When our client’s call volume spiked to 9,842 inbound calls in a single Friday night, the bill jumped from $3,200 to $17,850 within 24 hours – a $14,650 surprise that broke their runway — see our voice agent platform for the full breakdown.
The headline number: $0.28 per completed call
Raw carrier cost vs. landed cost
Most vendors quote a “per‑minute” rate that looks good on paper. In our stack the carrier charge was $0.03 / minute, which for a 3‑minute average call translates to $0.09. That’s the number you’ll see on the invoice from the telco, similar to what we documented in our agentic systems we ship.
But once the call lands in a voice AI pipeline you pay for more than the pipe. Transcription, intent routing, monitoring, and SLA penalties turn that $0.09 into $0.28. The difference is the landed cost – the figure you should be budgeting against.
