Bland AI Pricing Explained (2026): Start vs Build, and What a Minute Really Costs
Bland AI charges one per-minute rate that already includes the language model, transcription and voices: $0.14 a minute with no platform fee on Start, or $0.12 a minute for $299 a month on Build. Every figure below is from bland.ai/pricing and Bland's billing docs, read October 21, 2026. Where the two don't match, we go with the pricing page and tell you what the docs say.
Bland keeps it simple: one rate covers the model and the voice. The two things to settle are which plan's call limits fit your volume, and how your phone line will be billed.
Bland AI is $0.14 or $0.12 a minute with the LLM and voices included. Here's what's in a Bland minute, what 500 to 15,000 minutes a month cost on Start and Build, where Build starts paying off, and the transfer, telephony and plan details that change the bill.
What you pay for on every Bland AI minute
AI talk time
$0.12–$0.14/min
Bland's rate for every connected minute: $0.14 on Start, $0.12 on Build. It includes the language model, real-time transcription and premium voices, with no token charges. Bland's docs say it's prorated to the exact second.
Transfer time
+$0.04–$0.05/min while transferred
Only when a call is handed to a person on a Bland-provided number, on top of talk time: $0.05 on Start, $0.04 on Build. Free if you bring your own Twilio or SIP carrier.
Phone line
Ask Bland
bland.ai/pricing says telephony is billed separately, on your own carrier or Bland's built-in Twilio at pass-through cost, and lists no rate. Bland's docs index says the per-minute price covers telephony, and its billing docs add a $0.015 minimum per outbound attempt or failed call on Bland's telephony. Bland says it's updating its docs.
Total per minute
about 12.0¢ to 14.0¢
Talk time only. Transfers and any phone-line charge come on top.
What a month costs on Bland AI’s own numbers
500 min/month
- Start
- $70
- Build
- $359
1,000 min/month
- Start
- $140
- Build
- $419
2,500 min/month
- Start
- $350
- Build
- $599
5,000 min/month
- Start
- $700
- Build
- $899
10,000 min/month
- Start
- $1,400
- Build
- $1,499
15,000 min/month
- Start
- $2,100
- Build
- $2,099
Build costs less than Start once you pass about 14,950 minutes a month (the $299 fee divided by the 2¢ a minute you save).
Start is $0.14 a minute with no fee; Build is $299 a month plus $0.12 a minute. These are talk time only, at Bland's listed rates, and leave out transfers, any phone-line charge and SMS. Start also caps you at 100 calls a day and 10 at once, so busy lines usually need Build for the limits before the price. Want your own volume and carrier? Try the cost calculator.
Packages and add-ons
Start
$0 platform fee
$0.14/min talk time and $0.05/min transfer time. 2 credits plus an inbound number (Bland values it at $15 a month), no card required. 10 concurrent calls, 100 calls a day and 100 an hour, 1 voice, 10 knowledge bases, 99.9% uptime SLA.
Build
$299/month
$0.12/min talk time and $0.04/min transfer time. 50 concurrent calls, 2,000 calls a day and 1,000 an hour, 5 voices, 50 knowledge bases, 99.9% uptime SLA.
Enterprise
Custom
Contracted to your volume: concurrency sized to you, no daily or hourly caps, on-prem or VPC deployment, a dedicated orchestration server and priority call queue, forward deployed engineers, plus BAA, SSO, JWT signatures and data residency, which the plan table lists on Enterprise only.
Scale (in Bland's docs)
$499/month
Bland's billing docs list Scale at $0.11/min talk time and $0.03/min transfer time, with 100 concurrent calls, 5,000 calls a day and 15 voice clones. It isn't on bland.ai/pricing, so confirm it with Bland before you plan around it.
Agent Phone plan
$29.99/month
One dedicated US number for a single AI agent, with unlimited calls and texts to the US and Canada under fair use: 1 call at a time, 20 calls an hour, 50 a day and 1,000 call minutes a day. $14.99 for your first month. Built for one agent, not a business phone line.
Other usage (Bland docs)
From $0.01
SMS $0.02 per message, in or out. Web widget agent messages $0.01 each. Bland's Norm tool is billed separately, by tokens.
How it compares on published pricing
Bland AI- Starting price
- $0.14/min, $0 platform fee
- Best for
- Teams that want one flat per-minute price with no model pass-through bills
Vapi- Starting price
- $0 to start; $0.05/min Vapi hosting, models billed pass-through at cost
- Best for
- Developers who want to choose their own LLM, transcriber, voice and telephony provider
Retell AI- Starting price
- $0 platform fee; $0.07–$0.31/min for voice agents
- Best for
- Teams that want a no-code flow builder plus an API with itemized per-minute pricing
ElevenLabs Agents- Starting price
- Agents: $0.08 per minute
- Best for
- Builders who want ElevenLabs' voices and speech models in one agent pipeline
Ultravox- Starting price
- $0.05/min (first 30 min free)
- Best for
- Developers wanting a speech-native model at a flat per-minute rate
Synthflow- Starting price
- Enterprise contracts from $30,000/year
- Best for
- Businesses wanting a no-code platform on an annual enterprise contract
Cozzo tested: reply time on real phone calls
Median time from the end of the caller’s speech to the agent’s first reply, on each vendor’s default model and voice (Oct 20, 2026). Places are out of 8 platforms tested.
- Retell AI: 1.04 s (tied 1 of 8, 11 calls)
- ElevenLabs Agents: 1.04 s (tied 1 of 8, 11 calls)
- Ultravox: 1.18 s (3 of 8, 11 calls)
- Vapi: 1.56 s (7 of 8, 11 calls)
- Bland AI: 1.86 s (8 of 8, 11 calls)
Not tested yet: Synthflow.
See the full phone-call benchmark → Small samples, so treat close numbers as ties.
What to check before you choose
- Choose the plan for its limits, not just the rate. Start allows 100 calls a day (about 3,000 in a 30-day month) and 10 at once; Build lifts that to 2,000 a day and 50 at once. On price alone, Build only wins past about 14,950 minutes a month.
- Transfers add up. If calls end with a hand-off to your team on a Bland number, those minutes are billed on top of talk time. Bland's own example: a 10-minute call with a 2-minute transfer costs $1.50 on Start and $1.28 on Build. Bring your own Twilio and transfer time is free.
- Ask how your phone line is billed. Bland's pricing page says telephony is separate (your carrier, or Bland's Twilio at pass-through cost), while its docs describe the minute rate as including telephony with a $0.015 minimum per outbound attempt. Get the answer in writing before you compare totals.
- Healthcare? Bland says it's HIPAA compliant with a signed BAA and SOC 2 Type I and II audited, but its plan table lists BAA on Enterprise only. Retell AI shows a self-signed BAA on pay as you go, and Vapi lists HIPAA as a $2,000 a month add-on.
- Compare whole minutes, not headline rates. Vapi's calculator puts its default stack at about 8.2 to 12.9¢ a minute before carrier fees, Retell AI comes to about 13.4 to 33¢ with its recommended LLMs, ElevenLabs Agents is $0.08 a minute plus the LLM, and Ultravox is a flat $0.05 a minute including its model. Our phone-call benchmark below adds how quickly each one replied.
Questions people ask
How much does Bland AI cost per minute?
$0.14 a minute on the free Start plan and $0.12 a minute on Build, which is $299 a month. That covers the language model, transcription and voices. Transfers to a person on a Bland number add $0.05 or $0.04 a minute, and Bland's pricing page says telephony is billed separately.
Is Bland AI free to start?
Yes. The Start plan has no platform fee and needs no card. You get 2 credits and an inbound number (Bland values it at $15 a month), then pay $0.14 a minute of talk time.
When is Bland's Build plan worth $299 a month?
On price alone, past about 14,950 minutes a month, because the $299 fee divided by the 2¢ a minute you save is 14,950. Most teams move earlier for the limits: Build allows 50 calls at once and 2,000 a day, against 10 and 100 on Start.
Does Bland charge for the LLM or tokens?
No. Bland says its per-minute rate includes the LLM, speech-to-text and text-to-speech, with no token charges and no model-provider pass-throughs. The exception is Bland's Norm tool, which is billed separately by tokens.
What are Bland's Scale and Agent Phone plans?
Bland's docs list Scale at $499 a month with $0.11 a minute talk time and 100 concurrent calls, but it isn't on the pricing page, so check with Bland. The Agent Phone plan is $29.99 a month ($14.99 the first month) for one AI agent's own US number, with unlimited US and Canada calls and texts under fair-use caps such as 1 call at a time and 50 calls a day.
Does Bland AI support HIPAA?
Bland says it is HIPAA compliant with a signed BAA, SOC 2 Type I and II audited, GDPR compliant and PCI DSS self-attested. Its plan comparison lists BAA, SSO and data residency on the Enterprise plan.
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Prices from vendors' official pricing pages, checked October 21, 2026. Not sponsored; order isn't a ranking.