Understanding how AI Voice Agent minutes are billed can help you better understand your usage and avoid unexpected charges. This article explains when AI Voice minutes are counted, what happens after your included minutes are used, and which calls are billed.
How AI Voice Agent Minutes Are Billed
Your AI Voice subscription may include a certain number of free AI calling minutes per billing cycle. The following overage rates only apply after the free minutes are used. The free AI calling minutes reset at the beginning of each new billing cycle.
Quick Summary
AI voice calling is "answered" gated, not a "dialed" gated meaning placing a call is free and ringing is free.
Nothing gets billed until the call is actually answered by a person, forwarded to a live agent, or the AI agent successfully leaves a voicemail message. Unanswered calls, busy signals, misdials, and failed connections never use any of your included or overage minutes.
Overage Rate
Once you're past your included minutes (or immediately, if your plan doesn't include any), overage is billed at $0.35 per minute. This rate is the same for both plans.
Minutes are rounded to the whole second on a per-call basis. For example, a 6 second call is billed at 1/10th of a minute, or $0.035 cents and the total call minutes are added in a billing cycle to calculate your usage invoice.
The Most Important Thing to Understand: You're Only Billed for a Real Conversation
This is the part customers ask about most, so we want to be very clear: you are not charged just because a call was placed. Dialing a number and having the phone ring does not, by itself, cost you anything.
Billing only starts once the call actually connects to a real outcome — meaning one of the following happened:
- The customer and the AI agent had a conversation, and either side ended the call normally.
- The AI agent transferred the call to a live person.
- The call ran long enough to hit the maximum call length, or ended due to a silence timeout after a conversation was underway.
- The AI agent reached voicemail and left a message.
If none of these happened, the call is not billed — no minutes are counted, even if the call took some time to reach that outcome.
Calls That Are Never Billed
The following situations do not count toward your usage at all, regardless of how long the call took to get there:
- The call was not answered.
- The line was busy.
- The number was invalid or the call could not be connected.
- The call failed due to a technical error on our end or our voice provider's end.
In all of these cases, no conversation ever happened, so there's nothing to bill for. This is true even though placing the call and letting it ring does take a small amount of time behind the scenes — that ring/setup time is never counted against your minutes.
Voicemail
If the AI agent reaches voicemail, whether it leaves a message depends on how many times we've already tried to reach that contact:
- On the first two attempts to reach a contact, if we detect voicemail, the AI agent will not leave a message.
- We'll try calling back again instead, so this attempt is not billed.
- On the third attempt, if we reach voicemail, the AI agent will leave a message. Because a message was actually left, this counts as a completed call and is billed for its full duration (both the time waiting through the greeting and the time spent leaving the message).
Conclusion
AI Voice billing is based on completed conversations or successfully delivered voicemail messages—not simply placing calls. If a call is never answered, is busy, cannot be connected, or fails before a conversation or voicemail occurs, no AI Voice minutes are used.