Agent Voice Response vs Cognigy

Agent Voice Response is a self-hosted system that turns an Asterisk PBX into a real-time voice AI agent. Callers can interrupt while it speaks through voice-activity detection. Its composable microservices let operators swap automatic speech recognition, language-model, and text-to-speech engines. It supports Asterisk AudioSocket on Asterisk 18 and later, including named systems such as FreePBX, VitalPBX, Vicidial, Elastix, and custom dialplans. Listed integrations include OpenAI, Anthropic, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Google, Ollama, Vosk, Kokoro, Ultravox, OpenRouter, CoquiTTS, and Silero. Noise cancellation and echo suppression are described before audio reaches the model. Local deployments can use Vosk or Silero, Ollama, and CoquiTTS or Kokoro, keeping caller audio on the network according to the maker. Docker microservices can scale horizontally behind a load balancer. AVR is free for personal and commercial use, with no license keys or per-minute charge. Setup requires Docker images, provider configuration, and an Asterisk dialplan extension.

Cognigy.AI is an enterprise platform for building and orchestrating customer-service agents in contact centers. Its agents use large language models, real-time memory, and integrated tools to work through tasks and answer customer queries. AI Agent Studio provides a collaborative, low-code visual interface for building, testing, and deploying conversational agents. They can run across webchat, voice, SMS, and messaging apps, with support for more than 100 languages and more than 25,000 concurrent interactions. Cognigy describes more than 100 prebuilt tools and integrations, including connectors for enterprise systems and contact center platforms. The platform includes knowledge-base answers and human handoff, as well as a secured REST API with access to every Cognigy.AI feature. On-premises installation is possible on Kubernetes; Cognigy recommends managed public cloud Kubernetes and does not configure or provision on-premises clusters. The AI Agent Studio page lists single sign-on, role-based access control, end-to-end encryption, and fine-grained data controls. Cognigy states compliance with GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 9001, PCI DSS, and BSI C5 Type II, among other standards. Pricing is available on request.