# What is Vapi? Facts, license and pricing (Oct 2026)

Canonical: https://theagenticweekly.com/what-is/vapi · Last verified: 2026-10-25 · Published: 2026-10-25 · Author: Agentic Weekly (operated independently from Texas, US) · Evidence: Evidence: Reported. Everything here was read from Vapi's own pages on 2026-10-25 (America/Chicago). We have not run Vapi for this page, so it says nothing about quality or speed.

> Vapi is developer platform for voice agents; $5 free credits, then pay for the minutes you run. License: Proprietary. Facts were read from official pages on Oct 25, 2026 and are Reported, not Tested.

## What Vapi is

Vapi's pricing page offers $5 in free credits, pay-per-minute use (pre-paid with $0.05 a minute Vapi hosting), and lists plan amounts of $29 and $999 a month plus enterprise.

We list Vapi under AI voice and speech.

## Vapi key facts

Table: Vapi facts (vendor pages and GitHub, 2026-10-25)

|  | Vapi |
|---|---|
| Vendor | Vapi |
| License | Proprietary |
| Platforms | API and dashboard |
| Pricing model | Pay as you go |
| Free tier | $5 free credits |
| Evidence | Reported from vendor pages |

## Who Vapi is for

- Good for: Developers who want to assemble their own voice stack.
- Skip if: You want a flat per-seat price.

## How to start with Vapi

1. Sign up for $5 in free credits and create an assistant.

## Vapi alternatives

- Retell AI: Voice AI agents for phone calls with pay-per-minute pricing and 20 free concurrent calls.
- Cartesia: Realtime voice AI: text-to-speech, speech-to-text in 44 languages and voice agents, with a free plan and credit tiers.
- Deepgram: Voice AI APIs for speech-to-text, text-to-speech and agents with $200 in free credit.

## What we did not verify

- Release date (none published on the pages we read; the date shown is the day we first covered this entry).
- What the $29 and $999 amounts buy.
- Output quality, speed and reliability of Vapi: we have not run it for this page.

## FAQ

### What is Vapi?

Vapi's pricing page offers $5 in free credits, pay-per-minute use (pre-paid with $0.05 a minute Vapi hosting), and lists plan amounts of $29 and $999 a month plus enterprise.

### What license is Vapi under?

Proprietary. Read from the project's own pages on Oct 25, 2026.

### Is Vapi free?

$5 free credits. Checked Oct 25, 2026; prices change, so confirm on the vendor's page.

## Sources

- [Vapi](https://vapi.ai/) (fetched 2026-10-25)
- [Vapi pricing](https://vapi.ai/pricing) (fetched 2026-10-25)

## Related

- [Vapi facts and sources](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/vapi)
- [Alternatives to Vapi](https://theagenticweekly.com/alternatives/vapi)
- [AI voice and speech: all tools we track](https://theagenticweekly.com/best/voice-ai)
- [Vapi vs Cartesia](https://theagenticweekly.com/compare/vapi-vs-cartesia)
- [Vapi vs ElevenLabs](https://theagenticweekly.com/compare/vapi-vs-elevenlabs)
- [Vapi vs Retell AI](https://theagenticweekly.com/compare/vapi-vs-retell)

## Changelog

- 2026-10-25: First published from official pages read on 2026-10-25.

## How to cite

Agentic Weekly, "What is Vapi? Facts, license and pricing (Oct 2026)", last updated 2026-10-25, https://theagenticweekly.com/what-is/vapi