Bland AI
Voice-AI platform with custom STT + LLM + TTS stack ('the whole pipeline'). Raised $40M Series A Apr-2024 (Lightspeed + Anthology). Distinguished by 'pathway' graphs (deterministic call flows) and aggressive outbound-calling positioning.
Active · Verified 2026-10-26 · fresh as of 2026-10-26 · 47 cited facts, 1 with a third-party source · 1 recorded change · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Tier
- T1
- Section
- Voice agent platforms
- Created
- 2023 (founded) vendor fix
- Latest release
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- License
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo fix
- Pricing
- Start: $0 platform fee + $0.14/connected min; Build: $299/mo + $0.12/min; Enterprise custom vendor fix
- Funding
- $40M total to date — $22M Series A Apr-2024 (Lightspeed) third-party fix
- Freshness
- 2026-10-26 fix
- Layer
- agent-infra repo fix
- Licensing
- commercial vendor fix
- Protocols
- mcp-server vendor fix
- Compliance
- fedramp, gdpr, hipaa, iso27001, pci-dss, soc2-type1, soc2-type2 vendor fix
When to use
Optimised for: Outbound phone agents with deterministic pathways
Anti-fit: Outbound-sales reputation polarising; closed proprietary stack reduces flexibility
Pros & cons
Pros
Best-funded voice-AI startup; vertical stack reduces vendor exposure; Pathway graphs are clean abstraction.
Cons
Brand reputation issues from cold-call use cases; opaque proprietary stack; per-minute economics.
Claims & capabilities
$40M Series A Apr-2024 (Lightspeed lead); end-to-end proprietary voice stack
Technical surface
- API surface
- REST API + SDKs + dashboard
- Backend storage
- Call + pathway state in Bland-managed DB
- Deployment
- Both (self-hosted + managed cloud) — managed cloud by default; on-prem/VPC deployment on Enterprise only
- Embedding model
- not applicable — not a memory product
- Multi-tenancy
- Multi-tenant cloud; Enterprise dedicated
- MCP
- yes — remote MCP server at api.bland.ai/v1/mcp for MCP clients (Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, VS Code, Windsurf, Gemini CLI)
- A2A
- searched not found
- OpenTelemetry
- searched not found
Alternatives to Bland AI → live options ranked by shared design, licence, hosting and MCP support
Similar systems
Other voice agent platforms in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Cartesia Sonic T1
Cartesia's Sonic TTS — state-space-model-based voice generation, lowest published TTS latency (~40ms). Cartesia raised $64M Series A Q1 2025 (Index + Lightspeed); founded by Mamba authors. Agent platform layer ('Cartesia Line') wraps Sonic with telephony + LLM.
- LiveKit Agents T1
LiveKit Agents — agent framework built on LiveKit's open-source WebRTC media server. LiveKit raised $45M Series B Sep-2024 ($300M val). Powers OpenAI Realtime API's WebRTC transport (LiveKit is the substrate OpenAI chose). Agents framework formally launched 2024.
- ElevenLabs Conversational AI (now ElevenAgents) T1
ElevenLabs launched Conversational AI Nov-2024 — STT + LLM + their own market-leading TTS in one pipeline. Combines vendor's voice cloning + multilingual TTS strengths with hosted call orchestration. ElevenLabs raised $180M Series C Jan-2025 at $3.3B val. As of 2026-10 ElevenLabs markets the platform as ElevenAgents.
- OpenAI Realtime API T1
OpenAI's Realtime API for native speech-to-speech multimodal interaction with GPT-4o — launched Oct 2024 (DevDay). Skips the STT → LLM → TTS pipeline by passing speech directly to GPT-4o. The platform substrate that Vapi/Retell/Bland integrate as one of their LLM choices.
- Pipecat (Daily) T1
Open-source Python framework for real-time voice + multimodal AI agents, maintained by Daily.co. Pipeline-style architecture (STT → context → LLM → TTS) wired over WebRTC. The OSS substrate that many of the voice platforms build on or compose with.
- Hume EVI T1
Hume's Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) — voice agent platform with vocal-affect understanding, using Hume's proprietary speech-prosody models. Hume will shut down the EVI and TTS APIs on 2026-11-13 (announced in its docs). Hume raised $50M Series B Mar-2024 (EQT).
Sources (46 cited facts, 1 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is Developer platform for AI phone agents (vertically integrated) vendor
- What it does & what's distinct Voice-AI platform with custom STT + LLM + TTS stack ('the whole pipeline'). Raised $40M … vendor
- Claims / benefits $40M Series A Apr-2024 (Lightspeed lead); end-to-end proprietary voice stack vendor
- Modalities voice (PSTN) + text vendor
- Created 2023 (founded) vendor
- Mindshare Most-funded voice-AI startup in 2024; controversial outbound-call marketing; major media… vendor
- Funding $40M total to date — $22M Series A Apr-2024 (Lightspeed) third-party
- Customers / scale Enterprise outbound-sales customers; reported Fortune 500 logos vendor
- Pricing Start: $0 platform fee + $0.14/connected min; Build: $299/mo + $0.12/min; Enterprise cus… vendor
- Compliance SOC 2 Type II; HIPAA vendor
- Data handling Configurable retention; PII redaction vendor
- Deployment Both (self-hosted + managed cloud) — managed cloud by default; on-prem/VPC deployment on… vendor
- HQ US (San Francisco) vendor
- Founders / pedigree Isaiah Granet (CEO) vendor
- Memory volume / scale Vendor: millions of calls / month at peak vendor
- Performance Sub-second turn latency vendor claim vendor
- API surface REST API + SDKs + dashboard vendor
- Latency p50/p99 <1s turn latency per vendor vendor
- Backend storage Call + pathway state in Bland-managed DB vendor
- Multi-tenancy Multi-tenant cloud; Enterprise dedicated vendor
- Encryption TLS + AES-256 vendor
- SSO / RBAC SSO on Enterprise vendor
- Versioning Pathways are versioned graph artifacts vendor
- Tombstoning User-initiated delete; HIPAA-grade retention controls vendor
- Namespace primitives per-organization / per-pathway vendor
- Forgetting policy Configurable retention vendor
- MCP support yes — remote MCP server at api.bland.ai/v1/mcp for MCP clients (Claude, Claude Code, Cha… vendor
- Webhooks / events Webhooks for call lifecycle vendor
- Import / export Pathway JSON exportable vendor
- Validated verticals outbound sales, recruiting, debt collection (controversial) vendor
- Time to running <1hr (sign-up + first pathway) vendor
- Anti-fit Outbound-sales reputation polarising; closed proprietary stack reduces flexibility vendor
- Optimised for Outbound phone agents with deterministic pathways vendor
- Adjacent infrastructure Twilio SIP; in-house STT/LLM/TTS vendor
- Pros Best-funded voice-AI startup; vertical stack reduces vendor exposure; Pathway graphs are… vendor
- Cons Brand reputation issues from cold-call use cases; opaque proprietary stack; per-minute e… vendor
- Project & sources bland.ai; docs.bland.ai vendor
- cost-pricing-model subscription vendor
- cost-last-verified 2026-06-29 vendor
- architecture-deployment-locus cloud vendor
- licensing-bucket commercial vendor
- positioning-platform-vs-product platform vendor
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup agent-infra repo
- compliance-certifications fedramp,gdpr,hipaa,iso27001,pci-dss,soc2-type1,soc2-type2 vendor
- sdk-languages rest vendor
- protocol-support mcp-server vendor
What changed
Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)
- 2026-10-26
- Pricing “Per-minute usage; Enterprise volume tiers” → “Start: $0 platform fee + $0.14/connected min; Build: $299/mo + $0.12/min; Enterprise custom” source
- Deployment “Cloud-managed; Enterprise private deployments” → “Both (self-hosted + managed cloud) — managed cloud by default; on-prem/VPC deployment on Enterprise only” source
- MCP support first recorded as “yes — remote MCP server at api.bland.ai/v1/mcp for MCP clients (Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, VS Code, Windsurf, Gemini CLI)” source
Related systems
Referenced by (2)
- LiveKit Agents integrates with — LiveKit Agents docs have a Bland AI model plugin page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Pipecat (Daily) integrates with — Pipecat docs have a Bland AI service page. (verified 2026-10-29)