Quick answer: Bland AI (bland.ai) charges $0.14 a connected minute on its free Start plan, or $0.12 plus a $299 monthly platform fee on Build; Enterprise is custom. Add $0.05 or $0.04 a minute for transfers on Bland numbers, $0.015 per unconnected outbound attempt and $15 a month per extra number. Its docs still list a $499 Scale plan no longer on its pricing page, and a one-number Agent Phone Plan at $19.99 a month ($9.99 for the first month, or $150 a year; as at 6 November 2026). US dollars, as at 31 October 2026.
This page is about Bland at bland.ai, the voice AI platform for phone agents. Every figure comes from Bland’s own pricing page and its Billing & Plans documentation, read on 31 October 2026 (Agent Phone Plan prices and terms re-read on 6 November 2026). Bland’s pricing page prints dollar amounts without a currency code; its Agent Phone Plan page labels its price “USD”, and we treat every Bland figure here as US dollars. Convert before you budget in Australian dollars.
Where Zian fits
Zian AI is our pick when what you are buying is booked appointments, not call minutes: it answers inbound calls 24/7 as an AI receptionist that qualifies, books, transfers and takes messages, and runs outbound follow-up by voice, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger. If you would rather have it run for you, LeadsNow.ai is the done-for-you, pay-per-result option that runs on Zian.
Zian is in a partnership-application beta and publishes no price, so no Zian figure appears in the arithmetic below. Each of its three listed plans, including Intel + Widgets (Free Forever), starts with a partnership application. The platform handles answering machines and voicemail on calls, works in 30+ languages with voice cloning, connects to HubSpot, Salesforce, HighLevel and Zapier, and supports private model deployment on customer infrastructure. SmartReach AI™ decides channel, message and timing, and PrecisionPitch AI™ split-tests scripts against real outcomes. Figures published on zian.ai include 50,769+ qualified sales appointments set and a 2,736% increase in lead contact rates.
The honest one-line gap: Bland prints a per-minute price you can budget from today, and Zian does not print one during its beta.
How much does Bland AI cost? All five plans, side by side
Bland sells usage plus a platform fee. You pay a per-minute rate for connected call time, a separate rate for time after a call is transferred, and, on Build, a flat monthly fee. Under its headline “Clear pricing across every call”, Bland’s pricing page says “No token charges. No model-provider pass-throughs. No surprise bills.” The per-minute rate covers the language model, speech-to-text and text-to-speech, which the page lists under “Included in your per-minute rate”.
| Plan | Monthly fee | Connected minute | Transfer minute | Daily cap | Hourly cap | Concurrent calls | Voices | Where it is listed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start (for developers) | $0 (“No card required”) | $0.14 | $0.05 | 100 calls | 100 calls | 10 | 1 | Pricing page and billing docs |
| Build (for teams) | $299 platform fee | $0.12 | $0.04 | 2,000 calls | 1,000 calls | 50 | 5 | Pricing page and billing docs |
| Scale | $499 | $0.11 | $0.03 | 5,000 calls | 1,000 calls | 100 | 15 voice clones | Billing docs, Agent Phone Plan pages and a September 2026 Bland blog post; not on the pricing page since September 2026 |
| Enterprise (for organisations) | “Custom”, “Contracted to your volume.” | Custom | Custom | Unlimited | Unlimited | “Concurrency sized to your volume” | Unlimited | Pricing page and billing docs |
| Agent Phone Plan | $9.99 first month (an organisation’s first Agent Phone Plan only, once per account owner), then $19.99; or $150 a year where the billing page offers yearly billing, with no first-month discount; an organisation that has had the plan before keeps the monthly price it had (as at 6 November 2026) | None: unlimited US and Canada minutes and texts under fair use (texts capped at 20 an hour and 100 a day) | Not stated | 50 calls | 20 calls | 1 | Not listed | Agent Phone Plan docs and billing docs |
Read three things off that table before you pick a plan.
Scale is in the docs but not on the pricing page. Bland’s billing documentation, last modified 27 October 2026, still lists Scale at $499 with a $0.11 connected rate. Bland’s pricing page, read the same week, shows only Start, Build and Enterprise. An archived copy of the pricing page captured on 3 September 2026 has a Scale column; a capture on 14 September 2026 does not. Neither Bland’s changelog nor its docs changelog announces the change: the only entry in the last 90 days is dated 3 August 2026 and is about speech timing. Bland’s own Agent Phone Plan pages still tell high-volume users to move to “Build or Scale”, and a Bland blog post published 27 September 2026 still describes “the three self-serve tiers” as Start, Build and Scale. So treat Scale as a plan to confirm with Bland before you budget on it.
Most of the features are Enterprise-only. The pricing page’s comparison table ticks SMS and web chat, the appointment scheduling node, in-call SMS, iMessage, warm transfers, live transfers, guardrails, alarms and monitoring, custom dialling, BAA, SSO and data residency against Enterprise only. Start and Build get integrations, Conversational Pathways, automations, version lock, a 99.9% uptime SLA and account and billing support.
The fee is only half the price difference. Build is 2 cents a minute cheaper than Start, so its $299 fee is recovered at 14,950 connected minutes a month. Below that volume Start is cheaper in minutes, but Start’s 100-calls-a-day cap is usually what forces the move.
The rates are recent. Bland’s billing docs record that plan-based connected rates took effect on 5 December 2025, replacing a single $0.09-a-minute rate for every self-serve customer, and that every organisation received a one-off transition credit for the difference on its previous 30 days of usage.
What Bland bills you for: every charge, defined
A Bland invoice is more than minutes. This is every billable event we found across the pricing page and the billing, SMS, numbers, speech and Agent Phone Plan docs, in Bland’s words where it gives them.
| Charge | Price | How Bland defines it, and where |
|---|---|---|
| Connected call time | $0.14 / $0.12 (/ $0.11 Scale) a minute | Billing docs: “Prorated to the exact second. Only active call time is counted.” “Connected time is the full AI conversation duration of the call.” |
| Transfer time on Bland numbers | $0.05 / $0.04 (/ $0.03 Scale) a minute | Billing docs: “billed additionally when the call is transferred to a human using Bland-provided numbers.” In Bland’s own example, a 10-minute call with a 2-minute transfer is billed 10 connected minutes plus 2 transfer minutes. |
| Transfer time on your own Twilio (BYOT) | $0.00 | Billing docs: “Free when using your own Twilio number.” Pricing page: “BYOT customers do not pay transfer fees.” |
| Outbound call attempt | $0.015 minimum a call | Billing docs: “Minimum charge per outbound call attempt using Bland’s telephony.” The June 2025 changelog says a connected call above the minimum pays only the per-minute rate (“minimum charge is absorbed”). |
| Failed calls | $0.015 a call | Billing docs: “Minimum charge applies if using Bland’s telephony.” |
| Voicemail | Plan rate | Billing docs: “Billed as part of standard call time.” |
| Warm transfer | Plan rate, then transfer rate | Billing docs: the background proxy agent is “Charged for talk time while active”; once calls merge, the time “is billed at the transfer rate”. Warm transfer is ticked for Enterprise only on the pricing page. |
| Phone number | $15 a month | Purchase Phone Number docs: “$15/mo. subscription using your stored payment method”, US or Canada. Start includes “an inbound number ($15/mo value)”. |
| Telephony | No separate rate printed | Pricing page FAQ: “Telephony is billed separately, on your own carrier or Bland’s at pass-through cost.” Bland’s llms.txt says per-minute pricing “covers LLM, TTS, STT, and telephony in a single line item”. Bland states it both ways. |
| SIP | Plan rate; carrier fees extra on BYOT | Billing docs, which describe SIP connectivity as “for enterprise customers”: through Bland’s SIP endpoints “Standard call rates apply; SIP cost is included.” On your own provider, “all carrier fees are billed to your account.” |
| SMS | $0.02 a message, in and out | Billing docs: “Both incoming and outgoing messages are billed.” SMS guide: “available on Enterprise plans and the Agent Phone Plan.” |
| Web widget | $0.01 per agent message | Billing docs: “Billed per message sent by the Bland agent via web widget.” |
| Norm (the AI builder) | Token-based, no rate printed | Billing docs: “Norm is billed separately from call usage and works on a token-based pricing model.” |
| Bland Speech (standalone text-to-speech) | $0.015 per 1,000 characters (launch offer); standard $0.04 | TTS API docs: a “limited-time launch offer”, with “a minimum charge of $0.001” a request; “Some public-library voices carry an additional per-character creator fee.” Separate from call minutes. |
| Voice clones | Plan limit, not a fee | Pricing page voice limit 1 on Start, 5 on Build, unlimited on Enterprise; “Custom Voice Actor” is “Available” on Enterprise. For Bland Speech, a one-time $5 top-up raises instant clones to 10 (Speech Limits). |
The quotable figure: on Start, the $0.015 outbound minimum is absorbed once a connected call passes about 6.4 seconds (0.015 ÷ 0.14 × 60); on Build the point is 7.5 seconds. The minimum matters for attempts that never connect, not for real conversations.
See the platform during beta. Zian’s AI receptionist answers inbound calls 24/7, books appointments, handles voicemail on calls and follows up by voice, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger. Apply For Partnership
How Bland bills: prepaid credits, auto-recharge and caps
Usage draws down a prepaid credit balance. Bland’s MCP tools reference describes buying “prepaid credits, $5 to $100 per purchase”, and its billing information API returns a current balance plus a refill_amount and a refill_at threshold, both null “if refilling is not enabled”. In other words, auto-recharge is optional: you set a threshold and the balance to refill to.
Three billing rules follow from Bland’s docs:
- Caps stop calls rather than adding charges. The billing FAQ says: “Hitting limits means calls get rejected rather than incurring unexpected charges.” That protects your budget, but a campaign that hits Start’s 100-calls-a-day cap stops dialling for the day.
- A balance can go negative. “A negative balance means your account usage exceeded the available credits before the system could stop additional usage.” Bland says this is not a separate invoice.
- International calling needs a purchase. The Send Call docs say international calls need you to “buy at least $5 of credits” or “turn on auto-recharge”. We could not find a per-country rate for international calls in Bland’s docs or pricing page, as at 31 October 2026.
On refunds and cancellation, Bland says less. Its Terms of Service (last updated 28 August 2026) contain no refund, payment or fee clause; they say Bland may terminate access “at any time and for any reason”. The only refund statement we found is on the Agent Phone Plan cancellation docs: cancelling stops the plan renewing, it stays active until the end of the month or year you have paid for, and “there’s no refund for the rest of that period” (as at 6 November 2026). We could not find a cancellation or refund term for Build’s $299 fee or for unused credits on the pricing page, billing docs or Terms, as at 31 October 2026. Ask before you buy a large credit block.
What a month of Bland costs at 1,000, 5,000 and 20,000 minutes
This worked calculation is the part no pricing page does for you. A short script pushed three monthly volumes of connected minutes through each self-serve plan, adding transfer time, failed-attempt charges and a phone number. Every input is printed, so you can swap in your own.
Inputs from Bland, read 31 October 2026: connected minutes $0.14 (Start), $0.12 (Build), $0.11 (Scale, not on the pricing page); transfer minutes $0.05, $0.04, $0.03; platform fee $0, $299, $499; $0.015 for each outbound attempt that does not connect; one number at $15 a month on Build and Scale, with Start’s included inbound number covering it on Start.
Our assumptions, change them to match your list: every call is outbound on Bland’s telephony; the average connected call lasts 2 minutes; for every connected call there are 2 attempts that do not connect (a one-in-three connect rate); 10% of connected calls transfer to a person for 3 minutes, and, following Bland’s own example, those 3 minutes sit inside the connected minutes and are billed again at the transfer rate; calls run on 22 dialling days a month; no SMS, because SMS is not listed on Start or Build.
| Plan | 1,000 connected minutes (500 calls, 1,000 failed attempts) | 5,000 connected minutes (2,500 calls, 5,000 failed attempts) | 20,000 connected minutes (10,000 calls, 20,000 failed attempts) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start | $140.00 minutes + $7.50 transfer + $15.00 failed = $162.50 | $700.00 + $37.50 + $75.00 = $812.50, but about 341 attempts a day exceeds the 100-call daily cap | $2,800.00 + $150.00 + $300.00 = $3,250.00, far over the daily cap |
| Build | $299 fee + $120.00 + $6.00 + $15.00 + $15 number = $455.00 | $299 + $600.00 + $30.00 + $75.00 + $15 = $1,019.00 | $299 + $2,400.00 + $120.00 + $300.00 + $15 = $3,134.00 |
| Scale (not on the pricing page) | $499 + $110.00 + $4.50 + $15.00 + $15 = $643.50 | $499 + $550.00 + $22.50 + $75.00 + $15 = $1,161.50 | $499 + $2,200.00 + $90.00 + $300.00 + $15 = $3,104.00 |
| Lowest bill that fits the caps | $162.50 (Start), $0.16 per connected minute | $1,019.00 (Build), $0.20 per connected minute | $3,104.00 (Scale, if Bland still sells it) or $3,134.00 (Build), about $0.16 per connected minute |
| Attempts a day on 22 days (connected calls a day) | 68 (23) | 341 (114) | 1,364 (455) |
Three results stand out. First, failed attempts are a real line: at a one-in-three connect rate they add $15 to $300 a month, about 9% of the Start bill at every volume. Second, the platform fee dominates at low volume: at 1,000 minutes, Build costs $455.00 against Start’s $162.50, and nearly two-thirds of the Build bill is the $299 fee. Third, at 20,000 minutes the plans converge: Build and Scale land within $30 of each other, which is exactly what you would expect, because Bland’s own numbers put the Build-to-Scale break-even at 20,000 minutes ($200 extra fee ÷ 1 cent a minute).
The 5,000-minute Start figure is the trap. It is the cheapest number in its column, but at 341 attempts a day it cannot run on a plan capped at 100 calls a day. We could not find where Bland says whether attempts that fail to connect count toward the cap, in its pricing page, billing docs or full docs index as at 31 October 2026, so we have printed both counts: even the 114 connected calls a day exceed it. At that volume Build is the lowest bill you can actually run.
The calculation leaves out five costs because Bland prints no figure for them: any telephony charge on Bland’s own numbers (its pricing page FAQ says telephony is “billed separately” at “pass-through cost”, while its llms.txt says the per-minute rate includes it), carrier charges if you bring your own Twilio or SIP trunk, international destinations, Norm’s token usage while you build, and any Enterprise contract. If you bring your own telephony, take the transfer and failed-attempt lines out and add your carrier’s per-minute rate instead. Voicemail is billed as call time, so how your agent detects answering machines changes the connected-minute line; our guide to answering machine detection settings by cost covers that trade-off.
Bland AI’s price in context, as at 31 October 2026
How this table was built: zian.ai publishes this page, and Zian appears in the table, so read it with that in mind. Zian is listed first as our platform pick and LeadsNow.ai as the done-for-you pick; Bland figures are from Bland’s own pages, read today. For how Bland compares on features rather than price, see our Zian AI vs Bland AI comparison for outbound and the three-way Vapi, Bland AI and Zian AI comparison.
| Option | How it bills | Published price | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zian AI (our pick) | Partnership-application beta; each of its three listed plans, including Intel + Widgets (Free Forever), starts with a partnership application | No published price | Teams that want an AI receptionist and outbound appointment setting across voice, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger in one platform |
| LeadsNow.ai (done-for-you pick) | Pay-per-result managed service that runs on Zian | Billed per result; no figure quoted here | Operators who want appointments set for them; leads answered in under 60 seconds, 24/7 |
| Bland Start | Per connected minute, no fee | $0.14 a minute; $0.05 transfer | Developers testing up to 100 calls a day |
| Bland Build | Per connected minute plus platform fee | $0.12 a minute + $299 a month; $0.04 transfer | Teams running up to 2,000 calls a day and 50 at once |
| Bland Enterprise | Contract | “Custom”, “Contracted to your volume.” | Regulated teams needing SMS, warm transfers, BAA, SSO, on-prem or VPC |
If you are comparing Bland’s bundled rate against platforms that bill model providers separately, our Vapi vs Retell AI pricing breakdown at 10,000 minutes shows how those per-component stacks add up. Bland’s pricing page makes its own comparison claims about those vendors; we have not reproduced them, because a vendor’s figures for a rival are not a primary source for that rival.
How to estimate your own Bland bill in five steps
- Count attempts, not minutes. Pull a week of dial logs and record attempts, connects and average connected seconds. The attempts drive the $0.015 line and the daily cap.
- Pick the plan from the cap, then the rate. Divide attempts by dialling days. Over 100 a day rules out Start; over 2,000 rules out Build.
- Add transfer minutes twice. Bland’s example bills the transferred leg as connected time and again as transfer time on Bland numbers.
- Decide on telephony. Bring your own Twilio or SIP trunk and Bland charges no transfer fee, and it lists the $0.015 minimum only for its own telephony, but your carrier bills its own leg and numbers.
- Price the features you actually need. If you need SMS follow-up, warm transfers or a BAA, those are listed on Enterprise, so the self-serve rates are not your price at all.
Want the calls to turn into booked appointments? Zian answers inbound calls 24/7 as an AI receptionist, sets appointments from inbound and outbound conversations and follows up across voice, SMS, email and WhatsApp. Apply For Partnership
Bland AI pricing questions people ask
How much does Bland AI cost per month?
Bland’s Start plan has no monthly fee and charges $0.14 per connected minute. Build charges $0.12 a minute plus a $299 monthly platform fee. Enterprise is “Custom” and “Contracted to your volume.” On top of minutes you pay transfer time, $0.015 for each outbound attempt that does not connect, and $15 a month per extra number. Prices are from Bland’s pricing page, as at 31 October 2026.
Does Bland charge for calls that don’t connect?
Yes, if the call uses Bland’s telephony. Bland’s billing documentation lists “Failed Calls” at $0.015 per call and an “Outbound Minimum” of $0.015 per outbound call attempt. Bland introduced the minimum on 16 June 2025. If you bring your own Twilio account or SIP trunk, Bland’s table says the minimum applies only “if using Bland’s telephony”, and your carrier bills you for its own leg.
Is Bland billed per second or per minute?
Bland quotes a per-minute rate but its billing documentation says call time is “Prorated to the exact second. Only active call time is counted.” A 90-second call on Start therefore costs $0.21, not two full minutes. The $0.015 outbound minimum sets the floor for very short calls.
Does Bland still have a Scale plan?
It depends which Bland page you read. The pricing page, as at 31 October 2026, lists Start, Build and Enterprise only. Bland’s billing documentation, last updated 27 October 2026, still lists Scale at $499 a month and $0.11 a minute. Archived copies of the pricing page show the Scale column on 3 September 2026 and gone by 14 September 2026. A Bland blog post published 27 September 2026 still names Scale as one of three self-serve tiers. Ask Bland before you budget on Scale.
How much does Bland charge for SMS?
Bland’s billing documentation prices SMS at $0.02 per message, and “Both incoming and outgoing messages are billed.” Its SMS guide says SMS is available on Enterprise plans and the Agent Phone Plan, and the pricing page lists SMS against Enterprise, not Start or Build. US numbers used for SMS also need A2P campaign registration.
What is Bland’s $19.99 Agent Phone Plan?
It is a separate plan for one AI agent on one US number: $9.99 for the first month (once per account owner), then $19.99 a month, or $150 a year with no first-month discount, as at 6 November 2026. It includes unlimited US and Canada calls and texts under fair use. The caps are one call at a time, 20 calls an hour, 50 a day and 1,000 call minutes a day, and 20 texts an hour and 100 a day. Bland says it is built “for one agent doing one thing at a time, not high-volume outbound campaigns”. Cancelling stops the renewal; the plan runs to the end of the paid month or year, with “no refund for the rest of that period”.
At what volume does Bland’s Build plan pay for itself?
On connected minutes alone, Build’s $299 fee is recovered by its 2 cent saving per minute at 14,950 minutes a month. In our worked example, which adds transfer time and a $15 number, the crossover is about 14,600 minutes. Below that, Start costs less in minutes, but Start’s cap of 100 calls a day may force you up first.
Is there a free trial of Bland AI?
Bland’s pricing page says the Start plan comes with “2 credits + an inbound number ($15/mo value)” and “No card required.” That is the free way in. The Agent Phone Plan is different: Bland says the card is charged for the first month immediately and “there’s no trial period.”
Where every figure on this page comes from
| Figure | Who published it | Link | Date read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start $0.14/min, $0 fee, “2 credits + an inbound number ($15/mo value)”; Build $0.12/min, $299/month; Enterprise “Custom”; transfer $0.05/$0.04; daily, hourly, concurrency and voice limits; Enterprise-only features; telephony and BYOT FAQ | Bland | bland.ai/pricing | 31 October 2026 |
| Scale $499, $0.11/min, $0.03 transfer, 5,000/day, 100 concurrent, 15 clones; per-second proration; $0.015 outbound minimum and failed calls; voicemail; warm transfer; SIP; SMS $0.02; web widget $0.01; Norm; negative balance; caps reject calls; 5 December 2025 rate change from $0.09 | Bland | docs.bland.ai/platform/billing | 31 October 2026 |
| Scale still named as one of “the three self-serve tiers” | Bland | Bland blog, How Much Does a Voice AI Platform Cost (published 27 September 2026, updated 5 October 2026) | 31 October 2026 |
| Scale column present 3 September 2026, absent 14 September 2026 | Bland (archived by the Internet Archive) | Capture 3 Sep 2026; capture 14 Sep 2026 | 31 October 2026 |
| $0.015 minimum effective 16 June 2025; “minimum charge is absorbed” | Bland | docs changelog, June 2025 | 31 October 2026 |
| No pricing entry in the last 90 days; latest entry 3 August 2026 | Bland | bland.ai/changelog | 31 October 2026 |
| Agent Phone Plan $9.99 first month, then $19.99 a month or $150 a year; billing table “Agent Phone | $19.99”; fair-use caps including 20 texts an hour and 100 a day; no trial; US and Canada only | Bland | Agent Phone Plan docs; Billing & Plans docs; AI phone number cost page | 6 November 2026 |
| “no refund for the rest of that period”; plan stays active to the end of the paid month or year | Bland | Cancel Agent Phone Plan docs; Agent Phone Plan docs | 6 November 2026 |
| SMS on Enterprise and Agent Phone Plan; A2P registration | Bland | SMS guide | 31 October 2026 |
| $15/month per number | Bland | Purchase Phone Number docs | 31 October 2026 |
| Prepaid credits $5 to $100 per purchase | Bland | MCP tools reference | 31 October 2026 |
| Auto-refill amount and threshold | Bland | Get Organization Billing Information | 31 October 2026 |
| International calls need $5 purchase or auto-recharge | Bland | Send Call docs | 31 October 2026 |
| Bland Speech $0.015 per 1,000 characters, standard $0.04, $0.001 minimum | Bland | TTS API docs | 31 October 2026 |
| $5 top-up raises instant clones to 10 | Bland | Speech Limits docs | 31 October 2026 |
| Terms last updated 28 August 2026; termination clause; no refund clause | Bland | Terms of Service | 31 October 2026 |
| Telephony “in a single line item” | Bland | bland.ai/llms.txt | 31 October 2026 |
| Worked monthly bills, break-evens, attempts per day | Zian AI calculation from the Bland figures above, with stated assumptions | This page | 31 October 2026 |
| 50,769+ appointments; 2,736% increase in lead contact rates | Zian AI | zian.ai home page | 31 October 2026 |