Head to head · Voice agents · October 2026 research run

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic vs ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP scores 72.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Amazon Nova 2 Sonic's 67.6 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Amazon Nova 2 Sonic leads on reliability. Both do voice agents.

Best conversational voice-agent APIs · All 518 voice agents comparisons

Which one, for what

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic B

Best for Voice agents on AWS, call centres on Amazon Connect, teams that want IAM and in-account data handling.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 95 against 75

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP loses 3 points for them

Watch for

Connections end after 8 minutes, so long calls need the session-continuation pattern

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP BB

Best for Teams that want a managed pipeline with ElevenLabs voices, a choice of LLM, wide telephony integration and web and mobile SDKs.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 92 against 75
  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 64
  • Security & auth, 83 against 77
  • Payments & pricing, 35 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 85 against 50

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

$0.08 a minute excludes LLM tokens and carrier minutes

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Maintenance & community ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP +35

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic 50

Read as a model. The newest dated change is the May 2026 refresh, completed on 28 May, 162 days before this check (10). No Sonic release note or document history entry in the 90 days from 8 August. The pre-alpha Python SDK shipped 0.9.0, 0.10.0, 0.11.0 and 0.12.0 in the window, counted half (10 of 20). Release notes, document history, re:Post and AWS Support (10 of 15). The JavaScript Bedrock runtime client is current at 3.1163.0, while the Python route is pre-alpha (10 of 15). The SDKs ship on AWS's release train; CI not read (10). Total 50.

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP 85

Changelog entry on 26 October 2026, and @elevenlabs/client 1.32.1 and @elevenlabs/react 1.20.2 tagged on 29 October (30). Weekly entries, with 108 tags in the agents packages repository since 3 August (20). Weekly changelog and incident write-ups on the status page, support we didn't test (12 of 15 for a closed service). Python and JavaScript SDKs with over a million weekly downloads each per the 1 October check, plus mobile SDKs (15). MIT SDKs on GitHub (8 of 10). 30 + 20 + 12 + 15 + 8 = 85.

Payments & pricing ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP +25

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic 10

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). The Nova and Bedrock pricing pages carry a speech-to-speech table drawn by script, so the per-token prices weren't read and this line scores absent, which is our reader's limit and not the vendor's (0). New accounts get up to $200 in Free Tier credits, and the Free Tier FAQ says most new customers need no payment method, read as half on the other AWS listings (10). A person signs up for an AWS account in a browser (0). Total 10.

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP 35

No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). The $0.08 call minute, $0.16 burst minute and plan allowances are on the public pricing page, and LLM usage is billed at the listed model rate (20). The Free plan includes 15 call minutes, and we didn't confirm whether it needs a card (15 of 20). Access starts with a human signup, and the MCP server's OAuth also needs a person to sign in (0).

Reliability Amazon Nova 2 Sonic +20

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic 95

Hosted reading. AWS Health Dashboard with per-service, per-Region history (20). The dashboard history file (newest event 30 October 2026) lists no Bedrock event in the 90 days from 8 August, and the 3 September us-west-2 event names STS, Connect and IAM Identity Center, not Bedrock. The public dashboard records broad events only, so 25 of 30, as amazon-nova-embeddings was read. Quotas published, 20 concurrent requests per Region, not adjustable (15). The stream API lists ThrottlingException (429), ServiceUnavailableException (503), ModelTimeoutException (408) and ModelStreamErrorException (424), Bedrock's troubleshooting guide advises backoff with jitter, and the 8-minute connection limit comes with a session-continuation sample (15). Bedrock's SLA of 99.9 per cent a month per Region for model APIs, as read for amazon-nova-embeddings on 1 November (10). Generally available since 2 December 2025 (10). 20 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 10 = 95.

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP 75

Read as a hosted service. Status page at status.elevenlabs.io (incident.io) with an ElevenAgents component group (Conversations, Telephony, Integrations, Other Agents APIs, Quality, RAG, UI) and dated component history (20). Re-read on 1 November from the history page, which dates each component's impact, as the ElevenLabs text-to-speech and voice cloning listings were read; the incidents feed was re-posted on 21 October and leaves older incidents out. In the 90 days from 3 August, ten incidents touched Agents components, all partial or under an hour. The longest, from 08:50 UTC on 13 October, a database behind the Agents platform in the US stalled, and the write-up says roughly 45 per cent of US calls failed and 7 per cent of API requests returned errors until 14:18 UTC, on seven Agents components marked partial outage. That is a share of requests in one region, read as partial, as hubspot-mcp's "many customers in North America" was and as the ElevenLabs text-to-speech and voice cloning listings read this incident, not every user in a region as in google-drive-api's regional major. The others are Inbound Twilio calls on 18 August (under 1 per cent), EU batch calling delays on 27 August, EU conversation history on 10 September, some calls failing to start on 18 and 19 September (1 hour 25 minutes), the EU platform unresponsive from 13:40 to 14:18 UTC on 28 September (38 minutes, one region), a usage datastore fault from 15:56 to 19:36 UTC on 29 September that caused latency and some failed requests on Agents conversations, STT and Creative products (partial outage), EU SIP calls with static IPs from 9:53 to 12:06 UTC on 6 October (one region, one call path) and SIP conversations from 14:21 to 15:15 UTC on 8 October. Minor only (20 of 30, was 5). Concurrency per plan is published, from 4 calls on Free to 40 on Business with burst to three times the cap (15). The errors page returns 429 with rate_limit_exceeded, concurrent_limit_exceeded or system_busy and tells callers to back off exponentially. No Retry-After header and no idempotency keys found (10 of 15). No SLA found for a self-serve tier, and Enterprise lists custom terms around SLAs (0). Agents is generally available (10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 10 + 0 + 10 = 75.

Schema & documentation ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP +17

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic 75

The Bedrock service model types InvokeModelWithBidirectionalStream, but the Sonic events inside it (session, prompt, content, tool and usage events) are JSON payloads documented only in the guide, with no schema file (12 of 25). llms.txt and Markdown copies of the Nova 2 guide (10). Guides on the event lifecycle, barge-in, turn-taking, async tools and chat history say when and how to use each (16 of 20). Event fields are documented as JSON examples and tables, not typed schemas (10 of 15). Sample repositories in several languages and the API's exceptions with HTTP codes (12 of 15). Release notes and document history, with in-place model refreshes and a versioned model ID (15). Total 75.

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP 92

Public OpenAPI at api.elevenlabs.io/openapi.json (25). llms.txt with Markdown copies of each page (10). The docs explain each agent setting with guidance on when to use it, such as turn timeout and soft-timeout fillers (16 of 20). The OpenAPI types every field, but conversation_config is a large nested object (12 of 15). The errors page lists codes, types and fixes, and every error carries a request_id (14 of 15). Weekly dated changelog entries and a versioned API (15).

Agent ergonomics ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP +13

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic 64

Scored as an API. Responses carry transcripts of both sides and usage events, chat history is capped at 200 KB and can be injected once per session (15 of 25). Output controls are voice, turn-taking sensitivity and text or audio input (12 of 20). Typed exceptions with HTTP codes, while errors inside the event stream are less documented (15 of 20). Asynchronous tool calls let the model keep talking, and AWS samples show how to resume after the 8-minute limit, with nothing on repeating tool side effects after a reconnect (12 of 20). A session needs a sequence of start events before audio. The JavaScript SDK is current, but the Python SDK the quickstart uses is pre-alpha and needs Python 3.12 (10 of 15). Total 64.

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP 77

We couldn't count the hosted MCP server's tools, since the docs list about ten capabilities without a tool list, so we scored context cost on the API, where list endpoints take page sizes and cursors (18 of 25). Conversation lists page and filter (18 of 20). Typed error codes with suggested fixes (18 of 20). MCP clients can set each tool to ask first and the docs warn that deleting an agent is destructive, but we found no idempotency keys (8 of 20). Few required fields to create an agent and official SDKs for Python, JavaScript, React, Swift, Kotlin and Flutter (15).

Security & auth ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP +6

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic 77

SigV4 with IAM roles and temporary credentials scoped per model ARN, as the Sonic quickstart signs (30). Tools run in the client, so side effects are the developer's to approve, and IAM can restrict which models a role invokes, with no approval step in the API (12 of 20). The model listens to callers and acts on tool results, and no prompt-injection guidance was found in the Sonic guide (5 of 15). CloudTrail logs Bedrock API calls, read as amazon-nova-embeddings was (12 of 15). VDP on HackerOne, Bedrock in SOC scope and a valid security.txt on aws.amazon.com, with no paid bounty, as on the other AWS listings (18 of 20). Total 77.

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP 83

The hosted MCP server signs in with OAuth and asks for scoped access to agents and speech. API keys can be limited to endpoint groups, given a credit limit, owned by a service account, rotated, and are disabled if found on GitHub (30). Scoped keys and signed URLs for private agents keep the main key off clients (17 of 20). Agents pass caller speech to an LLM. The guardrails docs, generally available since 19 October 2026, describe a Manipulation guardrail that detects prompt injection in user turns and can end the conversation, included at no extra cost, and the MCP security page recommends Always Ask approval for tool calls. It is a setting the builder turns on, not a default we could confirm (12 of 15, was 5). Audit logs cover over 100 endpoints through GET /v1/workspace/audit-logs, but only on Enterprise, and every conversation keeps a transcript (12 of 15). security.txt valid to 6 October 2027 (re-read on 1 November) and HIPAA BAAs are available with zero retention mode. We didn't re-check certifications or a bug bounty (12 of 20). 30 + 17 + 12 + 12 + 12 = 83.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAmazon Nova 2 SonicElevenLabs Agents API + MCPEdge
Reliability16%209575Amazon Nova 2 Sonic +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27592ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP +17
Agent ergonomics13%16.26477ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP +13
Security & auth14%17.57783ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP +6
Payments & pricing10%12.51035ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85085ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP +35
Transparency & trust7%8.87978Amazon Nova 2 Sonic +1
Negative events≤150-3
TotalB 67.6/100BB 72.6/100

Facts side by side

FactAmazon Nova 2 SonicElevenLabs Agents API + MCP
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorAmazon Web ServicesElevenLabs
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/convai
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per useFreemium
Price for voice agentsnot published$0.08 per minute of call
x402nono
LicencenoneMIT (SDKs)
Tools exposed0none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedio.elevenlabs/mcp
Last release2026-05-282026-10-29
Terms last updated2026-10-012026-03-31
Privacy policy last updated2026-05-182026-05-20
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-outyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularitynone114 stars, 1.2M npm/wk, 2.2M PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (2)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic

Nova 2 Sonic runs speech-to-speech conversations with asynchronous tools on Bedrock, with IAM scoping, no default storage of inputs and a 99.9 per cent SLA. Sessions cut off at 8 minutes, the Python SDK is pre-alpha, and the event payloads have no schema file. Prices are in a script-drawn table we couldn't read.

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP

API keys scoped to endpoint groups, with per-key credit limits and service accounts, and a documented prompt-injection guardrail. $0.08 a minute excludes LLM tokens and carrier minutes, and a US database fault on 13 October failed about 45 per cent of US calls for about five hours.

Before you call either

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic

  1. Plan a reconnect before 8 minutes and replay chat history (up to 200 KB) at the start of the new session
  2. Send session, prompt and content start events in order before any audio
  3. Make tool calls safe to repeat, since a reconnect can replay them
  4. Back off on ThrottlingException and stay within 20 concurrent sessions per Region
  5. Use the polyglot voices TIFFANY or MATTHEW when callers may switch language

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP

  1. Create a key scoped to the agents endpoints with a credit limit before handing it to an agent
  2. Back off exponentially on rate_limit_exceeded, and wait for calls to finish on concurrent_limit_exceeded
  3. Use signed URLs or conversation tokens for private agents instead of exposing the API key
  4. Turn on the Manipulation guardrail and set MCP tools to Always Ask for agents that take actions
  5. Set platform_settings.privacy.retention_days where you don't need 2 years of history

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Amazon Nova 2 Sonic or ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP?

ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP scores 72.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Amazon Nova 2 Sonic's 67.6 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Amazon Nova 2 Sonic leads on reliability.

Do Amazon Nova 2 Sonic and ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP need an API key?

Amazon Nova 2 Sonic needs an API key. ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Amazon Nova 2 Sonic and ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Amazon Nova 2 Sonic. ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/convai.

Other comparisons with Amazon Nova 2 Sonic or ElevenLabs Agents API + MCP

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