Quick answer: Retell AI is cheaper than Bland AI on a lean stack: 25,000 outbound minutes cost $2,335 on Retell (GPT 5 mini, $0.093 a minute) against $3,749 on Bland’s Build plan, as at 6 November 2026. A Recommended model with an ElevenLabs voice ($0.174) costs $4,360, so Bland wins there. Above 2,000 calls a day, Build is capped.
This page compares Retell AI (retellai.com) and Bland AI (bland.ai), two platforms you build AI phone agents on and pay for by the minute. Every figure was read on each vendor’s own pricing page, documentation, trust page and changelog on 6 November 2026. Both vendors’ documentation reports call cost in USD, so prices are US dollars, excluding tax such as Australian GST. The answer turns on three things: what a minute includes, what an unanswered dial costs, and how many calls a plan lets you place. Each vendor publishes its own comparison with the other, Bland in its pricing FAQ and Retell on its Retell vs Bland page; in the versions we read on 6 November 2026, neither works out a monthly bill at a stated volume, which is what this page does.
Where Zian fits if you want the agents, not the build
Zian AI is our platform pick when what you need is booked appointments rather than a voice stack to assemble. It answers inbound calls 24/7 as an AI receptionist that qualifies, books, transfers and takes messages, and it runs outbound follow-up by voice, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger. If you would rather have the whole job run for you, LeadsNow.ai is the done-for-you pick: a managed, pay-per-result appointment-setting and lead-generation service that runs on Zian, with leads answered in under 60 seconds, 24/7.
Retell and Bland are platforms your team builds agents on. Zian ships a digital team instead, including an Inbound Appointment Setter, an AI Receptionist, an Outbound Appointment Setter and a Customer Support Agent. Its agents handle answering machines and voicemail on calls, work in 30+ languages with voice cloning, run research, web and knowledge-base lookups, and connect to HubSpot, Salesforce, HighLevel and Zapier. SmartReach AI™ sets the channel, message and timing of each follow-up, and PrecisionPitch AI™ keeps split-testing scripts against real outcomes. Zian’s live counter shows 50,769+ qualified sales appointments set.
The honest gap, in one line: Zian is in a partnership-application beta and publishes no price, so it does not appear in the arithmetic below. Each of its three listed plans, including Intel + Widgets (Free Forever), starts with a partnership application.
How Retell AI and Bland AI each build a per-minute price
Retell sells a minute in parts; Bland sells it whole. On Retell’s pay-as-you-go plan, every voice minute is its Voice Infra fee of $0.055, plus the language model, the voice and telephony you pick. Bland’s pricing page lists the LLM, speech-to-text and text-to-speech under “Included in your per-minute rate”: $0.14 on Start or $0.12 on Build, which adds a $299 monthly platform fee. Its headline: “No token charges. No model-provider pass-throughs. No surprise bills.”
| Price element | Retell AI (pay as you go) | Bland AI (self-serve) |
|---|---|---|
| Plans | Pay as you go, no plan fee; Enterprise “Custom Pricing” | Start ($0 platform fee), Build ($299/month platform fee), Enterprise (“Custom”). Billing docs also list Scale at $499; the pricing page does not |
| Platform or AI minute | Voice Infra $0.055 | $0.14 Start, $0.12 Build ($0.11 Scale, docs only), covering LLM, speech-to-text and text-to-speech |
| Language model | Extra: 37 priced rows, from $0.0016 (GPT 5 nano) to $0.32 (GPT 6 Astra) on the standard tier and up to $0.64 on Fast Tier | Included |
| Voice (text-to-speech) | Extra: $0.015 for six voice families (Retell Platform, Minimax, Fish, Cartesia, OpenAI, Inworld); ElevenLabs $0.040 (Flash only) to $0.10 (v3, v4) | Included; voice limit 1 on Start, 5 on Build |
| Telephony on the platform’s numbers | US $0.015 on Retell’s Twilio route, $0.03 on its Telnyx route | No separate rate printed. Pricing FAQ: “billed separately … at pass-through cost”; docs index: per-minute pricing covers telephony “in a single line item” |
| Billing increment | “Each call is tracked to the nearest second … No rounding up per call.” | “Prorated to the exact second. Only active call time is counted.” |
| Per-call minimum | 10 seconds, only on calls under 10 seconds that use a dynamic opening message when the AI speaks first | $0.015 per outbound call attempt on Bland’s telephony |
| Dials that never connect | “If a call fails to connect, you won’t be billed.” | $0.015 per failed call on Bland’s telephony |
| Voicemail | Billed “only for the duration the AI agent is active on the line” | “Billed as part of standard call time” |
| Transferred calls | Agent fee stops; “Only the telephony fee continues” | Connected time plus transfer minutes at $0.05 (Start) or $0.04 (Build) on Bland numbers; $0 on your own Twilio |
| Phone numbers | $2/month (US, Canada); US toll-free $5/month | $15/month (US or Canada) |
| Long prompts | Above 4,000 prompt tokens, billed duration scales by tokens ÷ 4,000 | “No token charges” |
| How you pay | Prepaid credits deducted in real time; legacy monthly accounts moved to credits on 30 September 2026; credits “non-refundable once purchased” | Credit balance; “Hitting limits means calls get rejected rather than incurring unexpected charges” |
| Free way in | $10 in free trial credits, once per email address | Start: “2 credits + an inbound number ($15/mo value)”, “No card required” |
Two rows decide most bills. The billing increment is a tie: both bill to the second, so a 90-second call is 1.5 minutes on either. The unanswered dial is not. Bland charges $0.015 for every outbound attempt on its telephony that does not connect; its June 2025 changelog says that if a call connects and exceeds the minimum, “you only pay the per-minute rate as usual”. Retell charges nothing for a call that fails to connect.
The other row to read twice is telephony. Bland states it both ways: its pricing FAQ says telephony is “billed separately, on your own carrier or Bland’s at pass-through cost”, while its documentation index says per-minute pricing “covers LLM, TTS, STT, and telephony in a single line item”. We could not find a separate Bland telephony rate on its pricing page or billing documentation, as at 6 November 2026, so the bills below carry no Bland telephony line; ask Bland which statement applies to your account. For every Retell line item, including add-ons this page leaves out, see our full Retell AI cost breakdown; for every Bland plan and fee, see how much Bland AI costs, plan by plan.
What 5,000, 25,000 and 100,000 minutes a month cost on Retell vs Bland
This worked bill is the part neither pricing page does for you. Every line is a published rate multiplied by a quantity you control, so you can swap in your own figures; a short script computed it and every total was rechecked line by line.
Our assumptions: outbound calls to US numbers; a 2-minute average connected call; two unanswered dials per connected call (one in three connects), ringing out without voicemail; no transfers; 22 dialling days a month; 2, 5 and 10 numbers on each side at the three volumes. Retell dials through its Dialer, for which we found no per-dial fee, on its US Twilio route at $0.015 and stays within its 20 included concurrent calls at 5,000 and 25,000 minutes; at 100,000 minutes we buy 20 more at $8 each, because the average number of calls in progress reaches 9.5 across an 8-hour dialling day. Bland runs on its own telephony.
Two Retell stacks bracket the choice. Stack A (lean) is GPT 5 mini at $0.008 with a Retell Platform voice at $0.015: $0.055 + $0.008 + $0.015 + $0.015 = $0.093 a minute. Stack B (mid) is GPT 5.6 Terra, which Retell marks Recommended, at $0.064 with an ElevenLabs Flash voice at $0.040: $0.055 + $0.064 + $0.040 + $0.015 = $0.174 a minute.
| Option and line item | 5,000 minutes | 25,000 minutes | 100,000 minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connected calls / unanswered dials | 2,500 / 5,000 | 12,500 / 25,000 | 50,000 / 100,000 |
| Dials a day over 22 days (connected calls a day) | 341 (114) | 1,705 (568) | 6,818 (2,273) |
| Retell Stack A: minutes at $0.093 | $465.00 | $2,325.00 | $9,300.00 |
| Retell Stack A: numbers at $2 and extra concurrency at $8 | $4.00 | $10.00 | $20.00 + $160.00 |
| Retell Stack A: monthly total | $469.00 | $2,335.00 | $9,480.00 |
| Retell Stack B: minutes at $0.174 | $870.00 | $4,350.00 | $17,400.00 |
| Retell Stack B: numbers and extra concurrency | $4.00 | $10.00 | $20.00 + $160.00 |
| Retell Stack B: monthly total | $874.00 | $4,360.00 | $17,580.00 |
| Bland Build: platform fee | $299.00 | $299.00 | Over Build’s caps |
| Bland Build: connected minutes at $0.12 | $600.00 | $3,000.00 | Over Build’s caps |
| Bland Build: unanswered dials at $0.015 | $75.00 | $375.00 | Over Build’s caps |
| Bland Build: numbers at $15 | $30.00 | $75.00 | Over Build’s caps |
| Bland Build: monthly total | $1,004.00 | $3,749.00 | Enterprise, “Custom” (Build rates would give $13,949.00, for reference only) |
| Bland Scale ($499 fee, $0.11; in billing docs, not on the pricing page) | $1,154.00 | $3,699.00 | $13,149.00, but only if unanswered dials do not count toward Scale’s 5,000-call daily cap |
| Cost per connected minute | A $0.094, B $0.175, Bland Build $0.201 | A $0.093, B $0.174, Bland Build $0.150 | A $0.095, B $0.176, Bland not priceable |
Three results stand out.
The lean Retell stack is the cheapest priced bill at every volume. At 5,000 minutes it costs $469.00 against Bland Build’s $1,004.00, and nearly 30% of the Build bill is the $299 platform fee. Bland’s Start plan has no fee and would total $790.00 at 5,000 minutes ($700.00 in minutes, $75.00 in unanswered dials, one extra number at $15), but 341 dials a day, or even the 114 connected calls, exceed Start’s cap of 100 calls a day.
Against a mid Retell stack, the winner flips between 5,000 and 25,000 minutes. Stack B costs $874.00 at 5,000 minutes, $130 below Bland Build. At 25,000 minutes Bland Build costs $3,749.00 and Stack B $4,360.00, so Bland is $611 cheaper: its $0.12 bundled minute, with the $299 fee spread over five times as many minutes, now undercuts Stack B’s $0.174.
At 100,000 minutes Bland’s pricing-page plans run out of room. 2,273 connected calls a day exceed Build’s 2,000-call daily cap, and 6,818 dials a day would exceed even Scale’s 5,000. Bland’s pages we read do not say whether unanswered dials count toward the cap, so we printed both counts. Build is over on either; Scale, listed only in Bland’s billing documentation, fits only if unanswered dials do not count, and would then cost $13,149.00. Otherwise Bland becomes an Enterprise quote that cannot be priced from its website. Retell stays on pay-as-you-go at $9,480.00 or $17,580.00.
The Bundle Line: when Bland’s bundled minute beats a Retell stack
The Bundle Line is the per-minute price at which a Retell stack and Bland’s Build plan cost the same. Bland Build is cheaper when your Retell stack’s per-minute sum (Voice Infra, model, voice and telephony) is above $0.12, plus $0.015 for each unanswered dial per connected minute, plus Bland’s $299 fee and its extra number cost spread over your monthly minutes. Below the line, Retell is cheaper. On our assumptions the line sits at 20.0 cents at 5,000 minutes and 15.0 cents at 25,000 minutes.
Call length and connect rate move the line, because they set how many unanswered dials each billed minute carries. This threshold table holds the volume at 25,000 minutes and five numbers on each side:
| Average connected call | Inbound or no unanswered dials | 1 in 2 dials connect | 1 in 3 connect | 1 in 5 connect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 minute | 13.46 cents | 14.96 cents | 16.46 cents | 19.46 cents |
| 2 minutes | 13.46 cents | 14.21 cents | 14.96 cents | 16.46 cents |
| 4 minutes | 13.46 cents | 13.83 cents | 14.21 cents | 14.96 cents |
Read your Retell stack against the row for your call length. Stack A, at 9.3 cents, is below every cell, so lean Retell beats Bland Build at 25,000 minutes whatever your connect rate. Stack B, at 17.4 cents, is above every cell except short calls with a one-in-five connect rate, so a Recommended model with an ElevenLabs voice usually loses to Bland at this volume. Check Build’s cap as well: with 1-minute calls at one in two connects or worse, or 2-minute calls at one in five, 25,000 minutes takes between 2,273 and 5,682 dials a day, which is over Build’s 2,000-call daily cap if unanswered dials count toward it, and Bland’s pages we read do not say whether they do. The quotable version: at 25,000 minutes, a Retell stack that costs more than about 15 cents a minute is dearer than Bland Build on a typical outbound list, before any Bland telephony charge.
Two things move the line further. Bring your own Twilio or SIP trunk to Bland and its $0.015 minimum, listed only for “Bland’s telephony”, drops away while your carrier bills its own leg. Retell lines this page does not price, such as the $0.005 knowledge-base surcharge, long-prompt scaling or, if you send the list as a legacy batch call instead of a Dialer campaign, Batch Call at +$0.005 a dial (another $187.50 at 25,000 minutes on our assumptions), push a Retell stack up towards the line.
Building this yourself, or buying the outcome? Zian’s agents answer inbound calls 24/7, book appointments, handle voicemail on calls and follow up by voice, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger. Apply For Partnership
How many concurrent calls Retell and Bland allow on each plan
Retell gives every pay-as-you-go workspace 20 concurrent calls and sells more at $8 each a month. Bland ties concurrency and daily call caps to the plan, so more capacity means a bigger plan.
| Plan | Concurrent calls | Call caps | Above the limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retell pay as you go | 20 per workspace included; $8.00 per extra concurrent call per month | Calls per second: 1 per telephony provider unless raised (Dialer docs) | Rejected, unless concurrency burst is on: +$0.10 a minute on the whole call, up to the lower of 3 times your limit or your limit plus 300. Batch and Dialer calls never burst; they wait for a free slot |
| Retell Enterprise | FAQ: “custom concurrency starting at 50+ calls”; plan table: “No Cap on Concurrent Calls” | Custom | Custom |
| Bland Start | 10 | 100 a day, 100 an hour | “Hitting limits means calls get rejected” |
| Bland Build | 50 | 2,000 a day, 1,000 an hour | Rejected |
| Bland Scale (billing docs only) | 100 | 5,000 a day, 1,000 an hour | Rejected |
| Bland Enterprise | Pricing page: “Concurrency sized to your volume”; billing docs: Unlimited | Unlimited | Contracted |
| Bland Agent Phone Plan | 1, account-wide | 20 calls an hour, 50 a day, 1,000 call minutes a day | Rejected; built “for one agent doing one thing at a time, not high-volume outbound campaigns” |
The burst rule is the one a campaign planner gets wrong. Retell’s concurrency page suggests burst for campaign launches, then adds that “Dialer campaign calls never use burst; they wait for a free slot instead”, and its FAQ says the same of batch calls. For a list, size your base concurrency; a Dialer campaign’s own limit defaults to half your workspace limit. Retell can also reserve concurrency for inbound calls so outbound traffic cannot crowd them out.
Phone numbers, SIP and bringing your own Twilio or Telnyx
| Telephony question | Retell AI | Bland AI |
|---|---|---|
| Buy a number from the platform | US and Canada on Twilio, $2/month; US toll-free $5/month (inbound toll-free minutes $0.06); US numbers on Telnyx, $2/month | $15/month, US or Canada; “For others, please contact support” |
| Call other countries on platform numbers | 15 countries on Twilio, e.g. Australia $0.10, UK $0.10, India $0.15, Philippines $0.80 a minute; Telnyx: US and Canada $0.03, India $0.25 | Needs a purchase of at least $5 of credits or auto-recharge; we could not find a per-country rate in Bland’s pricing page or full documentation, as at 6 November 2026 |
| Bring your own Twilio | Yes, by elastic SIP trunking | Yes: connect your Twilio account and import numbers; no transfer fees on your own Twilio |
| Bring Telnyx or another SIP carrier | Elastic SIP trunking or dial-to-SIP-URI over TCP, UDP, TLS or mTLS; guides for Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, Avaya, Genesys Cloud, Five9 and Amazon Connect | Inbound and outbound SIP trunks from any carrier or PBX, plus number porting. Billing docs describe SIP as “for enterprise customers”; the pricing FAQ names no plan |
| What the platform charges when you bring your own | “No Charge for Sip Trunking/Custom Telephony”; your carrier bills you | Its standard per-minute rate; “all carrier fees are billed to your account” |
| SMS | $20/month per Retell SMS number plus $0.01 a message | $0.02 a message, in and out, on Enterprise; the Agent Phone Plan includes unlimited US and Canada texts, capped at 100 a day |
For an Australian business the row that matters is the first. Retell’s number-purchase page says Retell-managed numbers are US and Canada only, although its international-calling page says Retell “also offers international numbers to purchase”, so check the dashboard. Bland’s purchase reference takes US or Canada and says “For others, please contact support.” In practice an Australian caller ID usually means bringing your own carrier on either one. Retell then charges nothing for telephony and Bland charges its standard rate, with your carrier’s bill on top in both cases. For how Retell’s telephony compares with a platform that only connects numbers you already have, see our Retell AI vs ElevenLabs Agents comparison.
Outbound campaign tools: Retell’s Dialer vs Bland’s batch calls
Retell has moved bulk outbound to its Dialer. Its batch-call page says “Batch calls are deprecated … Batch calls are still available”, and the pricing page still lists Batch Call at +$0.005 a dial. A Dialer campaign runs a sequence of call and SMS attempts per contact, retries on a delay you set, dials inside a calling window in each contact’s local time, and can screen contacts against federal and state Do Not Call registries, known TCPA litigators, reassigned numbers and line types. That screening is “billed per number checked”, priced in the dashboard; Retell’s own contact DNC check is free. Campaigns can dial from up to 500 numbers, with verified numbers at $10 a month each and a daily spam check at $2 per number a month. We could not find a per-dial fee for Dialer campaigns in Retell’s pricing page or full documentation, as at 6 November 2026.
Bland runs outbound as batch calls: upload a CSV with a phone_number column, pick the agent, and Bland dispatches the list, with an optional start time and a status webhook. Its Send Call reference can leave a voicemail and retry a call that reached voicemail after a delay, and numbers on your do-not-call list are dropped at dial time. Bland’s pricing page ticks SMS and web chat, warm and live transfers, the scheduling node, guardrails and custom dialling for Enterprise only, so a Start or Build batch is voice-only.
Languages: what each platform says it supports
Retell’s language-support page lists 55 languages, each covered by at least one voice provider and at least one speech-recognition provider, and says the dashboard picker is “the live source of truth”, greying out combinations a given voice or recogniser does not support. English comes in US, UK, Australian, New Zealand and Indian variants. Bland’s documentation says the platform “handles 40+ languages out of the box”; its Send Call reference lists codes including en-AU and en-NZ, a “fluent” mode that switches languages on the fly, a beta Babel engine for all languages, and an auto-detect mode for English and Spanish. A count is not a quality score: test your callers’ accents on both.
HIPAA, BAAs and SOC 2 as each vendor states them
Retell’s compliance documentation says Retell is “HIPAA compliant, GDPR compliant, SOC 2 Type 1 & Type 2 certified”, that its BAA and DPA are “available for self-signing” and that “There is no additional fee to sign these agreements.” Its home page adds ISO 27001, which the compliance page does not list. The same compliance page says Retell does “not currently operate services within the European Union.”
Bland’s pricing FAQ says it holds SOC 2 Type I and Type II, is HIPAA compliant “with a signed BAA”, GDPR compliant with a DPA and PCI DSS self-attested, and is FedRAMP 20x Class A and ISO 27001 certified; its trust page lists ISO 27001:2022 and PCI DSS v4.0.1. Its pricing page lists the BAA, SSO and data residency on Enterprise, and says compliance documentation “is available under NDA on Enterprise.” In practice, a small healthcare team can self-sign a BAA on Retell’s pay-as-you-go plan, while on Bland the BAA comes with an Enterprise contract.
Retell AI vs Bland AI: which should you choose?
How this comparison was built. zian.ai publishes this page, and Zian appears in it, so read it with that in mind. Zian is listed first as our platform pick by editorial policy, and LeadsNow.ai as the done-for-you pick; neither is scored or priced. Retell and Bland facts come only from each vendor’s own pricing page, documentation, trust page and changelog, read on 6 November 2026, and the same evidence rule applies to both. The bills are our arithmetic on published rates, with every assumption stated above.
| Option | Choose it when | It is the wrong pick when |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Zian AI (platform pick) | You want AI agents that answer inbound calls 24/7 and run outbound follow-up across voice, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger, with booking built in | You need a published per-minute price today, or you want to build your own agent stack from components |
| 2. LeadsNow.ai (done-for-you pick) | You want appointments set for you on a pay-per-result basis, with leads answered in under 60 seconds, 24/7 | You want to own and operate the agent yourself |
| 3. Retell AI | You will run a lean model and voice (under the Bundle Line), want 100,000+ minutes a month on pay-as-you-go, want 20 concurrent calls included, or need a self-signed BAA | You want one predictable rate with no model or voice choices, or your stack runs above about 15 cents a minute at mid volume |
| 4. Bland AI | You want the model, speech-to-text and voice in one rate, caps that reject calls rather than add charges, and you dial under 2,000 calls a day on Build | You need SMS, warm transfers or a BAA without an Enterprise contract, or your volume exceeds Build’s daily cap |
The sentences on Retell’s and Bland’s own pages that cut against this page
Bland’s strongest counter-argument is predictability: “Hitting limits means calls get rejected rather than incurring unexpected charges”, and its pricing page promises “No surprise bills.” The same pricing FAQ argues the per-minute case directly: adding typical provider rates “brings most production stacks to roughly $0.13 to $0.30 per minute on Vapi and $0.11 to $0.25 per minute on Retell, depending on which model and voice you pick.” Our Stack B ($0.174) sits inside that Retell range; Stack A ($0.093) sits below it because it pairs a low-cost model and voice rather than the leading LLM and ElevenLabs or OpenAI voice Bland’s estimate assumes. A Retell bill depends on the model, voice, add-ons and rules such as long-prompt scaling, so it takes more care to forecast. Retell’s own promise, “No minimums, no contracts, no surprises”, is accurate for the plan itself, which has no fee and no term. The sentence that cuts against Retell sits on its billing page: “Credits never expire, but they are non-refundable once purchased.”
Neither changelog moves these numbers. Bland’s product changelog has no entry after 3 August 2026, so none in the last 90 days. Retell’s entries in that window (Workflows, Conductor, a model benchmark, Conversation Memory at $0.005 per run on 8 October, GPT-Live-1 on 2 November) change no core per-minute rate. The bills above leave out Retell’s DNC screening, branded and verified numbers and add-ons, and Bland’s possible telephony charge, its token-billed Norm builder and any Enterprise contract. Re-read both pricing pages on the day you budget.
Retell AI vs Bland AI questions people ask
Is Retell AI cheaper than Bland AI?
It depends on the model and voice you run on Retell. In our worked outbound bill for 25,000 minutes a month, Retell with GPT 5 mini and a $0.015 voice costs $2,335.00, Bland’s Build plan costs $3,749.00, and Retell with GPT 5.6 Terra and an ElevenLabs Flash voice costs $4,360.00. At that volume, a Retell stack above about 15 cents a minute is dearer than Bland Build. Prices as at 6 November 2026.
What does Bland AI’s per-minute price include?
Bland’s pricing page lists the LLM, speech-to-text and text-to-speech under “Included in your per-minute rate”: $0.14 a minute on Start and $0.12 on Build, which adds a $299 monthly platform fee. On telephony Bland says two things: its pricing FAQ says telephony is “billed separately … at pass-through cost”, while its documentation index says per-minute pricing covers telephony “in a single line item”.
Do Retell and Bland charge for calls that don’t connect?
Retell does not: its pricing FAQ says “If a call fails to connect, you won’t be billed.” Bland’s billing documentation charges $0.015 per failed call and sets a $0.015 minimum per outbound attempt when you use Bland’s telephony. At one connect in three, that adds $375.00 to a 25,000-minute month on Bland. Both vendors bill connected time to the second.
How many concurrent calls do Retell and Bland allow?
Retell includes 20 concurrent calls per pay-as-you-go workspace and sells more at $8 each a month. Burst above the limit costs $0.10 a minute extra, but Retell’s batch and Dialer campaign calls never burst. Bland allows 10 concurrent calls on Start and 50 on Build, with daily caps of 100 and 2,000 calls, and sizes Enterprise concurrency to your volume.
Can I use my own Twilio or SIP trunk with Retell or Bland?
Yes, on both. Retell connects your own Twilio, Telnyx or other carrier by elastic SIP trunking or SIP URI dialling and prints “No Charge for Sip Trunking/Custom Telephony”. Bland connects your Twilio account or a SIP trunk and charges its standard per-minute rate, with carrier fees billed to you. Its billing documentation describes SIP as “for enterprise customers”, while its pricing FAQ names no plan.
Which one signs a HIPAA BAA?
Both offer one, on different terms. Retell’s security and compliance page says its BAA is “available for self-signing” and that “There is no additional fee to sign these agreements.” Bland’s pricing page lists the BAA, SSO and data residency on its Enterprise plan, and says compliance documentation is available under NDA on Enterprise.
Where every figure on this page comes from
| Figure | Who published it | Link | Date read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voice Infra $0.055; LLM rows $0.0016 to $0.32 standard, $0.64 Fast Tier; GPT 5 mini $0.008; GPT 5.6 Terra $0.064 (Recommended); voices $0.015, ElevenLabs Flash $0.040 to $0.10; US telephony $0.015; no charge for SIP or custom telephony; Batch Call +$0.005/dial; numbers $2; Retell SMS $20/month and $0.01/message; concurrency 20 free then $8; per-second billing; failed calls not billed; voicemail and transfer rules; Enterprise concurrency wording; “No minimums, no contracts, no surprises”; “SOC 2 certified, HIPAA-ready” | Retell AI | retellai.com/pricing | 6 November 2026 |
| Prepaid credits; 30 September 2026 move from monthly billing; $10 trial credits; credits non-refundable | Retell AI | Billing: credits, auto recharge, and invoices | 6 November 2026 |
| 10-second minimum; 4,000-token scaling | Retell AI | Exceptions to Our Per-Minute Pricing | 6 November 2026 |
| 20 concurrent calls per workspace; burst +$0.10/min, lower of 3 times or limit plus 300; batch and Dialer calls never burst; reserved inbound concurrency | Retell AI | Understand concurrency & limits | 6 November 2026 |
| Batch calls deprecated, still available | Retell AI | Create and schedule batch calls | 6 November 2026 |
| Dialer sequences, calling windows, DNC and TCPA screening billed per number checked; campaign limit half the workspace limit; 500 numbers; verified numbers $10; spam check $2; 1 CPS per provider | Retell AI | Outbound call campaigns; Compliance checks; Caller ID and pacing | 6 November 2026 |
| 15 Twilio countries and rates (Australia $0.10, UK $0.10, India $0.15, Philippines $0.80); Telnyx US and Canada $0.03, India $0.25 | Retell AI | International calling | 6 November 2026 |
| US and Canada numbers only; toll-free $5 and $0.06 inbound; Telnyx US $2 | Retell AI | Purchase phone number | 6 November 2026 |
| Elastic SIP trunking, SIP URI dialling, transports, provider guides | Retell AI | Custom telephony | 6 November 2026 |
| 55 languages; dashboard picker is the live source | Retell AI | Supported languages by provider | 6 November 2026 |
| HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2 Type 1 and 2; self-signed BAA and DPA, no fee; no services operated in the EU | Retell AI | Security and compliance | 6 November 2026 |
| ISO 27001 claim | Retell AI | retellai.com | 6 November 2026 |
| Changelog entries, 24 August to 2 November 2026; Conversation Memory $0.005 per run | Retell AI | retellai.com/changelog | 6 November 2026 |
| Start $0.14, Build $0.12 + $299; transfer $0.05/$0.04; concurrency 10/50; daily and hourly caps; LLM, STT, TTS included; Enterprise-only features incl. SMS, warm transfers, guardrails, custom dialling, BAA; telephony FAQ; Retell and Vapi stack estimate ($0.11 to $0.25 a minute on Retell); BYOT; compliance FAQ; “2 credits + an inbound number” | Bland AI | bland.ai/pricing | 6 November 2026 |
| Per-second proration; $0.015 outbound minimum and failed calls; voicemail; Scale $499/$0.11/5,000 a day/100 concurrent; Enterprise unlimited; caps reject calls; SIP “for enterprise customers”; carrier fees on BYOT; SMS $0.02 | Bland AI | Billing & Plans | 6 November 2026 |
| Connected call above the minimum pays only the per-minute rate | Bland AI | Billing Update: Outbound Call Pricing | 6 November 2026 |
| Agent Phone Plan caps: 1 concurrent, 20 an hour, 50 a day, 1,000 minutes a day | Bland AI | Agent Phone Plan | 6 November 2026 |
| Telephony “in a single line item”; “40+ languages” | Bland AI | docs.bland.ai/llms.txt | 6 November 2026 |
| Numbers $15/month, US or Canada | Bland AI | Purchase Phone Number | 6 November 2026 |
| International calls need $5 of credits or auto-recharge; language codes; voicemail and retry options | Bland AI | Send Call | 6 November 2026 |
| SIP trunks, numbers on your own carrier, porting | Bland AI | SIP | 6 November 2026 |
| Own Twilio account and number import | Bland AI | Custom Twilio Integration | 6 November 2026 |
| SMS on Enterprise and Agent Phone Plan | Bland AI | SMS | 6 November 2026 |
| CSV batch calls; do-not-call numbers dropped at dial time | Bland AI | Batch Calls | 6 November 2026 |
| ISO 27001:2022, PCI DSS v4.0.1, HIPAA with BAA | Bland AI | Trust & security | 6 November 2026 |
| Latest changelog entry 3 August 2026 | Bland AI | bland.ai/changelog | 6 November 2026 |
| Worked bills at 5,000, 25,000 and 100,000 minutes; dials a day; the Bundle Line and its threshold table | Zian AI calculation from the Retell and Bland rates above, with stated assumptions | This page | 6 November 2026 |
| 50,769+ qualified sales appointments set | Zian AI | zian.ai | 6 November 2026 |
| Pay-per-result; leads answered in under 60 seconds, 24/7 | LeadsNow.ai | leadsnow.ai | 6 November 2026 |
Want the calls answered and the appointments booked, not a stack to maintain? Zian answers inbound calls 24/7 as an AI receptionist, sets appointments from inbound and outbound conversations, and follows up by voice, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger. It is in partnership-application beta. Apply For Partnership