Bland AI vs LiveKit Agents (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Bland AI if

• Fits if you want to build voice agents and pay by the minute
• Works for a team that wants its own telephony carrier

Look elsewhere if

• Tight if you grow: Start is capped at 100 calls a day and Build at 2,000
• Watch out: telephony is billed separately, plus $0.05 or $0.04 a transfer minute
• Not for you if you need BAA, SSO or data residency, which are Enterprise
• Watch out: its comparisons with Vapi and Retell are the vendor's own marketing

Pick LiveKit Agents if

• Fits if you are a developer who wants to build and ship a voice agent in one place
• Works for teams that start on the free plan and add phone lines later

Look elsewhere if

• Not for you if you want no-code: you build agents in code
• Tight if you leave the free plan: 1,000 minutes, 5 concurrent sessions
• Pricey if you add it up: sessions, phone lines and models are billed per minute on top of the plan
• Watch out: private links, role-based access and HIPAA reports start at Scale, $500 a month

Bland AI

• Telephony is billed separately, on your own carrier or at Bland's pass-through cost, and transfer minutes carry their own rate.
• Start is capped at 100 calls a day and Build at 2,000; unlimited calls are Enterprise only.
• BAA, SSO, data residency and on-prem or VPC deployment are listed for Enterprise.
• The per-minute rates are the vendor's own comparison basis; its FAQ comparisons with Vapi and Retell are its marketing claims.

LiveKit Agents

• The plan prices are 'starting at' and add per-minute charges for agent sessions, telephony and model use.
• An estimator on the pricing page gives about $0.0479 a minute for one sample phone-call setup; model choice changes it.
• Private links, role-based access and HIPAA reports start at the Scale plan.

Bland AI

All-in per-minute rate

The talk-time rate includes the language model, real-time transcription and premium voices, with no token charges. Telephony is billed separately.

Conversational pathways

Call flows are built as pathways, with knowledge bases, automations and integrations available on every plan.

Telephony choices

Connect an existing Twilio account or a SIP trunk, or use Bland's built-in Twilio at pass-through cost.

Messaging

SMS and web chat, in-call text nodes and iMessage appear in the plan table with dashes under Start and Build, so they look Enterprise-only.

Compliance claims

The FAQ says Bland holds SOC 2 Type I and II and ISO 27001, signs a HIPAA BAA and is GDPR compliant. Documentation is under NDA.

LiveKit Agents

Agents framework

An open source framework for building and testing voice agents in Python or Node.js.

LiveKit Inference

One API key for speech-to-text, language and text-to-speech models, billed by model per minute.

Agent deployment

Hosts agents on LiveKit Cloud with rollback, deployment metrics and a global network.

Telephony

Phone numbers and SIP integrations so an agent can take or place calls.

Observability and simulations

Session recordings, event logs and text simulations for testing agents.

Bland AI

• Start$0

  platform fee, then $0.14 per minute

  Transfer minutes $0.05, 10 concurrent calls, 100 calls a day, 10 knowledge bases and 1 voice.

• Build$299

  per month platform fee, plus $0.12 per minute

  Transfer minutes $0.04, 50 concurrent calls, 2,000 calls a day, 50 knowledge bases and 5 voices.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Rates contracted to volume, with on-prem or VPC deployment, BAA, SSO, data residency and forward-deployed engineers.

LiveKit Agents

• Build$0

  1,000 agent session minutes, 5 concurrent sessions, $2.50 of inference credits, community support.

• Ship$50

  per month, starting at

  5,000 session minutes then $0.01 a minute, 20 concurrent sessions, team access and email support.

• Scale$500

  per month, starting at

  50,000 session minutes, up to 600 concurrent sessions, roles, region pinning and HIPAA reports.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Volume pricing, SSO, a support SLA and a shared Slack channel.