A phone team is one of the few parts of a business where the software bill grows in step with headcount. Twenty agents means twenty seats, and the gap between a $29 seat and a $149 seat is real money. That is why call centre pricing is worth reading closely.
2026 added a complication: the AI layer is now sold two different ways. Established platforms bundle AI into the seat and charge per user; a newer group of voice agent vendors charges per minute and lets the seat count stop mattering. Both models are legitimate — and they produce very different bills.
Below are eight platforms sold to call centres and contact centres, plus two per-minute voice agent tools. Every price comes from the vendor's own pricing page, in the currency it publishes; where a vendor publishes nothing, that is stated rather than guessed.
Two pricing models, and why the difference matters
Per-seat pricing is the industry default. You pay for each agent who logs in, and the platform supplies routing, recording, reporting and increasingly an AI copilot per seat.
Per-minute pricing is the newer shape. An AI voice agent handles a call end to end — greeting, qualifying, booking, escalating — and you pay only for the minutes it talks. With no seat to buy, it is cheap for overflow and after-hours work, and wrong for a floor of fifty agents.
Transparency is still the exception: of the twenty vendors checked, four (Samespace, Cresta, Observe.AI and Synthflow) publish no price at all. The ten below all do.
1. Aircall — AI in the seat price, voice agents billed by the conversation
Aircall is a cloud phone system built for sales and support teams rather than a hundred-seat contact centre. It connects to over 250 tools, syncs call activity to your CRM, and adds power dialer and analytics on higher plans.
Its published pricing puts Essentials at $30 per license per month and Professional at $50. Live AI coaching is an add-on at $49 per seat per month, and AI Voice Agents are billed by use — $0.15 to $0.35 per conversation, or from $99 per month on a bundle.
Why it made the list: the clearest split between seat cost and AI cost.
2. CloudTalk — the European option, with AI priced as a line item
CloudTalk is a European cloud call centre platform for small and mid-sized teams. Smart routing, messaging and real-time analytics sit on its mid tier; parallel dialers and Salesforce tooling on the top one.
Its pricing page lists Starter at €25 per user per month, Essential at €29 and Expert at €49 billed annually (€34, €39 and €69 monthly). AI is itemised, not included: summaries around €9 per user per month, and AI Voice Agents from €99 for 200 minutes.
Why it made the list: the most granular add-on pricing here — buy only the AI you will use.
3. JustCall — the least expensive per-seat AI stack on this list
JustCall packages a business phone system with CRM integrations, workflow automation and named AI use cases — an AI receptionist, an outbound agent and a lead qualifier. It is built for teams wanting automation without an enterprise contract.
Its plans run at $29, $49 and $89 per user per month billed annually, the top tier adding AI coaching and call tracking. AI Review Assist is a $9 per user add-on, and extra voice minutes cost around $0.025 each.
Why it made the list: the cheapest way to put transcription, summaries and scoring in front of every agent.
4. Dialpad — every contact centre tier has AI in it
Dialpad started as a business phone system and grew a contact centre product for queue-based support and sales floors. Calls, messaging and meetings share one platform, and its AI features — live transcription, summaries, agent assist — ship as part of it.
Its pricing page lists the Contact Center tiers at $89, $119 and $149 per user per month, dropping to $39, $59 and $79 on annual billing. AI transcripts, real-time agent guidance and quality management appear as you move up. AI Voice is priced separately, from $15 to $25.
Why it made the list: an AI-heavy platform publishing a real price card instead of a quote form.
5. Five9 — enterprise contact centre seats with public prices
Five9 is one of the large enterprise contact centre vendors, covering voice, chat, email, workforce management and reporting, with AI agents alongside human ones. It is built for hundreds of concurrent conversations.
Its pricing page publishes two entry points: Digital at $119 per seat per month for digital channels only, and Core at $159 for all channels with the AI essentials included. Enterprise configurations are still quoted.
Why it made the list: a number on screen where most enterprise vendors send you to a sales form.
6. NICE — an agentic AI suite with a price list
NICE sells the full stack: omnichannel routing, workforce engagement, recording and quality analytics, plus AI agents for sales, marketing and outreach. It is aimed at centres large enough to have a workforce planning function.
Its published plans step up through Omnichannel Suite at $110 per agent per month, Essential at $135, Core at $169 and Complete at $209, topping out at $249 — or $0.25 per session.
Why it made the list: a five-tier ladder with a per-session alternative to per-seat.
7. Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — the small-team option
Quo is a shared business phone system for small teams rather than a contact centre platform. Everyone gets a number, a shared inbox and call rules, and its AI covers summaries and drafted replies.
Its plans are $19, $33 and $47 per user per month, with annual billing starting at $15. AI actions are metered through a monthly credit allowance rather than sold separately, with overage charged per call.
Why it made the list: the cheapest credible entry point at five agents, not fifty.
8. VoiceSpin — priced per account, not per seat
VoiceSpin is a call centre platform for outbound-heavy operations — collections, lead generation, offshore teams running prediction dialers across several countries. Its AI covers dialling, speech analytics on every recorded call, and an in-call rep assist.
Unusually, its pricing is quoted per account rather than per user: Basic from $300 per month, Professional from $525 and Advanced from $1,000, with annual commitments down to $270, $472 and $900 — built for a floor of dialling agents, not a handful of support staff.
Why it made the list: the only account-level plan here — how offshore and BPO pricing usually works.
Per-minute AI voice agents: Bland and Retell
If the job is answering calls rather than employing agents, model the per-minute option before you buy seats. Bland and Retell sell voice agents by the minute of talk time, so a quiet week costs almost nothing.
Bland's published rates are $0.14 per minute on the entry tier with no platform fee, falling to $0.12 per minute plus a $299 monthly platform fee once you need higher rate limits — an agent answering immediately, with no seat commitment.
Retell's pricing is a transparent per-minute stack: $0.07 to $0.31 per minute for voice agents, billed against whichever language model and voice you route through it, with $10 in free credits to start.
Why they made the list: at ten to twenty cents a minute, an AI agent beats a human seat until it is busy all day.
How to choose without a six-week procurement process
Four questions separate a good deal from an expensive one. First, what is your peak concurrent call volume, not your headcount — seat prices scale with people logged in, and half are usually off the phone.
Second, is the AI included or an add-on? Aircall and JustCall charge separately for coaching and review; Dialpad and Five9 fold the essentials into the tier. A $29 seat plus a $49 add-on is not cheaper than an $89 seat.
Third, how much annual commitment is on the table? Dialpad's contact centre tiers fall by more than half on annual billing, and VoiceSpin discounts every plan yearly — often more than the quote-only vendors concede.
Fourth, split the workload. Very few operations need every call handled by a paid seat. Routing after-hours, overflow and repetitive qualification to a per-minute agent while keeping complex calls on fewer seats cuts the bill most.
The honest takeaway
The call centre market is one of the more transparent slices of business software in 2026 — sixteen of the twenty vendors checked publish real numbers, including enterprise platforms that historically hid them behind a sales call.
If you run a support or sales floor of five to fifty people, price Aircall, JustCall and Quo against each other, then decide whether the AI you want is worth the add-on. If you mainly need calls answered, price Bland and Retell first and compare the per-minute total with the seats you were about to buy.