Pipecat Cloud pricing for voice agents
Short answer. Pipecat is an open source framework for voice AI agents. Pipecat Cloud is Daily's hosted service to run those agents. It charges $0.01 a minute for a voice agent on the agent-1x profile. Phone calls over Daily's phone network add $0.018 a minute. The language model, speech to text, and voice bill to the providers you pick. That makes 1,000 phone minutes cost $28 before model costs, by our math. We read the Pipecat Cloud pricing page on October 27, 2026.
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Agent hosting
| Profile | Size | Active | Reserved |
|---|---|---|---|
| agent-1x, best for voice | 0.5 vCPU, 1 GB | $0.01 a minute | $0.0005 a minute |
| agent-2x, voice and video | 1 vCPU, 2 GB | $0.02 a minute | $0.0010 a minute |
| agent-3x, voice and video plus processing | 1.5 vCPU, 3 GB | $0.03 a minute | $0.0015 a minute |
Reserved agents stay on. Daily bills each reserved minute until you turn the agent off. The Pipecat docs say a warm agent cuts cold starts. Concurrency is unlimited.
Phone, transport, and extras
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Daily PSTN dial-in and dial-out (SIP included) | $0.018 a minute |
| Daily SIP dial-in and dial-out | $0.003 to $0.02 a minute |
| SIP REFER transfer | $0.20 an event |
| Twilio dial-in and dial-out | Billed by Twilio |
| Daily WebRTC voice | $0.001 a minute, free for 1:1 voice sessions on Pipecat Cloud |
| Daily WebRTC voice and video | $0.004 per participant minute |
| Krisp VIVA noise filter | Free to 10,000 minutes a month, then $0.0015 a minute |
| Recording, audio | $0.005 a minute |
| Recording, audio and video | $0.01349 a minute |
| Recording storage | $0.003 a minute |
| LLM, speech to text, voice | Billed by your providers, 80+ supported |
Sources: Pipecat Cloud pricing and Pipecat Cloud scaling docs, checked October 27, 2026.
1,000 phone minutes, our math
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| agent-1x hosting | $10 |
| Daily PSTN phone minutes | $18 |
| Subtotal before model providers | $28 |
| One reserved agent-1x on all month | $21.60 more |
Call transfers kept on Daily keep the minutes running. A SIP REFER handoff drops Daily from the call for a one-time $0.20 fee. Daily says transcoding adds charges and a higher per-minute rate. The page does not list that rate, so we left it out.
Who it fits
Pipecat Cloud fits a shop with a developer who wants low hosting costs and full control of the model and voice. It is not a ready-made receptionist. If you want an agent you set up in a browser, compare Vapi, Retell AI, or Bland AI. If you want an answering service with no build, see the AI receptionist list.
Compare more: LiveKit pricing · Vapi vs LiveKit · Retell AI pricing, Deepgram vs ElevenLabs, Twilio voice pricing, OpenAI Realtime API pricing.
FAQ
Is Pipecat free? The Pipecat framework is open source. Pipecat Cloud, the hosted service from Daily, charges $0.01 a minute for an agent-1x voice agent.
What does Pipecat Cloud cost per minute? $0.01 a minute to host a voice agent. Daily phone calls add $0.018 a minute. Model, speech, and voice costs bill to your providers.
Does Pipecat Cloud charge for idle agents? Reserved agents bill $0.0005 a minute on agent-1x while they stay on. Agents that are not reserved bill when active.
Can I use Twilio with Pipecat Cloud? Yes. Pipecat Cloud lists Twilio dial-in and dial-out, billed by Twilio.
Does Pipecat Cloud limit concurrent calls? The pricing page lists unlimited concurrency.
Checked 2026-10-27. Prices and policies change. Confirm on the source before you buy.
Sources
- https://www.daily.co/pricing/pipecat-cloud/
- https://docs.pipecat.ai/pipecat-cloud/fundamentals/scaling
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