Bland AI: What It Is, Pricing, and Alternatives (2026)
Bland AI is the voice platform insurers, banks and health systems use to run thousands of AI phone calls at once. It builds its own models and sells them at one per-minute rate.
The catch for everyone else: texting, warm transfers and calendar booking sit behind an Enterprise contract.
The quick answer: Bland (still widely called Bland AI) is an enterprise platform for building AI phone agents that answer and place calls at scale. Your engineers, or Bland’s, build the call flow and wire up the CRM and calendar. Self-serve calling costs $0.14 a minute, or $0.12 plus $299 a month, with telephony on top. If you want your business phone answered rather than a platform to build on, Carly answers and makes your business calls, handles texts and runs your team inbox, set up by the Carly team with no code.
Bland AI at a glance
Checked against Bland’s pricing page, docs, changelog and status page on October 3, 2026. US dollars.
| Bland AI | |
|---|---|
| What it is | An enterprise platform for AI phone agents, inbound and outbound. SMS, iMessage and web chat on Enterprise |
| How you build | Conversational Pathways (a node-based flow builder), prompts, a REST API and CLI, and Norm, an AI assistant that drafts agents from a prompt |
| Models | Its own speech, transcription and language models, which Bland says it self-hosts |
| Native integrations | Salesforce, HubSpot, Cal.com, Calendly, Slack, Notion, Zapier, Make, Pipedream. Telephony via Twilio, SIP, Five9, Genesys, NICE CXone, Talkdesk and Amazon Connect |
| Languages | 40+, with real-time translation in 23, per Bland |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type I and II, HIPAA (BAA on Enterprise), GDPR, PCI DSS. FedRAMP 20x since September 2026 |
| Price | $0.14 a minute on Start, or $0.12 a minute plus $299 a month on Build. Enterprise is custom. Telephony extra |
| Best for | Insurance, healthcare, finance and logistics teams with high call volume and engineers to build |
What Bland AI is and does
Bland raised a $50 million Series C in June 2026, led by Dell Technologies Capital, taking it past $100 million raised in under three years. It says it handles more than 3.5 million calls a week for companies like Samsara, Kin Insurance and CNO Financial. Its pitch is control: it trains its own voice models and runs the stack itself.
What the platform covers:
- Conversational Pathways, a node-based canvas for calls where steps must run in order, like a required disclosure, with API calls mid-call.
- Outbound at scale. Upload a CSV with no row limit and Bland dials it in chunks, skipping numbers on your do-not-call list.
- Norm (March 2026): describe the agent in plain English and Norm drafts the prompt, pathways and extraction rules on a protected branch, then tests it against simulated callers.
- Bland Speech v3 (August 2026): its newest voice model, which Bland says ranked second only to real human recordings in a blind realism benchmark.
- CRM memory sync (July 2026): each caller’s history and summary sync to HubSpot or Salesforce after every call.
- Twilio partnership (September 30, 2026): Twilio calling is built in, or bring your own Twilio account.
Enterprise customers get forward deployed engineers who build the first agent with them, live in about 30 days. Separately, a $29.99-a-month Agent Phone Plan gives a personal AI like Claude or Grok Bot its own number, capped at one call at a time and 50 calls a day: a line for one person’s assistant, not a business phone agent.
Bland AI pricing (October 2026)
Bland bills connected minutes, prorated to the second. The rate covers the language model, transcription and voice, with no token charges.
| Plan | Price | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Start | $0.14 a minute, no platform fee. Transfers $0.05 a minute | 100 calls a day, 100 an hour, 10 at once, 1 voice clone |
| Build | $0.12 a minute plus $299 a month. Transfers $0.04 a minute | 2,000 calls a day, 1,000 an hour, 50 at once |
| Scale | $0.11 a minute plus $499 a month (listed in Bland’s billing docs, not on its pricing page) | 5,000 calls a day, 100 at once |
| Enterprise | Custom contract | No daily cap. Adds SMS, warm transfers, scheduling, BAA, SSO, on-prem |
Extras to budget for:
- Telephony. Bland’s pricing page says it’s billed separately, at pass-through cost on Bland’s Twilio or your own carrier, though its homepage says the rate covers it. Ask before you sign. Each outbound attempt on Bland’s lines also carries a $0.015 minimum, failed calls included.
- SMS. $0.02 a message, inbound and outbound, once you’re on Enterprise.
Bland raised its rates on December 5, 2025: Start went from $0.09 to $0.14 a minute, up 56%. Any review still quoting $0.09 predates that.
Take Michael Bennett’s heating and air company: 600 calls a month at four minutes, so 2,400 minutes. On Start that’s $336 a month plus telephony. On Build it’s $587, because Build only beats Start on price above about 14,950 minutes a month. You’d move up for the caps, not the rate. Then add whoever builds and maintains the agent.
Carly prices it the other way around: the phone line is priced on a short call with the Carly team, setup included. Everything else: free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month.
Who Bland AI is for, and what you build yourself
Bland fits enterprises in regulated industries, contact centers replacing a phone menu, and outbound teams calling large lists. Bland says a typical call can stretch to 30 to 45 minutes.
What arrives on a self-serve plan is a calling engine. Someone on your side still:
- Picks a plan by its caps: Start stops at 100 calls a day.
- Buys numbers from Bland or connects your own Twilio account or SIP trunk.
- Builds the pathway, prompts and qualification rules (Norm can draft them).
- Wires up booking. Cal.com and Calendly are native. Booking straight onto your team’s Google or Outlook calendars is a custom API tool you build, or the Enterprise scheduling node pointed at your own webhook.
- Turns on disclosure guardrails before calling anyone (see below).
- Tests, and retests when the agent changes.
Bland AI limitations: what the record shows
Public reviews of Bland are thin: two on Trustpilot, on a profile Bland hasn’t claimed. Its own records say more.
- Business basics are Enterprise-only. Bland’s plan table reserves SMS, web chat, in-call texts, the appointment scheduling node, warm and live transfers, call outcomes and custom guardrails for Enterprise. On Start or Build, the agent can call but can’t text the customer or warm-transfer to a teammate.
- Outages hit live callers. Bland’s status page logs 17 incidents in 2026 through October 3. On September 25, agents on some calls using its newest voices went silent for 10 to 30 seconds, over about two hours. On May 15, warm transfers failed for about four hours, with both sides dropping before they could speak. Database and API outages on March 25 and April 13 disrupted new calls for 36 and 48 minutes.
- “Self-hosted” has limits. Bland says it runs its whole stack itself, but its August 27 incident traced to “a provider outage” that limited inference capacity.
Bland AI and outbound calling rules
Since February 2024, the FCC treats AI-generated voices as “artificial” voices under the TCPA, so AI calls to cell phones need prior consent, and sales calls need written consent. Our AI outbound calling guide covers the rules.
What Bland provides:
- Four built-in guardrails for the standard TCPA disclosures: AI disclosure, recording disclosure, self-introduction and opt-out. They’re on every plan, but a new agent starts with all four switched off.
- Do-not-call handling. Batches drop numbers on your do-not-call list at dial time.
- Defaults to check. A new agent opens with call recording and caller memory on.
Bland’s docs call guardrails monitoring, not a compliance guarantee, and its terms make you solely responsible for following the law. This isn’t legal advice.
Bland AI alternatives
US list prices from each vendor’s pricing page, checked October 3, 2026.
| Alternative | Kind | Price | Who sets it up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carly | Business-ready: calls, texts and email in one team inbox | Phone line priced on a short call. Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month | The Carly team, with you |
| Retell AI | Developer platform | $0.07 to $0.31/min. Telephony extra | Your developer or a Retell partner |
| Vapi | Developer platform | $0.05/min hosting plus models at cost. 1,000 minutes runs $82 to $129 on its calculator | Your developer |
| ElevenLabs Agents | Developer platform | Free (15 minutes) to $990/mo (12,375 minutes). Model billed on top | Your developer |
| Synthflow | Enterprise platform | Contracts from $30,000 a year | Synthflow, with your team |
If you want the phone agent, not the platform
1. Carly
Carly is an AI assistant for your whole team, and Carly for teams puts it on your business line. It answers and makes calls, texts from the same number and runs the team inbox. No pathway to draw, no API to call: you write instructions in plain English, and the Carly team sets up the number with you, the one you have or a new one.
Here’s a Thursday call to Bennett Heating & Air while Michael’s techs are out on jobs:
- Carly picks up when nobody can, or around the clock if you’d rather.
- It knows the caller. Emily Parker’s number matches her CRM record and last month’s email about a noisy furnace, so the call starts there.
- It qualifies and books. Michael’s questions run in order, then Emily lands on a real Google or Outlook calendar, round robin across the team.
- It hands off and logs. If Emily asks for a person, Carly rings the right teammate. The transcript and summary land in the team inbox and on her CRM record.
What Bland reserves for Enterprise comes with it:
- Texts. Carly answers texts on your business number, a teammate can take over any thread, and carrier registration is part of setup. “Missed call, text them back” is one workflow (how it works).
- Calls from ChatGPT or Claude. Add Carly Teams as a connector and ChatGPT or Claude can place calls, send texts and go through voicemail on your business line. You can build the voice and text agents themselves from the same chat (how to set it up).
- Speed to lead. A web form comes in, and Carly calls the lead within about a minute and books them (tutorial).
- One team inbox and CRM. Calls, texts and email share one timeline per customer, and a teammate replying pauses the AI. Carly works across all of your team’s Gmail and Outlook accounts and calendars at once, and writes back to HubSpot, Salesforce and Dynamics 365.
- Workflows on call events. Trigger on call ended, voicemail or text received. Carly connects to thousands of apps, so the outcome goes wherever your team works.
- More than the phone. Booking pages with round robin, and AI email agents for your support@ address.
You pick the voice (OpenAI or ElevenLabs voices), then call the number and read the log. The build-and-test tutorial walks through it.
Best for: Small and mid-sized teams that want calls answered, booked and logged without a developer or an enterprise contract. Pricing: Phone line priced on a short call. Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month. Setup: Done with the Carly team. Get started or book a call.
More business-ready options: the best AI receptionist and AI answering service guides.
If you’re building: developer platforms
2. Retell AI
Retell is pay as you go with no platform fee, and you choose the model and voice. It sells chat and SMS agents alongside voice. Full breakdown in our Retell AI guide.
Best for: Developers and agencies that want to pick the model and pay only for minutes. Pricing: $0.07 to $0.31 a minute for infrastructure, voice and model. Telephony is $0.015 a minute on a Retell US number plus $2 a month per number. $10 in free credits. Limitations: 24/7 support is Enterprise-only, and its docs say it doesn’t currently operate services within the EU. Trustpilot rates it 4.9 from about 810 reviews.
3. Vapi
Vapi is the most hands-on: you choose every component (transcriber, model, voice, carrier) and pay for each at cost on top of Vapi’s hosting fee. More in our Vapi AI guide.
Best for: Engineers who want full control of the stack. Pricing: $0.05 a minute hosting plus models at cost, about $82 to $129 per 1,000 minutes on its calculator. Support packages from $29 a month. Limitations: The bill moves with every component you swap. Trustpilot rates it 2.4 out of 5.
4. ElevenLabs Agents
ElevenLabs, best known for its voices, sells agent plans with call minutes included.
Best for: Products where the voice is the selling point. Pricing: Free for 15 minutes, up to $990 a month for 12,375 minutes. Extra minutes are $0.08. Limitations: The language model is billed on top of the plan.
5. Synthflow
Synthflow has moved upmarket: it sells only enterprise contracts, scoped around volume and security review.
Best for: Contact centers that want the vendor to scope and launch the rollout. Pricing: Contracts from $30,000 a year. Limitations: No self-serve plan. A May 2026 Trustpilot reviewer reported agents drifting from instructions and failing SMS triggers and webhooks.
Bland AI or Carly: how to pick
- Pick Bland if you run a regulated contact center or large outbound program, have engineers (or budget for Bland’s), and need on-prem, FedRAMP or a BAA.
- Pick Retell to pay per minute with no platform fee, Vapi to control every component, ElevenLabs Agents if the voice is the product, and Synthflow for an enterprise rollout with a $30,000-plus budget.
- Go with Carly if you want your calls answered, texts handled and every conversation logged in your team inbox without building anything. The Carly team sets it up with you.
More on the category: what an AI voice agent does and costs and AI voice agents for customer service.
FAQ
What is Bland AI?
Bland AI (now branded simply Bland) is an enterprise platform for building AI phone agents that answer and place calls at scale, on its own speech and language models. You design the agent with Conversational Pathways, prompts or its API. If you’d rather have a phone agent set up for you, Carly does that for teams.
How much does Bland AI cost?
$0.14 a minute on Start with no platform fee, or $0.12 a minute plus $299 a month on Build, as of October 2026. Telephony is extra, and Enterprise (where SMS lives) is a custom contract. Carly’s phone line is priced on a short call, so book a call with the Carly team to scope yours.
Can Bland AI send text messages?
Only on Enterprise, where texts bill at $0.02 a message. On Start and Build the agent only calls. Carly answers calls and texts from the same business number.
Is Bland AI TCPA compliant?
Bland gives you tools, not a guarantee. Its built-in disclosure and opt-out guardrails start switched off on a new agent, and its terms make you responsible for following the law. Call people who asked to hear from you.
Is Bland AI better than Retell AI?
They suit different buyers. Bland folds the model into one per-minute rate and aims at enterprises, with texting and warm transfers on Enterprise. Retell bills per component with no platform fee and suits developers and agencies. Our Retell AI guide has the full comparison.
What’s the best Bland AI alternative?
It depends on whether you’re building. Developers usually compare Retell (pay per minute), Vapi (most control) and ElevenLabs Agents (voice quality). For a business that wants the calls handled, Carly answers and makes calls, texts from the same number and logs everything in one team inbox.
Ready to automate your busywork?
Carly schedules, researches, and briefs you—so you can focus on what matters.
See what people say
"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."
