Twilio Pricing in 2026: Voice, SMS and Phone Number Costs, and What an AI Receptionist Really Pays
As of October 7, 2026, Twilio Voice in the US is pay-as-you-go: a local number is $1.15 a month, incoming calls are $0.0085 a minute and outgoing calls $0.014. Toll-free numbers are $2.15 a month and $0.022 a minute incoming. US texts start at $0.0083 per segment plus carrier fees. For an AI receptionist, the AI connection you choose moves the bill more than the phone line does.
How much does Twilio cost? The short answer
As of October 7, 2026, Twilio Voice in the US is pay-as-you-go: a local number is $1.15 a month, receiving a call on it is $0.0085 a minute, and making a call is $0.014 a minute. A toll-free number is $2.15 a month and $0.022 a minute to receive. US texts start at $0.0083 per 160-character segment plus carrier fees. There is no monthly plan. For an AI receptionist, the per-minute phone line is the small part of the bill; the add-on you pick to connect the AI decides it.
Every number below comes from Twilio's own US Voice and US SMS pricing pages, read October 7, 2026. Twilio says prices can change without notice, so check the live page before you sign a budget.
Twilio Voice prices in the US
| What you pay for | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Local phone number | $1.15 a month | Plus $0.0085 a minute for every minute of incoming calls |
| Toll-free number | $2.15 a month | Plus $0.022 a minute incoming, more than double the local rate |
| Outbound call, US and Canada | $0.014 a minute | Same rate to local and toll-free destinations; Alaska is $0.0945 |
| Browser, app or SIP calls | $0.004 a minute | Each direction; a SIP refer is $0.10 |
| Call recording | $0.0025 a minute | Storage $0.0005 a minute per month; Twilio transcription $0.05 a minute |
| Media Streams | $0.0044 a minute | Sends live call audio to your own AI over a websocket |
| ConversationRelay | $0.07 a minute | Twilio's managed voice-AI layer: it handles the speech side, you bring the AI model |
| Answering machine detection | $0.0075 a call | Outbound calling only |
| Premium text-to-speech | $0.0008 to $0.013 per 100 characters | Standard, Neural and Generative tiers; basic voices are free |
| Speech recognition (Gather) | $0.02 to $0.025 per use | Per recognition, not per minute |
New accounts get a $15 trial credit to buy a number and test calls. Twilio also charges a $75 fee for any 911 call placed from a number without a registered emergency address, which is worth fixing on day one if your agent ever dials out.
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Twilio SMS prices in the US
Texting is priced per 160-character segment: $0.0083 to send or receive on a long code, toll-free number or short code. US carriers then add their own per-message fees on top, for example $0.0035 per outbound text to AT&T and $0.0045 to T-Mobile, and business texting on a local number needs A2P 10DLC registration, which has its own fees. A 300-character text is two segments, so short messages are cheaper than they look on a per-message budget only if you keep them under 160 characters.
Two optional add-ons: link shortening, click tracking and scheduling at $0.015 per outbound text (first 1,000 free each month), and an AI compliance check at $0.015 per text.
A worked example: an AI receptionist taking 400 calls a month
Twilio's page lists rates, not bills, so here is one. Take a home-services company whose AI receptionist answers 400 calls a month on a local number, averaging 3 minutes each, so 1,200 inbound minutes. A quarter of the callers get transferred to the owner's cell for about 2 minutes, every caller gets one confirmation text, and every call is recorded.
| Line item | Math | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Local number | 1 number | $1.15 |
| Inbound minutes | 1,200 x $0.0085 | $10.20 |
| Transfer leg to the owner | 100 calls x 2 min x $0.014 | $2.80 |
| Recording | 1,200 x $0.0025 | $3.00 |
| Recording storage, first month | 1,200 x $0.0005 | $0.60 |
| Confirmation texts | 400 x $0.0083, plus carrier fees of about $1.40 to $1.80 | $4.72 to $5.12 |
| Subtotal before the AI connection | about $22.50 | |
| Option A: Media Streams to your own AI stack | 1,200 x $0.0044 | $5.28, total about $28 |
| Option B: ConversationRelay | 1,200 x $0.07 | $84.00, total about $107 |
That is the finding most Twilio price lists miss. The phone line itself costs about $22 a month at this volume, and it is the same no matter how smart the agent is. The connection choice moves the Twilio bill nearly 4x. Media Streams is cheap because you supply and pay for speech recognition and the voice separately. ConversationRelay costs more per minute because Twilio handles the speech side for you. Neither includes the AI model itself, which your model provider bills.
Three switches change the total fast. Turn on Twilio's own transcription for every call and you add $60 (1,200 x $0.05). Put the same calls on a toll-free number and inbound goes from $10.20 to $26.40. Keep recordings for a year and storage grows by about $0.60 every month you keep them.
The full stack costs more than Twilio alone. The voice and model layers usually cost more than the phone line, which is why our ElevenLabs pricing breakdown runs the same 1,200 minutes on a managed voice-agent plan, and our guide to AI voice agent cost adds up every layer per minute.
Do you need Twilio if you use Vapi, Retell or ElevenLabs?
Usually you bring a phone number from somewhere, and Twilio is the most common place to get it. Voice-agent platforms connect to a Twilio number or a SIP trunk, and the carrier side of each call is billed by that provider at its own rates. ElevenLabs states this directly on its agents pricing page: it adds no telephony fee, and your provider bills you for the carrier side. Our comparison of Vapi vs Bland vs Retell covers how each platform handles numbers.
So for most AI receptionist builds, the Twilio part of the bill is the phone number, the inbound minutes, any transfers and any texts: the roughly $22 subtotal above, not the $107 version.
Is Twilio cheap for a small business?
For the phone line, yes. At under a penny a minute to receive a local call, 1,200 minutes costs about $10. Where Twilio gets expensive is engineering time, not usage. Twilio is a set of building blocks: someone has to wire the number to the AI, handle transfers, register for business texting, and watch the logs. If nobody on your team will do that, the real cost is the build, which is why most owners end up comparing builders rather than per-minute rates.
A missed-call text-back is the cheapest useful thing you can run on Twilio: our missed-call text-back guide walks through it, and at $0.0083 a text plus carrier fees, 200 missed calls a month costs a few dollars.
Who can build a Twilio voice agent for my business?
You can build it yourself if you have a developer, hire a freelancer, or hire a studio that builds the whole system and hands it over. Ask anyone you hire which Twilio connection they plan to use and why, because that one choice is the difference between the $28 and the $107 month above.
SuperDupr is one of those studios. We build AI voice agents for service businesses, and our published price for a voice agent build is $5,000 to $10,000, with $200 to $2,000 a month ongoing depending on volume. Most AI builds go live in 2 to 4 weeks, the number and the system belong to your business, and the usage bills (Twilio, the voice platform, the model) stay in your name at the vendors' own rates. The first step is a free 30-minute strategy session, booked from that page.
How to keep a Twilio bill small
- Use a local number unless toll-free earns its keep. Incoming toll-free minutes cost $0.022 against $0.0085 local.
- Pick the AI connection on purpose. Media Streams is $0.0044 a minute; ConversationRelay is $0.07.
- Do not pay for two transcriptions. If your voice platform already transcribes calls, leave Twilio's $0.05-a-minute transcription off.
- Keep texts under 160 characters. Each extra segment is billed again, carrier fees included.
- Set a recording retention period. Storage is billed per minute stored, every month.
Sources
- Twilio Voice pricing, United States, twilio.com/en-us/voice/pricing/us, read October 7, 2026: number prices, per-minute call rates, recording, Media Streams, ConversationRelay, answering machine detection, text-to-speech, speech recognition, emergency calling fee and trial credit.
- Twilio SMS pricing, United States, twilio.com/en-us/sms/pricing/us, read October 7, 2026: per-segment rate, carrier fee examples and optional add-ons.
- ElevenLabs agents pricing, elevenlabs.io/pricing/agents, read October 7, 2026: telephony billed by your own provider.
- Worked example: SuperDupr's arithmetic on the published rates above, for an assumed 400 calls of 3 minutes each.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Twilio has no monthly plan; you pay for what you use. As of October 7, 2026, a US local number is $1.15 a month and a toll-free number $2.15. Receiving calls costs $0.0085 a minute on a local number and $0.022 on toll-free, and outgoing US calls cost $0.014 a minute. A small business answering 1,200 minutes of calls a month pays about $11 for the number and minutes.
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In the US, $0.0085 a minute to receive a call on a local number, $0.022 on a toll-free number, and $0.014 a minute to make a call to the US or Canada. Calls in a browser, app or over SIP are $0.004 a minute. Add-ons such as recording ($0.0025), Media Streams ($0.0044) and ConversationRelay ($0.07) are billed per minute on top.
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$0.0083 per 160-character segment to send or receive in the US, on long codes, toll-free numbers and short codes. Carriers add their own fees on top, for example $0.0035 per outbound text to AT&T and $0.0045 to T-Mobile, and business texting on a local number requires A2P 10DLC registration.
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For 400 calls of 3 minutes on a local number, with transfers, recording and a confirmation text, the phone side is about $22.50 a month. Connecting the AI through Media Streams adds $0.0044 a minute (about $28 total); Twilio's ConversationRelay adds $0.07 a minute (about $107 total). The AI model and voice platform are billed separately by their providers.
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No ongoing free plan, but new accounts get a $15 trial credit to buy a phone number and test voice features. After that, every number, minute and message is billed at the pay-as-you-go rates.