---
title: "Speko vs Vapi"
description: "A sourced comparison of Speko (hosted phone agents, Router and Gateway) with Vapi across product scope, telephony, routing, runtime ownership, observability and pricing."
canonical: "https://speko.ai/speko-vs-vapi"
last-updated: "2026-11-03"
---

> ## Speko page index
> The complete index of every page on this site is at: https://speko.ai/llms.txt
> Read it before exploring further. It lists the exact Markdown URL for every canonical HTML page.

# Speko vs Vapi

Comparison

Speko offers hosted phone agents (Speko Agents), a hosted model router (Speko Router) and an open customer-side Gateway; Vapi is a hosted developer platform that runs the whole voice agent, so the useful comparison is which boundary your team wants to own.

Short answer

Vapi and Speko Agents are both hosted voice agent platforms. Speko Agents bills $0.09 per minute all-in plus carriage on Speko numbers, with phone numbers, inbound and outbound calls, SMS and transfers included; Vapi bills usage-based hosting and orchestration plus model and telephony charges. Choose Speko Router + Gateway instead when your own runtime owns the conversation loop and model selection is the boundary to make interchangeable.

Author

Speko engineering

Reviewed by

Speko engineering

Published

August 7, 2026 Last reviewed November 3, 2026

## How do Speko and Vapi compare?

Vapi category, scope and billing statements were checked against the official sources below on July 31, 2026. Speko Agents cells were checked against the Speko docs and pricing page on November 3, 2026. The table compares product boundaries, not overall quality. A dash means this site publishes no sourced statement for that cell.

| Dimension | Speko Agents (hosted) Hosted phone agents | Speko Router + Gateway Model layer, your runtime | Vapi |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Category | Hosted voice agent platform with phone numbers, calls and SMS. | Voice model router. | Hosted developer platform for voice agents. |
| Scope | The whole agent: prompt, voice, tools, knowledge and the phone number live in the Speko console and API. Speko runs the conversation loop. | Compatible model calls for STT, LLM and TTS. It does not run the conversation loop. | Managed agent orchestration with prompts, tools and a provider stack configured in the platform. |
| Telephony | Included. Inbound and outbound phone calls on a Speko number or on a number you already own (SIP trunk import); SMS on Speko numbers; blind and warm transfers to a human. | Not included in the Router or Gateway boundary. Telephony and WebRTC remain with the application runtime. | Telephony is connected and billed separately from Vapi hosting and orchestration. |
| Model routing | Measured selection and pre-response failover across STT, LLM and TTS. An agent can also pin providers, or run on a speech-to-speech model: Grok Voice 3.0 at the same per-minute rate, or GPT-Live, which adds its reasoning model's tokens at the provider's published rate plus 5%. | The application can pin a model or request measured automatic selection from eligible routes. | Developers configure supported STT, LLM and TTS choices. Model usage can be pass-through or BYOK. |
| Runtime ownership | Speko operates the agent runtime and the phone legs, records the call, persists transcripts and events, and finalizes a call report after hangup. The customer configures the agent. | Speko operates the routing API; the customer keeps LiveKit, Pipecat or a custom runtime. | Vapi operates the hosted platform; the customer configures the agent and connected services. |
| Observability and failover | Lifecycle events, a call report and a recording per call; signed workspace webhooks; call lists of up to 1,000 rows with a call window. | Route, reason, failover-count and first-byte headers. Failover is pre-response only, not mid-stream. | The platform owns call logs and orchestration. Fallback behavior stays within the configured provider paths. |
| Benchmark transparency | An agent's default stack is computed from the same benchmark dataset that feeds the public boards at speko.ai/benchmarks; the picks are written into the agent at create time. | Public voice benchmark boards at speko.ai/benchmarks; automatic selection ranks over the published snapshot. | - |
| Pricing model | $0.09 per minute all-in for STT, LLM and TTS, billed from answer to hang-up; unanswered calls cost nothing. Calls on a Speko number add the carrier's charge plus 20%, at least $0.015 per minute outbound and $0.01 per minute inbound; calls over your own SIP trunk add nothing. A Speko number is $1 setup and $2 a month. $10 signup credit. Prices as of November 3, 2026. | $0.09 per minute on Speko infrastructure for STT, LLM and TTS; phone calls on Speko numbers add the carrier's charge for the call, including its taxes and fees, plus 20%. Current terms are kept on the pricing page. | Usage-based hosting and orchestration, plus model and telephony charges; BYOK providers can bill directly. |

Vapi sources:

[Vapi pricing](https://vapi.ai/pricing) [Vapi pricing FAQ](https://docs.vapi.ai/faq) [Vapi documentation](https://docs.vapi.ai/)

Checked 2026-07-31

## Published per-minute prices

Data as of November 2026.

| Platform | Per minute | Included | Telephony | Monthly fee | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Speko our product | $0.09 per minute, all-in | Speech-to-text, LLM and text-to-speech on Speko infrastructure. Billed per second from answer to hang-up; unanswered calls cost nothing. | Calls on Speko numbers add the carrier's charge for the call, including its taxes and fees, plus 20%, at least $0.01 per minute inbound and $0.015 per minute outbound. Calls over your own SIP trunk add nothing. | None. A Speko phone number is $1 setup and $2 a month for most numbers. | [speko.ai/pricing](https://speko.ai/pricing) |
| Vapi | $0.05 per minute Vapi hosting, pre-paid | Vapi hosting. Speech-to-text, LLM and text-to-speech are passed through at the provider's cost on top. | Transport is charged by the carrier, not Vapi; Vapi's own SIP transport is listed as free. | None on the usage-only plan (1 included number, 4 concurrent calls). Core $29 a month; Pro $999 a month minimum; HIPAA $2,000 a month. | [vapi.ai/pricing](https://vapi.ai/pricing) |
| Retell AI | $0.07 to 0.31 per minute for AI voice agents | Retell voice infrastructure at $0.055 per minute plus the selected text-to-speech and LLM components, each priced per minute. | Retell-provided numbers $0.015 per minute in the US; own SIP trunk or custom telephony at no charge from Retell. | None. A Retell phone number is $2 a month; 20 concurrent calls included, $8 per extra concurrent call a month. | [retellai.com/pricing](https://www.retellai.com/pricing) |
| Bland AI | $0.14 per minute on Start; $0.12 per minute on Build | LLM, speech-to-text and text-to-speech, with no token charges. Transfer time bills $0.05 per minute on Start and $0.04 per minute on Build. | Billed separately: your own carrier, or Bland's built-in telephony at pass-through cost. | $0 platform fee on Start (an inbound number included); $299 a month platform fee on Build. | [bland.ai/pricing](https://www.bland.ai/pricing) |
| Synthflow | No per-minute rate published; annual enterprise contract | Scoped per contract. | Native telephony or SIP trunking, scoped per contract. | Quote only. No free plan or trial. | [synthflow.ai/pricing](https://synthflow.ai/pricing) |

## When to choose Vapi

- A managed developer platform should own agent orchestration and provider configuration.
- You want a developer-facing managed agent surface with a configurable provider stack.
- The platform should own more of deployment and call orchestration than a model router does.

## When to choose Speko

- Speko Agents runs the whole phone agent: the prompt, the voice, its tools, its phone number, SMS and blind or warm transfers live in the console and API, at $0.09 per minute plus carriage on Speko numbers.
- Automatic routing considers only models in the published benchmark snapshot. If the request constraints leave no eligible candidate, the router returns no_candidate rather than selecting outside that snapshot.
- The route is decided when your session opens, not while you speak.
- A preview endpoint returns the provider Speko would pick for a language and objective, with its runners-up, before you send a request.

## Method and provenance

Every Vapi cell is copied from the sourced comparison this site maintains on the [voice agent platforms page](https://speko.ai/voice-agent-platforms), where each statement carries its official source and check date. Speko Router + Gateway cells are verified against the public contracts and claim ledger this site builds from; Speko Agents cells against [Build a phone agent (Speko docs)](https://docs.speko.ai/guides/phone-agents) and the pricing page. The benchmark snapshot behind routing is published at [speko.ai/benchmarks/data.json](https://speko.ai/benchmarks/data.json).

Choose the layer first. Compare products inside that boundary second.

Related pages

- [Voice agent platforms, runtimes and model routers](https://speko.ai/voice-agent-platforms)
- [Speko vs Retell AI](https://speko.ai/speko-vs-retell)
- [Speko vs Bland AI](https://speko.ai/speko-vs-bland)
- [Vapi alternatives](https://speko.ai/vapi-alternatives)
- [Current model catalog](https://speko.ai/models)
- [Speko pricing](https://speko.ai/pricing)