> For clean Markdown of any page, append .md to the page URL. > For a complete documentation index, see https://docs.talkif.ai/llms.txt. > For AI client integration (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.), connect to the MCP server at https://docs.talkif.ai/_mcp/server. # Credits and pricing > How Talkif charges — what a call costs and why, the four kinds of balance and the order they're spent in, what happens at zero, and a worked example. Talkif is prepaid and usage-based. You keep a USD balance; every call, phone number and post-call analysis takes what it costs from that balance, itemised. There are no plans to pick and no per-seat fees — the price of a call is the sum of the resources it used, at the rates for the providers *you* chose in the flow. This page explains the model. Topping up, cards and auto-recharge are in [Credits and payment](/account/credits-and-payment); reading a bill is in [Cost breakdown](/account/cost-breakdown). ## What a call costs A finished call is priced as a set of line items, one per resource, each with its own unit: | Line item | Unit | How it's measured | | ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Telephony** | per minute, **rounded up** to the next whole minute | Carrier time for the call. Rate depends on provider (Talkif number, your SIP trunk, WhatsApp) and direction | | **STT** | per minute, prorated to the second | Duration of the call, at the chosen speech-to-text model's rate | | **LLM** | per token, input and output priced separately | Every turn re-sends the prompts and transcript, so tokens grow with call length and prompt size | | **TTS** | per character synthesized | Only what the agent actually said | | **Infrastructure** | per minute: prorated to the second for calls that start until November 14, 2026; **rounded up** to the next whole minute for calls that start from November 15, 2026 (UTC) | The agent runtime itself — the platform fee, a flat platform rate | | **Function calls** | — | Calls to your own HTTP endpoints are **free**; you pay only the LLM tokens around them | | **LLM analysis** | per token | Post-call insights, if enabled — a separate line so you can see what analysis costs versus the conversation | Two consequences worth knowing before you design a flow: * **Telephony rounds up, and from November 15, 2026 so does the platform fee.** A 61-second call pays 2 telephony minutes and 61 seconds of STT. Its infrastructure line (the platform fee) is 61 seconds for calls that start until November 14, 2026, and 2 minutes for calls that start from November 15, 2026 (UTC). At the standard platform rate of \$0.05 per minute that is \$0.0508 before and \$0.10 after; a call that ends on a whole minute costs the same either way, and no call pays more than one extra minute of platform fee. Short calls are proportionally more expensive on the rounded lines — [WhatsApp calls](/telephony/whatsapp-business-calling) have no telephony line at all. * **LLM cost is quadratic-ish in call length.** Each turn resends the whole context, so a long System Prompt is paid on every turn of every call. Keeping prompts short is a cost lever as well as a quality one — see [Write prompts](/build/write-prompts). ### Transferred calls When an agent [transfers a call to a person](/build/transfer-calls-to-people), the AI part of the bill stops where the agent leaves the call: * **STT, LLM, TTS and infrastructure** are billed for the time the agent was on the call, including a warm-transfer briefing — not for the conversation between the caller and your person afterwards. * **Phone legs** are billed as **telephony**, at the rates below. The caller's leg is billed for the whole call, before and after the transfer. A transfer to a phone-number destination is an extra outgoing leg, billed from the moment it's answered at the rate of the **Call from** number's provider — ringing isn't billed. * Time your person spends on the call in the **dashboard** carries no platform fee of its own. Rates are published live. The current telephony and number prices are below; model rates are on [Models and voices](/reference/models-and-voices). ### Telephony | Provider | Inbound / min | Outbound / min | | ------------ | ------------- | -------------- | | SIP Trunking | \$0.0040 | \$0.0040 | | Twilio | \$0.0085 | \$0.0140 | | WhatsApp | Free | Free | ### Phone numbers | Fee | Amount | | ------------ | --------------- | | **Purchase** | \$1.15 one-time | Monthly cost varies by country and number type. Price shown is for US local numbers. ### Recording storage | Fee | Amount | | ----------- | --------------------- | | **Storage** | \$0.5000 / GB / month | Billed based on actual storage duration. Minimum 1 day charged. ## The four kinds of balance Your balance is made of *buckets*, and which bucket pays for what is the part that surprises people. **`subscription`** `expires` Granted monthly by a subscription plan; expires at the end of the period. Spent **first**. --- **`promotional`** `may expire` Credits from a promotion, usually with an expiry date. Spent **second**. --- **`bonus`** `never expires` Welcome credit, referral rewards and similar. Spent **third**. --- **`purchased`** `never expires` Money you paid. Spent **last**, so it's never wasted while expiring credit exists. --- Two rules sit on top of the order: 1. **Calls and analysis can be paid from any bucket.** Expiring buckets go first so you lose as little as possible. 2. **Phone number purchases and monthly rental can only be paid from purchased or subscription balance.** Bonus and promotional credit never buy or rent a number. This is why a new account with only its welcome credit can build and test but must top up before buying a line. `GET /billing/balance` reports `available` (everything usable), `purchasedBalance`, `bonusBalance` and the `earliestExpiration` across buckets. ## Admission, overdraft and suspension Talkif checks your balance **once per call, before it starts** — and never again during it. * To start any call (inbound, outbound, browser test) the account must be active and have at least **\$1.00** available. Below that: outbound requests fail with `insufficient_balance`, inbound calls are answered busy, campaigns and schedules hold. * Once a call is running it is **never cut off for money**. It's metered to the end and settled as one charge, even if that takes the balance negative. * If the balance ends at or below zero, the account is **suspended**: no new calls until a top-up brings it positive. The dashboard, billing and your data stay fully accessible — suspension only blocks spending. A top-up reactivates the account automatically. * With **auto-recharge** on, the top-up happens instead of the suspension: the shortfall triggers a charge to your default card for your configured amount. ## A worked example You sign up, get the **\$5.00 welcome credit** (bonus), and add **\$50.00** by card (purchased). ```text Purchased $50.00 Bonus $5.00 Available $55.00 ``` #### You buy a US local number at \$1.15/month Number purchases can't use bonus, so the rental comes off *purchased* even though bonus is available. ```text Purchased $50.00 − $1.15 = $48.85 Bonus $5.00 = $5.00 Available = $53.85 ``` #### You make a 4 min 20 s test call Telephony is billed per started minute; STT per second; TTS per character; the LLM per token. Infrastructure is per second for calls that start until November 14, 2026, and per started minute from November 15, 2026. Say the call comes to \$0.42: ```text Telephony 5 min (started) × $0.014/min = $0.07 STT 4.33 min × model rate LLM ~2,800 tokens × model rate TTS ~1,900 chars × model rate Infrastructure 4.33 min × platform rate (until Nov 14, 2026) 5 min (started) × platform rate (from Nov 15, 2026: ~$0.03 more at $0.05/min) Call total ≈ $0.42 ``` Calls spend **expiring-first**, so the whole amount comes off bonus: ```text Purchased $48.85 = $48.85 Bonus $5.00 − $0.42 = $4.58 Available = $53.43 ``` #### Twelve more calls use up the bonus Bonus hits \$0.00; the next call spends from purchased. Nothing else changes — you don't notice the bucket switch except in the transaction history, where each entry names its bucket. #### A long campaign runs the balance to –\$0.80 The last call was admitted with \$1.10 available, ran long, and settled at \$1.90. A running call is always billed to the end, so the balance goes negative and the account is **suspended**: existing calls finish normally, the queue holds. ```text Available $1.10 − $1.90 = −$0.80 → suspended Top-up −$0.80 + $20.00 = $19.20 → active, queue resumes ``` #### Next month, rental renews \$1.15 is taken from purchased balance for the number. If the balance can't cover rental, the number's billing status moves to *past due* and eventually *suspended* — see [Buy a number](/telephony/buy-a-number). ## Where the numbers come from Every line item on a bill records the **rate that applied at the time**, so historical bills don't change when prices do. Rates are per account — if you're on negotiated pricing, your rates apply automatically everywhere the public ones are shown here. ## Next #### [Credits and payment](/account/credits-and-payment) Top up, manage cards, set up auto-recharge. #### [Cost breakdown](/account/cost-breakdown) Read a call's bill line by line and find what drives cost. #### [Models and voices](/reference/models-and-voices) Current per-model rates for STT, LLM and TTS. #### [Choose models and voices](/build/choose-models-and-voices) Trade off latency, quality and cost per provider.