Still on Retell or Vapi? Your wallet deserves honest math.
Retell AI and Vapi AI are good developer products. They do what they say they do. But if you are an operations leader — not a developer — you have been paying for parts and engineering time you should not need.
ConnexŪS AI is a voice AI platform you fund with a wallet and turn on. You pick a voice, you pick a tier, you go live. The math below is the full story.
Per-minute, honestly priced
A single per-minute rate covers voice in, voice out, LLM reasoning, telephony, and platform access. No line-item invoices. No rounding. No per-seat tax.
- Budget — $0.079/min — Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
- Mid — $0.099/min — GPT 4.1 Mini
- Standard — $0.124/min — GPT 4.1
- Premium — $0.149/min — Claude 4.5 Sonnet
Each sits 13–15% under Retell's public reference rate for the equivalent LLM pairing. We benchmark quarterly and publish the methodology.
Fund once. Pay what you use.
Start with $10 and we add $20 in credit. That is a first-load-only launch promo — one per customer.
After the promo, minimum wallet load is $25.
Credits expire 60 days after they are loaded. This keeps wallets active.
Auto-refill triggers at a $10 remaining balance. You pick the refill amount, we keep your agents running.
What Retell and Vapi actually charge
Vapi: $0.05/min platform fee on top of LLM, STT, TTS, and telephony billed separately. Blended real-world cost lands $0.13–$0.31/min depending on the stack you assemble.
Retell: $0.07+/min for voice only; LLM and telephony billed separately; enterprise tiers add monthly platform minimums.
Both are developer APIs. Both assume you are supplying engineering hours, procurement cycles, and four-to-six vendor invoices. That is the real cost.
Comparison table
| Capability | ConnexŪS AI | Retell AI | Vapi AI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing shape | All-in per-minute wallet | Per-minute + line items | Platform fee + line items |
| Who is the buyer | Ops leaders | Engineers | Engineers |
| Deploy time | Minutes, no code | Days to weeks | Days to weeks |
| Contracts | None. No lock-in. | Enterprise minimums | Enterprise minimums |
| Minimum commit | $10 first load ($20 credit) | Monthly minimums | Platform + usage |
| Per-minute rate range | $0.079 – $0.149 | $0.07+ voice only, add LLM + telephony | $0.05 platform, add everything else |
| Rate positioning | 13–15% under Retell | Reference | Parts-only |
The wallet is the product
A contract is a promise that you will spend a certain amount. A wallet is the amount you actually spent plus the amount you are ready to spend next. That shift is the whole point.
You are not buying seats. You are not buying minutes in a box. You are funding the exact thing that happens on every call and nothing else.
When you should still pick a developer API
You have a dedicated voice engineer and want to hand-wire every integration. Retell and Vapi are legitimately good at that.
You do not want a voice you can pick from a list, a wallet you can refund, or a migration that takes minutes.
If either of those describes you, the developer APIs are fine. Most operators we talk to do not fit that description.
Start for $10
Fund a wallet. Pick a voice. Go live. That is the product.