Tuvoz vs PlaceCall: AI agents that call US businesses

PlaceCall and Tuvoz are close cousins: both let your AI agent call US businesses, both open the call by naming the service and saying the line is recorded, and both let the voice agent ask your agent questions mid-call. The main differences are price shape (PlaceCall charges per answered call, Tuvoz per second), who can be called (PlaceCall: businesses only), and what happens when your agent can’t answer (Tuvoz phones you).

At a glance

	PlaceCall	Tuvoz
Price	First 250 calls at no charge. Through Apify: $0.10 per call that reaches a real conversation; voicemail, busy and unanswered calls cost nothing	$0.12 a minute, billed per second, with a 30-second minimum per answered call leg, including calls to your own phone
Getting started	Name and email for an API key, sent by email	Google sign-in and a verified mobile number; 15 free minutes. Free plan includes training on your calls.
Who it calls	US businesses only	US listed businesses, your own phone, and people you confirm agreed to AI calls
How the call opens	“Every call opens by identifying PlaceCall and stating that the line is recorded”	“Hi! I’m Jane Doe’s AI assistant, calling through Tuvoz about a dinner reservation.” Then a consent question about recording and AI training
Mid-call questions	Yes: “agents will ask questions mid-call if necessary”, answered through POST /calls/{id}/answer	Yes: up to 3 per call, answered from a file or stdin; Tuvoz calls your phone if your agent doesn’t answer
Agents	Claude Code and Cowork (plugin marketplace), claude.ai, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Hermes Agent, any MCP client	Claude Code, Codex, claude.ai, Meta Muse, OpenClaw
Install in Claude Code	/plugin marketplace add voygr-tech/placecall then /plugin install placecall@placecall	Paste Set up Tuvoz: https://tuvoz.io/agents
Recordings and transcripts	Kept 90 days	No audio kept. What the other person said is deleted from call records 30 days after the call, but stays in training records until the account is deleted (unless training is off or the call is excluded)
Open source	The repo (MIT) holds the plugins and skill; calls run through Voygr’s API	The voice bridge (MIT) is open source and can be self-hosted

What PlaceCall does well

• Predictable cost per call. A call that sits on hold for 20 minutes costs the same $0.10 as a 1-minute call. With Tuvoz, hold time is billed per second.
• A generous start. 250 calls before you pay anything, against Tuvoz’s 15 minutes.
• More agents and an MCP server. ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini CLI and any MCP client, plus a one-command plugin install in Claude Code. Tuvoz has no MCP server at launch.
• Simple sign-up. Name and email. Tuvoz asks for Google sign-in and a verified mobile number.
• Place suggestions. It can suggest places to call (5 credits per answered lookup). Tuvoz never suggests or looks up numbers for you.

Where Tuvoz is different

• You’re the backstop. If your agent doesn’t answer a mid-call question (the terminal is closed, or the agent doesn’t know), Tuvoz calls your phone, asks you, and passes your answer back into the live call. Read how it works.
• More than businesses. Tuvoz can call your own phone, and personal numbers you add as contacts who agreed to AI calls.
• Consent before recording. Tuvoz asks whether recording is okay. If the person says no, the call ends and Tuvoz keeps nothing they said. Our AI voice provider processes their words live to run the call and may keep them for a limited time for abuse monitoring, as our Privacy Policy explains.
• No recordings kept. Tuvoz keeps transcripts, not audio, and deletes the other person’s words from call records 30 days after the call. Training records last longer; see how we use call data.
• Self-host the voice side. The bridge that runs calls is MIT-licensed and runs on your own Twilio and Gemini accounts. See self-host vs hosted.

Where Tuvoz is weaker

• Long holds cost more, because Tuvoz bills per second.
• 15 starting minutes against 250 starting calls.
• Fewer agents and no MCP server yet.
• More steps to sign up (Google plus a verified mobile number).
• The consent question means some calls end early.

What typical calls cost

Call	PlaceCall (via Apify)	Tuvoz
2-minute booking	$0.10	120 s × $0.002 = $0.24
12 minutes, mostly on hold	$0.10	720 s × $0.002 = $1.44
Voicemail, nobody answers	$0.00	$0.00 (no message left by default)

Which should you pick?

Pick PlaceCall if you mostly call businesses, often wait on hold, or use ChatGPT, Cursor or Gemini CLI.

Pick Tuvoz if you want a person in the loop when your agent can’t answer, need to call your own phone or a contact who agreed, or want to self-host the voice bridge.

Next: set up Tuvoz, or read which AI agent is best for phone calls.