What is Vapi?
Vapi (Y Combinator Winter 2021) is an API for building voice agents that talk on the phone or on the web. You choose the transcriber, language model and voice from different providers, and Vapi joins them up, handles interruptions and turn-taking, and runs the calls.
Vapi charges $0.05 a minute for hosting and passes provider costs through with no markup; new accounts get $5 of free credit. It raised a $50M Series B led by Peak XV in May 2026 at a reported $500M valuation, and says more than 1 million developers have built 2.7 million agents that have handled over 1 billion calls. Amazon Ring routes all its inbound calls through it.
How much does Vapi cost?
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| No package | $0.05/min hosting | 4 concurrent calls, 14-day retention, $5 free credit |
| Core | $29/month | 10 concurrent calls, 30-day retention, zero data retention option |
| Pro | 10% hosting fee, $999/month minimum | 30 concurrent calls, 180-day retention, RBAC, 99% uptime SLA |
| Premier | Custom |
$0.05/min hosting plus provider costs at cost; $5 free credit. Core $29/month (10 concurrent calls, 30-day retention); Pro 10% hosting fee with a $999/month minimum; Premier custom. HIPAA add-on $2,000/month; extra concurrency $10/line/month.
Is Vapi worth it?
Building a phone agent from parts means stitching together speech recognition, a language model, a voice and a phone line, then fighting the half-second delays that make callers talk over the bot.
Vapi does the stitching. You pick each provider, for example Deepgram to listen, an OpenAI model to think and ElevenLabs to speak, and Vapi runs the conversation and the call. Switching any one of them is a setting, not a rewrite, which matters when a cheaper or better voice ships every few months.
The scale is real. Vapi says it has passed 1 billion calls and handles 1 to 5 million a day, and TechCrunch reported that Amazon Ring tested more than 40 voice vendors before picking it. On price, Vapi's own calculator puts 1,000 minutes at $82 to $129 a month all in, which is roughly 8 to 13 cents a minute, in line with Retell.
The catch: the extras add up. Health data needs the HIPAA add-on at $2,000 a month, where Retell signs a BAA for free. The free tier allows only 4 simultaneous calls and keeps call data for 14 days; Pro, with 30 lines and 180 days, has a $999 monthly minimum. You also deal with several provider bills and their separate rate limits behind one dashboard.
Our take: Vapi is the toolkit for a developer who wants to swap every component and wire agents into their own stack, and Retell is the tidier bill for a team that just needs phone calls answered, especially in healthcare.
Where it earns its place
A two-engineer startup building a booking assistant for salons
Prototype a voice agent and test cheaper voices without rebuilding
Start on the $5 credit, then the $29 Core plan for 10 lines and 30-day logs. At Vapi's sample rate of $82 to $129 per 1,000 minutes, a pilot of 5,000 minutes runs about $410 to $645 a month.
A platform team at a home services software company
Embed voice agents for thousands of customer accounts
Pro charges a 10% hosting fee with a $999 minimum and allows 10 workspaces and 30 concurrent calls; each extra line is $10 a month, so 200 concurrent calls adds $1,700 a month in concurrency.
A telehealth company's compliance lead
Run patient reminder calls under HIPAA
Add the $2,000-a-month HIPAA package with a BAA and DPA, and turn on zero data retention from Core upwards. That fixed cost only makes sense at volume; at 10,000 minutes it adds 20 cents a minute.
Before you commit
- Setup
- Sign up with $5 of credit, create an assistant in the dashboard or API, pick providers, attach a number and call it; no minimum minutes.
- Integrations
- Transcribers such as Deepgram, models from OpenAI and others, voices such as ElevenLabs; Twilio, Vonage and Telnyx telephony or Vapi's own SIP; WebSockets and Daily WebRTC for web calls.
- Data and privacy
- Call data kept 14 days on the free tier, 30 on Core and 180 on Pro; zero data retention from Core; HIPAA BAA only through the $2,000-a-month add-on.
- Cost at scale
- 10,000 minutes a month at Vapi's own per-1,000-minute estimate comes to roughly $820 to $1,290 including providers; Pro's 10% fee replaces the per-minute hosting charge but carries a $999 minimum.
- Limits
- 4 concurrent calls free, 10 on Core, 30 on Pro; support on the free tier is Discord and email with no guaranteed response time.
What's good
- Bring any transcriber, model and voice, and switch without rewriting
- Provider costs passed through with no markup
- Free transport over Vapi telephony, SIP, WebSockets and Daily WebRTC
- Unlimited agents plus testing and simulation tools on every plan
- Proven at scale: over 1 billion calls, Amazon Ring in production
What's not
- HIPAA BAA costs $2,000 a month extra
- Free tier capped at 4 concurrent calls and 14-day retention
- Pro carries a $999 monthly minimum
- Extra concurrency is $10 per line per month
- Several provider choices to tune and monitor
Best for
Developers building voice agents into their own product who want to choose and swap each speech, model and voice provider.
Vapi alternatives
Vapi: common questions
- Is Vapi worth it?
- Vapi gives developers the most freedom to mix and match voice providers, and charges for it the moment your agent handles anything sensitive. We rate it 4.3 out of 5.
- How much does Vapi cost?
- $0.05/min hosting plus provider costs at cost; $5 free credit. Core $29/month (10 concurrent calls, 30-day retention); Pro 10% hosting fee with a $999/month minimum; Premier custom. HIPAA add-on $2,000/month; extra concurrency $10/line/month.
- What are the downsides of Vapi?
- HIPAA BAA costs $2,000 a month extra; free tier capped at 4 concurrent calls and 14-day retention; pro carries a $999 monthly minimum; extra concurrency is $10 per line per month; several provider choices to tune and monitor.
- Who is Vapi best for?
- Developers building voice agents into their own product who want to choose and swap each speech, model and voice provider.
- How much does Vapi cost for a team or in production?
- 10,000 minutes a month at Vapi's own per-1,000-minute estimate comes to roughly $820 to $1,290 including providers; Pro's 10% fee replaces the per-minute hosting charge but carries a $999 minimum.
- Is Vapi safe for company data?
- Call data kept 14 days on the free tier, 30 on Core and 180 on Pro; zero data retention from Core; HIPAA BAA only through the $2,000-a-month add-on.
- What are the best Vapi alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are Retell AI, ElevenLabs and Sierra.
Answers checked Oct 26, 2026.
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