Bland

What it is for

Bland is a phone voice-agent platform: you draw a Conversational Pathway, attach knowledge, and Bland places or answers calls at a single talk-time rate. Use it when the job is an inbound or outbound phone agent with LLM/STT/TTS in one number, not when you want to pick every model yourself.

It is not open source. Start is $0 platform + $0.14/min (no card; 2 credits + an inbound number).

What makes it unique: the cover is Bland’s official Pathway still — “Good time to talk?” branching to End call — not a headset poster.

Key features

• Conversational Pathways — draw the call as a node graph: greeting, branches, tool calls, and hang-up (cover; Conversational Pathways; Docs).
• Knowledge — attach PDF / DOCX / JSON or a URL and test what the agent retrieves before it goes live (Knowledge).
• Batch calls — fire one outbound run from a CSV of recipients (Batch Calls).
• Webhooks — hit an API from a pathway node mid-call, or push transcripts after hang-up (Webhooks; Post Call Webhooks).
• Messaging — run the same pathways on SMS, RCS, and iMessage (Messaging).
• BYO telephony — bring Twilio or SIP, or use Bland’s Twilio at pass-through (Pricing FAQ).

Who it's for

Best fit: ops and support teams who want a pathway-built phone agent and one all-in minute rate.

Poor fit: developers who want to swap Deepgram / ElevenLabs themselves (Vapi).

Pricing

Verified 2026-10-22 (Asia/Shanghai) from bland.ai/pricing. Telephony is extra (your carrier or Bland pass-through). Re-check before you buy.

• Start — $0 platform. $0.14/min talk time; $0.05/min transfer. No card. 2 credits + inbound number. 10 concurrent; 100 calls/day; 10 knowledge bases; 1 voice. 99.9% uptime SLA.
• Build — $299/month platform. $0.12/min talk; $0.04/min transfer. 50 concurrent; 2,000 calls/day; 50 knowledge bases; 5 voices.
• Enterprise — custom (on-prem / VPC, BAA, SSO, data residency, warm/live transfers, SMS & web chat, FDE).

Pathways, automations, and integrations are on Start. SMS, iMessage, appointment nodes, guardrails, and citations are Enterprise-gated on the comparison table.

Limitations / costs

• Start is 100 calls/day and 10 concurrent. Real volume jumps to Build ($299).
• Telephony is not in the $0.14. Budget the carrier.
• Warm / live transfer and SMS are Enterprise, not Start.
• This is not a TTS studio. There is no downloadable voiceover product.

Alternatives

• Vapi — hosting $0.05/min plus provider pass-through if you want to pick the stack.
• Retell — pay-as-you-go infra $0.055/min and 20 free concurrent calls.
• ElevenLabs — speech studio if you do not need a phone pathway.

Official tutorial

Official Bland channel video: The new Bland dashboard: Build, test & deploy AI voice agents (oEmbed author: Bland).

Written path: Pricing.

Website

https://www.bland.ai

Source

Catalog row curated for AI Tools Nav. Cover is Bland’s official Pathway still (Good time to talk? → End call). Start $0 platform + $0.14/min. Build $299/mo + $0.12/min. Tutorial: The new Bland dashboard on @Bland-AI (oEmbed).

Last verified

2026-10-22 (Asia/Shanghai) editorial check.