Cekura alternatives: TotalPath vs Cekura, a like-for-like 2026 comparison

Cekura and TotalPath overlap more than any other pair in voice testing. Both send an AI caller at your voice agent, both can press keys, both publish their prices, and both let you start without talking to sales. Cekura is built for teams developing AI voice agents on platforms like Vapi, Retell, ElevenLabs and LiveKit, and adds production call monitoring. TotalPath is built for contact centres testing the journey a customer actually dials - DTMF menus, AI voice agents and the routing between them - over the real phone network, with load testing and a regulator-mapped compliance catalogue on every plan.

This post is the like-for-like breakdown. We're biased - we make TotalPath - so every Cekura figure below is taken from their own pricing page and documentation as published on 2 November 2026, and we'll say where they're the better fit.

TL;DR

• Building an AI voice agent on Vapi, Retell, ElevenLabs, LiveKit or Pipecat and want testing plus production call monitoring in one place? Cekura.
• Need a signed BAA for US healthcare from a mid-tier plan? Cekura (Startup plan).
• Testing the number your customers dial, cold, with no changes to your agent? TotalPath.
• Have DTMF menus or a hybrid IVR you need to discover and map before you can test it? TotalPath.
• Need load testing without an enterprise contract? TotalPath - it's metered on every plan. Cekura lists it as Enterprise.
• Need evidence against EU AI Act Article 50, FCA Consumer Duty or Ofcom rules? TotalPath.

At a glance

	TotalPath	Cekura
Free allowance	150 minutes every month, across six activity types, no card	300 credits to start (about 60 minutes), no card
Entry paid plan	Starter, $49/month	Pay as you go, $0 base
Mid plan	Team, $499/month	Startup, $500/month (about 2,000 voice minutes included)
Enterprise	$4,999/month, published	Custom, annual contract
AI-caller testing rate	Mission testing $0.20/min	$0.25 per voice testing minute
Scripted / DTMF testing rate	$0.08/min	Same $0.25 voice minute
Billing granularity	Per second after a 30-second minimum per call	Per minute
How calls reach your agent	We dial your number over the PSTN. No integration	Platform integrations, SIP with injected headers, or Twilio / Plivo numbers you connect
DTMF	Yes, scripted and AI-driven	Yes, scripted and AI-driven
IVR discovery and mapping	Yes, a product in its own right	Not offered
Load testing	Every plan, $0.07/min, up to 500 concurrent	Enterprise; 10 / 50 concurrent on the self-serve plans
Regulator-mapped compliance tests	Yes - EU AI Act Art. 50, FCA PRIN 2A and FG21/1, Ofcom GCs, PECR, European Accessibility Act	No catalogue; HIPAA and GDPR posture, BAA on Startup
Production call monitoring	No - we place our own synthetic calls	Yes, $0.05 per monitored call
Chat testing	Beta: web chat widgets, Amazon Connect chat, Amazon Lex V2, Microsoft Copilot Studio, any HTTP / OpenAI-compatible endpoint	Text simulation of voice agents on supported platforms (ElevenLabs, Retell and others)
SMS testing	Beta: end-to-end SMS survey testing from a UK number	SMS sent and received during a voice call
API, MCP, CI	REST API, Python and Node SDKs, MCP server	API, MCP server, Claude Skills, GitHub Actions

Cekura figures are from cekura.ai/pricing and docs.cekura.ai. Ours are on our pricing page.

Where the two products agree

A year ago the honest summary was that Cekura tested AI voice agents and TotalPath also tested legacy IVRs. That is no longer a fair line to draw. Cekura's testing agent sends and receives DTMF, it can be scripted to press a key at an exact moment, and IVR navigation is a documented use case. Both products now treat the AI caller and the keypad as normal parts of a test.

Both also assume the bot under test is non-deterministic. You describe what the caller is trying to do and what counts as success, and the result is judged on the outcome rather than an exact string. If your test plan is "an AI customer tries to rebook an appointment and we check it worked", either product will run it.

Where they differ: what you're testing from

This is the real difference, and it follows from who each product was built for.

Cekura is built for the team that owns the voice agent. Its fastest path is a direct integration with the platform the agent runs on. Its SIP testing injects run and scenario IDs into the call headers so the agent can link a call to a test. Chat runs clone or call your agent through the platform's own API. That's a strong design when you control the agent and want tight feedback while you build it.

TotalPath is built for testing from the customer's side of the phone. We dial the number your customers dial, over the real phone network, with no access to the agent and nothing installed on it. That means a test also crosses the carrier, the contact centre platform, the routing and any queue in between - the parts that break without anyone touching the bot. It also means you can test a journey you don't own the code for: an outsourced IVR, a vendor's AI agent, or a number your team inherited without documentation.

If the agent is yours and lives on one of Cekura's supported platforms, the inside-out view is useful. If the question is "does the journey work when a customer rings it", you need the outside-in one.

Pricing, side by side

Both companies publish prices, which already puts them ahead of most of this market. The shapes differ.

Free allowance. TotalPath's free tier is 150 minutes every month, split across six activity types, plus 50,000 AI analysis tokens. Cekura gives 300 credits to start, which they size at about 60 minutes. For a single proof of concept the two are similar. For a team that wants to keep a small regression suite running without a budget line, a monthly allowance goes further.

Per-minute rates. Cekura charges one rate, $0.25 per voice testing minute, whatever the test does. TotalPath meters each activity separately: $0.08/min for scripted DTMF and audio testing, $0.07/min for load testing, $0.20/min for AI-caller mission testing and $0.40/min for compliance testing. If your suite is mostly AI-caller tests, the rates are close. If it has a lot of scripted regression or load, TotalPath is a fraction of the price per minute. Compliance testing costs more than a Cekura minute because it's judged against a named regulation and produces evidence, not just a pass or fail.

The mid plan. Cekura's Startup plan is $500 a month for about 2,000 voice minutes, 10,000 monitored calls, 50 concurrent calls and 10 seats. TotalPath's Team plan is $499 a month for 50 concurrent activities, a shared workspace with role-based access and a 5% discount on every rate - usage is billed on top. If you'd use most of Cekura's bundled minutes and monitored calls, the bundle is good value. If you'd use a few hundred minutes, you'll pay for the minutes you don't use.

Enterprise. Cekura's Enterprise plan is custom and annual. TotalPath's Enterprise plan is $4,999 a month and on the website, with 500 concurrent activities, SSO and a 10% usage discount.

Load testing

Cekura's load testing works by running each test scenario many times at once - ten scenarios run five times each is fifty concurrent calls. The self-serve plans cap concurrency at 10 and 50, and load testing is listed on the Enterprise plan.

TotalPath treats load testing as its own product, on every plan, at $0.07/min with each call billed per second after a 30-second minimum. Concurrency follows your plan: 3 on Free, 10 on Starter, 50 on Team and 500 on Enterprise. A load test of a real contact centre number also exercises the carrier, the platform and the queue, which is usually where capacity runs out first.

Compliance

Cekura's compliance story is about Cekura: HIPAA and GDPR, with a signed BAA and DPA from the Startup plan. If you're a US healthcare team and need a BAA from your testing vendor, that matters, and it's a reason to shortlist them.

TotalPath's compliance story is about your agent. The compliance catalogue runs tests mapped to named clauses - EU AI Act Article 50 disclosure, FCA Consumer Duty PRIN 2A, FCA FG21/1 on vulnerable customers, Ofcom General Conditions, UK PECR and the European Accessibility Act - against the live number, and keeps the call transcript as evidence. For UK and EU regulated teams, that's the difference between "the vendor is compliant" and "we can show the agent is".

Chat and SMS

Both products have moved beyond voice, in different directions.

Cekura's chat testing runs the same scenarios as text against voice agents on platforms it supports, such as ElevenLabs and Retell. It's faster and cheaper than a call and well suited to checking conversation logic in CI. Its SMS support covers messages your voice agent sends or receives during a call.

TotalPath's chat testing, in beta, connects to the chat channels contact centres actually run: web chat widgets, Amazon Connect chat, Amazon Lex V2 bots, Microsoft Copilot Studio agents, and any HTTP or OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Its SMS testing, also in beta, tests an SMS survey end to end: your survey texts a UK number you rent from us, and an AI respondent answers it like a customer would.

Both are worth checking against what you actually run. If your chat is a Copilot Studio agent or an Amazon Connect flow, start with TotalPath. If it's the text mode of a Retell or ElevenLabs agent, Cekura already covers it.

What Cekura does that we don't

To be straight about it:

• Production call monitoring. Cekura scores your real production calls and alerts on them. TotalPath only places its own synthetic calls; it is not a call-recording or speech-analytics product.
• A BAA on a self-serve plan. If you need HIPAA paperwork, Cekura offers it from Startup.
• Deep integrations with voice-agent platforms. If you build on Vapi, Retell, ElevenLabs, LiveKit or Pipecat, Cekura plugs into the platform rather than calling it from outside.
• Red teaming as a packaged offering, on their Enterprise plan.

If those are the things you need most, Cekura is a good choice.

Frequently asked questions

Is TotalPath a Cekura alternative? For testing a voice journey from the caller's side - AI agents, DTMF menus, load and compliance - yes. For monitoring live production calls, no; TotalPath only places synthetic calls.

Does Cekura test DTMF IVRs? Yes. Its testing agent can send and receive DTMF, either chosen by the AI or scripted at exact moments. What it doesn't offer is discovering and mapping an IVR you don't have documentation for, which is one of TotalPath's core products.

Which is cheaper? It depends on the mix. For AI-caller tests, Cekura's $0.25 a minute and TotalPath's $0.20 a minute for mission testing are close. For scripted regression and load testing, TotalPath's rates are much lower. If you'd fill Cekura's $500 Startup bundle, it's good value; if not, TotalPath's per-second metering means you pay only for what you use.

Do I need to change my voice agent to use TotalPath? No. TotalPath dials your existing number over the PSTN. There's no SDK, webhook or SIP header to add.

Does TotalPath do chat and SMS testing? Yes, both in beta. Chat testing connects to web chat widgets, Amazon Connect chat, Amazon Lex V2, Microsoft Copilot Studio and any HTTP or OpenAI-compatible endpoint. SMS testing covers SMS surveys end to end.

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If you're comparing the two, the most useful test is a real call placed against your real number, on the real phone network, before you commit to anything. That's what we built TotalPath for.

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