AI Voice Agent Pricing vs Human Receptionist: What 40+ Deployments Taught Me About True Cost

The advertised price is almost never what you pay. Vapi says $0.05 per minute. That is true if you ignore the LLM, the transcription engine, the voice synthesis, and the telephony carrier. Add those in and you are at $0.15 to $0.31 per minute before your first call ends. I have deployed AI voice agents for over 40 businesses since 2023, across law firms, HVAC companies, healthcare practices, and property management firms. This post is what I wish existed before I spent months figuring out what...