Billing Examples

End-to-end examples estimating voice workflow cost on Vapi.

Case Examples

Here are a few case-examples of what billing would look like on Vapi for different voice pipeline configurations.

Call Center (Inbound Phone)

A customer is looking to use Vapi to assist their call center staff taking phone calls inbound:

1. Scenario

   “I want to use Vapi voice assistants to support my human customer service reps in a call center. However, I have a custom LLM I would prefer to use instead of the ones offered through the platform.

   Expected monthly usage will be 10,000 calls, with an average of 2 minutes per call. For Voice, PlayHT will suit our needs.

   What is my pricing breakdown?”
2. Providers

   The providers used will determine per-minute cost. The following providers will be involved:

   Transcriber: Deepgram

   Model: custom model

   Voice: PlayHT

   Telephony: Twilio (receiving inbound phone calls)

   
   

   The customer will be using a custom model & taking inbound phone calls.

   
   
3. Cost Breakdown

   We will break down the costs of each piece of the voice pipeline, then later multiply by call volume:

   Deepgram: ≈ $0.01/min

   Custom Model: ≈ $0.04/min (vague assumption, can vary widely)

   PlayHT: ≈ $0.07/min

   Twilio: ≈ $0.02/min (inbound, toll-free) (see Twilio phone call pricing)

   Vapi: $0.05/min

   Our estimating costs guide can help you determine these values.
4. Final Estimate

   Call Minutes / Month: 10,000 calls x 2 min/call = 20,000 call minutes

   Transcription: $0.01/min x 20,000 = $200

   Custom Model: $0.04/min x 20,000 = $800

   Voice: ≈ $0.07/min x 20,000 = $1,400

   Telephony: ≈ $0.02/min x 20,000 = $400

   Vapi: $0.05/min x 20,000 = $1,000

   Total: $3,800/mo

Real Estate Lead Generation (Outbound Phone)

A customer doing real estate lead generation is looking to use Vapi to automate parts of their sales calling operation:

1. Scenario

   “I have a company that does real estate lead generation, and would like to use Vapi voice assistants to automate parts of my sales process.

   Calls would average ~4 minutes, for Model I want to use GPT-3.5-turbo through your platform, and for Voice I will be using a ElevenLabs.

   I’d like a breakdown based on sending 1,000 outbound calls in one month.”

2. Providers

   Transcriber: Deepgram

   Model: OpenAI (GPT-3.5 Turbo)

   Voice: ElevenLabs

   Telephony: Vonage (sending outbound phone calls)

   
   

   The customer will be using GPT-4 & making outbound phone calls.

   
   
3. Cost Breakdown

   Deepgram: ≈ $0.01/min

   OpenAI (GPT-3.5 Turbo): ≈ $0.02/min

   ElevenLabs: ≈ $0.04/min

   Vonage: ≈ $0.01/min (outbound call) (see Vonage’s phone call pricing)

   Vapi: $0.05/min

   Our estimating costs guide can help you determine these values.
4. Final Estimate

   Call Minutes / Month: 1,000 calls x 4 min/call = 4,000 call minutes

   Transcription: $0.01/min x 4,000 = $40

   Model: $0.02/min x 4,000 = $80

   Voice: ≈ $0.04/min x 4,000 = $160

   Telephony: ≈ $0.01/min x 4,000 = $40

   Vapi: $0.05/min x 4,000 = $200

   Total: $520/mo

Mock Intervieweing Application (Web)

A web engineer is looking to develop a website that helps job candidates practice for job interviews. They are looking to use Vapi for their virtual interviewers:

1. Scenario

   “Hi, I’m looking to develop a web application for mock interviews. Users will be able to practice for a variety of job interviews with AI interviewers.

   Interviews will be 30-minutes each (at max), for model I’ll be using a custom open-source model hosted with Baseten & for voice I’ll be using PlayHT.

   How much would this cost me each month if I service 1,000 interviews per month?”

2. Providers

   Transcriber: Deepgram

   Model: custom model

   Voice: PlayHT

   
   

   The customer will be using a custom model & making web calls (no telephony will be involved).

   
   
3. Cost Breakdown

   Deepgram: ≈ $0.01/min

   Custom Model: ≈ $0.02/min (vague assumption, can vary widely)

   PlayHT: ≈ $0.07/min

   Vapi: $0.05/min

   Our estimating costs guide can help you determine these values.
4. Final Estimate

   Call Minutes / Month: 1,000 calls x 30 min/call = 30,000 call minutes

   Transcription: $0.01/min x 30,000 = $300

   Model: $0.02/min x 30,000 = $600

   Voice: ≈ $0.07/min x 30,000 = $2,100

   Vapi: $0.05/min x 30,000 = $1,500

   Total: $4,500/mo

Further Reading

Provider Costs

Learn more about where provider costs end up getting billed.

Estimating Costs

Learn more about determining per-minute costs for providers.