AI voice agent cost per minute: published prices compared (2026)

Published prices, September 2026

Prices as each vendor publishes them on its own pricing page, read September 26, 2026 (HighLevel's on September 24, 2026). US rates where a vendor lists several countries.

Carriers and speech APIs: the parts, by the minute

Carriers and speech companies sell voice AI by the minute too, as parts for developers: a speech engine to connect to your own model and phone line, or a phone line to connect to your own agent. Their rates are low, and each covers only part of a call.

Lead Friendly buys some of these parts: its phone lines run on Telnyx and its speech recognition on Deepgram, and its plan price includes them.

US rates, read on each vendor's own pricing page on September 26, 2026. Telephony figures are the lowest local rate each lists.

What 500 AI minutes a month costs

The same month on each price list: 500 minutes of US calls on the cheapest published plan for that volume. Where the rate depends on the model or voice, the figure uses the lowest listed rate, or the published range. Where inbound and outbound calls are priced differently, the phone-line figure is for inbound calls.

On minutes alone, Lead Friendly is not the cheapest here: every developer platform and API in this table can come in lower at 500 minutes, and so can ElevenLabs and Trillet, before the phone line and anything else the rate leaves out. The Lead Friendly figure also pays for the phone line, the CRM, calendar booking, missed-call text-back and the checks that run before an outbound call.

Six ways AI voice agents are priced

• Parts by the minute: Plivo, Telnyx, Twilio ConversationRelay and Deepgram. Low rates for developers who write the agent and connect what the rate leaves out, always the phone line and often the model.
• Pay as you go, by component: Retell and Vapi. Low floors, but you pick and pay for the model, the voice and the phone line, and the total moves with every choice.
• One rate per minute: Bland and ThunderPhone (the model, transcription and voice) and Leadlock (the model and telephony). Easier to budget; check what the single rate leaves out.
• Plans with included minutes: ElevenLabs, Trillet, Autocalls and Lead Friendly. Predictable up to the allowance, then a per-minute rate.
• Per conversation: Ringly charges $1.99 a phone conversation with a $99 monthly minimum (50 conversations), so a long call costs the same as a short one.
• Enterprise contracts: Synthflow publishes no rate; its contracts start at $30,000 a year.

What the headline rate leaves out

• The phone call. Some rates include the carrier minutes and some don't, and the phone number is usually a separate monthly fee.
• The model and the voice. A platform fee, such as Vapi's hosting fee, covers the platform only; the language model, transcription and voice are billed at each provider's rate.
• The plan behind the rate. A low per-minute price can require a monthly plan, a prepaid balance or an annual contract.
• How many calls run at once. Plans often cap concurrent calls, which matters when a campaign or a busy Monday stacks them up.
• Rounding. Telnyx rounds each call up to a whole minute, ThunderPhone bills in quarter-minutes and Plivo bills SIP calls in 6-second steps. The difference is largest on short calls, and most missed-call callbacks are short.
• Everything after the call. A voice platform answers and places calls; the CRM, calendar booking, texting and calling-rule checks it hands off to are separate bills, or separate work.

Which is cheaper for you

If you have developers, already run a CRM, and place thousands of minutes a month, a developer platform such as Retell, Vapi, Bland or ThunderPhone, or parts from Plivo, Telnyx, Twilio or Deepgram, will usually cost less per minute than any bundled plan, Lead Friendly's included. You pay in engineering instead: building the agent, wiring it to your CRM and calendar, and keeping the calling-rule checks current.

A small business without developers is buying more than minutes: a phone number, a CRM, calendar booking, missed-call text-back and checks before any outbound call. Lead Friendly puts those in the plan: Starter is $49 a month with 150 AI voice minutes, Pro $99 with 400, and Agency $199 with 600. Minutes beyond the plan cost $0.15 each on Starter and Pro and $0.12 on Agency, drawn from a prepaid wallet, so a busy month cannot run up an open-ended bill.

How this comparison was made

Every competitor figure comes from that vendor's own website, read on September 26, 2026 (HighLevel's on September 24, 2026): pricing pages, and the vendor's documentation for billing details such as free credit and rounding. Where a vendor publishes no price, the table says so instead of guessing; where a vendor's own pages disagree, the pricing page is used; and figures that appear only in calculators are left out. Lead Friendly's figures come from its pricing page. Rates in this market change often; if one here is out of date, email hello@leadfriendly.com and it will be corrected.