What does an AI voice minute really cost?
Bundled voice AI vendors quote one tidy per-minute price. Inside it are telephony at a markup, the AI model at a markup, and their margin. Enter your volume and see the same month priced on your own Twilio and OpenAI accounts.
Your month
Defaults are illustrative. Edit anything to match your invoices.
Bundled vendor
Your own providers
WhautoVoice plan is picked automatically from your AI minutes: Starter US$59 (1,500 min), Growth US$149 (5,000 min), Scale US$449 (20,000 min). Overage US$0.05 per AI minute, capped at half the plan price.
Compared with a bundled vendor at the rates you entered.
| Carrier, AI minutes | US$0 |
| Carrier, human minutes | US$0 |
| OpenAI Realtime | US$0 |
| WhautoVoice Growth | US$0 |
| AI minute overage (capped) | US$0 |
| Total | US$0 |
Same Twilio. Same OpenAI. No meter on top. Try it on your own numbers for 14 days.
Start free trialHow bundled voice AI pricing works
Most AI phone agent platforms sell a single per-minute rate. It is convenient, and it hides three separate costs: the carrier minute (what Twilio or a similar provider charges to connect the call), the AI minute (speech recognition, the language model and speech synthesis, or a single speech-to-speech model like OpenAI Realtime), and the platform's own margin. Because the vendor buys the first two wholesale and sells them retail, the published rate is usually two to four times the underlying cost. Many vendors also keep charging after the AI hands the call to a human, or sell a separate seat-based dialer for that.
What bring-your-own-key actually costs
With WhautoVoice you connect your own Twilio, Plivo or Vonage account and your own OpenAI key. The carrier bills you its published per-minute rate. OpenAI bills you its published Realtime rate. WhautoVoice charges a flat plan fee that includes an AI-minute allowance and never meters human talk time. The calculator adds those three lines together and compares the total with the bundled vendor's total at the same volume.
| Cost line | Bundled vendor | Bring your own keys |
|---|---|---|
| Carrier minute | Inside the per-minute rate, marked up | Your carrier's list price, billed by them |
| AI minute | Inside the per-minute rate, marked up | OpenAI's list price, billed by OpenAI |
| Human agent minute | Often metered after transfer | Carrier minute only. Never metered by WhautoVoice. |
| Platform | Margin inside the rate, sometimes a fee too | Flat plan from US$59 a month |
Methodology and assumptions
- Bundled total = AI minutes x AI rate + human minutes x human rate + platform fee.
- WhautoVoice total = (AI minutes + human minutes) x carrier rate + AI minutes x OpenAI rate + plan fee + capped overage.
- Plan selection picks the cheapest plan whose AI-minute allowance covers your volume. Above 20,000 AI minutes the Scale plan applies with overage at US$0.05 per minute, capped at US$224.50 (half the plan price).
- Carrier defaults reflect typical US per-minute voice rates for programmable voice; international and toll-free rates are higher. Number rental (a few dollars a month per number) is excluded on both sides because it is the same either way.
- OpenAI defaults approximate Realtime API audio pricing at typical talk ratios. The smaller realtime model is several times cheaper than the flagship. Rates change; check OpenAI's current price list.
- Taxes, SMS and recording storage are excluded on both sides.
Reading the result
At low volume the two totals are close, because a flat plan fee is a larger share of a small bill. The gap opens quickly with volume, and it opens faster if your team spends real time on the phone, because those minutes cost you nothing extra on WhautoVoice. If the calculator shows the bundled vendor ahead, that usually means very low AI volume and no human minutes. In that case the trial is still free, and the numbers will move as you grow.
Frequently asked questions
Published all-in rates for bundled AI phone agent platforms generally fall between US$0.07 and US$0.30 per minute once telephony, speech, language model and platform fees are added together. Many also meter minutes after a call is transferred to a human. Use the presets or type your quote.
Roughly the carrier's per-minute voice rate, about one to two US cents in the United States, plus OpenAI Realtime usage, typically a few cents a minute for the smaller realtime model and around six to ten cents for the flagship model, plus a flat platform fee. Rates change, so check current price lists and edit the defaults.
Because many bundled vendors keep the meter running after the AI transfers a call to a person, or charge separately for a human dialer. WhautoVoice never meters human talk time, so the gap widens as your team spends more time on the phone. Set the bundled human rate to zero if your vendor does not charge for it.
We built it, so read it with that in mind. Every input is editable and the formula is printed above. If your bundled quote is genuinely US$0.05 a minute all-in with free human minutes, type that in and the calculator will tell you so.