Bland AI drops telephony from its all-in per-minute rate
Bland's per-minute voice rate now covers only LLM, STT and TTS. Telephony moved out of the bundle and is billed separately at carrier or pass-through cost.
Per-minute rate advertised as all-in: LLM + STT + TTS + telephony in one number ('Telephony — PSTN and SIP supported' listed under 'Everything included in your per-minute rate').
Per-minute rate covers LLM + STT + TTS only. Pricing-page FAQ: 'Telephony is billed separately, on your own carrier or Bland's at pass-through cost.'
Bland’s plan prices did not move — Start stays free at $0.14/min, Build $299/month platform fee at $0.12/min, Scale $499/month platform fee at $0.11/min, and Enterprise remains contracted to volume. What changed is the scope of what that per-minute number buys. The pricing page’s “included in your per-minute rate” strip dropped its fourth item, Telephony, and now lists only LLM (“no token charges”), STT (“real-time transcription”) and TTS (“premium voices + clones”). The competitive FAQ was rewritten to match: where it previously claimed “Bland’s per-minute rate includes LLM, STT, TTS, and telephony in one number,” it now says the rate “covers the LLM, STT, and TTS in one number, with no token charges and no model-provider pass-throughs. Telephony is billed separately, on your own carrier or Bland’s at pass-through cost.”
That matters because the all-in framing was Bland’s central argument against Vapi and Retell, whose headline rates it describes as “the platform fee only.” Buyers modelling a Bland bill now need a second carrier line item alongside talk time, transfer time, the $0.015/call outbound minimum, $0.02/SMS and $0.01 per web-widget agent message.
Two smaller moves landed in the same refresh. The compare table replaced a checkmark-only “99% Uptime SLA” row with a stated 99.9% SLA on all four plans, and Enterprise concurrency was re-labelled from “Unlimited” to “Custom” / “concurrency sized to your volume.” Bland’s billing docs also added a Norm section: the assistant is billed separately from call usage on a token-based model priced by request complexity and interaction length.
Bland's pricing page dropped Telephony from the "included in your per-minute rate" list, leaving LLM, STT and TTS. The FAQ now states the per-minute rate "covers the LLM, STT, and TTS in one number" and that "Telephony is billed separately, on your own carrier or Bland's at pass-through cost." Plan prices were unchanged ($0.14 / $0.12 / $0.11 per minute; $0 / $299 / $499 platform fees). The compare table also moved to a stated 99.9% uptime SLA on every plan, re-labelled Enterprise concurrency from "Unlimited" to "Custom", and corrected the Scale card's transfer rate from $0.04 to $0.03/min to match the table. The billing docs added a Norm section — the assistant is billed separately on a token-based model — and a Negative Balance section.