What a bilingual voice agent actually costs to run
Build cost gets all the attention. Running cost decides whether the agent pays for itself.
When businesses ask what an AI voice agent costs, they usually mean the build. That is the smaller and more predictable number. The figure that decides the business case is what it costs per conversation, every month, for years.
The build
A scoped bilingual voice agent for a single business line, integrated with a calendar and a CRM, typically starts in the region of AED 60,000. More integrations, more call types and stricter compliance push that up. Messy data and undocumented systems push it up faster.
The running cost
Running costs are made of four parts:
- Telephony: the phone number and per-minute carrier charges.
- Speech: turning speech to text and text back to a natural voice.
- The model: the language model that understands and decides, priced per token.
- Tuning and support: someone reviewing transcripts and improving the agent.
Together these usually land at a fraction of the cost of a staffed minute, but the exact figure depends on call length and volume. We model it from your real call recordings before you commit.
The comparison that matters
Compare against the true cost of the calls you currently miss or answer late, not only against salaries. A missed after-hours enquiry that would have become a booking is the real cost.
The cheapest agent is the one that books the jobs you were losing to voicemail.
Ways to keep it lean
- Start after hours only.
- Keep calls short by letting the agent act, not just talk.
- Use a smaller model for simple intents and route hard ones up.
- Review monthly and remove call types that should go straight to a person.
