In recent years, the conversational AI market, which includes chatbots and voicebots, has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% between 2020 and 2025, reaching nearly $14 billion by 2025. According to Deloitte and Gartner, approximately 70% of white-collar workers will have regular interactions with these conversational platforms by 2022. Furthermore, Gartner estimates that 44% of customer service managers will have experienced a GenAI voicebot in 2024.
These data demonstrate rapid growth and adoption: understanding the difference between chatbots and voicebots is crucial to choosing the best solution for your business needs.
Updated on July 16th 2025
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Table of contents
What is the difference between chatbots and voicebots?
Let’s briefly explain the difference between chatbots and voicebots. Chatbots offer a text-based digital interface for desktop, mobile, or messaging platforms, where users type and receive precise answers to frequently asked questions or structured processes. Thanks to asynchronous interaction, they are particularly effective for e-commerce support and lead generation, with high accuracy in text recognition and responses.
In contrast, voicebots operate through speech, using automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) technologies to enable natural conversations on phones, smart speakers, or IVR systems. However, in the difference between chatbots and voicebots, this adds complexity: their effectiveness depends on microphone quality and ambient noise, and they require sophisticated language processing and context management capabilities.
Chatbots
To distinguish between chatbots and voicebots, we can say that they are text-based virtual assistants (web, app, social) that respond via messages. They are ideal for FAQs, lead management, and e-commerce support. By 2025, 88% of users had interacted with a chatbot at least once. In the B2B sector, 58% of companies use chatbots, and it is expected that these tools will save up to 2.5 billion working hours by 2025.
Voicebots
Similar to chatbots, but voice-based, they use speech-to-text and text-to-speech for conversations. They are used in call centers, cars with voice assistants, and smart home devices. Gartner found that GenAI voicebots will be trialed in 44% of contact centers by 2024.
In short, chatbots are best suited to simple, structured text flows, while voicebots offer an advanced hands-free experience for reservations, voice commands, and IVR systems, albeit with greater technical costs and environmental constraints.
How to choose between chatbots and voicebots
Here are the parameters to consider for an informed choice between chatbots and voicebots.
- Business objectives
Do you prefer written interactions? -> chatbot
Do you need voice automation? -> voicebot - User context
User in front of a screen? Chatbot
User behind the wheel or on a phone? Voicebot - Technical complexity
Need a quick, simple response? Chatbot
Need natural language understanding and noise? Voicebot, but with higher development costs. - Costs and resources
Chatbots: cheaper, faster ROI. Voicebots: require speech AI, voice infrastructure, and specific training.
- Human escalation
In both cases, there’s no need to distinguish between chatbots and voicebots, but it’s helpful to plan for conversation transfer to a human operator if necessary.
Conclusions
Chatbots and voicebots serve conversational AI objectives, but differ in their interaction methods, required technology, and context of use. Chatbots ensure efficiency and rapid ROI in digital environments, while voicebots represent the future of voice assistance, especially in contact centers and voice devices.
The key is to clearly define objectives, audience, and context; always integrate a human element to ensure trust and continuity of service.
Faqs about chatbots and voicebots
No: chatbots communicate via text, voicebots via voice, with different technical challenges.
Yes, but it requires integration with speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis and greater context management.
Typically, chatbots, in Italy and around the world, have shorter implementation times and costs.
Updated on July 16th 2025
