Bland AI costs $0.14 per minute of AI talk time on the free Start plan, $299/month plus $0.12/min on Build, and $499/month plus $0.11/min on Scale, with transfer time billed at $0.03–$0.05/min and a $0.015 minimum per outbound call attempt — real monthly bills commonly land between $350 and $2,000+ depending on volume. If you'd rather have a done-for-you AI agent built and operated for you, Agents by AIQ designs and runs AI receptionists, follow-up, and support agents month-to-month — book a call to scope yours. Bland is best for technical teams who can manage usage-based billing; owner-operators who want predictable costs and a managed build should look elsewhere.
Bottom line: Bland AI's pricing is transparent per-minute but usage-based, so the right choice depends on your call volume and whether you have engineering capacity to build and monitor agents yourself.
TL;DR
- Bland AI's Start plan is free with $0.14/min talk time, $0.05/min transfer time, 10 concurrent calls, and a 100 calls/day cap.
- Build costs $299/month plus $0.12/min; Scale costs $499/month plus $0.11/min with 5,000 calls/day and 100 concurrent calls.
- Bland raised per-minute rates in December 2025 from a flat $0.09/min to plan-based rates of $0.11–$0.14/min.
- Every outbound call attempt carries a $0.015 minimum fee, even unanswered or failed calls on Bland's telephony.
- Third-party analysis puts realistic Bland monthly costs at $350–$2,000+ once talk time, transfers, SMS, and add-ons are included.
- Bland's per-minute rate bundles LLM, STT, and TTS with no token charges — competitors' headline rates often exclude those layers.
- Bland holds SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA (with BAA), GDPR, and PCI DSS certifications, with VPC or air-gapped on-prem deployment on Enterprise.
Head-to-head
| Dimension | Bland AI | Agents by AIQ |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Usage-based: plan fee + per-minute talk time, transfers, SMS, and add-ons | Month-to-month subscription for a done-for-you managed agent |
| Entry cost | Free Start plan ($0.14/min); Build at $299/mo; Scale at $499/mowinner | Scoped on a call; month-to-month |
| Per-minute rate | $0.14/min (Start), $0.12/min (Build), $0.11/min (Scale); transfers $0.03–$0.05/min; $0.015 outbound attempt minimum | Included in the managed service |
| Ease of use | Developer-first; reviewers report getting started is hard and debugging voice flows is harder than a typical API | Done-for-you — AIQ Labs builds and operates the agentwinner |
| Features | Pathways builder, voice cloning, 40+ languages, warm/live transfers, SMS & web chat, self-hosted deploymentwinner | AI receptionist on a real phone number, voice agents, SDR/follow-up, support, email, marketing, appointment setting, workflow automation |
| Support | Slack channel on Start; forward-deployed engineers on Enterprise; independent reviewers report weak email support | The same team that scopes and builds your agent runs itwinner |
| Integrations | Native connectors: Twilio, Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Five9, NICE, Genesys, Amazon Connect, Talkdesk, Zapier, Calendly, plus webhookswinner | Integrated with the tools the business already uses |
| Setup time | First agent typically within a day on self-serve plans; Enterprise follows a 28-day deployment framework | Scoped and built by AIQ Labs after a call |
Scores
Bland AI
bland.ai ↗Bland AI is a developer-first AI voice calling platform for building phone agents that make and take calls, extending into SMS, iMessage, and web chat from the same workflow. It owns its full stack — telephony, speech-to-text, the language model, text-to-speech, and workflow orchestration — rather than routing through third-party providers, which is why its per-minute rate bundles LLM, STT, and TTS with no token charges or model-provider pass-throughs. The core building block is Pathways, a node-based visual designer for branching, multi-turn call flows with six node types including webhook, knowledge base, and transfer nodes. Bland claims 604 million calls resolved to date, support for over 1 million concurrent calls, 40+ languages with real-time translation, and voice cloning via its Bland Speech v3 model. It holds SOC 2 Type I and II, HIPAA-eligible with a signed BAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS certifications, and Enterprise customers can deploy into a VPC on AWS, GCP, or Azure or fully air-gapped on-premises. Customer examples include Kin Insurance (18.7% increase in qualified call transfer rates) and Needle (60,000 monthly automated pharmacy calls at 81% autonomous resolution).
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Start | $0/mo | $0.14/min talk time, $0.05/min transfer, 100 calls/day, 10 concurrent calls, 1 voice clone, 10 knowledge bases |
| Agent Phone | $29.99/mo | Single agent number, unlimited voice minutes and SMS to US/Canada, 1,000 call minutes/day, 50 calls/day cap |
| Build | $299/mo | $0.12/min talk time, $0.04/min transfer, 2,000 calls/day, 50 concurrent calls, 5 voice clones, 50 knowledge bases |
| Scale | $499/mo | $0.11/min talk time, $0.03/min transfer, 5,000 calls/day, 100 concurrent calls, 15 voice clones |
| Enterprise | — | Custom contracted volume, unlimited caps, on-prem/VPC, BAA, SSO, forward-deployed engineers |
Pros
- Transparent per-minute pricing that bundles LLM, STT, and TTS — no token charges or model-provider pass-throughs
- Free Start plan with no card required, plus 2 credits and an inbound number
- Owns the full stack (telephony through TTS), enabling a stable quoted rate and claimed sub-400ms latency
- Scales to high volumes: 2,000 calls/day on Build, 5,000/day on Scale, unlimited on Enterprise
- Strong compliance posture (SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA BAA, GDPR, PCI DSS) with self-hosted options for regulated teams
- Well-structured docs; developer reviewers report going from zero to a working system in a few hours
Cons
- December 2025 pricing change raised connected-minute rates from a flat $0.09/min to $0.11–$0.14/min depending on plan
- Usage-based billing is hard to forecast; third-party analysis puts real monthly costs at $350–$2,000+
- Outbound attempt minimum of $0.015/call applies even to unanswered or failed calls
- Independent reviewers (Coval, Retell AI) measured real-world latency at 700–900ms, above Bland's advertised sub-400ms
- Developer-first design: non-technical teams struggle to build and debug Pathways flows
- G2's 5.0 rating is based on roughly 10 reviews, several flagged as seller-invited or incentivized
Agents by AIQ
agentsbyaiq.com ↗Agents by AIQ is the agent-focused arm of AIQ Labs, offering done-for-you AI agents designed, built, connected, and operated for small and mid-size businesses. The service covers AI receptionists and phone answering on a real phone number, voice agents, sales follow-up and SDR agents, customer support agents, email agents, marketing agents, appointment setters, and workflow automation — all integrated with the tools the business already uses. Rather than handing over a DIY toolkit, AIQ Labs scopes, builds, and runs each agent, with month-to-month terms and full client ownership of everything built. The positioning targets owner-operators and small teams in trades, legal, healthcare, insurance, real estate, ecommerce, and professional services who are losing missed calls, slow lead follow-up, and manual busywork. The site presents an engineer's notebook of agents being sketched and designed for the visitor's business, with the primary conversion being a scoping call.
Pros
- Fully managed: the team that scopes the work builds and runs the agent
- Month-to-month terms with no long-term lock-in; the client owns everything
- Covers phone, email, support, marketing, appointment setting, and workflow automation in one service
- Integrates with the tools a business already uses
- Designed for owner-operators and small teams, not just developers
Cons
- Not a self-serve platform — you can't build and tweak agents yourself
- Requires a scoping call to get started, so there's no instant sign-up
- Suited to small and mid-size businesses rather than enterprise-scale regulated deployments
Bland AI pricing compared: what each plan actually costs
Where the real bill comes from: usage charges beyond the headline rate
Managed alternative: when a done-for-you agent beats a DIY platform
Which should you pick?
FAQs
How much does Bland AI cost per minute in 2026?
Bland AI charges $0.14 per minute of AI talk time on the free Start plan, $0.12/min on Build ($299/month), and $0.11/min on Scale ($499/month). Transfer time is billed separately at $0.05/min on Start, $0.04/min on Build, and $0.03/min on Scale. These plan-based rates took effect December 5, 2025, replacing the previous flat $0.09/min rate. Bland's rate bundles the LLM, speech-to-text, and text-to-speech with no token charges; telephony is billed separately on your own carrier or Bland's at pass-through cost.
Is Bland AI's free plan really free?
Yes. The Start plan has no platform fee and no card required. You get 2 credits plus an inbound number valued at $15/month. However, you still pay per-minute usage at $0.14/min for talk time and $0.05/min for transfers, and the plan is capped at 100 calls/day, 100 calls/hour, 10 concurrent calls, 1 voice, and 10 knowledge bases. Businesses running 24/7 inbound automation typically outgrow it quickly.
What hidden or extra costs should I budget for with Bland AI?
Beyond the per-minute rate, budget for: a $0.015 minimum charge on every outbound call attempt (including unanswered and failed calls on Bland's telephony), transfer minutes when calls hand off to humans, per-message SMS billing inbound and outbound, number rental at about $15/month depending on region, and add-on charges for GPT-4 access, advanced voice cloning, and multilingual support. Third-party analysis estimates realistic monthly costs at $350–$2,000+ depending on volume. Using your own Twilio numbers (BYOT) eliminates transfer fees.
How does Bland AI's pricing compare to Vapi and Retell?
Vapi lists $0.05/min and Retell about $0.07/min, but those are platform fees only — you pay separately for the LLM, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and telephony. Bland's own pricing page notes that adding typical provider rates brings most production stacks on Vapi to roughly $0.13–$0.30/min and on Retell to $0.11–$0.25/min. Bland's $0.11–$0.14/min covers the LLM, STT, and TTS in one number with no token charges, making the comparison closer than headline rates suggest.
When is Build cheaper than Scale on Bland AI?
Build ($299/month + $0.12/min) remains cheaper than Scale ($499/month + $0.11/min) up to roughly 20,000 minutes per month. Scale only becomes financially better after that threshold — the $200/month difference outweighs the $0.01/min savings at lower volumes. Most businesses upgrade to Scale for capacity (100 vs 50 concurrent calls, 5,000 vs 2,000 daily calls) rather than cost savings.
Is Bland AI a good fit for small businesses without developers?
Generally no. Bland is developer-first: its Pathways builder requires wiring branching call logic, webhooks, and API calls by hand, and reviewers report that debugging voice interactions is harder than a typical API flow. Non-technical teams wanting simple, predictable pricing or fully managed setups are a poor fit for its usage-based model. A done-for-you service like Agents by AIQ — which designs, builds, and operates AI receptionists and follow-up agents month-to-month — suits owner-operators better, while technical teams running high-volume campaigns get the most from Bland's control.
Sources
- Pricing | Bland AI
- Billing & Plans - Bland
- Bland AI Pricing 2026: Is It Worth It?
- Bland AI Reviews and Pricing: Costs and Alternatives
- Bland AI Pricing 2026: Plans, Per-Minute Rates and What a Call Really Costs
- 14 Ways How Much Does a Voice AI Platform Cost in 2026
- 48 AI Phone Agent Pricing Models: Full Cost Breakdown 2026
- Bland AI Pricing: A Complete Breakdown and Alternatives (2026)
- Agents by AIQ