monthly = platform + STT + LLM + TTS + carrier + recording
platform = base fee + max(0, minutes − included minutes) × overage rate
per minute = monthly total ÷ connected minutes
per call = per-minute total × average handle time
Public list prices are stored in USD before tax. Free trials, one-time credits, negotiated enterprise discounts, annual commitments, and temporary promotions are excluded unless they are part of the standard pricing structure itself.
Conversation model estimates
LLM providers usually bill tokens rather than connected minutes. The calculator uses platform-published conversation-minute estimates to make fast side-by-side comparisons. This is the least portable part of the model because prompt size, tool definitions, history, caching, turn count, and output length vary by application.
For production budgeting, replay representative transcripts against the chosen model and measure real input, cached-input, output, and reasoning tokens. Replace the normalized estimate with that workload result.
Bundled platform handling
Bland Start and ElevenAgents are represented as bundled speech-engine minutes: separate STT, LLM, and TTS selections are disabled and contribute zero additional cost. Telephony and recording remain separate because public pricing treats them independently.
Self-hosted baseline
The self-hosted entry is a small infrastructure floor, not a total-cost claim. It excludes engineering, support, observability vendors, compliance, networking variance, and idle capacity. Treat it as a prompt to build a real infrastructure model, not proof that self-hosting is cheaper.
Change policy
A pricing update must change the rate, primary source, and verification date together. Comparison pages are generated from the shared catalog so a corrected rate propagates to the calculator, provider profiles, and head-to-head examples in the same build.