Bolna vs Vapi: India-Ready Voice AI or a Global Developer API

Bolna suits Indian teams that want a bundled minute, from 6 cents with its preferred models included, plus Exotel and Vobiz lines and India data residency on Enterprise. Vapi suits developers who pick every model, paying $0.05 a minute hosting plus each provider at cost. Our open-source platform, Dograh, suits teams that want to run the agent themselves.

Key Takeaways

• Bolna's 6-cent minute includes its preferred models. Telephony and a platform fee are extra.
• Vapi bills $0.05 a minute for hosting, and every model costs extra.
• Bolna keeps call data in India on Enterprise. Vapi offers an EU region.

Bolna was built for Indian phone lines, and Vapi for developers anywhere. We table both, explain what each minute covers, compare Indian carriers and data location, price one month, then cover limits and private hosting and say who each fits. If you want open source, the last section covers Dograh.

Bolna and Vapi in one table

Bolna sells a minute with the models already inside, while Vapi sells a hosting fee and lets you pick every model. The table puts them side by side, and the sections after it explain the rows that matter most.

A bundled minute or a hosting fee

The two minutes cover very different things. Bolna's pay-as-you-go rate starts at $0.06 a minute (about ₹5.52), with speech-to-text, the language model and the voice included when the agent uses Bolna's bundled models. Telephony and Bolna's platform fee are added per minute on top, and larger top-ups bring the rate down to about 4.5¢.

Bolna also sells one-time Pilot packs, $500 for 12,000 minutes or $300 for 6,500, with up to 25 calls at once and a month of support from its team. Pilot minutes use a 30-second billing pulse, so a 40-second call counts as a full minute. You can bring your own keys for the language model, voice and speech-to-text, and a model outside Bolna's preferred list is billed at that provider's rate.

Vapi works the other way. It charges $0.05 a minute for running the call, and every model sits on top at its provider's price. Core costs $29 a month for 10 calls at once, Pro has a $999 monthly minimum for 30, and extra lines cost $10 a month each.

So Bolna gives you one number for the models and asks fewer decisions. Vapi gives you a small platform fee and every model decision, which suits teams that want to tune each layer. For a collections team running the same short script all day, one bundled rate is easy to forecast. For a product team trying new models every month, Vapi's split bill shows exactly which layer costs what.

Indian phone lines and where call data sits

For an Indian business, phone lines and data location often decide the shortlist. Bolna connects Twilio, Plivo, Exotel and Vobiz numbers, or your own SIP trunk, so a team can keep the Indian carrier it already uses. It also supports India-focused speech providers such as Sarvam.

Call data sits in the US by default, on AWS's us-east-1 region. With India residency, calls are processed in Mumbai and recordings and transcripts are stored in India, but India residency is an Enterprise feature. A pay-as-you-go account keeps its data in the US.

Vapi is built for a global developer audience. It gives free US numbers, imports Twilio, Telnyx and Plivo numbers, and connects SIP trunks, with setup guides for several carriers. It also offers an EU region for teams with European callers.

So an Indian lender or clinic that must keep call records in India gets there on Bolna's Enterprise plan. A team calling the US or Europe from anywhere will find Vapi's numbers and EU region a closer fit. If your customers already know your Exotel or Vobiz numbers, keeping those numbers matters more than any feature row, so check carrier support first.

What 10,000 minutes a month costs

A worked example shows why the two headline rates cannot be compared directly. Take 10,000 call minutes in a month and count the line each vendor prints, then what is still to add.

The rows are not like for like. Bolna's $600 already pays for the speech-to-text, the language model and the voice, while Vapi's $500 pays only for running the calls. Add a language model, a voice and speech-to-text to Vapi's line and the gap can close or reverse, depending on the models you pick.

Bolna's Pilot looks strong for a first month, but it is a one-time pack, and minutes after it return to the 6-cent rate. Our breakdown of Vapi pricing prices Vapi's models and packages line by line for three example businesses.

Open Source Alternative to Vapi / Retell

Self-hosted voice agent platform — no per-minute fees

dograh-hq/dograh

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Call limits and private hosting

Limits work differently on each. On Bolna, paid accounts start at 10 outbound calls at once and scale automatically with monthly usage, trials allow 2, and inbound calls have no concurrency limit. On Vapi the ceiling is 4 calls with no package, 10 on Core and 30 on Pro, and each extra line adds $10 a month.

On private hosting, Bolna offers on-prem installs with Docker or Kubernetes, and usage metrics are still sent to Bolna's cloud for billing and system optimization. Vapi runs only in its own cloud and sells HIPAA as a $2,000-a-month add-on. That metrics link matters for teams with strict data rules, so ask your security team to review what an on-prem Bolna install sends back before you sign.

Bolna's engine is open source under the MIT license, while its hosted product and no-code playground stay closed. Our post on what Bolna's open-source repository contains covers that split in full. Vapi's code is closed.

Which one fits your team

Bolna fits an Indian business that wants agents on Indian numbers quickly, without choosing every model. Collections and reminder calls on Exotel or Vobiz lines suit it, and the Pilot packs keep a first month predictable. It fits less well when you need India data residency before you are ready for Enterprise, or when callers are mostly abroad.

Vapi fits a developer team that builds in code and wants to pick each model, often for callers in the US or Europe. It fits less well when nobody wants to own the model choices, or when Indian carriers and data in India are requirements.

Test on the phone line you will use in production. Phone networks still deliver most calls as 8 kHz audio, half the 16 kHz a browser demo uses, so try your speech-to-text on real Indian-carrier calls before you commit. For mixed-language callers, set the agent to ask a short question offering the likely languages when it is unsure, and switch only once the caller confirms.

Where Dograh fits as the open-source option

If you want Indian phone lines and a platform whose whole code is open, builder included, Dograh is the open-source third option. Exotel, Vobiz and Plivo are built in next to Twilio, Telnyx and other telephony providers, and you choose every model under the agent.

For handing a caller to a person, Transfer Call runs on Plivo, Twilio, Telnyx, Cloudonix and Asterisk ARI lines. Hold music plays while Dograh rings the destination, and the caller is put through once someone answers. On Exotel or Vobiz numbers, the agent books a callback request instead, so someone on your team calls back.

For Indian languages, Sarvam's voices, speech-to-text and language models are built-in providers on your own Sarvam key, set as the agent's voice provider and transcriber, next to Smallest AI's voices. To keep calls in India, self-host Dograh on servers in India with the models running there too.

Self-hosted Dograh has no per-minute platform fee, but servers, model keys and phone minutes still cost money. Dograh Cloud charges a 1¢-a-minute platform fee. That is the $100 line in the example above. Pre-recorded clips let a real person's voice say your most frequent lines, which suits repeated reminder and collections scripts.

A self-hosted install allows 10 simultaneous calls out of the box, and one setting lifts that. Dograh Cloud includes 10, with more on request. When a model provider caps you first, keys from separate accounts with that provider can add capacity, where it counts its limit per account.

The QA step grades a chosen sample of test and live calls node by node, and each call's trace breaks every turn into speech-to-text, AI and voice time. Sample live calls in each language you support, since a prompt that works well in English can drift in another language.

For the wider field, see our guides to Bolna alternatives and Vapi alternatives.