Smallest vs Cresta AI: Best Voice AI Platform for Builders in 2025
Discover how Smallest AI offers faster TTS, real-time barge-in, full observability, and transparent pricing for scalable voice automation in 2025
In 2025, voice agents are prepared to enter the next phase.
Today’s enterprises are moving forward from voice agents that cater to specific flows and use cases, to voice AI that can help with real-time responsiveness, programmable flows, and deep integrations into their workflows.
Among the companies that have managed to automate many use cases, Cresta stands out as an alternative to contact centers- with the capability to build virtual agents for industries like banking, telecom, and insurance. But as contact centers of today look to evolve into deploying beyond scripts, it might be time to look at Cresta alternatives that give you more control.
Among the options available today, for building real time workflows, Smallest AI offers a modern, infrastructure-first approach to voice: one that’s fast, customizable, observable, and developer-friendly.
Let’s break down how they compare, and why teams should switch to Smallest.
Cresta: Voice Agents for Contact Center Workflows
Cresta delivers contact center agents that use AI to handle routine customer queries, escalate complex calls, and ensure compliance. It’s built to slot into existing telephony stacks and drive outcomes like reduced handle time and better CSAT.
Where Cresta Shines:
- Banking, telecom, and insurance-specific use cases
- Call coaching and agent augmentation
- Structured, compliance-heavy flows
- Real-time suggestions to live agents
But while powerful in its niche, Cresta’s architecture is less suited for custom outbound workflows, voice-in-product, or real-time programmable logic.
Smallest AI: Voice AI that Scales
Smallest is designed for builders who want to:
- Orchestrate outbound campaigns
- Route support tickets via voice
- Deploy barge-in agents into products
- Build programmable flows that don’t rely on rigid trees
With Smallest, you're not locked into templates. You’re building with:
- Lightning V2: Low-latency TTS (<100ms) that speaks instantly
- Electron V2: A tunable, instruction-following LLM that understands nuance
- Streaming STT with true barge-in support
- Token-level latency tracing across the voice pipeline
- Multi-environment deploys (Cloud, VPC, On-prem, Air-gapped)
More than just tools, Smallest.ai is an entire voice infrastructure with access to a world class full stack platform.
Key Differences That Matter
Feature | Cresta | Smallest AI |
|---|---|---|
Primary Focus | Contact center automation | Programmable voice infrastructure |
TTS Latency | ~200ms | ~100ms with Lightning V2 |
Real-Time Interrupts (Barge-in) | Limited or delayed | Fully supported via streaming STT |
Observability | Call logs, transcripts, counterfactuals | Token-level latency tracing, live debugging, dashboard view |
Deployment Options | Cloud only | Cloud, On-Prem, Air-gapped |
NLP Behavior | Domain-tuned flows | Instruction-tuned Electron LLM |
Where Smallest Excels Beyond Cresta
Programmability
Cresta works for predefined call types. But when your use case isn’t a contact center, or your logic needs to change weekly or even on a daily basis you need full control.
Smallest gives you:
- Agentic flow graphs
- Prompt-level overrides
- API-connected logic
- Modular templates (not hardcoded call trees)
Observability & Debugging
With Cresta, you’ll know how a call is performed. Once the call is done, you will only understand the effectiveness of a template- which has its own guardrails. A failed call or campaign requires hours of debugging or troubleshooting, possibly with developer support required.
With Smallest, you’ll know instantly how your campaign has performed, with live tracking dashboards across the platform. In the case of a call not going according to the plan, the ability to debug the prompt with Smallest’s multinodal feature, chat debugging feature is easier.
This makes Smallest.AI, perfect for debugging production flows in high-throughput environments.
Deployment Flexibility
If your company needs an on-prem voice stack for compliance to ensure your data is secure and in your control,
Smallest supports:
- On-prem installation
- Fully air-gapped setups
- SIP access, CRM integrations
- HIPAA/SOC2-aligned configurations
Cresta does not have the ability to support all these integrations put together for your enterprise.
Pricing Comparison: Smallest AI vs Cresta AI
Platform | Pricing Model | Transparency | Scalability |
|---|---|---|---|
Cresta AI | $150,000/year for 100,000 voice calls via AWS Marketplace ($1.5 per voice call unit beyond quota) Similar structure for chat: $150,000/year for 125,000 chats | Enterprise-only, gated pricing | Difficult to test or ramp gradually |
Smallest AI | Starts at $49/month for devs Business plan at $1,999/month with 10 concurrent calls Usage-based calling (~$0.07–$0.12/min) Free test credits included | Fully transparent tiers + add-ons | Easy to scale from free to production |
Key Takeaway:
Cresta has six-figure contracts upfront for your enterprise, even for pilot volumes. The platform also adds more usage later costs $1.5 per call, making experimentation or dynamic scaling expensive.
Smallest, by contrast, offers:
- Free trial with test credits
- Pay-as-you-go pricing with per-minute billing
- No gating of core infra (TTS, LLM, observability)
- Easy ramp from dev to production
If you’re a team that needs flexibility, clarity, and control over costs- Smallest is one of the best alternatives to Cresta AI available today.
Try Smallest AI Today
If you’re comparing top alternatives to Cresta, and want full-stack control, transparent pricing, and lower latency, Smallest is built for you.
For teams scaling voice thoughtfully, Smallest is one of the best Cresta AI alternatives for 2025.