Vapi vs Retell vs Bland vs owning your stack
The real question is not which managed platform. It is whether you rent a voice agent per minute forever, or own the code and keep the margin.
| Platform | Pricing | Own code + margin? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vapi | Managed. $0.05/min base, ~$0.15 to $0.36 all-in once you add STT, LLM, TTS, and telephony. No native white-label (Vapify add-on $29 to $149/mo). | No. Rented per minute. | Fast no-code prototypes |
| Retell | Managed. $0.07/min base, ~$0.13 to $0.31 all-in. White-label only via wrappers ($79 to $499/mo). | No. Rented per minute. | Managed agents at some scale |
| Bland | Managed. $0.11 to $0.14/min plus $299 to $499/mo plans. Positioned away from small builders. | No. Rented per minute. | Enterprise call volume |
| Synthflow | Managed. ~$0.08/min base. Agency white-label built in. | No. Rented on their rails. | Agencies reselling to clients |
| Free LiveKit starter | Open source. $0 (you pay providers directly). A working agent, but no billing, dashboard, or way to charge. | Yes, but you cannot charge for it. | DIY, not monetizing yet |
| ShipVoice | One-time $199, self-host. Per-minute Stripe metering wired in, plus auth, dashboard, and telephony. | Yes. Own the code and the margin. | Own a billable voice product |
Rent vs own
Managed platforms (Vapi, Retell, Bland) are the fastest way to a working agent, and if you just need calls handled, they are great. But you rent them per minute, forever, and they bill your users, not you. Their per-minute markup compounds: stacked all-in, most land at $0.15 to $0.36 per minute.
Owning your stack flips that. Your real cost across STT, LLM, TTS, and telephony is a fraction of the platform price, and above roughly 20,000 minutes a month, self-hosting wins outright. ShipVoice is the boilerplate that makes owning it practical: it wires per-minute Stripe metering, auth, a call dashboard, and telephony on top of the free LiveKit core, so you bill your own users through your own Stripe and keep the difference.
Not sure where the line is for you? Run your numbers in the margin calculator.