Bolna AI Pricing Breakdown: And How Open Source Saves 70%

Bolna AI is a proprietary voice-agent platform. Although it previously presented itself as open source, it no longer operates that way. Bolna AI charges a flat platform fee of $0.02 per minute for calls. The total cost depends on the combination of models the user selects for your agent. In the dashboard, user’ll see an estimated per-minute price based on user chosen providers and models, typically around $0.06 per minute, excluding telephony costs.

Bolna AI offers Pay-as-you-Go, Fixed Pricing, and Enterprise plans. The fixed-pricing bundles include the Starter, Pilot and Growth tiers. The Starter plan begins at $100 for 1,000 call minutes at a rate of $0.10 per minute making it ideal for testing small-scale projects.

This blog breaks down Bolna AI’s pricing and compares it with leading competitors like Dograh AI and others, helping you choose the best AI Voice agent platform for your needs.

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Bolna AI Pricing at a Glance

The Bolna AI pricing bundle includes the Starter, Pilot, and Growth plans. All paid plans support up to 10 concurrent calls. Any calls beyond this limit are automatically queued and processed as call slots become available. Trial users who haven’t purchased credits can make up to 2 concurrent calls, limited to their verified phone numbers.

Core Pricing Structure

• Starter : The Starter plan, perfect for testing and small projects, offers 1,000 minutes for $100 at an effective rate of $0.10 per minute.
• Pilot : The Pilot plan, ideal for growing businesses, offers 10,000 minutes for $500 under the Diwali Offer (normally $1,000). It includes a pre-configured market-ready agent, advanced analytics, custom workflows and campaigns, a free phone number with Truecaller verification, API integrations and function tooling and forward-deployed support.
• Growth : The Growth plan is built for established teams, offers 4,000 mins at $250 at an effective rate of $0.063/min.

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How Bolna AI Pricing Works and Tiers Comparison

Bolna AI offers Pay-as-you-Go, Fixed Pricing, and Enterprise Pricing, giving users the flexibility to choose the model that best fits their needs. Here’s an overview of how the Bolna AI pricing model works.

How Bolna AI Pricing Works

Transparent, usage-based call pricing with flexible enterprise-grade plan options :

• Pay as you Go : Flexible credits with top-ups anytime, perfect for ad-hoc use cases. Purchase credits (from $5 to $5,000), top up whenever your balance is low and enjoy automatic discounts of up to 20% on larger purchases.
• Fixed Pricing : Affordable bundles designed for small businesses with growing revenues. Choose from standardized-rate packages, enjoy rates as low as 5c (₹4) per minute and get premium support via Slack or Teams.
• Enterprise Plan : Custom, scalable solutions built for large organizations. Get best-in-class pricing at committed volumes, tailored integrations and deployments and forward-deployed support for advanced agent development.

Bolna AI Pricing and Tiers Comparison

How to Reduce Voice Agent Costs ? 

Users can significantly reduce voice agent costs by connecting their own provider accounts. When these providers are connected, Bolna does not charge for those components, so users only pay their providers directly along with Bolna’s platform fee.

For deployments exceeding 10,000 calls per month, the Enterprise Plan offers volume discounts and priority support.

Real Cost Breakdown

Bolna AI offers two pricing plans: a usage-based Pay-as-You-Go model and a Fixed model pricing.

Pay-as-you-Go

Charges are based on the combination of models selected for the agent. The dashboard provides an approximate pricing estimate for the agent, depending on the chosen providers and models.

Here are a few examples illustrating call costs in different scenarios :

• Transcriber : $0.008
• LLM : $0.003
• Voice : $0.03
• Platform : $0.02

Total : Approx Price (Excluding Telephony) = $0.06/min

Fixed Model Pricing

Users can choose from the available tiers, and they are charged a flat price regardless of the number of tokens generated.

• Transcriber Model : All Deepgram models, All Azure models
• LLM Models : All OpenAI models except Gpt - 4o and Gpt - 4.1, All Azure - OpenAI models except Gpt - 4.1 and Gpt - 4.1.
• Synthesizer Models : All ElevenLabs voices, All Cartesia voices, All Azure voices, All Deepgram voices, All AWS Polly voices, All Rime voices.

Setup and Technical Needs

Bolna AI setup is primarily done through its no-code Playground at https://platform.bolna.ai/, where users can create, configure and test voice agents for inbound and outbound calls, with optimization for Indian languages and numbers. The setup process includes defining agent prompts, selecting LLMs, voice synthesizers and transcribers, and then saving and testing agents via chat or live calls. As a cloud-based platform, it requires no specific hardware beyond API keys for providers such as Twilio, Plivo, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, or Deepgram and supports workflow integrations with Zapier, n8n and Make.com.

How to calculate your monthly bill with Bolna AI

Using the Bolna AI pricing calculator, the total estimated cost per minute comes to $0.102, based on contributions from several providers: OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 Mini for real-time LLM processing at $0.0090 per minute, ElevenLabs’ Turbo v2.5 for text-to-speech at $0.0500, Deepgram’s Nova 3 for speech recognition at $0.0092, Twilio for telephony services at $0.0140, and an additional platform fee of $0.0200.

Pros and Cons of Bolna AI Pricing 

Pros

• Cost Effective : Highly cost-effective for high-volume calls at about $0.03/min, compared to $0.09/min with Bland AI, plus low-cost $2/month phone numbers.
• Pay-as-you-Go : Flexible scaling with pay-as-you-go or bundles fits small businesses and ad-hoc needs, supported by real-time cost calculators in the dashboard.
• Transparent Pricing : Transparent pricing breakdown eliminates hidden fees and supports clear cost comparisons across voice AI platforms.

Cons

• Unpredictable Third-Party Costs : Variable costs from third-party providers like OpenAI and ElevenLabs can create unpredictable expenses driven by model choices and usage levels.
• Upfront Commitment : Fixed bundles (e.g. $500 Pilot) require upfront payment, making them less suitable for low-volume testing without a strong free tier.
• Enterprise Customization : Enterprise customization may require sales negotiation, echoing transparency challenges seen with other small AI providers.

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How Bolna AI compares to Dograh AI

Dograh is an open-source platform with no fees, making it a cost-effective, customizable, and scalable alternative as compared to Bolna AI, featuring prebuilt templates and a 2-minute setup.

What Dograh AI offers that Bolna AI doesn’t

The Bottom Line: Is Bolna AI Worth It ?

Bolna AI is a strong option for businesses targeting the Indian market or seeking cost-effective, multilingual voice agents, particularly for high call volumes. However, reliance on third-party LLM/TTS services can introduce variable costs, making it less suitable for ultra-low-volume testing without access to deeper free tiers. While it excels for Indian and global audiences, it offers less support for non-regional languages compared to broader platforms. Note that Bolna AI is not an open-source solution.

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Getting started with Dograh

Interested in leveraging Dograh for lead generation, cold calling or business automation ? Here’s a streamlined path to getting started, along with direct links to essential resources :

1. Dograh AI: Quick Start Demo

2. Run Docker Command

Download and Start Dograh first startup may take 2-3 mins to download all images

Docker

3. Quick Start Instructions

Describe use case

Create Workflow Dashboard

Auto-generated templates - test your bot and customize quickly

Dograh AI Dashboard

Step by step written guide to building and deploying your first voice AI Agent

• Open Dashboard: Launch http://localhost:3000 on your browser.
• Choose Call Type: Select Inbound or Outbound calling.
• Name Your Bot: Use a short two-word name (e.g., Lead Qualification).
• Describe Use Case: In 5–10 words (e.g., Screen insurance form submissions for purchase intent).
• Launch: Your bot is ready! Open the bot and click Web Call to talk to it.

4. Community & Support

Join Slack Community and discuss issue with Dograh experts :

Join Slack Community

5. Additional Resource

Cost Optimization Strategies

Bolna AI is highly cost-effective for high-volume calls at around $0.03/min, compared to $0.09/min with Bland AI, and offers phone numbers for just $2/month. Costs can be further reduced by connecting your own provider accounts, Bolna doesn’t charge for those components, so you pay only your providers directly plus Bolna’s platform fee.

Final Thoughts

While Bolna AI is highly cost-effective for high-volume calls, its reliance on third-party services like OpenAI tokens or ElevenLabs characters introduces cost variability. Low-volume testers may find more generous free tiers with other platforms, so careful monitoring is recommended.

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