Guides · updated 9 September 2026
Vapi vs Retell vs Bland: pricing compared
Vapi, Retell and Bland are the three names most teams evaluate first. They price in three different ways: Vapi charges a per-minute orchestration fee and passes model costs through, Retell does the same with add-ons, and Bland bundles proprietary models at a flat rate. The numbers below come from each vendor's pricing page and are re-checked weekly.
Pricing model side by side
| Vapi | Retell | Bland | Voiceflint | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform fee / min | $0.050 | $0.055 | bundled | $0.010 |
| Models | pass-through | pass-through + add-ons | $0.140 all-in, proprietary | pass-through + 15%, or $0 with your keys |
| Telephony / min | free US numbers | $0.015 | included | $0.012 |
| Concurrency | 10 lines included; $10 per extra line/month | 20 concurrent included; $8 per extra concurrent call/month | 10 / 50 / 100 by tier ($0 / $299 / $499 per month); daily call caps | no per-line charge |
| Bring your own keys | yes | no | no | yes |
| Model choice | large catalog | LLM and TTS; STT auto-routed | in-house only | 95 models, any combination |
Monthly totals on the balanced stack
Same models everywhere: Deepgram Flux (English), GPT-5 mini and Inworld TTS-2 Flash at $0.019 per minute, US phone calls. Bland cannot run those models, so its column is its bundled rate.
| Minutes | Vapi | Retell | Bland | Voiceflint managed | Voiceflint, your keys |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $69 | $89 | $140 | $44 | $22 |
| 10,000 | $694 | $894 | $1,400 | $443 | $220 |
| 100,000 | $6,939 | $8,939 | $14,000 | $4,429 | $2,200 |
What each one is good at
- Vapi: Free Vapi US numbers (limits apply); HIPAA add-on $2,000/mo; ZDR $1,000/mo. The broadest provider list of the three and a mature API.
- Retell: TTS $0.015-0.04/min and LLM $0.003-0.16/min added on top; KB, denoising, guardrails, PII removal are per-minute add-ons. Strong enterprise features and SOC 2.
- Bland: Proprietary in-house models only; transfers $0.03-0.05/min; $0.015 minimum per outbound call. A single predictable rate and on-prem options for large accounts.
Where they cost you
- Per-minute platform fees of $0.05 to $0.055 are five times Voiceflint's and apply to every minute, including silence.
- Concurrency sold by the line turns a busy Monday into a monthly fee.
- Compliance add-ons: Vapi lists HIPAA at $2,000 and zero data retention at $1,000 per month; on Voiceflint these are settings.
- Model lock-in: Bland's models cannot be swapped, and Retell's STT is auto-routed, so a better or cheaper model released next month does not help you.
Questions
- Can I migrate an agent from Vapi or Retell?
- Yes. Prompts, tools (JSON Schema functions with a webhook URL) and phone numbers map directly. The API guide shows the create-agent call; most migrations are an afternoon.
- Are these numbers current?
- They are read from each vendor's pricing page and checked every week by a scheduled job that opens a review when a price moves. The observed date is shown on each comparison page.
Run the numbers on your own calls
500 free minutes a month, every model, a receipt on every call.
Related: How much does an AI voice agent cost per minute?Build a phone agent with the Voiceflint APISpeech-to-speech vs cascaded pipelines