Voice agent pricing compared: Vapi, Retell and Bland

Vapi, Retell and Bland all charge by the minute, but they put different things inside that minute. Vapi charges a hosting fee and passes the speech, model and voice costs through on top. Retell adds up separate parts. Its rate moves with the model and voice you choose. Bland folds the model, speech recognition and voice into one rate per plan.

For a typical 3-minute call, the prices on their own pages work out at roughly 25 to 42 cents before plan fees. The numbers below were checked on 28 October 2026 against each vendor's own pricing page (Vapi, Retell, Bland). Prices change often, so check the pages before you budget.

Key facts

• Vapi charges $0.05 a minute for hosting, with the transcriber, model and voice billed on top (Vapi pricing).
• Retell quotes $0.07 to $0.31 a minute for voice agents (Retell pricing).
• Bland charges $0.14 a minute on Start and $0.12 on Build, which has a $299 monthly platform fee (Bland pricing).
• Bland prorates time to the exact second (Bland billing docs).
• Retell's own worked example comes to $0.11 a minute (Retell pricing).

How does Vapi bill?

Vapi's pricing page shows a hosting fee of $0.05 a minute. That is Vapi's own charge. The transcriber, the language model and the voice are billed on top, and the page's calculator shows them as ranges per minute:

• Transcriber, Deepgram: $0.0095 to $0.0099 (Vapi pricing).
• Language model, OpenAI: $0.0077 to $0.0452 (Vapi pricing).
• Voice, ElevenLabs: $0.0146 to $0.0238 (Vapi pricing).

Phone transport is charged by the telephony provider, not by Vapi. The page lists Vapi Telephony and SIP as free, and Twilio at $0.008 a minute inbound and $0.014 outbound (Vapi pricing).

Plans set your limits. The free tier allows 4 concurrent calls and one phone number. Core costs $29 a month for 10 concurrent calls, and Pro charges 10% of the hosting fee with a $999 monthly minimum (Vapi pricing). The same page prices extra concurrency at $10 a line each month. Its own example puts 1,000 minutes a month at $82 to $129.

We did not find a rule for rounding or short calls on that page.

How does Retell bill?

Retell's pricing page quotes $0.07 to $0.31 a minute for voice agents. The total is built from parts. Retell's voice infrastructure is $0.055 a minute and telephony is $0.015 a minute, with no charge for SIP trunking or your own telephony (Retell pricing).

The voice and the model are where the range comes from. Several voice providers are listed at $0.015 a minute, while ElevenLabs voices run from $0.040 to $0.10 (Retell pricing). Model prices vary just as widely by the model you pick. The page's own worked example comes to $0.11 a minute, made up of $0.04 for the model, $0.055 for voice infrastructure and $0.015 for the voice.

Some costs sit outside the minute rate. A Retell phone number is $2 a month. The first 20 concurrent calls are free, then each extra one costs $8 a month (Retell pricing). Optional extras, such as denoising and PII removal, carry their own per-minute charges on the same page.

Retell says each call is tracked to the nearest second, and that billing covers the whole call, silences and holds included (Retell pricing).

How does Bland bill?

Bland charges one rate per connected minute, set by your plan. Its pricing page lists Start at $0.14 a minute with no platform fee, and Build at $0.12 a minute with a $299 monthly platform fee. The billing docs add a Scale plan at $499 a month and $0.11 a minute. Time spent on a transferred call has its own lower rate on each plan.

The pricing page says the language model, speech-to-text and text-to-speech are included in the per-minute rate, with "no token charges" (Bland pricing).

Telephony is less clear. The FAQ on the pricing page says telephony "is billed separately, on your own carrier or Bland's at pass-through cost". Bland's home page says one per-minute rate covers telephony as well. Ask Bland which applies to your account before you budget.

The billing docs say time is prorated to the exact second and only active call time counts. They also list a minimum charge of $0.015 for each outbound attempt and each failed call on Bland's own telephony. Plans also cap volume. Start allows 10 concurrent calls and 100 calls a day, per the pricing page.

What does a 3-minute call cost?

Here is one example call, three minutes long, using only the prices on each vendor's page. It leaves out plan fees, phone number rental and tax. It is arithmetic from list prices, not a measured bill.

So a short call on any of the three lands in a similar band. The gap opens up with the choices you make. On Vapi and Retell, the model and the voice move the rate a long way, and Retell's own range runs from $0.07 to $0.31 a minute. On Bland, the plan fee matters most at low volume. At 1,000 minutes a month, Build's $299 fee adds about $0.30 a minute, which makes Start cheaper (Bland pricing).

What do the headline rates leave out?

Look past the minute rate at these before you compare.

• Concurrency. Each vendor caps calls at once by plan and sells more. See the Vapi, Retell and Bland pages for the limits.
• Phone numbers and carrier minutes. These may come from the platform or from your own carrier.
• Plan and platform fees, which weigh most at low volume.
• Add-ons such as denoising, PII removal, knowledge bases and compliance packages, priced separately on some plans.
• Short and failed calls, and how time is rounded.

How do you find your real cost per call?

Run a batch of test calls that look like your real traffic, then read the bill. Use the same call lengths, the same model and voice, and the same carrier you will use live. Divide the charge by the minutes. That number is worth more than any calculator, because it includes the silences, retries and transfers your callers actually cause. Our guide on how to make test calls covers how many to run and what to check on each.

RingTru's simulated callers can generate that batch of calls, and the RingTru pricing page covers our own charges. We have not measured these platforms ourselves yet. Our own benchmark figures are planned. For how the three differ beyond price, see Vapi vs Retell vs Bland, and for other options see Vapi alternatives.

Prices on this page were checked on 28 October 2026 against the vendors' own pricing pages. These guides name the platforms in plain text and are not endorsed by any of them.