---
title: "Vapi pricing in 2026: what a minute really costs"
description: "Vapi pricing in 2026: $0.05 a minute plus the model, voice, transcriber and phone line, about 10 to 14 cents all in. TalaLevel's Joey: about 10 cents, CRM included."
url: https://talalevel.com/compare/talalevel-vs-vapi/
date: 2026-11-12
updated: 2026-11-12
competitor: "Vapi"
---

# Vapi pricing in 2026: what a minute really costs

Vapi charges $0.05 a minute to run your voice agent, then passes on the cost of the transcriber, the model, the voice and the phone line. With its default parts and a Twilio number for outbound calls, that comes to about 10 to 14 cents a minute, before the CRM and before anyone builds the agent. The alternative, TalaLevel, is a sales CRM with an AI caller, Joey, on its Scale plan: $247 a seat a month with about 500 minutes of Joey, and about 10 cents a minute after that, with the line, voice, model, transcript and recording inside. Vapi is a toolkit for developers. Joey is a finished caller that works a list a person sets running.

## At a glance

Vapi is a platform for building voice agents. You choose the transcriber, the model and the voice, bring a phone line, and connect it all to your own systems. TalaLevel is a sales CRM with the dialer, texting, email and AI inside it, and on the Scale plan it includes Joey, an AI caller who works your lists. Most of the differences below come from that one choice: parts to assemble, or a caller that is already built.

| | TalaLevel (Joey) | Vapi |
| --- | --- | --- |
| What it is | A sales CRM with a dialer, texting, email, Tala and Joey | A platform for developers to build voice agents |
| How you pay | $247 a seat a month on Scale, about 500 Joey minutes included | $0.05 a minute to Vapi, plus each provider's price |
| A minute, all in | About 10 cents past the seat's minutes | About 10 to 14 cents with Vapi's default parts and Twilio |
| Numbers for outbound calls | In the app; no carrier account | Imported from Twilio, Telnyx, DIDWW or a SIP trunk |
| Calling hours | 9am to 8pm in each lead's own time zone | One time zone and window per campaign |
| Voicemail | At most one per lead on each list, in words you approved | You pick a detection method and write the rules |
| Recordings | Every call recorded, transcribed and filed on the lead | 14 days on usage only, 30 on Core, 180 on Pro, or your own storage |
| Listening in | A rep can listen to any call and take it over | An audio stream sent to your server |
| Your CRM | It is the CRM; sign in to the one you use now and your leads, deals and history come across, and if yours has to stay, the two stay connected | None; GoHighLevel prebuilt, others through your own tools |
| Who builds it | You write the guide in plain words, or talk it through with Tala | A developer, in the Dashboard, the API and your own server |
| AI on inbound calls | No; reps take incoming calls, Joey calls out | Yes |
| Building your own agent | No; the API and webhooks are for the CRM | API, SDKs and webhooks |
| Other languages | No, English | Yes |
| Security papers | No SOC 2 report yet | SOC 2 Type II; HIPAA as a $2,000-a-month add-on |

## Vapi pricing, part by part

Vapi's [pricing page](https://vapi.ai/pricing) bills by the minute, and its FAQ names the parts: "speech-to-text, the language model, text-to-speech, and transport. Each is billed at the provider's listed price with no markup. Vapi's $0.05/min hosting fee is added on top." Its calculator puts each part in a range:

| Part | Vapi's default | Range in Vapi's calculator |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Hosting, paid to Vapi | $0.05 | $0.05 |
| Transcriber | Deepgram, $0.0095 to $0.0099 | $0.0052 (AssemblyAI) to $0.0122 (OpenAI) |
| Model | OpenAI, $0.0077 to $0.0452 | $0.006 (Google) to $0.0452 (OpenAI) |
| Voice | ElevenLabs, $0.0146 to $0.0238 | $0.0069 (Cartesia) to $0.0238 (ElevenLabs) |
| Phone line, outbound | Twilio, $0.014 | $0.0055 (Telnyx) to $0.014 (Twilio) |
| **A minute, all in** | **$0.096 to $0.143** | **$0.074 to $0.145** |

The calculator opens on "Vapi Telephony", which is free. But Vapi's docs say of its free numbers that "only inbound calls are supported", and that "Outbound Campaigns require an imported number." So an outbound list adds a carrier: Twilio lists a US local number at $1.15 a month and outbound calls at $0.014 a minute, Telnyx a number at $1.00 a month. The model's price is an estimate too. Vapi's docs say that on long calls "actual cost is often higher", because the conversation so far is sent again with every request.

Then come the packages. Usage only starts with $5 of free credits, four calls at once and 14 days of recordings and logs, with community support. Core is $29 a month for ten calls at once, 30 days of data and an email answer within two business days. Pro is 10% of the hosting fee with a $999 monthly minimum, for 30 calls at once, 180 days of data and a Slack channel. Add-ons are $10 a month for each extra line, $20 for each extra workspace, and $2,000 a month for HIPAA. Usage is prepaid credit, and Vapi's terms say per-minute charges "are non-refundable except as required by law."

Joey's price is one line. He is part of TalaLevel's Scale plan, $247 a seat a month, which includes 5,000 AI credits a seat. A minute of Joey uses about 10 credits, so a seat covers about 500 minutes. More credits are $10 per 1,000, about 10 cents a minute, with the phone line, the voice, the model, the transcript and the recording all inside it. The same seat has the CRM, the power dialer on up to ten lines, 6,000 texts and ten numbers, email from your Gmail and Tala. A year costs ten months.

## A month of calls, worked through

Vapi with its default parts, a Twilio line and one number, on usage only, against Joey on one Scale seat with extra credits:

| Minutes a month | Vapi | TalaLevel Scale with Joey |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 500 | 500 × $0.096 to $0.143, plus $1.15 = $49 to $73 | $247 |
| 2,000 | $193 to $287 | $247 + $150 of credits = $397 |
| 5,000 | $481 to $716 | $247 + $450 of credits = $697 |
| Also needed | A CRM, someone to build and run the agent; Core or Pro for more than four calls at once or data kept past 14 days | Nothing |

On the minutes alone, Vapi costs less at 500 and 2,000 minutes, and by 5,000 minutes its default setup is level with Joey. Joey's extra minutes, at about 10 cents, sit inside Vapi's own default range. What the Vapi column leaves out is everything around the minutes: the CRM the results go into, the dialer your reps use, the texts and emails that follow the call, and the hours someone spends building, testing and watching the agent.

For a team, the seats do the work. Four reps on Scale cost 4 × $247 = $988 a month and include about 2,000 Joey minutes. Ten reps cost $2,470 and include about 5,000. Each of those seats is also a rep's CRM, dialer, texting and email.

## What you set up before Vapi can call a list

Vapi's docs lay out the outbound path. Before the first campaign:

1. **A carrier account and numbers.** Buy numbers at Twilio, Telnyx or DIDWW, or bring a SIP trunk, and import them. The free Vapi number takes inbound calls only.
2. **Caller ID and reputation.** Vapi's outbound guide walks you through Twilio's Trust Hub and STIR/SHAKEN ("typically takes 5-7 business days"), caller name registration ("3-5 business days"), and registering with First Orion and Hiya. It warns that this "can take 2-4 weeks to fully propagate."
3. **The agent.** Pick a transcriber, a model and a voice, write the prompt, and choose how voicemail is handled: a tool the agent calls when it hears a mailbox, with the rules written into its prompt, or a detection service. The docs say not to use both, and suggest a 45 to 60 second silence timeout so call screeners can hand over.
4. **The link to your CRM.** Lead lookups and updates are tools pointing at your own server, and a pre-dial webhook to "your CRM or other system of record" checks each contact before it is dialled.
5. **The campaign.** Upload a CSV of up to 10,000 contacts, pick one number, one time zone and one window, up to seven days ahead. Once launched it can't be edited, and it runs once; to call again you duplicate it. With four lines on usage only, the docs suggest batches of 50 to 100 numbers.
6. **Somewhere for the recordings.** They are deleted after 14 days on usage only, unless you buy a package or send them to your own S3, Google Cloud, Cloudflare R2, Azure or Supabase bucket.

Joey skips that list. He lives inside the CRM: no separate phone system, no code, no phone numbers bought elsewhere, no model or voice provider accounts. You write his guide in plain words (your business, who you call, how the call goes, the greeting, the voice, how fast he speaks), or talk it through with Tala, the assistant in the app. Nothing is live until you press Go live.

## Calling the list

A Vapi campaign dials as capacity allows, from the one number you chose, inside one window in one time zone. Vapi's own guidance is to split contacts by time zone into separate campaigns, and not to guess a lead's local time from the area code. Voicemail depends on how well the agent was set up: the docs say the voicemail tool "can miss some mailboxes" and leaves calls connected longer when it does.

Joey works a list a person sets running from the Calls page, and never starts calling on his own. He calls from 9am to 8pm in each lead's own time zone, in one list. He leaves one voicemail at most for each lead on each list, in words you approved. If you switch it on, he sends one text, in words you set, when none of a run's calls reach a lead.

Whichever you pick, judge it by people reached. On our own floor, over the same ten weeks, a person answered 5.9% of Joey's calls and 8.4% of our reps' calls.

## After the call

On Vapi, each contact's result sits on the campaign page: status, why the call ended, duration, cost, transcript and recording. Moving that onto a lead in your CRM is a webhook or a tool you set up. Live listening is an audio stream sent to your server, and changing a call in progress, such as transferring it, is a command your server sends.

On TalaLevel, every Joey call is recorded, transcribed and filed on the lead, next to the reps' calls, texts and emails. A rep can listen in on any of his calls and take the call over while it is going. The follow-up happens in the same app, with texting from your own numbers and email from your Gmail.

## Setup and who each is built for

Vapi's homepage says "Voice agents for builders", and its FAQ says "Vapi focuses on developers." It suits engineering teams putting a voice agent into their own product, inbound support lines, agencies that resell agents under their own name, and large companies with a security review: it has SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA as an add-on and an EU region on its top package. Composer, a chat builder in its Dashboard, is still in alpha, and Vapi retired its visual Workflows builder in August 2026 in favour of Squads, several assistants that hand off to each other.

TalaLevel is bought on its website: pick a plan and start the seven-day trial with a card on file, with no demo call. Scale includes an onboarding call and priority support. You can talk to Joey in the browser at talalevel.com/ai-caller for up to three minutes before signing up. It is built for any team that sells by phone and text, from one rep to a full floor, and sales teams outside our own floor run on it today. Joey calls in the US only, works outbound lists only and speaks English, and TalaLevel has no SOC 2 report yet.

## Which to pick

### Pick TalaLevel if

- You want an AI caller working your lists this week, without a carrier account, model accounts or a developer.
- You want one price with the line, voice, model, transcript and recording inside it, and one bill.
- You want each lead called in their own hours, one voicemail at most, and every call filed on the lead.
- You want reps who can listen in and take over, and the CRM, dialer, texting and email in the same seat.
- You run a team: four Scale seats include about 2,000 Joey minutes and give four reps everything else.

### Pick Vapi if

- You are a developer building a voice agent into your own product, with its API, SDKs and webhooks.
- You need inbound agents, such as a receptionist or a support line.
- You call outside the US or in other languages, or want to choose your own model and voice.
- You resell voice agents under your own brand.
- Your security review needs SOC 2 Type II or HIPAA papers.
- You only need minutes, at low volume, and have someone to build and run the agent.

## How we compared

We read Vapi's pricing page, its calculator, docs and terms, and Twilio's and Telnyx's price lists, in November 2026. Joey's prices are from our own pricing page, checked the same month.

## Questions

### How much does Vapi cost per minute?

Vapi's hosting fee is $0.05 a minute. On top come the transcriber, the language model, the voice and the phone line, each at the provider's price. With Vapi's default parts (Deepgram, OpenAI, ElevenLabs) and Twilio for outbound calls at $0.014 a minute, the total is about 10 to 14 cents a minute. The model is the part that moves most: Vapi's calculator puts OpenAI anywhere from $0.0077 to $0.0452 a minute, and its docs say long calls often cost more than the estimate.

### Can Vapi make outbound calls from its free phone number?

No. Vapi's docs say free Vapi numbers are US numbers that take inbound calls only, and that outbound campaigns need an imported number. For outbound you bring a number from Twilio, Telnyx, DIDWW or your own SIP trunk, and that carrier bills you for the number and the minutes. Twilio lists a US local number at $1.15 a month.

### What does Vapi cost for 500, 2,000 or 5,000 minutes a month?

With Vapi's default parts, a Twilio line and one number, about $49 to $73 for 500 minutes, $193 to $287 for 2,000 and $481 to $716 for 5,000. That leaves out any package, the CRM and the work to build the agent. On TalaLevel, one Scale seat at $247 covers about 500 minutes of Joey; 2,000 minutes come to about $397 and 5,000 to about $697, and the seat includes the CRM, the dialer, texting and email.

### Do I need a developer to use Vapi?

For an outbound list, in practice yes. Vapi's own FAQ says it is built for developers building voice AI applications, and that function calling needs a server URL. The Dashboard and an early-stage builder called Composer help, but connecting a CRM, checking contacts before each dial and keeping recordings past the retention period are webhooks, tools or storage you set up. Joey's guide is written in plain words, or talked through with Tala, and goes live when you press Go live.

### Does Vapi work with HubSpot, Salesforce or my CRM?

Vapi lists prebuilt integrations with GoHighLevel, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Slack, Make and n8n; HubSpot and Salesforce are not on the list. Any other CRM connects through API request tools, an MCP server or functions on your own server. TalaLevel is the CRM, and Joey files every call on the lead; if your own CRM has to stay, we connect it with you.

### How many calls can Vapi make at once?

Four at once on usage only, ten on the $29 Core package and 30 on the Pro package, which costs at least $999 a month. Extra lines are $10 a month each. Vapi's docs suggest splitting long lists into batches of 50 to 100 numbers to stay inside the limit.

### Can Vapi call each lead in their own time zone?

A Vapi campaign uses one time zone and one calling window for every contact, and the docs say to create separate campaigns for contacts in different time zones. Joey calls from 9am to 8pm in each lead's own time zone, in the same list.

### How long does Vapi keep call recordings?

Recordings, transcripts and logs are kept 14 days on usage only, 30 days on Core and 180 days on Pro, unless you send them to your own storage bucket. Joey's calls are recorded, transcribed and filed on the lead, next to the reps' calls, texts and emails.

### Where is Vapi ahead of TalaLevel?

Vapi is a full developer platform: an API, SDKs and webhooks, your own choice of model and voice, inbound agents, many languages, numbers outside the US and white-label use. It has SOC 2 Type II and offers HIPAA as an add-on. On minutes alone it also costs less at low volume. Joey calls in the US only, works outbound lists only and speaks English. TalaLevel's API and webhooks are for the CRM, not for building your own voice agent.