent builder, knowledge base/RAG, tool calls, SIP telephony, and multilingual voices in one place, making it the fastest route from idea to a natural-sounding agent.","reasons":[{"model":"Claude","reason":"End-to-end conversational AI platform riding the best TTS in the market — agent builder, knowledge base/RAG, tool calls, SIP telephony, and multilingual voices in one place, making it the fastest route from idea to a natural-sounding agent."},{"model":"ChatGPT","reason":"Best-in-class voice quality and multilingual breadth paired with telephony, mobile and web SDKs, visual workflows, tools, analytics, A/B testing, and unusually capable automated agent tests."}],"fixes":[{"model":"ChatGPT","fix":"Best value depends on prioritizing ElevenLabs’ voice stack; cost and platform coupling are weaker fits for voice-agnostic teams."},{"model":"Claude","fix":"Locks you into the ElevenLabs voice and orchestration stack — you can't swap in a cheaper TTS or restructure the pipeline, and per-minute pricing runs high at call-center volumes."}],"updated":"2026-07-15","rank_history":{"days":["2026-06-29","2026-06-30","2026-07-08","2026-07-09","2026-07-10","2026-07-12","2026-07-13","2026-07-14","2026-07-15"],"ranks":[5,null,5,5,null,4,null,5,4]},"reasoning_shift":[{"model":"Claude","from":"2026-07-14","to":"2026-07-15","added":[{"t":"fastest route from idea","q":"making it the fastest route from idea to a natural-sounding agent"},{"t":"can't swap cheaper TTS","q":"you can't swap in a cheaper TTS or restructure the pipeline"},{"t":"high call-center pricing","q":"per-minute pricing runs high at call-center volumes"}],"dropped":[{"t":"consumer and brand-sensitive experiences","q":"consumer apps and brand-sensitive experiences"},{"t":"complex call-flow tooling less mature","q":"complex call-flow tooling still less mature than the phone-first platforms"}]}],"api":"https://modelsagree.com/api/v1/best/best-voice-agent-platform.json"},{"slug":"best-voice-agent-platforms-for-outbound-appointment-booking","title":"Best voice agent platforms for outbound appointment booking","rank":5,"of":7,"score":2,"appearances":2,"modelRanks":{"ChatGPT":5,"Claude":5},"reason":"Excellent voice quality with scheduled batch calling, personalization, visual workflows, testing, analytics, and native Google Calendar actions at competitive self-serve pricing","reasons":[{"model":"ChatGPT","reason":"Excellent voice quality with scheduled batch calling, personalization, visual workflows, testing, analytics, and native Google Calendar actions at competitive self-serve pricing"},{"model":"Claude","reason":"Best-in-class voice realism now wrapped in a full conversational-agent platform with telephony, tool-calling, and turn-taking — the strongest choice when call quality and human-sounding delivery drive booking conversion."}],"fixes":[{"model":"ChatGPT","fix":"Outbound campaign and appointment-operations tooling is less mature and turnkey than the top three, often requiring external telephony and additional workflow assembly"},{"model":"Claude","fix":"Younger as an end-to-end agent/orchestration platform than the purpose-built booking tools, so complex multi-step scheduling flows and campaign management are less mature, and premium voice adds cost."}],"updated":"2026-08-10","rank_history":{"days":["2026-08-03","2026-08-10"],"ranks":[5,null]},"api":"https://modelsagree.com/api/v1/best/best-voice-agent-platforms-for-outbound-appointment-booking.json"},{"slug":"best-voice-agent-platforms-for-customer-support","title":"Best voice agent platforms for customer support","rank":6,"of":9,"score":3,"appearances":1,"modelRanks":{"Claude":3},"reason":"Best-in-class voice quality and turn-taking naturalness, aggressive per-minute pricing, built-in RAG/knowledge base, multilingual coverage, and telephony support turned it from a TTS vendor into a credible full agent platform; ideal when caller experience quality is the differentiator.","reasons":[{"model":"Claude","reason":"Best-in-class voice quality and turn-taking naturalness, aggressive per-minute pricing, built-in RAG/knowledge base, multilingual coverage, and telephony support turned it from a TTS vendor into a credible full agent platform; ideal when caller experience quality is the differentiator."}],"fixes":[{"model":"Claude","fix":"Contact-center operational depth (routing, agent-assist handoff, compliance tooling, enterprise analytics) trails the CCaaS-grade players — less suited to large regulated support operations."}],"updated":"2026-07-17","api":"https://modelsagree.com/api/v1/best/best-voice-agent-platforms-for-customer-support.json"}],"page":"https://modelsagree.com/product/elevenlabs-agents","check":"https://modelsagree.com/check?q=ElevenLabs%20Agents","updated":"2026-08-10T18:18:45.051Z","attribution":"modelsagree.com, CC BY 4.0"}