Quick answer: On US list prices read on 12 November 2026, a month of 20,000 AI-agent call minutes (60% inbound), 9,000 texts and 10 numbers costs US$1,334.40 on Telnyx’s hosted Voice AI, including Telnyx’s own LLM-token estimate, and US$3,427.55 on SignalWire’s AI Agent, whose $0.16 a minute includes the model. Streamed to your own pipeline, Telnyx leads by US$11.15.
Telnyx and SignalWire both sell programmable voice, SMS, phone numbers and SIP by API, and both sell a hosted runtime for AI voice agents: Telnyx Voice AI Agents, and the SignalWire AI Agent, defined in SWML (SignalWire Markup Language) or its Python and TypeScript agent SDKs. Telnyx describes itself as carrier-owned; SignalWire says it was founded by the team that wrote FreeSWITCH. For a US build the decision turns on whether you want the vendor to run speech-to-text, the model and text-to-speech for you, the A2P 10DLC fees set by The Campaign Registry (TCR), the AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon carrier fees, the account gates each vendor puts in front of production traffic, and the SLA. Every figure below comes from each vendor’s own pricing pages, developer documentation, legal documents or machine-readable files, read on 12 November 2026, in US dollars, pay-as-you-go, before volume discounts.
Where Zian fits: an AI agents platform, not a phone system
If what you need is an agent that answers calls and follows up, rather than a carrier and a runtime to build one with, Zian is our pick over both vendors’ own agent products. Zian AI is a standalone AI sales and reception agents platform, not a phone system (carrier, CPaaS or contact centre) and not an add-on to one. Its AI Receptionist answers inbound calls 24/7, qualifying callers, booking appointments, transferring calls and taking messages, and its outbound agents follow up by voice, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger.
Zian handles answering machines and voicemail on calls, works in 30+ languages with voice cloning, integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, HighLevel and Zapier, and uses SmartReach AI™ to pace follow-up by channel and timing. Zian reports 64,521+ qualified sales appointments set. It is in a partnership-application beta with no published prices; each of its three listed plans, including Intel + Widgets (Free Forever), starts with a partnership application, so this page does not price it against the two vendors. If you would rather hand the whole job over, LeadsNow.ai is the done-for-you option: it runs on Zian, is paid per result and answers leads in under 60 seconds, 24/7.
Telnyx vs SignalWire: US list prices side by side
These are the US list prices an AI agent that calls and texts touches, read on 12 November 2026 from SignalWire’s pricing page and from Telnyx’s Voice API, SIP trunking, SMS, numbers and Voice AI pricing pages.
| Line item (US) | Telnyx | SignalWire |
|---|---|---|
| Inbound call to a local number, programmable path | $0.002 Voice API fee + SIP inbound “Starting at $0.0032” = from $0.0052/min | $0.0066/min (Local 10DLC) |
| Outbound call to a US number, programmable path | $0.002 + SIP outbound $0.005 (lower 48) = $0.007/min; Hawaii $0.01, Alaska $0.07, high-cost zones $0.01 to $0.181 on the SIP line | $0.0080/min; “Hawaii, Alaska, and high-rate centers may incur an additional access fee” |
| Toll-free inbound / outbound | $0.002 + “Starting at $0.015” / $0.002 + $0 SIP | $0.0147 / $0.0069 per minute |
| SIP or WebRTC leg | SIP interface $0.002/min; browser/app calling $0.002/min | $0.0030/min each direction |
| Audio streaming to your own WebSocket server | Media Streaming over WebSockets $0.0035/min | Audio <Stream> / Tap $0.0030/min |
| Answering machine detection | Standard $0.002 per call; premium $0.0065 per call | $0.006 one-time per call |
| Call recording | $0.002/min; storage $0 | $0.002/min |
| Call transfer | $0.10 per invocation | SIP Refer $0.10 |
| Local number rental | From $1.00/month, plus $0.10/month “to add SMS and MMS capabilities” | $0.50/month (Local 10DLC) |
| Toll-free number rental | From $1.00/month | $0.80/month |
| SMS segment, 10DLC long code, outbound / inbound | $0.004 / $0.004 per message part | $0.00415 / $0.00415 per segment |
| MMS, long code, outbound / inbound | $0.015 / $0.005 | $0.020 / $0.010 |
| Carrier fee on SMS sent to AT&T / T-Mobile / Verizon | $0.0035 / $0.0045 / $0.0045 | $0.0035 / $0.0045 / $0.0050 |
| Carrier fee on SMS received from AT&T / T-Mobile / Verizon | $0.0035 / $0.0025 / no carrier fee | $0.0035 / $0.0025 / $0 |
| Voice billing increment | 60/60 on the Voice API (“if your call is 11 seconds long, you will be charged for 60 seconds”); llms.txt describes SIP trunking as “per-second billing” | We could not find it stated (see below) |
Three lines decide most programmable-voice comparisons between these two. Telnyx bills every programmable call as two lines, its $0.002 Voice API fee plus the SIP trunk the call rides, and SignalWire bills one PSTN rate per direction. On the lower 48 that leaves Telnyx $0.0014 a minute lower inbound and $0.001 a minute lower outbound. SignalWire rents a local number for $0.50 against Telnyx’s $1.10 once it is text-enabled, and its streaming line is $0.0005 a minute lower.
The word “Starting” on Telnyx’s SIP pages covers destination zones: Telnyx’s public pricing API prices the lower 48 at $0.005, Hawaii at $0.01 and Alaska at $0.07 on the outbound SIP line, all 60/60. SignalWire publishes one outbound rate and says Hawaii, Alaska and high-rate centres “may incur an additional access fee” without a figure on its pricing page, so compare zone rates with both before you dial outside the lower 48. Our Twilio vs Telnyx cost comparison for AI voice agents works through the same Telnyx two-line structure against Twilio’s single rate.
We could not find SignalWire’s voice billing increment on its pricing page, its full rate deck, its AI pricing page or its developer documentation indexes as at 12 November 2026, and its support knowledge base could not be searched from our side. Ask SignalWire whether calls are billed per second or rounded to the minute before you compare short-call workloads; the worked bill below uses billed minutes as its input for both vendors, so the comparison holds only if the two round the same way. Both vendors’ terms also price short calls. Telnyx’s terms bill US and Canadian calls “in sixty second increments with a sixty second minimum” and add $0.01 per call of six seconds or less (its help centre applies this when such calls pass 15% of the month’s connected calls). SignalWire’s Cloud Agreement lets it charge $0.01 per call of six seconds or less above a 15% share of outbound calls, $0.01 per abandoned call above 30% of attempts, and an ACD surcharge of $0.01 per minute of shortfall when your average call is under 90 seconds. An agent that leaves many voicemails or hangs up on unanswered calls should model these before choosing.
SignalWire AI Agent vs Telnyx Voice AI: what $0.16 and $0.05 buy
The hosted runtimes are priced on different scopes, so compare what each minute contains before comparing the numbers.
| Hosted agent term | Telnyx Voice AI Agents | SignalWire AI Agent |
|---|---|---|
| Headline rate | $0.05/min “voice engine” | $0.16/min “AI Agent Runtime” |
| Included in the rate | Orchestration, Telnyx-hosted speech-to-text (including Deepgram models) and text-to-speech (Telnyx Ultra, Natural, NaturalHD, Qwen3TTS, Inworld, Rime, Resemble, Murf) | “Real-time STT, LLM, and standard TTS”, orchestration with barge-in, memory and tool calls, built-in retrieval |
| Language model | Add-on, billed per token: Telnyx-hosted models at its priority-tier rates (“Kimi typically ~$0.006/min”), or Anthropic and OpenAI models at provider rates | Included: “Flat rate includes LLMs”; default model gpt-4o-mini in the SWML reference |
| Telephony | Extra: $0.002 Voice API fee plus SIP trunking | Extra: “Voice transport (SIP/PSTN/WebRTC) is billed at standard rates” |
| Vendor’s own all-in estimate | “A production agent lands near $0.06 per minute” | “Most customers see an all-in rate of ~$0.163–$0.168/min” |
| Billing increment | “Each call is billed in 60-second increments”, connected duration only | We could not find it stated |
| Premium voices | ElevenLabs and Azure Neural HD are bring-your-own-key, billed by those vendors | Premium TTS extra, per character ($0.00015 Premium tier, $0.0002 Pro tier, which includes ElevenLabs Multilingual v2 and v3) |
| Concurrency on pay-as-you-go | “500 concurrent calls, 100 API req/s, 50 SMS/s” on the Voice AI pricing page (but see the account gates below) | We could not find a published concurrent-call limit; default 1 call per second |
SignalWire’s own pages qualify its flat rate in two places. The Voice API notes on the same pricing page say “LLM model selection (GPT-4, Claude, Llama) affects per-interaction cost”, and the SWML reference says the optional double-turn planning model is “Billed separately from the agent’s per-minute rate.” Telnyx’s pricing page says its estimates exclude per-call rounding to 60-second increments, “so actual voice-engine charges can be higher, especially for short calls”. Ask each vendor which models your $0.16 or your token bill covers before you sign.
A worked monthly bill for an AI agent that answers, calls and texts
Every input is a published list price you can replace with your own. The workload is a US sales and reception agent that answers calls, calls leads back and confirms by text:
- 12,000 billed inbound minutes and 8,000 billed outbound minutes on US lower-48 local numbers (20,000 in all);
- 10 US local numbers, all text-enabled;
- 6,000 outbound and 3,000 inbound single-segment SMS on 10DLC, split evenly across AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon (2,000 sent to and 1,000 received from each);
- one standard 10DLC campaign.
Path A runs the agent on each vendor’s hosted runtime. Path B streams every minute to your own speech-to-text, model and text-to-speech, which this bill does not price.
| Line | Telnyx | SignalWire |
|---|---|---|
| Inbound calls, 12,000 min | 12,000 × ($0.002 + $0.0032) = $62.40 | 12,000 × $0.0066 = $79.20 |
| Outbound calls, 8,000 min | 8,000 × ($0.002 + $0.005) = $56.00 | 8,000 × $0.0080 = $64.00 |
| 10 local numbers | 10 × ($1.00 + $0.10 SMS) = $11.00 | 10 × $0.50 = $5.00 |
| SMS, 9,000 segments | 9,000 × $0.004 = $36.00 | 9,000 × $0.00415 = $37.35 |
| Carrier fees, 6,000 sent | 2,000 × ($0.0035 + $0.0045 + $0.0045) = $25.00 | 2,000 × ($0.0035 + $0.0045 + $0.0050) = $26.00 |
| Carrier fees, 3,000 received | 1,000 × ($0.0035 + $0.0025 + $0) = $6.00 | 1,000 × ($0.0035 + $0.0025 + $0) = $6.00 |
| 10DLC standard campaign | $10.00 | $10.00 |
| Telephony and SMS subtotal | $206.40 | $227.55 |
| Path A: hosted runtime, 20,000 min | 20,000 × $0.05 = $1,000.00, plus LLM tokens at Telnyx’s own estimator figure of $0.0064/min = $128.00 | 20,000 × $0.16 = $3,200.00, language model included |
| Path A monthly total | $1,334.40 | $3,427.55 |
| Path B: WebSocket streaming, 20,000 min | 20,000 × $0.0035 = $70.00 | 20,000 × $0.0030 = $60.00 |
| Path B monthly total (before your own AI costs) | $276.40 | $287.55 |
| One-time, month one | Brand $4.50 + campaign review $15 + campaign fee billed for three months initially (+$20) + $1 one-time cost per number on its rate sheet (+$10) = +$49.50 | Brand $4.50 + DCA vetting $7.50 + campaign fee for the first three months up front (+$20) = +$32.00 |
On the hosted path Telnyx is $2,093.15 a month lower for this workload, almost all of it the gap between a $0.05 engine plus tokens and a $0.16 bundled minute. On the streaming path the vendors are $11.15 apart: Telnyx is lower on calls ($118.40 against $143.20) and SignalWire is lower on numbers and streaming. The Telnyx LLM line is the soft number: $0.0064 a minute is the figure Telnyx’s own estimator shows for its hosted Kimi model at about 6,000 prompt tokens a minute, and a frontier model is billed at that provider’s list rates instead, which you need to estimate from your own prompts. The Telnyx one-time line also assumes an account already at its Verified tier, because a Paid account has no 10DLC access. For the segment and reply arithmetic on two-way texting, see our breakdown of A2P 10DLC costs for two-way AI SMS agents.
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The 11-cent rule: when SignalWire’s bundled agent minute is lower
Here is the rule in one line. On US list prices, SignalWire’s $0.16 AI Agent minute costs less than Telnyx’s hosted Voice AI minute only if the language model you would run on Telnyx costs more than about 11 cents a minute in tokens.
The arithmetic, for this page’s 60% inbound mix: a SignalWire hosted minute is $0.16 plus $143.20 ÷ 20,000 = $0.00716 of telephony, or $0.16716. A Telnyx hosted minute is $0.05 plus $118.40 ÷ 20,000 = $0.00592 of telephony, plus L, your token cost per minute. The two are equal where L = $0.16716 − $0.05592 = $0.11124. The mix barely moves the line: at 100% inbound it is $0.1114, and at 100% outbound $0.111.
| Your LLM token cost per minute on Telnyx | Telnyx hosted minute (60% inbound) | SignalWire hosted minute | Lower at list |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.0064 (Telnyx’s own estimator figure for hosted Kimi) | $0.06232 | $0.16716 | Telnyx |
| $0.03 | $0.08592 | $0.16716 | Telnyx |
| $0.08 | $0.13592 | $0.16716 | Telnyx |
| $0.111 | $0.16692 | $0.16716 | Even |
| $0.15 | $0.20592 | $0.16716 | SignalWire |
Two conditions break the rule, and each needs checking with the vendor. First, SignalWire’s flat rate assumes the model it bundles; its own pricing notes say model selection “affects per-interaction cost”, and the double-turn planning model is billed separately. Second, Telnyx rounds each hosted call up to the next 60 seconds; if your calls are short and SignalWire turns out to bill per second, the gap narrows, although SignalWire’s Cloud Agreement lets it add an ACD surcharge when your average call is under 90 seconds.
The streaming path has its own break-even. A streamed outbound minute is $0.0080 + $0.0030 = $0.0110 on SignalWire and $0.002 + $0.005 + $0.0035 = $0.0105 on Telnyx to the lower 48. Any Telnyx outbound SIP rate above $0.0055 ($0.0110 − $0.002 − $0.0035) puts SignalWire’s published outbound minute ahead, which Telnyx’s Hawaii rate of $0.01 does, unless SignalWire’s unpublished access fee for that destination closes the gap.
Account gates on Telnyx and SignalWire before your first production call
Both vendors restrict new accounts, and both publish the restrictions in their developer documentation, read on 12 November 2026.
| Gate | Telnyx (developer docs, account levels) | SignalWire (developer docs, platform) |
|---|---|---|
| Starting tier | Pretrial ($25 in AI credits), then Trial ($5 testing credit) | Trial Mode: “All new SignalWire accounts begin in Trial Mode” |
| How to lift the first gate | Paid: verified mobile, card payment, 2FA, service address, fraud review | “Add a credit card to your account and fund it with at least $5 of credit” |
| Calls before the gate lifts | Paid tier: 5 concurrent outbound calls, 100 outbound calls a day, 10 an hour, an automated-call announcement on machine-generated voice | Trial: calls “Only to and from purchased and verified numbers”; 1 phone number; no international |
| 10DLC texting | “No access to 10DLC” on Paid; needs the Verified tier (KYC and an AI agent evaluation) | After Trial, TCR brand and campaign registration (“approximately 3-5 business days”); Auto Top-Up must be on to register a campaign |
| Test texting before registration | Trial tier: long-code SMS only to your one verified number, capped at 100 messages a day (Trial account page); no 10DLC until Verified | Platform Free Trial: one number, up to 200 segments a day, only to your verified mobile, prefixed “[SignalWire Free Trial]” |
| Default call rate | SIP proxy path: 20 calls per second per source IP, plus a monthly surcharge on outbound SIP trunking peak CPS above 5 ($12 to $30 per CPS; Programmable Voice traffic excluded); rate-limits.json: 1 call a second (free), 10 (pro) | 1 call per second; more costs $15 to $40 per CPS a month with a three-month commitment |
| Concurrent calls | Voice AI pricing page: 500 on pay-as-you-go; Paid docs: 5 outbound; help article: 2 by default, 10 after Level 2 | We could not find a published limit |
| Funding model | Card on file, pay-as-you-go; “No contract, no fee” on cancellation (help centre) | Prepaid balance; Auto Top-Up is “required for any account with active SignalWire resources” and charges “at most once every six hours” |
The practical difference is the order of operations. On Telnyx, the gate that matters for an AI agent that texts is KYC: until the account reaches Verified, it cannot register for 10DLC and is held to 5 concurrent outbound calls and 100 a day. On SignalWire, a $5 top-up lifts Trial Mode, after which the waits are TCR’s and the carriers’, and the limit you will meet first is 1 call per second, which is paid to raise. SignalWire’s account-setup guide adds that some features, outbound calling among them, require account verification “if prompted”, and its outbound calls carry STIR/SHAKEN C attestation by default, with A and B attestation requiring vetting that may include KYC. SignalWire’s Auto Top-Up note carries its own warning: a Space “that spends faster than that can reach a zero balance between charges and lose service”, so size the top-up to six hours of your own traffic.
Telnyx’s own pages give concurrency figures from 2 to 500 depending on which page you read, and SignalWire publishes a call rate but no concurrency figure we could find. Get the number for your account in writing from either before an outbound campaign. The Plivo vs Telnyx comparison applies the same Telnyx gates against Plivo’s plan-based ones.
10DLC fees on Telnyx and SignalWire
A2P 10DLC is the US carriers’ registration system for business texting from ordinary 10-digit numbers. Both vendors pass through TCR fees, and both bill a new campaign’s first three months up front.
| Fee | Telnyx | SignalWire |
|---|---|---|
| Brand registration | $4.50 one-time | $4.50 one-time; “Each submission incurs a registration fee” |
| Campaign vetting or review | $15 per campaign review; a campaign “may be submitted multiple times for carrier review” | DCA vetting $7.50 per new campaign, plus $7.50 per resubmission |
| Standard campaign | $10/month, “billed for three months initially” | $10/month; “first 3 months up front (as there is a 3 month minimum commitment)” |
| Low-volume mixed campaign | $1.50/month | $1.50/month |
| Brand vetting | $41.50 one-time (rate sheet) | “Third-party vetting fees apply” (registration guide, no figure there) |
| 50 or more numbers on a brand or campaign | T-Mobile number pool request, $50 one-time | Number pooling: $100 processing + $2,000 configuration, one-time, pre-approval required; 49 numbers per campaign before pooling |
| Idle campaign | Not listed on its 10DLC fees article or pricing.md (searched 12 November 2026) | T-Mobile inactivity passthrough, $250 per campaign idle 60 consecutive days |
One Telnyx inconsistency matters for the bill. Its 10DLC fees article (last modified 22 July 2026) lists registered-traffic carrier fees of $0.003 to send on T-Mobile and AT&T, while its live SMS pricing page lists $0.0045 and $0.0035. The worked bill uses each vendor’s pricing page, so both sides are priced from the same kind of source. Telnyx says in that article that it “does not currently charge a markup on 10DLC fees”. Its rate sheet in pricing.md also lists one-time campaign lines that the article does not explain, a $15 “Campaign Activation Fee by Syniverse” and two $50 T-Mobile campaign fees, so ask Telnyx which of them apply to a standard campaign before you budget month one. Ask Telnyx whether it passes through T-Mobile’s inactivity fee; SignalWire lists it, and a seasonal campaign that sits idle for two months on SignalWire costs $250.
Telnyx vs SignalWire uptime SLA and support
| Term | Telnyx | SignalWire |
|---|---|---|
| Uptime figure | “99.99% uptime SLA for core voice and messaging services” (/ai/sla.json, linked from llms.txt) | 99.95% Monthly Uptime Percentage, “commercially reasonable efforts” (Cloud SLA, last updated 1 January 2026); 99.99% for Dedicated Real-Time Regions (enterprise page) |
| Credits | 10% below 99.99%, 25% below 99.9%, 50% below 99.0% | 10% of the month’s pro-rated fees below 99.95%, applied only against future payments |
| How to claim | Not stated in the file | Ticket within 30 days of month end, subject “SLA Claim”, with dates, times and evidence |
| Main exclusions | Scheduled maintenance “notified 72h in advance”, force majeure, customer-caused outages, Internet routing beyond its network | Force majeure, “carrier related problems”, Internet beyond its demarcation point, scheduled maintenance, beta features; services you do not use |
| Where it is written | Machine-readable file; pricing.md lists “Custom SLA” (Committed, $500/mo) and “Custom SLA with credits” (Enterprise, $5,000/mo) | Legal PDF linked from its legal page |
| Support | Pay-as-you-go “Community support”; Growth ($2,000/mo minimum spend) adds “Support 24/7 via chat or call”; help centre lists a 24/7 support phone line | Basic free (email and community); Premium 5% of monthly usage or $1,200/month minimum (P1 response 2 hours); Enterprise 8% or $5,000/month minimum (P1 15 minutes) |
The two SLAs are different kinds of document. SignalWire’s is a dated legal agreement with one credit tier and a claims process; Telnyx’s figure is in a machine-readable file with three credit tiers, while its pricing.md ties credit-bearing SLAs to its Enterprise plan. Telnyx’s pricing pages also disagree on the tier above pay-as-you-go: they show Growth at $2,000 a month, and pricing.md shows Committed at $500. If a percentage and a credit matter to you, put them in the order form with either vendor.
FreeSWITCH, SWML and TeXML: what the lineage changes for a developer
SignalWire’s about page says it “was founded by the team that created FreeSWITCH”, the open-source telephony engine, and that it “employs the original FreeSWITCH authors and continues to maintain the project today”. Its FreeSWITCH page dates the engine’s announcement to January 2006 and SignalWire’s founding to 2017, and notes that “A free SignalWire account is required to access FreeSWITCH downloads and packages.” If you already run FreeSWITCH on your own servers, that is the practical link: the same company maintains the engine and sells the hosted platform built on it.
For an AI agent the lineage shows up as SWML, a YAML or JSON document that defines the call flow and the agent, including its prompt, functions (SWAIG) and model parameters, which SignalWire executes from a hosted script or a document your server returns. Telnyx’s equivalents are its Voice API and TeXML, which it describes as “Point your TwiML application at Telnyx and it runs unchanged at the Voice API rate”; SignalWire’s Compatibility API takes the same route with its cXML. If you are leaving Twilio, both vendors’ own pages say a TwiML app can move with endpoint and credential changes, so test the verbs your app uses on each. Telnyx, for its part, describes itself in its llms.txt as “carrier-owned” and its network page lists 30+ carrier licences and 25+ points of presence; neither vendor’s description is a measurement of call quality, which you can only get from a test month. If you would rather connect your own session border controller straight to a model’s SIP endpoint, our guide to a direct SIP AI voice agent with no Twilio in the path covers the cutover checks.
What Telnyx and SignalWire shipped in the last 90 days
Release pace changes coverage quickly, so these are selected voice, AI-agent and messaging items from each vendor’s own release log between 14 August and 12 November 2026; Telnyx’s feed lists more in each area, including Soniox TTS, medical speech-to-text, SIP anchorsites in Mumbai and Chennai, and WhatsApp Coexistence. SignalWire’s marketing release-notes page stops at 12 June 2026; its developer changelog carries the later entries, and that is the one used here. Telnyx’s feed also covers email, inference and edge products not listed. The two logs are written at different granularity, so do not compare them by count.
| Area | Telnyx (release notes feed) | SignalWire (developer changelog) |
|---|---|---|
| AI agents | Warm transfer acceptance (27 Aug); OpenAI GPT-Live for Voice AI Assistants (30 Sep); more than one transcription model per assistant (9 Oct); Agent Browser (22 Oct); Pipecat voice agents on Telnyx Edge (28 Oct) | AI agent text chat (17 Aug); multilingual agents that switch languages and voices in real time (19 Aug); default voice changed to ElevenLabs “Mark”, included in the regular AI agent price (5 Sep); AI Sidecar (15 Sep); semantic gates on SWAIG functions (5 Oct) |
| Voice and network | Melbourne, Australia anchorsite for SIP (3 Sep); Programmable Voice in Mumbai (16 Oct); Mobile Voice (VoLTE) in the US (9 Nov) | Caller ID name (CNAM) management in the REST API (31 Aug); UDP, TCP or TLS transport on dials to external SIP (19 Oct) |
| Messaging | AI-based SMS opt-out detection (15 Oct); automatic chunking of oversized SMS (29 Oct) | Self-service move of Platform Free Trial numbers to your own 10DLC campaign (19 Oct) |
| Account and numbers | Mobile numbers in India (17 Sep) | New swapi_ API token format (14 Sep); two early number releases a month within 14 days of purchase (28 Sep) |
Who each is wrong for
Telnyx is the wrong pick for a launch that cannot wait for business verification: its developer documentation gives a Paid account no 10DLC access, 5 concurrent outbound calls, 100 outbound calls a day and 10 an hour until the account passes KYC and an AI agent evaluation. It is also the wrong pick if you want one predictable per-minute AI price, because its language model is billed per token in addition to the $0.05 engine and each hosted call rounds up to 60 seconds.
SignalWire is the wrong pick for a cost-led hosted agent whose model would cost less than about 11 cents a minute in tokens on Telnyx; Telnyx’s own estimate for its hosted Kimi model is about $0.006. It is also the wrong pick for an outbound campaign that needs more than 1 call per second without a paid, three-month throughput commitment, although Telnyx’s own rate-limits file also lists 1 call a second on its free plan, so get the rate for your account in writing from both. Its standard Cloud SLA pays a single 10% credit, applied only against future payments, while Telnyx ties a credit-bearing custom SLA to its Enterprise plan.
Neither is the right purchase if you do not want to build the agent at all: Zian is a standalone AI sales and reception agents platform whose agents hold the conversations, book the appointments and run the follow-up themselves.
| If you want to… | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Run an AI agent that answers calls and follows up, without building it | Zian | AI Receptionist 24/7 plus outbound follow-up by voice, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger; 30+ languages; HubSpot, Salesforce, HighLevel and Zapier integrations |
| Hand the whole job to a managed team | LeadsNow.ai | Done-for-you, pay-per-result, runs on Zian, answers leads in under 60 seconds, 24/7 |
| Build a hosted voice agent at the lowest per-minute list price, and choose your own model | Telnyx | $0.05 engine plus tokens; lower inbound and lower-48 outbound call rates; once the account is Verified |
| Build a hosted agent with one flat AI rate that includes the model, or extend an existing FreeSWITCH estate | SignalWire | $0.16 including the default model; $0.50 numbers; Trial lifted with a $5 top-up; maintained by the FreeSWITCH authors |
| Stream calls to your own pipeline | Either; test both | $11.15 apart on this page’s bill; Telnyx lower per call minute, SignalWire lower per number and on the streaming line |
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Telnyx vs SignalWire: frequently asked questions
Is Telnyx cheaper than SignalWire?
On US list prices read on 12 November 2026, yes for a hosted AI agent and narrowly for a streamed one. Telnyx’s Voice AI engine is $0.05 a minute plus language-model tokens, against SignalWire’s $0.16 AI Agent minute that includes the model, so our 20,000-minute agent month costs $1,334.40 on Telnyx and $3,427.55 on SignalWire. Streamed to your own pipeline, the same month is $276.40 against $287.55. SignalWire rents local numbers for $0.50 a month against Telnyx’s $1.10 text-enabled.
What does SignalWire’s $0.16 per minute AI Agent price include?
SignalWire’s pricing page says the $0.16 AI Agent Runtime includes “Real-time STT, LLM, and standard TTS” and orchestration, with voice transport billed at standard rates in addition, and that most customers see about $0.163 to $0.168 a minute all in. The same page notes that model selection “affects per-interaction cost”, premium voices cost extra per character, and its SWML reference bills the optional double-turn planning model separately.
Does Telnyx’s $0.05 per minute Voice AI price include the LLM?
No. Telnyx’s Voice AI pricing page says the $0.05 voice engine covers orchestration, hosted speech-to-text and hosted text-to-speech, while LLM tokens are an add-on billed per token and telephony is billed separately. Telnyx estimates its hosted Kimi model at about $0.006 a minute and a production agent near $0.06 a minute all in, and it rounds each call up to the next 60 seconds.
Can I send 10DLC texts on a new Telnyx or SignalWire account?
Not straight away on either. Telnyx’s developer documentation lists “No access to 10DLC” on a Paid account until it reaches the Verified tier, which needs KYC and an AI agent evaluation; its Trial tier can send test SMS only to your one verified number, up to 100 a day. SignalWire starts every account in Trial Mode until you add a card and at least $5, then needs a brand and campaign registered with The Campaign Registry, which it puts at approximately 3 to 5 business days; its Platform Free Trial lets one number send up to 200 test segments a day to your own verified mobile.
Which has the better uptime SLA, Telnyx or SignalWire?
Telnyx states 99.99% for core voice and messaging in its machine-readable SLA file, with credits of 10%, 25% and 50%, and its pricing.md attaches a credit-bearing custom SLA to its $5,000-a-month Enterprise plan. SignalWire’s Cloud SLA, last updated 1 January 2026, commits to 99.95% with a 10% credit applied against future payments, and its enterprise page offers 99.99% on Dedicated Real-Time Regions. Put the figure and the credit in your order form with either.
Is SignalWire built on FreeSWITCH?
SignalWire says it was founded in 2017 by the team that created FreeSWITCH, employs the original FreeSWITCH authors and still maintains the open-source project. Its FreeSWITCH page describes SignalWire as the platform the same team built around the engine, and says a free SignalWire account is required to download FreeSWITCH packages.
Where every figure on this page comes from
| Figure | Who published it | Link | Date read |
|---|---|---|---|
| SignalWire voice ($0.0066, $0.0080, $0.0147, $0.0069, SIP/WebRTC $0.0030), Stream $0.0030, AMD $0.006, recording $0.002, SIP Refer $0.10, numbers $0.50 / $0.80, SMS $0.00415, MMS $0.020 / $0.010, carrier fees, 10DLC fees ($4.50, $10, $1.50, $7.50, $250, pooling $100 + $2,000), high-throughput $15 to $40 per CPS, AI Agent $0.16, TTS tiers, access-fee note, LLM-selection note | SignalWire | Pricing | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire “$0.16 per minute for all AI components”, “$0 minimum commitment” | SignalWire | Voice AI pricing | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire default model gpt-4o-mini; double-turn model billed separately | SignalWire | SWML AI params | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire Trial Mode limits and $5 funding | SignalWire | Trial mode | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire 1 CPS, 10,000 backlog, 4 MPS 10DLC | SignalWire | Rate limits | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire Auto Top-Up required, six-hour charge interval, needed for campaign registration | SignalWire | Auto Top-Up | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire account verification for outbound calling “if prompted” | SignalWire | Account Setup | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire default C attestation; A and B require vetting, may include KYC | SignalWire | Resolve spam labels and blocked calls | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire Platform Free Trial, 200 segments a day | SignalWire | Platform Free Trial | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire TCR registration, 3-5 business days, three months up front, 49 numbers, third-party vetting fees | SignalWire | TCR registration | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire 99.95%, 10% credit, claims and exclusions | SignalWire | Cloud Service Level Agreement | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire 99.99% Dedicated Real-Time Regions | SignalWire | Enterprise | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire support plans: 5% / $1,200, 8% / $5,000, P1 2 hours / 15 minutes | SignalWire | Support plans | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire FreeSWITCH founding team and maintenance | SignalWire | About us | 12 Nov 2026 |
| FreeSWITCH January 2006, SignalWire 2017, account needed for downloads | SignalWire | FreeSWITCH | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire changes 17 August to 22 October 2026 | SignalWire | Changelog | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire release-notes page, newest entry 12 June 2026 | SignalWire | Release notes | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx Voice API $0.002, streaming $0.0035, AMD $0.002 / $0.0065, recording $0.002, transfer $0.10, SIP interface $0.002, Growth $2,000, Enterprise $5,000 | Telnyx | Voice API Pricing | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx SIP “Starting at $0.005” out, $0.0032 in, toll-free $0.015 in | Telnyx | SIP Trunking Pricing | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx US outbound SIP zones: $0.005, $0.01, $0.07, $0.01 to $0.181, 60/60 | Telnyx | Public pricing API | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx SMS $0.004, MMS $0.015 / $0.005, carrier fees | Telnyx | SMS API Pricing | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx numbers from $1, $0.10 SMS enablement | Telnyx | Global Numbers Pricing | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx Voice AI $0.05, inclusions, ~$0.006 Kimi, $0.0064 estimator line, ~$0.06 all-in, 60-second increments, 500 concurrent calls, Community support | Telnyx | AI Voice Agent Pricing | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx Committed $500 / Enterprise $5,000, Custom SLA wording, $1 one-time number cost, $41.50 brand vetting | Telnyx | pricing.md | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx Paid limits (no 10DLC, 5 concurrent outbound, 100 a day, 10 an hour, announcement) | Telnyx | Paid Account Privileges & Limitations | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx Trial tier: SMS only to one verified number, 100 messages a day | Telnyx | Trial Account Privileges & Limitations | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx tiers, KYC and AI agent evaluation, $25 and $5 credits | Telnyx | Account Upgrade | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx concurrent outbound 2 by default, 10 after Level 2 | Telnyx | Limits on Concurrent Outbound Calls | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx outbound SIP trunking peak-CPS surcharge: first 5 free, then $12 to $30 per CPS | Telnyx | Calls per second (CPS) surcharge | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx 20 CPS per source IP | Telnyx | CPS Limits | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx 1 and 10 calls a second by plan | Telnyx | /ai/rate-limits.json | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx 99.99%, credits 10% / 25% / 50%, exclusions | Telnyx | /ai/sla.json | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx US and Canada calls billed in 60-second increments with a 60-second minimum; $0.01 short-duration surcharge | Telnyx | Terms and Conditions of Service and What are Short Duration Calls? | 12 Nov 2026 |
| SignalWire short-call, abandoned-call and ACD surcharges ($0.01 each) | SignalWire | SignalWire Cloud Agreement | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx 60/60 billing | Telnyx | Billing increments | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx 10DLC fees ($4.50, $15, $10, $1.50, $50 pool), no markup, three months initially, $0.003 article carrier fees | Telnyx | 10DLC Fees and Charges | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx “carrier-owned”, per-second SIP billing wording | Telnyx | llms.txt | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx 30+ carrier licences, 25+ points of presence | Telnyx | Our Network | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Telnyx releases 27 August to 9 November 2026 | Telnyx | Release Notes | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Worked bill, 11-cent rule, threshold table, $0.0055 streaming break-even | Zian (our arithmetic on the rates above) | This page | 12 Nov 2026 |