CloudTalk alternatives with AI voice agents come in two kinds. Phone systems such as Aircall, JustCall and Dialpad sell AI agents as add-ons to user plans. Dedicated platforms such as Vapi, Retell AI and Dograh, the open-source AI voice agent platform we build, run the agent itself. You can self-host it or run it on Dograh Cloud.
Key Takeaways
- CloudTalk sells AI agent minutes from €99 for 200, on top of per-user plans.
- Aircall, JustCall and Dialpad also sell AI agents as phone-system add-ons.
- A dedicated agent can answer behind CloudTalk through forwarding, on models you choose.
Phone systems now sell AI agents as add-ons, and that changes what a CloudTalk alternative means. We price CloudTalk's AI tiers, compare three phone systems that sell the same kind of add-on, then the platforms built only for voice agents. The last section covers keeping CloudTalk and adding Dograh.
What CloudTalk charges for its AI agents
CloudTalk is a business phone system first, and its AI agents sit on top of the per-user plan. CloudTalk charges €25 for Starter, €29 for Essential and €49 for Expert per user a month billed annually, or €34, €39 and €69 billed monthly, with a three-licence minimum on Expert. Prices exclude tax, and customers in the US (and Canada from 2 December 2026) pay an extra 11% compliance and administrative fee on the subscription.
The AI agents come in tiers. The AI Voice Agents add-on starts at €99 a month for 200 minutes. AI Receptionist is listed at €0 a month with 50 free minutes in your first month, and AI Specialist costs €349 a month with 1,000 minutes. Past 10,000 minutes a month, CloudTalk offers custom volume pricing "as low as" €0.15 a minute. A 14-day trial includes 50 AI Voice Agent minutes.
What the minute buys is a packaged agent. CloudTalk describes its agents as answering inbound calls around the clock, running outbound jobs such as reminders and lead qualification, and handing calls to people with the conversation context intact. They link to HubSpot, Salesforce and other CRMs out of the box. The add-on is sold as one AI minute, and the speech and language models behind it stay CloudTalk's choice.
Aircall, JustCall and Dialpad sell the same add-on
Three other phone systems sell AI agents the same way, as minutes or credits on top of user licences. Aircall publishes the most detail. Essentials costs $30 and Professional $50 per licence a month billed annually, with a three-licence minimum, and both include 50 AI Voice Agent minutes a month. Past those, AI Voice Agents cost $0.29 a minute pay as you go with a $99 monthly minimum, or come in bundles of 1,000 minutes for $250, 3,500 for $805 and 10,000 for $1,900 a month on an annual commitment.
JustCall sells Team at $29, Pro at $49 and Pro Plus at $89 per user a month billed annually. Its AI Voice Agent gives you the first 100 minutes free, with volume discounts down to $0.15 a minute. Dialpad starts at $15 per user for Connect Standard and prices its Resolve AI agents through sales, on credits it says are used only when the AI delivers value.
| Row | CloudTalk | Aircall | JustCall | Dialpad |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phone plan per user, billed annually | €25 to €49 | $30 to $50 | $29 to $89 | From $15 |
| AI agent price | €99 for 200 minutes, €349 for 1,000 | $0.29 a minute, or 1,000 minutes for $250 | Down to $0.15 a minute on volume | Custom, through sales |
| Free AI minutes | 50 in the first month on AI Receptionist, 50 in the trial | 50 a month on Essentials and Professional | First 100 minutes | Through sales |
| Minimum | 3 licences on Expert | 3 licences, $99 a month for AI | Per user | Per user |
Read across the rows and the shape is the same. You pay per seat for the people, then per minute for the agent. The add-on is the fastest start for a team that already works inside one of these phone systems, because its numbers, users and CRM links are set up already. It also ties the agent to that vendor's AI minute and its upgrade path.
Platforms built only for voice agents
A dedicated platform runs the agent and leaves the phone system to whoever you choose. The bill changes shape. You pay a platform fee per minute and the models and phone line separately, or one bundled minute with the models inside.
| Platform | How it bills | Models | Where it runs |
|---|---|---|---|
| CloudTalk AI add-on | €99 for 200 minutes to €349 for 1,000 | CloudTalk's choice | CloudTalk's cloud |
| Dograh | 1¢-a-minute platform fee on Dograh Cloud, none per minute self-hosted, models and phone on your own bills | Any LLM, speech-to-text and voice by key, or local open models | Your servers or Dograh Cloud |
| Vapi | $0.05 a minute hosting, models and phone passed through | Your choice of providers | Vapi's cloud |
| Retell AI | $0.055 a minute voice infrastructure, plus models and phone | Priced per minute, per model | Retell's cloud |
| Bland AI | $0.14 a minute on Start, $0.12 plus $299 a month on Build | Bland's own, included | Bland's cloud, on-prem or VPC on Enterprise |
What you gain is control over each part of the call. You pick the language model and the voice, and you see each line of the bill. Capacity is priced openly too. Vapi sells packages of 4, 10 or 30 concurrent calls, with extra lines at $10 a month each, which matters once the agent runs a whole campaign. What you take on is the phone side, meaning numbers, forwarding and the hand-off to people, which a phone-system add-on keeps inside one product.
Open Source Alternative to Vapi / Retell
Self-hosted voice agent platform — no per-minute fees
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1,000 AI minutes a month, an example
Here is one worked example, 1,000 AI agent minutes in a month, priced at each vendor's published rates. It covers the AI line only, before tax and before the seats for the people who take transferred calls.
| Option | 1,000 AI minutes | What else you pay |
|---|---|---|
| CloudTalk AI Specialist | €349 | Phone plan seats, tax, 11% fee in the US (and Canada from 2 December 2026) |
| Dograh Cloud | 1,000 x $0.01 = $10 | Models and phone line on your own keys |
| Aircall bundle | $250 on an annual commitment, or 1,000 x $0.29 = $290 pay as you go | Licences |
| JustCall | First 100 minutes free, the rest priced on volume | Licences |
| Vapi | 1,000 x $0.05 = $50 | Models and phone line |
| Retell AI | 1,000 x $0.055 = $55 | Models and phone line |
| Bland AI Start | 1,000 x $0.14 = $140 | Phone line if you bring your own carrier |
The rows do not hold the same things, so read the last column before the middle one. The phone-system add-ons sell one AI minute and pick the models for you, and Bland includes its own models in the rate. Vapi, Retell and Dograh leave the models and the carrier on separate bills, which our breakdown of what an AI voice agent costs per minute prices line by line. If you expect more than 1,000 minutes, ask CloudTalk in writing what minute 1,001 costs on AI Specialist before you pick the tier.
Which teams fit an add-on or a dedicated agent
The add-on fits a sales or support team that already runs on CloudTalk, Aircall or JustCall and wants an agent taking overflow calls this week. Users, numbers, queues and CRM links are in place, and the agent hands callers to the same people who answer today.
A dedicated agent fits when the call needs more than the phone system offers. That means bookings or lookups in your own systems during the call, a choice of language model and voice, outbound campaigns with your own retry rules, or recordings and transcripts kept on your own servers. For a regulated team the last point usually settles it, because a hosted add-on keeps call data in the vendor's cloud.
Whichever route you choose, test it on a real phone line. Most phone calls still reach the agent as 8 kHz audio, while a browser demo runs at 16 kHz, so an agent that sounds right in a dashboard can mishear callers once calls arrive by phone. A forwarded call adds one more leg to check. Our comparison of built-in AI receptionists in phone systems covers the same choice for Webex, Zoom Phone, GoTo and 3CX.
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Keeping CloudTalk and adding your own agent
You can keep CloudTalk for your team and still run a dedicated agent. With call forwarding, calls to your CloudTalk number go on to a number on a provider Dograh connects to, such as Twilio or Telnyx, where you set your agent as that number's inbound workflow. Callers keep dialling your usual number, and your team keeps its CloudTalk seats for the calls that need a person. The forwarded call uses minutes on both sides.
When a caller needs someone, the agent's Transfer Call tool dials a CloudTalk user's number while the caller hears hold music, and connects them once that person answers. If nobody picks up or the line is busy, the agent gets the result back as transfer_failed and the call carries on with the agent. Transfer Call works on Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, Cloudonix and Asterisk ARI. Our post on AI receptionist call transfer walks through the hand-off step by step.
Your CRM connects through tools you set up on the agent. An HTTP API tool looks up or writes a record during the call, and a Webhook node sends the call's results once it ends, so HubSpot or Salesforce receive the outcome through their own APIs. Our tutorial on extracting structured data from calls into any CRM shows the setup.
Model choice is where the dedicated route pays off. Bring your own keys for any LLM, speech-to-text and voice provider, or run open models on your own servers. Pre-recorded clips can play the lines your agent says most, with text-to-speech in the same cloned voice for the rest, and each call's trace shows the speech-to-text, AI and voice time for every turn.
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. Built-in QA scores each step of test and live calls with tags, a 1 to 10 score, sentiment and a summary, and you choose what share of calls it scores. For outbound work, you set the retries (0 to 10) and the wait between them, with calling hours by weekday in one time zone. The code is under a BSD 2-Clause licence that you can read and change.
If your team lives in CloudTalk and the calls are simple, start with its add-on and watch the minute count each month. If the agent needs your own systems and models, or has to run on your own servers, keep CloudTalk for the people and put a dedicated agent in front of it.
Glossary
- AI add-on
- An AI agent sold as an extra on top of a phone system's per-user plan, usually as a bundle of minutes. CloudTalk's starts at €99 a month for 200 minutes, and the models behind it are the vendor's choice.
- Call forwarding
- Sending calls that reach one number on to another. Forwarding CloudTalk calls to a number connected to a voice agent lets the agent answer while callers keep dialling the usual number, with minutes used on both legs.
- Inbound workflow
- The agent a phone number sends its calls to in Dograh. Point a Twilio or Telnyx number at an agent this way, then forward your phone system's calls to that number.
- Transfer Call
- Dograh's tool for handing a caller to a person. It dials the destination first and connects the caller only when someone answers, and a failed transfer comes back to the agent so the call can continue.
