Vapi

Overview

Vapi is a developer-centric platform designed for building, deploying, and scaling advanced voice AI agents. The platform provides comprehensive infrastructure for creating human-like, multilingual voice agents capable of automating phone operations, customer interactions, and business workflows through a highly configurable API.

Built for both engineers and business users, Vapi offers streaming interfaces and modular building blocks for constructing conversational agents. The platform supports multiple cloud-based engines for automatic speech recognition (ASR), seamlessly integrates with various large language models (LLMs), and provides high-fidelity synthesis through multiple text-to-speech (TTS) providers.

Vapi's infrastructure is designed to handle dynamic workloads with advertised sub-500ms infrastructure latency (end-to-end conversational latency depends on your STT/LLM/TTS choices and network conditions) and 99.99% infrastructure uptime. The platform can scale from development to millions of calls in minutes. Vapi supports enterprise compliance needs including SOC 2 and PCI, with HIPAA options available through enterprise arrangements. For large enterprises, on-premise deployment options are available via enterprise agreements, along with built-in guardrails for handling interruptions and reducing unwanted model behavior.

Key Features

• Highly Configurable API — Offers thousands of configuration options and seamless integrations, enabling developers to build custom voice AI agents tailored to specific business requirements with full flexibility.

• Multilingual Voice Support — Advertises support for over 100 languages including English, Spanish, and Mandarin, though actual language coverage depends on the specific STT and TTS providers you configure, enabling businesses to serve global audiences.

• Bring Your Own Models — Allows integration of custom API keys for transcription, LLMs, or TTS models, or deployment of self-hosted models for complete control over the AI stack and data flow.

• Plug-and-Play Integrations — Provides integrations across 40+ apps and common tooling in the voice-agent stack, enabling embedding of agents into telephony systems, websites, and enterprise applications.

• Automated Testing & A/B Experiments — Enables creation of test suites with simulated voice agents to identify issues before production, plus experimentation with different prompts, voices, and workflows to optimize performance.

• Enterprise-Grade Infrastructure — Delivers advertised sub-500ms infrastructure latency with 99.99% infrastructure uptime, designed to scale up and down to millions of calls in minutes to handle varying demand levels efficiently.

Pricing & Plans

Vapi employs a usage-based pricing model where costs are determined by actual consumption of platform services and resources. The platform lists a base $0.05 per minute charge for calls. In addition to Vapi's platform fee, you'll pay your chosen STT, TTS, LLM, and telephony vendors—typically passed through at vendor cost.

Pricing Structure:

The total cost consists of Vapi's platform fee plus costs from your selected service providers:

• Platform Fee: $0.05 per minute for core infrastructure usage
• Speech-to-Text: Varies by provider and model (e.g., Deepgram lists pricing such as $0.0077/min for certain real-time models)
• Text-to-Speech: Typically billed per character or credit depending on provider (e.g., ElevenLabs uses credits per character; rates depend on model and plan)
• LLM Usage: Token-based pricing that varies by model and conversation length (e.g., GPT-3.5 to GPT-4 Turbo); actual per-minute costs depend on conversation patterns and context usage
• Telephony: Pricing varies by provider, direction (inbound/outbound), and country (e.g., Twilio lists separate rates for different call types and regions)
• Phone Numbers: Monthly fees vary by country and number type

Additional Considerations:

Vapi pricing is primarily usage-based, but some capabilities may involve monthly add-ons (e.g., call concurrency lines or compliance options like HIPAA) depending on your plan. Your total monthly cost will depend on your chosen vendors, usage volume, model selections, and geographic regions.

Free Trial:

• New users receive $10 in free credits upon signup for platform exploration.

Enterprise customers can contact the sales team for volume discounts and custom deployment options.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Comprehensive developer tooling with RESTful API, CLI, and SDKs (including TypeScript/Node options) for rapid integration
• Advertised sub-500ms infrastructure latency with 99.99% infrastructure uptime for reliable production deployments
• Flexible model selection allows using preferred AI providers or self-hosted models
• Enterprise-ready with SOC 2 and PCI compliance, HIPAA options via enterprise arrangements, and on-premise deployment for large enterprises
• Extensive integration ecosystem with 40+ apps and telephony provider options

Cons:

• Usage-based pricing can become expensive at scale compared to flat-rate alternatives
• Requires technical expertise to configure and optimize multi-component architecture
• Cost complexity with multiple pricing variables across STT, TTS, LLM, and telephony services

Best For

• Engineering teams building custom voice AI solutions that require full control over the AI stack and integrations
• Enterprises needing SOC 2 or PCI compliance, with HIPAA support available through enterprise arrangements and on-premise deployment options for sensitive voice data
• Developers seeking low-latency voice interactions with flexible model choices and extensive customization options
• Businesses automating high-volume phone operations across multiple languages and regions
• Organizations needing to integrate voice agents with existing business systems and telephony infrastructure

FAQ