Cognigy alternative: AI agents for phone and chat without a corporate project
A finished product instead of a platform project, prices on the website instead of in the contract.
EchoCall is an alternative to Cognigy for companies that want AI agents on the phone and in chat without running a platform project to get there. Cognigy has been part of NiCE since September 2025, bills per conversation, where one conversation covers up to 50 inputs in 24 hours, and names prices only in the contract. EchoCall bills in call minutes and chat sessions, with amounts on the website: voice from 75 euros for 250 minutes, chat from 40 euros for 100 sessions. If you run a corporate contact center with its own development department, Cognigy still serves you well. If you want an agent for appointment booking, order status or first contact live this week, you are in the right place.
The essentials first
- Cognigy has belonged to NiCE since 8 September 2025. The announced purchase price was approximately 955 million US dollars. The product remains available on its own and becomes part of the CXone platform.
- Cognigy bills per billable conversation. According to its documentation one conversation covers up to 50 user inputs within 24 hours. Prices per conversation are not public.
- EchoCall bills in call minutes and chat sessions, with every amount on the website: voice from 75 euros, chat from 40 euros, Presence at the front desk from 149 euros a month.
- Cognigy is a platform on which teams set up AI agents with a persona, jobs, knowledge and tools and bring them to their channels through flows. EchoCall is a finished product: upload knowledge, connect a number, switch on integrations.
- Not for everyone: if you are looking for a company-wide platform with your own developer team, or already work inside the NiCE environment, Cognigy offers the better-fitting frame.
What Cognigy is
Cognigy is a conversational AI platform from Düsseldorf for the contact centers of large enterprises. On 28 July 2025 NiCE announced the acquisition for approximately 955 million US dollars, and on 8 September 2025 the deal closed. Cognigy has since been part of the CXone platform and remains available as a standalone offering. Billing is per conversation: according to the documentation a billable conversation starts with the first input through an endpoint, ends when the user stops interacting, and is capped at 50 inputs within 24 hours. 101 inputs within two hours count as three conversations. The documentation names no price per conversation, and the former pricing page is no longer reachable. A free trial without a credit card is available for trying it out.
Where Cognigy is strong
- A platform for large organisations with many brands, languages and teams that design and operate their own dialogues
- Part of NiCE and the CXone platform since the acquisition, which matters for corporations already running NiCE
- Billing per conversation can work out cheaper than billing per minute for long, text-heavy dialogues
- Publicly readable documentation, including the billing rules, which is not a given in the enterprise space
EchoCall and Cognigy side by side
The Cognigy details come from its public documentation, the product page, the trial signup page and the two NiCE press releases on the acquisition, checked in October 2026. The links are below the table. The audience row is our own assessment.
| Criterion | EchoCall | Cognigy |
|---|---|---|
| Prices | Every plan on the website: chat from €40 for 100 sessions, voice from €75 for 250 minutes, Presence from €149 for 300 spoken minutes | No prices in the cited documentation. The former pricing page is no longer reachable |
| Billing unit | Minute on the phone, session in chat, spoken minute at the front desk. The number of agents does not matter | Billable conversation: up to 50 user inputs within 24 hours |
| Getting started | Sign up, use 30 voice minutes and 30 chat conversations for 14 days, then pick a plan | Free trial without a credit card, plus a demo booking on the website |
| Build | Finished product: upload documents or crawl the website, describe the conversation goal, set handover rules. No flow editor required | AI agents with a persona, jobs, knowledge and tools, placed in the conversation through an AI Agent node in a flow |
| Audience | Mid-sized companies, practices, law firms, trades, hotels, online shops, agencies and call center operators | Contact centers of large enterprises |
| Channels | Phone via your own number, SIP or Twilio. Website chat with microphone. Avatar on a tablet at reception | More than 30 omnichannel connectors for web, phone and messaging |
| Integrations | CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce), helpdesk (Zendesk, Freshdesk, ServiceNow), calendars (Google, Outlook, Calendly, Cal.com), shops (Shopify, Shopware 6), automation (n8n, Zapier, Make), API | More than 110 prebuilt tools and integrations |
| Data protection | Standard plans on IONOS in Germany, DPA, TOMs and sub-processor list as downloads, Zero-PII mode on the Business plan | Lists GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 9001, PCI DSS and BSI C5 Type II among others. SaaS environments in Europe, the US, the UK and Australia, plus CXone clusters including one in Frankfurt |
| Company | Independent provider, founded in 2024, with an open-source portal for partners | Part of NiCE since September 2025, purchase price approximately 955 million US dollars |
Sources on Cognigy: billing documentation, Cognigy.AI product page, trial signup, AI Agents documentation, certifications, SaaS environments documentation, NiCE acquisition announcement, NiCE closing of the acquisition
Figures with sources
$955 million
is the purchase price NiCE named for Cognigy on 28 July 2025, including a time-bound holdback of approximately 50 million US dollars.
Source: NiCE, acquisition announcement
8 September 2025
is when the acquisition closed. Cognigy has since been offered as part of the CXone platform and as a standalone product.
Source: NiCE, closing of the acquisition
50 inputs
within 24 hours make up one billable conversation at Cognigy. 101 inputs within two hours count as three conversations according to the documentation.
Source: Cognigy, billing documentation
€40
a month is the smallest EchoCall chat plan with 100 sessions. The smallest voice plan is 75 euros for 250 minutes.
Source: EchoCall, pricing
What a switch or a second agent next to Cognigy looks like
Nobody replaces a platform project in a day, and nobody has to. The smallest useful step is a single area that currently goes unserved.
- 01
Scope the area
Take an area the existing platform does not cover today: a hotline after hours, a brand without its own bot, the website chat with voice. That is where the benefit shows without disturbing what already runs.
- 02
Knowledge instead of flows
Instead of modelling dialogue trees, upload documents or let the website be crawled and describe the conversation goal in sentences. The agent asks for what it is missing and sticks to the handover rules.
- 03
Switch on the channels
Connect the number by call forwarding or SIP and embed the chat widget in the website. The same agent with the same knowledge works on the phone and in chat.
- 04
Measure and decide
After two weeks the history and statistics show how many cases the agent resolved and how many it handed over. Then the area grows, or it goes again, with one month notice.
When EchoCall fits and when Cognigy does
EchoCall fits when
- You have no developer team for dialogue design and still want to go live this week
- You want to know prices before the first conversation, in minutes and sessions, without contract negotiations
- Phone, chat and an avatar at reception should run from one account with the same knowledge
- You want to run a portal under your own brand with billing per client as an agency or service provider
Cognigy fits when
- You operate a company-wide platform with your own development team and custom dialogue design
- Your contact center already runs on NiCE CXone and the AI agents should stay in that environment
- Your conversations are long and text-heavy, and billing per conversation works out cheaper for you
Questions that come up in the comparison
No price is public. The documentation describes the billing unit, the billable conversation, but names no amount, and the former pricing page no longer responds. You get prices in a quote from Cognigy or NiCE.
According to the documentation, an interaction between a user and an AI agent or a human agent that flows through the Cognigy platform. It starts with the first input through an endpoint, ends when the user stops interacting, and covers at most 50 inputs within 24 hours. 50 inputs in under 24 hours are one conversation. 101 inputs within two hours are three.
According to NiCE, Cognigy remains available on its own and at the same time becomes part of the CXone platform. What that means in the long run for prices, roadmap or contract terms the releases do not say, and we do not speculate. Anyone deciding today should raise the question in the quote.
Chat from 40 euros a month for 100 sessions, voice from 75 euros for 250 minutes, Presence from 149 euros for 300 spoken minutes at the front desk. Larger plans are listed with minutes and sessions on the pricing page, enterprise on request. There is no setup fee and no limit on the number of agents.
No. Knowledge comes from documents or the website crawl, integrations are connected in the dashboard, the number by call forwarding or SIP. If you want to connect your own systems, use the API, which is included in every plan, or n8n, Zapier and Make.
Yes, that is the usual route. EchoCall takes over a clearly scoped area, for example the hotline outside opening hours or a brand without its own bot. After two weeks the statistics show whether the area should grow. Please check any contractual commitments to Cognigy in your own documents.
Read on
- AI chat agent: features and pricing
- AI voice agent for the phone
- AI voice agent for call centers
- Parloa alternative
- White-label portal for AI agents as open source
Last reviewed on . EchoCall prices and features reflect that date.
Cognigy and NiCE are trademarks of their respective companies. EchoCall has no business relationship with them. All statements come from the linked public sources as of the review date. If something is no longer accurate, report it to us via the contact page.
Try EchoCall instead of Cognigy?
Start with 30 voice minutes and 30 chat conversations of starting credit at hub.echocall.de, valid for 14 days - card required for verification, €1 automatically refunded.