The Bland AI alternatives worth shortlisting are Cartesia Managed Agents, Vapi, Retell AI, Synthflow, ElevenLabs Agents, LiveKit Agents, and Pipecat. They split into three groups: hosted platforms that run the agent for you, an enterprise contract vendor, and open-source frameworks you deploy yourself. Which group fits depends on why Bland stopped working for you, whether that is the price per minute, the voice, the plan limits, or wanting more control over the models.
We build Cartesia, so weigh our view accordingly. Every competitor price and feature below comes from that vendor’s own site, read on November 10, 2026.
What Bland charges, for reference
Bland’s pricing page lists three plans:
| Plan | Platform fee | Talk time | Transfer time | Concurrent calls | Daily call cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start | $0 | $0.14/min | $0.05/min | 10 | 100 |
| Build | $299/month | $0.12/min | $0.04/min | 50 | 2,000 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Unlimited |
The per-minute rate includes the LLM, speech-to-text, and text-to-speech. Telephony is billed separately, through your own carrier or Bland’s Twilio at pass-through cost. On-prem and VPC deployment, a BAA, SSO, and data residency sit on the Enterprise plan. Our Bland AI pricing guide works through what those rates cost at real volumes.
Alternatives at a glance
| Platform | Type | Listed price per minute (Nov 10, 2026) | Models |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cartesia Managed Agents | Hosted platform | $0.03, plus $0.014 for a Cartesia number | Ink 2 + your LLM + Sonic 3.6 |
| Vapi | Hosted platform | $0.05 hosting, plus models at cost | Your choice |
| Retell AI | Hosted platform | $0.07 to $0.31 | Your choice |
| Synthflow | Enterprise platform | Annual contract, no per-minute rate | Bundled |
| ElevenLabs Agents | Hosted platform | $0.08, plus the LLM | ElevenLabs + your LLM |
| LiveKit Agents | Framework and cloud | $0.01 session, plus models | Your choice |
| Pipecat | Open-source framework | Free, plus models and hosting | Your choice |
A listed rate is only part of the bill. Bland’s rate includes the LLM; most of the others add it on top. Compare the same call, with the same LLM, voice, and telephony, on every finalist.
Cartesia Managed Agents
Managed Agents runs Ink 2 for speech-to-text, an LLM you choose, and Sonic 3.6 for speech. Both speech models are our own. In the independent Artificial Analysis Speech Arena, Sonic 3.6 had an Elo of 1276 in September 2026, against 1036 for Bland TTS. The Sonic vs. Bland TTS comparison has the chart.
Calls cost $0.03 a minute on every plan, with the LLM billed separately. A Cartesia-provided phone number adds $0.014 a minute; your own Twilio account or SIP trunk does not (pricing). You configure the agent in the playground or through the API, give it tools that call your systems during the call, and test it from the browser before you move a number.
To move, recreate one call flow first: node prompts become the agent’s instructions, and each webhook, transfer, and end-call node becomes a tool. The Cartesia vs. Bland AI page walks through that mapping for a rescheduling flow.
Pick it when the voice decides whether callers stay on the line and you want a lower per-minute rate than Bland’s.
Vapi
Vapi calls itself a platform for “voice agents for builders”. Vapi’s pricing page lists $0.05 a minute for hosting on the pay-as-you-go plan, with transcriber, LLM, and voice passed through at cost. Its own estimate for 1,000 minutes a month is $82 to $129. Core is $29 a month, and extra concurrent lines are $10 each a month. HIPAA is a $2,000-a-month add-on. Vapi chose Cartesia as its default voice provider.
Pick it when you want to choose every model and are comfortable reading several line items per call.
Retell AI
Retell sells a no-code studio with a drag-and-drop canvas for call flows. Its pricing page lists $0.07 to $0.31 a minute on pay-as-you-go: $0.055 for Retell’s voice infrastructure, plus the voice, the LLM, and telephony. Cartesia voices are on Retell’s menu at $0.015 a minute, and Retell reports 2 to 3 times faster time to first audio with Cartesia than with the next best provider on its platform.
Pick it when an operations team, not engineers, will build and edit the call flows.
Synthflow
Synthflow sells only annual enterprise agreements. Its pricing page says there is no per-minute rate and no free plan; the contract is scoped by call volume, phone system, integrations, security needs, and launch support. Telephony runs on Synthflow’s own lines, SIP trunking, or approved enterprise systems.
Pick it when you want a vendor to scope and run the rollout and you can sign an annual contract.
ElevenLabs Agents
ElevenLabs bills agents by call minute. Its agents pricing page lists plans up to Business ($990 a month, 12,375 minutes, 40 concurrent calls), with extra minutes at $0.08 and $0.16 for calls above your concurrency limit. The LLM is billed separately.
Pick it when your team already uses ElevenLabs for voiceover and wants agents on the same account.
LiveKit Agents
LiveKit Agents is an open-source framework for writing the agent loop in code. You can self-host it or deploy to LiveKit Cloud, which charges $0.01 per agent session minute after the included allowance, with model inference available on the same bill. Sonic and Ink run on LiveKit through the LiveKit integration.
Pick it when you have engineers and want full control over the pipeline without running media servers.
Pipecat
Pipecat is an open-source Python framework for voice and multimodal agents, BSD-2-Clause licensed and maintained by Daily and its community. It is free; you pay the model providers and host it yourself. Cartesia is listed among its speech-to-text and text-to-speech services.
Pick it when you want the most control and the fewest platform opinions. Our Pipecat tutorial builds a working agent with Ink and Sonic.
How to choose
Start from the reason you are leaving Bland:
- The price per minute. Write down your monthly minutes, then price each finalist with the same LLM and telephony. Bland’s rate includes the LLM, so add the LLM to the others before comparing.
- The voice. Put the same script through each finalist on a real phone line. Listen for numbers, addresses, and confirmation codes, which is where speech models tend to slip.
- Plan limits. Check concurrency, daily call caps, and what happens when you exceed them. On Bland, Start caps you at 100 calls a day and Build at 2,000.
- Control. If you want to swap models or change audio handling, a framework (LiveKit Agents or Pipecat) or a compose-your-own platform (Vapi) gives you that. If you want one bill and a visual builder, stay with a hosted platform.
Our AI voice agent platforms guide compares the same platforms by architecture.
Try Cartesia Managed Agents
Build an agent and test-call it in the Cartesia playground on the free plan, which includes $1 of agent usage a month. If you would rather keep another platform, Vapi, Retell, LiveKit, and Pipecat all support Sonic as the agent’s voice.