Telnyx
Get the voice agent and the phone network it runs on from one provider, useful when you want billing in one place.
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The carrier-grade option. Telnyx owns the phone network its agents run on, so SIP, numbers and the AI are one first-party stack, with native warm transfer and MCP. Pricing is itemised from a $0.05/min base. The catch: it is built for developers, not drag-and-drop.
About $0.06 to 0.20 for a minute of conversation, once the phone line and the AI are added in.
That's roughly $3.60–12.00 an hour. Plans: from $0/mo (Pay as you go) up to $5000/mo (Enterprise).
Pricing
Show the cost breakdown
| What the platform charges to run the agent, before the phone line and the AI usage are added on. | $0.05 /min |
|---|---|
| The step that turns what the caller says out loud into text the AI can read. | — |
| The AI 'brain' that reads what the caller said and works out what to say back. | $0.01 /min |
| The step that turns the AI's written reply back into a spoken voice. | — |
| The phone line itself: the service that connects the call to a real phone number. Usually billed on top of the platform. | $0.01 /min |
| The total you actually pay for one minute of conversation once every piece is added up: the platform, the AI, the voice and the phone line. | $0.06–0.20 /min |
The pricing page was rebuilt between our 2026-07-23 and 2026-07-30 captures (same URL). The $0.05/min voice engine did not move, but it is now sold as 'No fine print': orchestration, hosted speech-to-text and hosted text-to-speech in the one rate, with language-model tokens at Telnyx GPU prices and telephony at carrier cost on top. Three commitment tiers replaced the old two: pay as you go at $0, Committed at a $500/mo minimum (marked BEST VALUE) and Enterprise at a $5,000/mo minimum, all running the same platform, models and network, with the minimum buying volume discounts and support rather than features. Telnyx's own estimator on that page outputs about $0.056/min for a production agent and the closing CTA reads 'about six cents a minute'; we keep our own derived range rather than adopt the vendor's estimate, so our low end stays at 0.06. The page also gained a 'Compliance is included. Not an add-on' section claiming regulated-industry readiness on every account including pay as you go, and pointing at rivals charging 'up to $2,000/month extra for HIPAA'. That is marketing copy, not a certification or a signed BAA, so it does not change the HIPAA tick below, which stays unticked on the help-centre evidence recorded further down. The same page carries a competitor table quoting Vapi, Retell and ElevenLabs rates; those are the vendor's figures about its rivals and are not used anywhere in our data. Pricing is itemised, pay-as-you-go, and the $0.05/min Voice AI Agent base is now presented as an all-in rate. Speech-to-text is included, and the pricing page's Included Voices tab lists ten text-to-speech voices all marked 'Included in the $0.05/min rate': Telnyx Natural, NaturalHD, Qwen3TTS, Ultra, Rime, Inworld Mini, Inworld Max, Inworld TTS 2, Resemble and Murf (re-read 2026-07-23), so a standard build pays no separate TTS line. Premium and third-party voices sit on a second tab and bill per character; the cheapest listed premium floor was about $0.000009/char (Amazon Polly standard) when last read on 2026-07-11, and that tab did not render in the 2026-07-23 capture, so treat the per-character floor as dated to the earlier evidence. Language-model rates are now presented per 1M tokens (Telnyx-hosted open models, e.g. Qwen3-235B at $0.60 input / $0.40 cached / $2.00 output per 1M, Kimi-K2.5 and K2.6 nearby), or bring your own key for GPT/Claude. Telephony is separate: Call Control and WebRTC $0.002/min, PSTN calls starting at $0.007/min. The llm and telephony components here are representative estimates for a cheap Telnyx-hosted model plus a PSTN call; a frontier model and premium voice push the all-in toward the $0.20 end. Fish Audio TTS was added on 2026-07-13 per the Telnyx release notes but does not yet appear on the Included Voices tab. SOC 2 Type I and II, SOC 3 and GDPR are stated on Telnyx's compliance article (re-confirmed 2026-06-15). HIPAA is asserted in a Telnyx page footer, but Telnyx's own help centre (article last updated 2026-01-29, re-checked 2026-07-23) says it relies on the HIPAA conduit exception and does not sign BAAs, so HIPAA is left unticked here. The product page still states 1,400+ voices across 80+ languages (re-sourced 2026-07-11; it previously showed 29+, stored conservatively at the time).
Every plan in one place: the monthly fee, what each one includes, and the features it unlocks. Anything beyond a plan's allowance, or on a pay-as-you-go tier, is billed at the per-minute rate above. A blank in the features means the vendor's plan page does not state it for that plan, not that it is unavailable.
| Pay as you go | Committed | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $500/mo | $5000/mo |
| Included | Pay per use | — | — |
| Plan notes | $0.05/min voice engine (orchestration, hosted STT and hosted TTS bundled) + per-1M-token LLM + telephony; no subscription. Limits at this tier: 500 concurrent calls, 100 API requests/sec, 50 SMS/sec, community support | Monthly minimum, not a fee for features: same platform, models and network as pay as you go, with volume discounts across all usage, a dedicated account manager, priority support and higher rate limits. Marked BEST VALUE on the pricing page | Monthly minimum. Everything in Committed plus dedicated infrastructure and IP addressing, private network interconnect and unlimited rate limits; custom pricing. Startups program offers up to $20k credits |
| What each plan unlocks | |||
| Priority support | — | — | 24/7 support + dedicated CSM |
- Pay as you go FreePay per use
$0.05/min voice engine (orchestration, hosted STT and hosted TTS bundled) + per-1M-token LLM + telephony; no subscription. Limits at this tier: 500 concurrent calls, 100 API requests/sec, 50 SMS/sec, community support
- Priority support
- —
- Committed $500/mo—
Monthly minimum, not a fee for features: same platform, models and network as pay as you go, with volume discounts across all usage, a dedicated account manager, priority support and higher rate limits. Marked BEST VALUE on the pricing page
- Priority support
- —
- Enterprise $5000/mo—
Monthly minimum. Everything in Committed plus dedicated infrastructure and IP addressing, private network interconnect and unlimited rate limits; custom pricing. Startups program offers up to $20k credits
- Priority support
- 24/7 support + dedicated CSM
Prices in USD as set by the vendor · last checked 2026-07-30 · vendor pricing →
Slide your expected monthly volume to see roughly what Telnyx would cost.
A rough estimate from Telnyx's sourced rates, not a quote. Always confirm on the vendor's own pricing page before you commit.
At a glance
- Speech-to-text
- Telnyx (included)
- Text-to-speech
- Telnyx Natural / NaturalHD / Ultra, ElevenLabs (BYO key), AWS Polly, Azure · Bring your own voice: you can upload or clone a custom voice instead of being limited to the platform's stock ones.
- Languages
- en, es, fr, de, it, pt, nl, pl
- Integrations
- Native Elastic SIP trunking, Twilio number porting, OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), Telnyx-hosted open-source LLMs, ElevenLabs (BYO TTS), LiveKit, CRM + calendar webhooks
Compliance
Our full take
Most voice-agent platforms rent their phone lines from someone else, usually Twilio, and stack the AI on top. Telnyx is the someone else. It is a licensed carrier that owns its network, so the SIP trunk, the phone numbers, the call routing and the AI agent all sit on one first-party stack. If telephony reliability and control are the things you actually lose sleep over, that single fact is the reason to look here.
The pricing is itemised rather than a single all-in number, which is honest but takes a minute to read. The core agent runs $0.05 a minute for the real-time orchestration, speech-to-text is included, and as of July 2026 ten standard voices are bundled into that same rate, so text-to-speech only becomes a separate per-character line if you reach for a premium or third-party voice. The language model is billed on top by the token (the page now quotes per-million-token rates). Telephony is separate too, $0.002 a minute for call control and from $0.007 a minute for a normal phone call. Bring a cheap Telnyx-hosted open model and a bundled voice and you are around $0.06 to 0.07 a minute all in; reach for a frontier model and a premium voice and it climbs toward $0.15 to 0.20.
What you get for the carrier roots is depth that the newer platforms are still building. Warm transfer with context passing, outbound and batch calling, and Model Context Protocol support for tools are all in the product rather than on a roadmap. You can bring your own language model or your own voice (ElevenLabs and Azure plug in by key), and there are more than a thousand voices (the bundled roster spans Telnyx’s own Natural, NaturalHD, Ultra and Qwen3-TTS plus Rime, Inworld, Resemble and Murf models) across eighty or so languages, with cloning if you need a specific one.
The honest catch is that this is a developer platform, not a drag-and-drop builder. Reviewers are clear that you will be wiring up functions, routing and a little backend yourself, and that the itemised pricing makes the final bill harder to predict than a flat per-minute rate. A few also report onboarding and number-provisioning friction, which is worth weighing if you need to be live next week.
On compliance, Telnyx publishes SOC 2 Type I and Type II, SOC 3, and GDPR, which is what you want from a carrier. HIPAA is asserted in a page footer, but Telnyx’s own help centre says it relies on the HIPAA conduit exception and does not sign a Business Associate Agreement, so this page leaves HIPAA unticked. If a signed BAA is a hard requirement for you, Telnyx is not the carrier for it.
The 1 to 10 scores here are an editorial preview, our provisional read, not a measured result. We have not call-tested Telnyx yet, so there is no Voxrater latency figure on this page. The pricing, capability and compliance detail is sourced from Telnyx’s pricing, product and compliance pages, captured 2026-05-31 and re-verified 2026-07-23.
Telnyx compared
Our in-depth pieces that put Telnyx side by side with the field, with the sourced numbers and a clear pick.
- Alternatives Alternatives to Bland: 5 platforms worth switching to
- Alternatives Alternatives to Retell: 5 platforms worth switching to
- Alternatives Alternatives to Synthflow: 5 voice platforms worth a look
- Alternatives Alternatives to Vapi: 5 voice platforms worth switching to
- Best of Best voice AI platforms for inbound customer support
- Best of Best AI voice agents for outbound sales
Alternatives to Telnyx
Other platforms that overlap with Telnyx on the same kind of work, ranked by how many capabilities they share, then by cheaper all-in cost per minute. Compare any of them side by side on the compare page.
Further reading
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Sources
- Re-captured 2026-07-30 (screenshot in evidence/): pricing page rebuilt. Voice engine still $0.05/min but now presented as bundling orchestration, hosted STT and hosted TTS in one rate ('No fine print'). Commitment tiers are new: pay as you go $0 (500 concurrent calls, 100 API req/s, 50 SMS/s), Committed $500/mo minimum (volume discounts, dedicated account manager), Enterprise $5,000/mo minimum (dedicated infrastructure, private network interconnect). Telephony components itemised: Voice API platform fee $0.002/min with SIP billed on top, SIP inbound from $0.0032/min, SIP outbound from $0.005/min, call recording $0.0012/min, media streaming $0.0035/min, conference $0.002/participant/min, US local numbers $0.25/mo, number lookup from $0.0015/query, SMS outbound from $0.0005/msg, fax $0.007/page. The page's own estimator outputs about $0.056/min for a production agent and the closing CTA reads 'about six cents a minute'; we keep our own derived range rather than adopt the vendor's estimate. A new 'Compliance is included. Not an add-on' section claims regulated-industry readiness on every plan; that is marketing copy and does not change our HIPAA tick. · captured 2026-07-30
- Re-verified 2026-07-23 (screenshot in evidence/): $0.05/min base now presented as all-in; the Included Voices tab lists ten voices (Telnyx Natural, NaturalHD, Qwen3TTS, Ultra, Rime, Inworld Mini/Max/TTS 2, Resemble, Murf) all 'Included in the $0.05/min rate'; STT included; LLM rates billed per 1M tokens (Qwen3-235B $0.60/$0.40/$2.00, Kimi-K2.5 $0.60/$0.40/$3.00, Kimi-K2.6 $0.665/$0.08/$4.00); PSTN 'starting at $0.007 per minute to make a call'. The Premium and third-party voices tab did not render in the capture, so per-character premium rates were not re-read. · captured 2026-07-23
- Telnyx release notes: Fish Audio TTS integration added 2026-07-13 (not yet listed on the pricing page's Included Voices tab); built-in AI Assistant insights added 2026-07-09. · captured 2026-07-23
- Re-checked 2026-07-23: the help-centre article (last updated 2026-01-29) still states Telnyx services fall under the HIPAA conduit exception with no need for a BAA, so hipaa stays false. · captured 2026-07-23
- Re-verified 2026-07-11: product page now states 1,400+ voices and 80+ languages; included-TTS roster adds Rime, Inworld, Resemble and Murf; cheapest listed TTS $0.000009/char (Amazon Polly standard). Base $0.05/min, Call Control/WebRTC $0.002/min unchanged. · captured 2026-07-11
- Telnyx Conversational AI re-captured 2026-06-15: $0.05/min base unchanged; Qwen3-TTS voice model added. SOC 2 Type I/II + GDPR confirmed; HIPAA asserted in a footer but Telnyx relies on the conduit exception and declines BAAs, so it stays unticked. · captured 2026-06-15
- Telnyx help centre: services fall under the HIPAA conduit exception, so Telnyx does not sign a BAA. · captured 2026-06-15
- Telnyx Conversational AI pricing verified 2026-06-02: $0.05/min base, STT included, TTS and LLM billed per component (pass-through), Call Control telephony $0.002/min. · captured 2026-06-02
- Telnyx pricing page re-captured 2026-06-02 for the quarterly re-verification (screenshot in evidence/). · captured 2026-06-02
- Telnyx Conversational AI plan page: usage-priced, no per-tier gating except Enterprise dedicated support · captured 2026-05-31
- Telnyx Conversational AI pricing: $0.05/min base, STT included, per-char TTS, per-token LLM, $0.002/min call control · captured 2026-05-31
- Voice AI Agents product page: 1,300+ voices, 29+ languages, BYO LLM/TTS, voice cloning, latency claim · captured 2026-05-31
- Telnyx compliance article: SOC 2 Type I and II, SOC 3, GDPR and CCPA (HIPAA not listed) · captured 2026-05-31
- Telnyx Elastic SIP Trunking: native carrier telephony on Telnyx's own network · captured 2026-05-31
- Warm transfer with context passing for Voice AI · captured 2026-05-31
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool support for Voice AI · captured 2026-05-31