What it's for
More control than Retell for developers, used as the alternative in our receptionist note.
- Custom voice agents for developers
- Phone agents with your own models
Plans and prices
| Plan | Price (USD unless shown) | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Pay as you go | By usage | $5 free credits, 1 included phone number, 4 concurrent calls |
| Core | $29/month | 5 included phone numbers, 10 concurrent calls |
| Scale | $999/mo minimum (10% of hosting fee) | 30 concurrent calls |
Read on the official pricing page on . Prices change; check before you buy.
Free plan in real output
$5 in free credits, 1 included Vapi phone number and 4 concurrent calls.
- Provider costs listed on the page: transcriber (Deepgram) $0.0095–$0.0099/min and the OpenAI model $0.0077–$0.0452/min, on top of voice and Vapi's own fee. Test with your chosen stack to get the real per-minute total.
Cost at your stage
| Plan | Monthly cost | |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 (testing, low volume) | Pay as you go | $5 |
| Month 12 (working volume) | Core | $29 |
Break-even: Core is covered by a single receptionist client.
Month-12 plan is our estimate of what a solo seller at steady weekly output needs, based on the plan limits above. Costs exclude tax.
Commercial use and output rights
Not a content generator. A developer platform for voice agents.
Your data and AI training: Not checked.
This is a summary of public terms, not legal advice. Terms change; re-read the clause before client work.
First-hour setup
- Create an account and use the free credits.
- Pick a transcriber, model and voice.
- Write the system prompt and tools (booking, CRM).
- Attach a phone number.
- Log the per-minute cost for 20 test calls.
Competitors compared
| Tool | Pricing model | Free plan | Starting price | Difficulty | Output rights | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vapi | Pay as you go | Yes | By usage | 4/5 | Not a content generator | Developers building custom voice agents |
| Retell AI | Pay as you go | Yes | $0.07–$0.31 per minute (voice agents) | 3/5 | Not a content generator | Receptionist and booking phone agents |
| Synthflow | Paid plans only | Trial only | See official site | 2/5 | – | Agencies building phone agents without code |
| Bland AI | Pay as you go | No | See official site | – | – | High-volume outbound and inbound calls |
| ElevenLabs | Free plan + paid plans | Yes | $0 · then $6/mo (first month promo shown: $1) | 2/5 | Commercial use on paid plans only | Narration for videos, audiobooks and courses in many languages |
| Voiceflow | Free plan + paid plans | Yes | See official site | 3/5 | – | Teams designing conversational agents |
Learning difficulty
4/5: Developer-focused; needs APIs and webhooks.
When not to use it
Non-developers should start with Retell or Synthflow.
Cheaper or free alternatives:
Which of our hustles use it
- Voice AI receptionist for local businesses: Developer-focused voice agent platform
Price history
Each monthly check adds rows here. Older rows are never edited, so you can see when prices changed.
Sources
- Vapi pricing (read 17 October 2026)
Last verified . Anything we couldn't confirm on an official page is marked "not published", "not shown" or "not verified".