At 300 minutes of calls a month, PhoneShield is $29.99 versus $44.55 for Bland Start usage, before the time it takes to build a receptionist on it. Full-duplex GPT-Live-1 voice, scam refusals and screening included.
$29.99 a month with 150 Nora minutes included, then $0.12 a minute. Bland bills every minute of every call; PhoneShield meters only the share that reaches Nora, about 35% on the pilot. Bland can cost less at low volume. Current pilot: scam blocking before answer, front-desk screening, ring-through with whisper, Nora, and messages.
Bland comparison checked September 27, 2026 · USD · Before taxStart with every minute of every call PhoneShield handles in a month. Only the share that reaches Nora is metered; scam refusals, front-desk screening, messages and calls that ring you are not. These are different products and configurations, with different setup and support requirements.
Measured on the pilot: about a third of handled minutes reach Nora; the rest is screening, refusals, messages and calls that ring you, which are not metered.
Approximately 100 calls and 70 unique callers. Used for capacity and caller-based pricing.
Voice platforms sell the parts; you assemble and maintain the receptionist. 4 hours at $35 is $140 a month, added to platform rows below. Set either to zero to compare raw usage only.
USD per month, one line with its PhoneShield number, before taxes. Excludes SMS, international calls and custom work. Minutes after Nora connects a caller to you are not counted. Estimates do not change your subscription.
Scam refusals, screening, messages and calls that ring you are never on the bill. No monthly minimum.
| Alternative | Usage bill | Build and upkeep | Month total | What you still build, or go without |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PhoneShield | $29.99 | $0About ten minutes, once | $29.99 | $29.99 a month with 150 Nora minutes included, then $0.12/min for the 35% of minutes that reach Nora. Scam refusals before the ring, favorites with a whisper, front desk, messages, call history and the shared scam list are included. Number included. Early access. |
| Bland Voice platform | $44.55Start: $0.14/min with model, speech and voice bundled, plus telephony at pass-through; inbound number included. Assumes calls spread across 30 days. | $1404 h at $35 | $184.55 | You build the pathway and prompts, open a Twilio account for the number and webhooks, and write the contact rules, scam handling and message delivery yourself. No shared scam list, no FTC complaint data. |
| Telnyx + Kimi Voice platform | $17.92Published calculator configuration. Possible additional $0.002/min Voice API fee. | $1404 h at $35 | $157.92 | You configure the assistant, telephony, transcription and every screening rule; there is no household dashboard, favorites list or shared scam list to start from. |
| Retell Voice platform | $32.30GPT-4.1 mini, platform voice and $0.015/min telephony. | $1404 h at $35 | $172.30 | You assemble the agent, voice, model and telephony. Blocklists, ring-through with a whisper, message delivery and call history are yours to build and host. |
| Vapi Voice platform | $31.50Midpoint of Vapi's own calculator ($82–$129 per 1,000 minutes): $0.05/min hosting plus Deepgram, OpenAI and ElevenLabs usage; Vapi telephony free. | $1404 h at $35 | $171.50 | You wire transcription, model, voice and telephony into an assistant and host the logic around it. Screening rules, blocklists, whisper ring-through and a family dashboard are yours to build. |
| ElevenAgents Voice platform | $28.80Cheapest ElevenLabs Agents plan covering this volume with $0.08/min overage, plus about $0.016/min for the language model, billed separately. | $1404 h at $35 | $168.80 | You design the agent and its tools and connect a number. Contact rules, scam handling, message delivery and history are not part of the product. |
| Rosie Packaged receptionist | $149Smallest listed package covering this volume; overage alternatives not modeled. | $0Set up for you | $149 | Packaged receptionist, minutes to set up. Answers every call, robocalls included, and those minutes count against the package. No refusal before the ring, no favorites whisper. |
| Smith.ai AI Packaged receptionist | $200100 calls: cheapest Smith.ai AI plan with overages (Free 25 calls then $3, Pro $150 for 75 then $2, Enterprise $500 for 300 then $1.67). | $0Set up for you | $200 | Packaged receptionist with onboarding. Every call it answers counts, robocalls included, at up to $3 each above the plan. No refusal before the ring, no favorites whisper. |
| Quo Sona Packaged receptionist | $49100 calls: cheapest Sona tier with overages ($25 for about 40 calls up to $199 for about 600). Requires a Quo phone workspace, not modeled. | $0Set up for you | $49 | AI answering added to a Quo workspace. Every answered call spends credits, robocalls included. No refusal before the ring, no shared scam list. |
| Goodcall Packaged receptionist | $7970 estimated unique callers. Lowest priced tier with overages; workflow limits differ. | $0Set up for you | $79 | Packaged receptionist, minutes to set up. Every new caller counts, scam callers included, at $0.50 each above the tier. No refusal before the ring. |
Other provider rates checked September 27, 2026; Bland and Twilio rechecked September 27, 2026. No promotional credits or annual discounts. Bland bundles the model and speech into its rate, includes an inbound number on Start, and bills telephony at pass-through, modeled at $0.0085/min; daily peaks or concurrency can require a higher tier sooner. Build and upkeep is your own time at the hours and rate you set above; it is an estimate of effort, not a fee any provider charges. Telnyx’s possibly additional $0.002/min Voice API fee adds $0.60 to its displayed estimate. Review the full methodology.
A pause. A quick correction. Someone saying “yes” while the other person finishes a sentence. The way an assistant handles these moments shapes the call.
GPT-Live-1 listens and speaks simultaneously. OpenAI charges $0.05 per elapsed voice-session minute, billed per second; backend reasoning and tools cost extra. That five cents is the voice layer, rather than a complete receptionist subscription. OpenAI model documentation ↗
Telnyx’s Kimi configuration chains speech recognition, a text model and speech generation. It supports barge-in, so a caller can interrupt playback. Telnyx interruption settings ↗
GPT-Live-1 handles incoming and outgoing audio in one voice model, delegating deeper work to a backend agent. A natural exchange still needs accurate business information and correctly implemented actions.
Try unfamiliar names, spelled email addresses, street noise and a caller changing their mind. Check the transcript against what was actually said.
Ask for an appointment or a transfer. Check the destination system and the fallback when it fails. A fluent confirmation is not proof of a completed action.
Test several simultaneous calls, silence, long conversations and service outages. Agree on overflow behavior and spending limits before routing your main number.
Update opening hours, review a missed inquiry, and change an instruction. Choose the service your team can keep accurate as the business changes.
You should be able to check the arithmetic and decide which tradeoffs matter for your business.
We use public U.S. monthly rates checked on September 27, 2026. Vendor links are provided beside their numbers. Enterprise negotiations, annual discounts, promotional credits and free trials are excluded. Quotes and current provider terms take precedence.
The calculator uses elapsed AI minutes, one local number and no post-transfer time. Bland is modeled at its bundled Start rate with telephony at pass-through and its included inbound number; its Build plan is selected above 3,000 estimated calls in a 30-day month, or when the usage discount offsets its base fee. Peaks can force an earlier upgrade. Retell, Telnyx, Vapi and ElevenLabs use the configurations stated in the table; Rosie, Smith.ai, Quo Sona and Goodcall take the cheapest published package covering the estimated calls. Voice platforms also carry the build-and-upkeep hours set in the calculator, which no provider charges and which you can set to zero. These do not use identical models.
Rosie shows the smallest advertised allowance covering the selected volume; unverified overages are not invented. Goodcall uses your estimated unique callers and the lowest priced tier including its $0.50 overage. Different feature or concurrency requirements may change which tier you need.
PhoneShield charges $29.99 a month plus $0.12 for each Nora minute beyond the 150 included. The calculator takes every minute of every call and bills Bland for all of them; PhoneShield meters only the share that reaches Nora, set to the 35% measured on the pilot and adjustable. Screening, scam refusals, messages and calls that ring you are never billed. At 300 minutes of calls, PhoneShield is $29.99 and the modeled Bland Start bill is $44.55. At 900 minutes, the bills are $49.79 and $133.65. In this configuration, PhoneShield becomes less expensive at about 202 minutes of calls. The headline example uses three-minute calls spread across 30 days; other carriers or contracts can change the comparison.
Our planning baseline is $0.075/min: $0.05 voice, $0.0129 Twilio inbound plus Media Streams, a $0.005 backend allowance, and $0.0071 contingency. Add $25/month hosting and a $1.15 number. At 900 minutes, that is about $93.65 before development, maintenance and support labor. Twilio rates ↗ OpenAI rates ↗
That is a modeled Twilio streaming route, not a measured invoice for our Telnyx SIP pilot. Using Telnyx as the carrier does not require buying its bundled Kimi assistant. A Telnyx + GPT-Live route needs its own voice, backend and applicable call-leg costs; it is not the $0.0564 Kimi configuration.
Taxes, your existing phone bill and forwarding fees, SMS, recording add-ons, toll-free or international calls, human backup, custom integrations, and labor. We do not infer competitor profit margins from their retail prices.
Usually, once a line handles a modest volume. At 300 minutes of calls a month, PhoneShield costs $29.99 versus $44.55 for the modeled Bland Start setup with U.S. inbound telephony at pass-through: $14.56 less, or about 33%. Every minute of every call is compared: Bland bills all of them, while PhoneShield meters only the share that reaches Nora, about 35% measured on the pilot. PhoneShield is $29.99 a month with 150 Nora minutes included, then $0.12 a minute; scam refusals, screening, messages and calls that ring you are not metered. In this setup, our price is lower from about 202 minutes of calls a month; Bland can cost less below that. That is usage only; the calculator also adds the time it takes to build and run a Bland pathway yourself, which PhoneShield includes. Rates, features and setup requirements differ, and no comparative call-quality benchmark has been run.
The Telnyx configuration compared here includes Kimi hosted by Telnyx, alongside its speech and orchestration services. Model tokens are an additional line already counted in the estimate. You do not need your own model API key for that configuration.
A system can stop speaking when interrupted while still processing speech recognition, reasoning and speech generation in sequence. GPT-Live-1 can listen and speak together in a single voice model. Architecture alone does not establish better results; test noisy calls, overlap and real receptionist tasks.
Yes. That can reduce service charges if you can configure, monitor and maintain the system. Include the phone number, carrier, model, backend tools, hosting and engineering time in your budget. The lowest API invoice is only one part of the decision.
PhoneShield is an early-access pilot: scam blocking before answer, front-desk screening, ring-through with whisper, Nora, and messages, with provider configuration managed by an administrator. Calendar booking and a human backup team are not included. Notifications by Telegram, email, Slack or webhook are, and Nora can connect a caller to you. Subscribe from the pricing page; we confirm your specific setup before you route your main number.
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