Voice agent cost per minute
Every month my agent talks for , up to call at once.
Mistral Voxtral is the cheapest, at $40.00 a month. OpenAI would cost 2.4 times as much.
Estimated monthly bill for 1,000 minutes, lowest first. 5 of 7 providers fit.
- 1Mistral VoxtralVoice Agents API (Mistral Small 4), $0.04/min audio in + out$40.00 per monthLowest priceVisit Voxtral
Audio in + out $40.00 Monthly total $40.00 Works out to $0.04 per minute.
- 2AssemblyAIVoice Agent API, $0.075/min audio in + out$75.00 per month+$35.00, 87.5% moreVisit AssemblyAI
Audio in + out $75.00 Monthly total $75.00 Works out to $0.075 per minute.
- 2DeepgramVoice Agent API (Standard), $0.075/min audio in + out$75.00 per month+$35.00, 87.5% moreVisit Deepgram
Audio in + out $75.00 Monthly total $75.00 Works out to $0.075 per minute.
- 4ElevenLabsSpeech Engine (voice agents), $0.08/min audio in + out$80.00 per month+$40.00, 100.0% moreVisit ElevenLabs
Audio in + out $80.00 Monthly total $80.00 Works out to $0.08 per minute.
- 5OpenAIGPT-Realtime-2.1, Per-token billing, converted to minutes$96.00 per month+$56.00, 140.0% moreEstimateVisit OpenAI
Tokens in + out $96.00 Monthly total $96.00 Works out to $0.096 per minute. Estimated from audio-token rates. Estimated.
Converted to tokens at 600 input and 1200 output tokens per minute.
Not available for this setup
- AzureDoes not offer this service.
- Google CloudDoes not offer this service.
- Prices updated 2026-10-23.
- Free-tier credits are not subtracted.
- How we calculate this
Some “Visit” links are affiliate links: the provider may pay us if you sign up. That never changes the order, which is set by price alone.
Voice agent cost per minute
Realtime voice APIs bill for the minutes a conversation is open, either at a flat per-minute rate or by audio tokens in and out. Token-based prices are converted to minutes here, so those rows are estimates and are labelled that way.
Per-minute figures may leave out the language model behind the agent. Add that cost separately if your stack calls an external model.
Frequently asked questions
- Which voice agent API is cheapest at 1,000 minutes a month?
- Mistral Voxtral is the cheapest of the 5 providers we compare for this use, at $40.00 a month (prices updated 2026-10-23). The order changes with volume, so enter your own number in the calculator.
- How is the monthly cost calculated?
- We apply each provider’s published pricing (tiers, plans or per-token rates) to your volume. Free-tier credits and taxes are not included. The methodology page lists every source and rule.
- Are these prices up to date?
- Prices were last checked on 2026-10-23 and are reviewed every month. Every change is listed on the price changes page.