AI voice agent cost calculator

✓ Last verified: 2026-08-15· Source: official provider pricing page· Auto-monitored — report change →

What a voice bot really costs to run — speech-to-text, the LLM and text-to-speech, per minute and per month. No sign-up.

A voice agent is three bills in one: speech-to-text + LLM + text-to-speech, all running per minute of conversation. The LLM and premium voices dominate. Enter your volume to see the real monthly cost.

Calls / month

Avg minutes / call

STT $ / min

TTS $ / min

LLM $ / min (est.)

—

per month

—per call

—per minute

—total minutes/mo

Where the money goes (per minute)

Component	$ / min	% of total

⚠️ Reference estimates (July 2026). STT ~$0.006/min (Whisper-class), TTS $0.015–0.30/min (premium neural voices cost more), LLM depends on tokens per turn — type your real numbers. Telephony/SIP minutes are extra if you connect a phone number. · Report outdated price →

How voice agent cost adds up

Per minute you pay for STT (transcribe the caller), the LLM (decide the reply — token-based, so longer context and answers cost more), and TTS (speak it back). The LLM and a premium voice usually dominate; STT is the cheapest leg. Estimate the LLM leg precisely with the AI agent cost calculator or LLM token cost, and compare TTS providers in our ElevenLabs and Deepgram guides. Building a text chatbot instead? Use the chatbot cost calculator.

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How this calculator works

This AI Voice Agent Cost Calculator estimates what a spoken AI agent costs to run, both per minute and per month. It stacks the three services a voice agent needs on every call: speech-to-text (STT) to transcribe the caller, the LLM to decide what to say, and text-to-speech (TTS) to voice the reply. You enter your per-minute price for each layer, then your calls per month and average minutes per call. The per-minute figure is simply STT plus LLM plus TTS, and the monthly total scales that by your total talk-time, so volume and call length are the largest drivers of what you pay.

Because cost scales with total minutes, small per-minute differences compound quickly at scale, so it pays to compare providers for each layer separately rather than picking a single bundled vendor. The LLM estimate is the least predictable input: longer conversations and more verbose responses raise real usage above a flat per-minute guess. Trimming average call length, or routing simple calls to a cheaper model, often lowers the bill more than shaving cents off STT or TTS.

Frequently asked questions

What does an AI voice agent cost per minute?

A voice agent stacks three costs per minute: speech-to-text (~$0.006/min), the LLM that generates replies (token-based, a few cents per minute of conversation), and text-to-speech (~$0.015/min or more for premium voices). Total is typically $0.05-0.20 per minute depending on the models.

How do I cut AI voice agent costs?

Use a cheaper LLM for routine turns, cap response length, pick a mid-tier TTS voice, and keep calls short. STT is usually the smallest line; the LLM and premium TTS dominate.

📚 New here? Learn how LLM API pricing works →

Learn & compare

How LLM pricing works →Compare 387 models →Per-model pricing →