Bland AI alternatives and pricing in 2026

The best Bland AI alternatives are Retell AI, which comes out cheapest all-in at about $0.10 a minute, Vapi for developers who want to pick every part, and ElevenLabs Agents for voice quality. Two names on older lists are gone: Air AI no longer sells a voice agent, and Synthflow now starts at $30,000 a year. Every price below comes from the vendor's own pricing page or docs, checked October 23, 2026.

What is Bland AI?

Bland AI is a voice-agent platform that makes and answers phone calls with an AI agent, sold mainly to developers and enterprise teams. Bland's product page calls it "Enterprise AI voice agents", and it runs its own models.

You build an agent through the API or with Conversational Pathways, a flowchart that keeps the agent on script. Its home ground is outbound: batch calls let you upload a CSV with a phone_number column and dial the whole list with one prompt. Teams use it for lead qualification, reminders and follow-ups, and it can also answer inbound calls. If you're new to how these agents fit together (phone line, speech-to-text, AI model, voice), start with what an AI voice agent is.

Bland AI pricing in 2026

Bland AI pricing has three plans: Start at $0.14 a minute with no platform fee, Build at $0.12 a minute plus $299 a month, and Enterprise at a custom contracted rate. The per-minute rate covers the AI model, transcription and the voice. Phone charges, numbers and some fees sit on top.

Source: Bland AI pricing page, October 23, 2026.

Build pays for itself at 14,950 minutes a month, where the two-cent saving covers the $299. Most teams move up sooner for the limits: Start allows 100 calls a day and 100 an hour, which is a test account, not a campaign.

The pricing page marks warm transfers, live transfers, SMS, iMessage and custom dialing as Enterprise only. Bland's docs still list a Scale plan ($499 a month, $0.11 a minute) and a $29.99 Agent Phone plan for a single number, but neither appears on the pricing page today.

Bland's pricing has changed three times in under a year. Until December 5, 2025, every call cost a flat $0.09 a minute, and the billing docs still explain the move to plan-based rates. In May 2026, Bland's pricing page promised "All-in per-minute pricing" with telephony included. Today its FAQ says: "Telephony is billed separately, on your own carrier or Bland's at pass-through cost."

Bland doesn't publish that pass-through rate. The Scale card has also come off the pricing page. So any review quoting $0.09, or an all-in rate with calls included, is out of date.

Bland AI cost per call: the fees on top

Bland AI's cost per call is the talk time at your plan rate, billed by the second, plus these charges, all from Bland's billing docs:

The minimum is easy to miss on an outbound list. A campaign where 60% of dials go unanswered still pays $0.015 for each of them on Bland's lines. Bringing your own Twilio account removes the minimum and the transfer fee, and Bland charges only its AI rate.

What Bland AI phone calls really cost

Bland AI phone calls cost about $0.51 per conversation for a small test campaign and about $0.57 per conversation at volume, once phone minutes are added. Here are two outbound months over 22 working days, with phone minutes from Twilio's US rates: $0.014 a minute out and $1.15 a month per local number.

Both months use your own Twilio account, which is the only way to price the phone line, since Bland doesn't publish its carrier rate. We count carrier minutes on calls that connect, voicemails included, and the transfer leg to the closer.

The same campaign on Bland's own lines costs more before the carrier minutes are even added: $299 plus $2,760 of talk, $120 of transfer time, $180 in minimums on the 12,000 unanswered dials and $150 for ten numbers. That's $3,509, plus calling minutes at a rate Bland doesn't show. Over a year, the Build campaign above runs about $41,000.

AI voice agent pricing compared

AI voice agent pricing comes down to a per-minute platform fee plus the AI model, the voice and the phone line. Bland bundles the model and voice into one rate. Retell and Vapi bill each part separately, which lets you pick cheaper parts. At 23,000 outbound minutes a month, Bland Build is the most expensive of the three.

The table leaves out numbers, transfers and texts. Retell's figure uses its $0.055 voice engine, a $0.015 voice, GPT 4.1 mini at $0.0128 and its own $0.015 phone minutes, all from Retell's pricing page. Vapi's range is its $0.05 hosting fee plus the model, transcription and voice ranges on Vapi's pricing page and Twilio's outbound rate.

Bland AI alternatives

The main Bland AI alternatives are Retell AI, Vapi and ElevenLabs Agents, and each one can come in under Bland Build at campaign volume. Bland AI's competitors split by who builds the agent: Retell suits teams that want to launch fast, Vapi suits developers who want control, and ElevenLabs suits teams that care most about the voice.

Retell AI voice agent

The Retell AI voice agent is the closest like-for-like swap for Bland, at about $0.10 a minute all-in with a mid-range model. Retell charges a $0.055 voice engine fee plus the model, voice and $0.015 phone minutes, bills to the second and doesn't charge for failed calls. Every account includes 20 concurrent calls, and more cost $8 each a month. Batch calls add half a cent a dial. Our Retell AI pricing guide has the full rate card.

Bland AI vs Vapi

Bland AI vs Vapi is a choice between one bundled rate and a menu of parts. Vapi charges $0.05 a minute for hosting and passes the model, transcription, voice and carrier through at cost, with no markup. That makes Vapi cheaper than Bland with budget parts and about the same with premium ones. The catch is concurrency: the free tier allows 4 calls at once, and each extra line is $10 a month. More options in our Vapi alternatives guide.

ElevenLabs AI voice agent

The ElevenLabs AI voice agent costs $0.08 a minute on its API pricing page, with a set number of minutes included in each plan and phone charges on top. It's the pick when the voice itself is the product: ElevenLabs voices also show up as premium options inside Retell and Vapi.

Synthflow AI voice agent

The Synthflow AI voice agent is no longer a self-serve option. Synthflow's pricing page now lists only Enterprise, and "Enterprise contracts start at $30,000 annually." Lists that still show its monthly plans are out of date.

Air AI pricing

Air AI pricing doesn't exist anymore, because Air AI no longer sells a voice agent. The air.ai address now hosts an unrelated product. In August 2025 the FTC sued Air AI, alleging deceptive earnings and refund claims, and in March 2026 it announced a proposed settlement that bans the company and its owners from marketing business opportunities.

Bland AI reviews: is it worth it?

Bland AI is worth it for an engineering team running outbound campaigns at volume, where batch calling, its own models and enterprise controls earn the price. It's a poor fit for a small team that wants a simple setup and a predictable bill, because the self-serve plans cap calls per day and hold back transfers and texting for Enterprise.

Two things on Bland's own pages deserve a hard look before you commit. The phone line is now a pass-through charge Bland doesn't publish, so you can't price a month from the pricing page alone. And Bland's pricing has changed three times in under a year, so a business case built on today's rate may not hold.

Is AI cold calling legal?

AI cold calling is legal only with the right consent. The FCC ruled in February 2024 that AI-generated voices are an "artificial or prerecorded voice" under the TCPA (FCC 24-17), so these calls need the person's prior express consent, and prior express written consent when the call is selling something. The message must identify who is calling, and sales calls must offer a way to opt out.

Bland's terms put that on you: "You are solely responsible for ensuring that your use of the Service complies with all applicable laws and regulations." The same is true of every platform here. This isn't legal advice. Our AI cold calling guide covers how teams run outbound AI, and the TCPA rules for sales calls cover consent, calling hours and do-not-call lists.

Build your own AI voice agent instead?

Building your own AI voice agent pays off when per-minute platform fees reach thousands of dollars a month and keep climbing with every campaign. Below that, rent. At the $255 test month above, Bland's Start plan or Retell is the sensible call, and if your whole software stack costs under $1,000 a month, keep what you have.

Every voice agent rents two things: a phone carrier and an AI model. A platform adds its own per-minute fee on top, forever. With an owned agent, the conversation logic, scripts, CRM and calendar hookups, call recordings and transcripts run on your own hosting. The phone line and AI minutes become utilities billed at cost, with no platform markup, and you can swap either vendor when a cheaper one appears. For a sense of how small those parts are, Vapi lists them at cost: about 3 to 8 cents a minute for the model, transcription and voice together, plus about a cent and a half for the carrier.

For answering inbound calls instead, start with our AI receptionist guide. What owning costs: typically less than you spend today, paid monthly, and the build payments have an end date. There are no seat fees, and you keep the code, the data and the IP. Here's how pricing works.

Sources

All checked October 23, 2026. Prices change often in this market, so check each vendor's page before you buy.

• Bland AI pricing page
• Bland AI billing docs
• Bland batch calls docs
• Bland Voice product page
• Bland terms of service (last updated August 28, 2026)
• Retell AI pricing
• Vapi pricing
• ElevenLabs API pricing
• Synthflow pricing
• Twilio US voice pricing
• FTC complaint against Air AI (August 2025) and settlement (March 24, 2026)
• FCC declaratory ruling 24-17 (adopted February 2, 2024)

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