Head to head, updated July 2026

DILR Voice vs Vapi

DILR Voice and Vapi solve different problems. Vapi is a bring-your-own-stack platform: $0.05 a minute for the platform, and you add your own speech-to-text, LLM and text-to-speech at cost. DILR Voice is $0.14 a minute with the models, multi-agent handoff, RAG, dialer, frontdesk and per-country call compliance already inside it. Pick Vapi to own the stack. Pick DILR Voice to skip assembling it.

Published pricing, sourcedStructure over headline ratesWhen to pick Vapi instead

The short answer

Vapi's $0.05 a minute is a platform fee, not a price. Vapi's own pricing page says model costs are passed through at cost, and drop to $0 for Vapi if you bring your own provider key and pay that provider directly. So your real rate is $0.05 plus whatever stack you choose. That is a feature if you want control, and a chore if you do not.

DILR Voice is $0.14 a minute with the stack inside it, plus a monthly phone-number fee. One number, no reconciliation across four vendors.

Where Vapi beats us outright: HIPAA. Vapi offers it (with a BAA, on Enterprise or a $2,000/mo add-on). DILR Voice does not offer HIPAA at all. If that is a hard requirement for voice, buy Vapi or Retell. Our HIPAA-aligned work lives in Dilr Mira, on your own hardware.

Side by side

DILR Voice and Vapi, on the published facts

Every Vapi figure below comes from Vapi's own pricing, docs or trust pages, read in July 2026. Vendors change pricing often, so check the source link before you buy.

 DILR VoiceVapi
Headline rate$0.14/min on Growth, plus a monthly fee per phone number. No per-seat fees.$0.05/min platform fee. Your STT, LLM and TTS are billed on top, passed through at cost.
Model costsIncluded in the per-minute rate. Nothing to source or reconcile.Pass-through at cost, or $0 to Vapi if you bring your own provider API key. You pay the provider directly.
StartFree to start with $10 of trial credits, no credit cardSelf-serve on the Build tier. No trial credit is published on the pricing page.
ConcurrencyIncluded on Growth.10 concurrent lines included on Build, then $10 per line per month.
HIPAANot offered. HIPAA is Dilr Mira's remit, not Voice's.Available. Requires a signed BAA and either an Enterprise subscription or the $2,000/mo HIPAA add-on.
Zero data retentionNot offered as a named product tier.$1,000/mo add-on.
SOC 2, PCI, SSO, RBACNo public SOC 2. SSO and RBAC are not published features.Scale tier only. The Build tier explicitly carries none of them. Scale is an annual contract with no published price.
Call compliancePer-country call compliance: DNC checks, consent capture, opt-out recognition and a full per-call audit trail (UK, US, India, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Ireland). No public SOC 2 or HIPAA badge.Trust centre lists CCPA, GDPR, SOC 2 and PCI DSS v4.0.1. Per-country DNC, consent capture and opt-out handling are not published as platform features.
Multi-agentMulti-agent pipeline with handoff.Squads. Vapi describes them as orchestrating multiple assistants with context-preserving transfers.
Data retentionFull per-call audit trail.14 days of call history and 30 days of chat history on Build. Custom on Scale.

Vapi figures from vapi.ai/pricing, docs.vapi.ai HIPAA and security.vapi.ai, read in July 2026. DILR Voice figures from our own product page. Pricing changes, so check the source before you buy.

The published fees

What Vapi charges on top of the per-minute rate

These are fixed monthly add-ons listed on Vapi's own pricing page, separate from the $0.05 per-minute platform fee and separate from your model costs.

Vapi monthly add-ons, as published

Per month, on top of usage. Extra concurrency is a further $10 per line per month beyond the 10 included on Build.

Vapi add-onPublished price
HIPAA mode$2,000/mo
Zero data retention$1,000/mo
Extra concurrent line$10/line/mo after 10
SMS and chat$0.005 per message

Capability footprint

Maturity per axis: 100 is built in, 55 is a paid add-on or partial, 40 is possible but you assemble it, 12 is not offered. Read against the table above, which carries the sources.

DILR VoiceVapi

Note the two axes where Vapi is ahead: model flexibility, where its pass-through pricing is genuinely the most open in this market, and HIPAA, which DILR Voice does not offer. These charts visualise the sourced table above, not a performance benchmark.

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When to pick Vapi instead

The honest case for Vapi

A comparison written by one of the two vendors is only worth reading if it says where the other one wins. So here it is, with no hedging.

Vapi

Developer-first, bring-your-own model stack

Where Vapi genuinely wins

Model economics no one else publishes. Vapi is the only platform in this comparison whose pricing page states that speech-to-text, LLM and text-to-speech are passed through at cost, and drop to $0 for Vapi if you supply your own provider API key. If you have negotiated provider rates or you want to tune unit economics per assistant, that is real and you cannot replicate it on a bundled rate.

Genuine per-layer control. Swapping the model stack per assistant is a first-class concept, not a workaround. For an engineering team that wants the platform to be plumbing and nothing more, that is exactly the right shape.

HIPAA, which we do not have. Vapi will sign a BAA and run HIPAA mode. DILR Voice will not, at any price.

Pick Vapi if

You have engineers who want to own and tune the speech-to-text, LLM and text-to-speech layers themselves, you are comfortable reconciling several vendor bills, or you need HIPAA on the voice platform itself.

What DILR Voice does not have

The gaps we are not going to hide

Against Vapi

DILR Voice has no HIPAA and no public SOC 2 report, and Vapi publishes both (SOC 2 on the trust centre, HIPAA as an add-on or on Enterprise). We do not let you bring your own LLM key to cut the rate, so if you have cheap negotiated model pricing you cannot use it here. We are also a newer challenger brand with a smaller public footprint than Vapi.

Where that matters

If any of the above is a hard requirement in your buying process, buy the tool that has it. We would rather lose the deal than have you find out in month three. For private, on-premise clinical models that keep patient data in your own environment, see Dilr Mira.

What people actually ask

Straight answers, including the Reddit questions

Is DILR Voice cheaper than Vapi?
It depends entirely on what you build. Vapi publishes $0.05 per minute, but that is a platform fee only: you also pay for speech-to-text, the LLM, text-to-speech and telephony, which Vapi passes through at cost (or $0 to Vapi if you bring your own API key and pay the provider directly). DILR Voice is $0.14 per minute on Growth with those costs already inside the rate, plus a monthly phone-number fee. If you have engineers who will tune a cheap model stack and negotiate their own provider rates, Vapi can land lower. If you want one number and no reconciliation, DILR Voice is simpler and predictable.
What is the real cost of Vapi per minute?
Vapi does not publish a single all-in number, and we are not going to invent one for them. What Vapi does publish is the structure: $0.05 per minute for the platform, plus your chosen speech-to-text, LLM and text-to-speech at pass-through cost, plus telephony. Your actual rate depends on which providers you pick, so model it with your own provider quotes. The widely circulated "Vapi really costs $0.07 to $0.25 a minute" figures come from third-party blogs, not from Vapi, and we do not cite them.
Does Vapi charge extra for HIPAA?
Yes. Vapi's pricing page lists HIPAA mode as a $2,000 per month add-on and zero data retention as a separate $1,000 per month add-on, and its docs state HIPAA requires a signed BAA plus either an Enterprise subscription or the paid add-on. For contrast, Retell AI states there is no additional fee to sign its BAA. DILR Voice does not offer HIPAA at all, so if HIPAA is a hard requirement, Vapi and Retell can serve you and we cannot.
What is the best Vapi alternative in 2026?
It depends on why you are leaving. If Vapi's assembly burden is the problem and you want inbound, outbound, multi-agent handoff, RAG and per-country call compliance in one platform, DILR Voice is the closest fit. If you want managed inbound with SOC 2 and a free BAA, Retell AI is strong. If you are running high-volume outbound, Bland AI is purpose-built for it and cheaper above roughly 15,000 minutes a month. If you need no-code, Synthflow. We compare all five on our best AI voice agent 2026 guide.
What do people on Reddit say about Vapi?
We are not going to tell you, because we cannot verify it. Reddit is not machine-readable for us, so any quote or thread summary we published here would be invented, and a comparison page that invents Reddit sentiment is not worth your trust. We have linked live Reddit searches for Vapi below so you can read the actual threads and judge for yourself. That is the honest version of a "what Reddit says" section.
Is Vapi or DILR Voice better for developers?
Vapi, clearly, if owning the stack is the point. Vapi is architecturally bring-your-own-everything: you pick the speech-to-text, LLM and text-to-speech provider per assistant and pay near-wholesale, which no other platform in this comparison publishes as a pricing model. DILR Voice is built for teams who want the pipeline to already work: multi-agent handoff, RAG, dialer, frontdesk and compliance shipped together. If your team wants to tune every layer, that is a Vapi job.
Can DILR Voice do multi-agent handoff like Vapi Squads?
Yes. DILR Voice runs multi-agent pipelines with handoff, where a call moves between specialised agents while keeping context, which is the same problem Vapi's Squads solve. The difference is not the capability, it is what surrounds it: on DILR Voice the RAG knowledge base, outbound dialer, inbound frontdesk, post-call automation and per-country compliance are part of the same platform, whereas on Vapi you assemble the model layer yourself.
Does DILR Voice work for UK businesses?
Yes, and it is where DILR Voice is strongest relative to Vapi. DILR is a London company, and Voice ships per-country call compliance covering the UK alongside the US, India, Australia, France, Germany, Spain and Ireland, with DNC checks, consent capture, opt-out recognition and a full call audit trail. Vapi publishes GDPR and SOC 2 on its trust centre but does not publish per-country DNC or consent handling as platform features. DILR also publishes a monthly UK and EU AI compliance changelog.

We do not reproduce Reddit quotes, because we cannot link you to a thread we have verified. Read the live discussion and judge the sentiment for yourself:

Reddit: Vapi reviewReddit: Vapi vs alternativesr/AI_Agents: voice AI platforms

Go deeper

Keep reading

DILR Voice vs Retell AIItemised per-minute pricing against a single rate, and who has the compliance badgesDILR Voice vs Bland AIOutbound at volume, tier breakeven maths, and where Bland is genuinely cheaperDILR Voice vs SynthflowNo-code speed against one platform, and a $30,000 a year published entry pointBest AI voice agent 2026All five platforms compared, with a best-for-X verdictAI receptionist for businessWhat an AI receptionist costs against a human answering serviceThe DILR Voice platformMulti-agent pipelines, RAG, inbound frontdesk, outbound dialer, post-call automation

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