Eleven Realtime speaks OpenAI’s protocol, and that makes voice agents easier to switch

ElevenLabs launched Eleven Realtime on 20 October 2026: two voice-agent models that start speaking in about 0.6 seconds. The speed is what made the headlines. For companies that buy voice agents, the more consequential detail is that the new Realtime API speaks the same protocol as OpenAI’s. Moving an existing agent comes down to a new endpoint and a new model name, which makes voice vendors easier to swap. The models themselves are fast and strong at spoken reasoning, but in independent tests they finish fewer tasks than Grok Voice 3.0 and Gemini 3.8 Live. By our own estimate, a conversation costs between 8 and 10 US cents a minute. Eleven Realtime comes in two versions.