Voice-agent cost calculator
What an AI phone agent really costs per month in emerging markets across South Asia, Africa, and South America — comparing three telephony architectures at your call volume. All math runs in your browser.
At 11,000 calls/month × 3 min with 70% on WhatsApp, Telnyx + IDT Express (CPaaS + wholesale blend) is cheapest at $1,672/month — but it's within $19 of Twilio, so ship the simpler one.
Twilio
CPaaS end-to-end
Numbers, SIP, and media from one vendor. Fastest to ship; Vonage is the like-for-like alternative.
$1,691/mo
$0.154 per call
- Telephony
- $297
- AI stack
- $967
- Platform
- $427
Telnyx + IDT Express
CPaaS + wholesale blend
Telnyx for numbers and failover, IDT Express wholesale routes for the minutes. Plivo also fits the CPaaS half.
$1,672/mo
$0.152 per call
- Telephony
- $178
- AI stack
- $967
- Platform
- $527
IDT Express + own SBC
Wholesale direct · FreeSWITCH
Direct carrier interconnects behind your own session border controller.
$1,933/mo
$0.176 per call
- Telephony
- $139
- AI stack
- $967
- Platform
- $827
The point of this tool: drag the WhatsApp slider from 0 to 100 and watch the winner change. At high WhatsApp share, the wholesale-infrastructure option becomes the most expensive — its fixed cost outweighs the minutes it saves, because there are barely any billable minutes left. Going WhatsApp-first and building wholesale telephony infrastructure are mutually exclusive strategies.
Why WhatsApp share moves everything
WhatsApp calls ride the customer's data connection — no per-minute termination, just a small conversation fee. None of these markets block WhatsApp calling (unlike the UAE), and India is WhatsApp's largest market. The caveat: Meta prohibits cold outreach, so the cheap channel only reaches contacts who opted in. Cold calls stay on PSTN.
Corridor rates — outbound to mobile, per minute
| Market | Wholesale | Via CPaaS | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Asia | |||
| India | ~$0.009 | ~$0.022 | Local numbers hard — TRAI rules strictest |
| Pakistan | ~$0.021 | ~$0.045 | KYC required — PTA filters grey routes |
| Bangladesh | ~$0.015 | ~$0.035 | IGW regime; use licensed gateways |
| Sri Lanka | ~$0.055 | ~$0.095 | Limited local numbers |
| Nepal | ~$0.065 | ~$0.110 | High termination; few direct routes |
| Africa | |||
| Nigeria | ~$0.035 | ~$0.070 | KYC required — NCC enforcing against SIM-box |
| Kenya | ~$0.045 | ~$0.085 | Registered sender/caller IDs advised |
| Ghana | ~$0.055 | ~$0.100 | Surtax on international inbound |
| South Africa | ~$0.025 | ~$0.055 | Best local-number availability in region |
| Egypt | ~$0.075 | ~$0.120 | High termination; VoIP restrictions apply |
| South America | |||
| Brazil | ~$0.008 | ~$0.025 | Cheap minutes; number regs via Anatel |
| Colombia | ~$0.006 | ~$0.020 | Among the cheapest corridors anywhere |
| Peru | ~$0.006 | ~$0.020 | Cheap; local DIDs widely available |
| Chile | ~$0.010 | ~$0.030 | Straightforward; good route quality |
| Argentina | ~$0.014 | ~$0.040 | FX volatility shows up in rate cards |
Assumptions
| AI stack (cascaded) | $0.0293/min | Deepgram $0.0060 + LLM $0.0033 + TTS $0.0200 |
| Gemini Live | $0.037/min | Effective rate from audio-token pricing |
| GPT Realtime / Mini | $0.050 / $0.016 per min | Base-math estimates; token billing varies |
| Ultravox Realtime | $0.050/min | Published flat rate, hosted agent stack included |
| WhatsApp fee | $0.01/call | Conversation fee; no per-minute charge |
| PSTN A / B / C | $0.030 / $0.018 / $0.014 per min | Blended emerging-market outbound-mobile rates |
| Fixed infra A / B / C | $350 / $450 / $750 per month | Numbers, monitoring, SBC hosting, ops time |
Figures are indicative and for sizing, not contracting. Corridor rates move weekly and vary by route quality; engine rates are list-price approximations as of September 2026. Currency conversion uses an indicative FX snapshot (September 2026) — the model is priced in USD, and the rate tables above stay in USD. Verify against current rate cards before committing to an architecture.