Your AI agent wants a phone number: eight ways to get one, and the one we sell

Bland's Agent Phone Plan gives an AI agent its own phone number for a monthly price. It plugs into an assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude so you can ask that assistant to phone a business, send a text, or take calls on its number. For a personal agent running a few errands a day on a fixed bill, it is the option we'd pick.

Our plan is one of eight ways to get your agent a number, counting Twilio and Telnyx together because both sell phone infrastructure to developers. We list ours first because this is our blog. Each rival's prices come from its own website.

A monthly number fee can sit alongside charges for each minute and text. Prepaid services deduct those charges from credit you buy in advance.

• Bland Agent Phone Plan: Number: Its own; How you pay: Flat monthly price; Texts: Yes
• Twilio or Telnyx: Number: Its own; How you pay: Number by the month plus each minute and text; Texts: Yes
• AgentPhone: Number: Its own; How you pay: Number by the month plus each minute and text; Texts: Yes
• ClawCall: Number: Shared or its own; How you pay: Flat monthly price; Texts: No
• ClawdTalk: Number: Shared or its own; How you pay: Free plan or monthly plan; Texts: Yes
• DialMCP: Number: Your own number; How you pay: Free during launch; Texts: No
• call4me: Number: Its own and free; How you pay: Prepaid credit by the minute; Texts: Not mentioned
• Hail: Number: Shared or its own; How you pay: Prepaid credit by the minute and text; Texts: Yes

Your agent may use a dedicated number, a number shared with other customers or your existing number. With Bland's dedicated number, people can call and text back. Check which of those replies another service supports before picking it.

Bland Agent Phone Plan: one flat price and a number of its own#

Bland's Agent Phone Plan gives your agent one US local number. Your agent tells Bland what a call is for. Bland's voice AI dials from that number, talks to whoever answers, and sends your agent a summary.

People can call or text your number back. Your agent can take calls on it. When your agent sends a text, it gives Bland a goal, such as asking about an appointment time, and Bland answers replies toward that goal.

It's $9.99 for the first month (once per account owner), then $19.99 a month. Calls and texts to US and Canada numbers carry no per-minute or per-text charge, up to our plan's caps:

• Your account can have one live call, counting calls in and out together.
• The hourly allowances are 20 calls and 20 sent texts, including automatic replies.
• The daily limits are 50 calls, 100 sent texts, including automatic replies, and 1,000 call minutes, counting incoming and outgoing minutes together.
• An outbound call can last up to 60 minutes.

While your agent is on a call, another caller hears a busy message and Bland rejects another outgoing call. Incoming texts still arrive after your agent reaches its text limit, but Bland stops replying until that limit resets. Incoming and outgoing minutes are added to the daily total when each call ends. Once that total reaches 1,000 minutes, Bland rejects new outgoing calls and incoming callers hear a busy message until midnight UTC resets the allowance.

The docs do not establish whether incoming calls count toward the 20-call hourly and 50-call daily limits, or what incoming callers hear when either call-count limit is exhausted. Confirm those details before relying on incoming calls. Hourly limits reset on the hour. Daily limits reset at midnight UTC, the international reference time, which is 7pm on the US East Coast in winter and 8pm in summer.

If you do not have a Bland account, signup can create one. Existing owners use the link-and-code instructions to sign in. Ask your agent to start using the route that fits your account:

• For browser signup, your agent shows you a link and a code. You open the link, sign up with the code and approve the plan in your browser, and your card is charged only then.
• For wallet signup on a new Bland account only, follow the wallet signup instructions. A documented example is Grok Bot with Stripe Link, a payment service. Your agent needs a supported wallet payment approval; a Link virtual card does not work. You relay a code that arrives by text and approve starting the plan in the Link app.

After wallet signup, add a card at Billing & Plans in your Bland account for monthly renewals. Our plan renews on the card on file until you cancel. If renewal fails, the plan goes past due and drops to pay-as-you-go, with your number kept on the account. The wallet signup instructions explain the renewal setup.

Our AI phone number page has setup guides for ChatGPT and Claude, coding tools such as Codex and Cursor, and personal assistants such as Meta Muse and OpenClaw. Your existing assistant gives Bland the task; Bland supplies its phone number and voice AI.

The same page covers the coding tools VS Code, Windsurf and Gemini CLI, and Poke, a personal assistant. Grok Bot, an assistant from the company behind Grok, has a Phone with Bland setup template you add inside Grok Bot. Bland's Grok Bot guide also requires an extra compatibility check. The guide does not give a separate check procedure, so support for your version needs confirming before you subscribe.

For developers: how the assistants connect#

Grok Bot's documented Stripe Link example uses Link's command-line tool. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a standard way for an AI app to use outside tools. Most of these apps use Bland's MCP server, with either a Bland sign-in or an API key, a secret credential that gives the app access to your account. Meta Muse uses Bland's REST API, a web interface for sending requests, and does not use MCP. The Grok Bot template's connection method is still unconfirmed.

ChatGPT needs a custom connector, an outside tool you add to ChatGPT, that allows actions such as placing a call. OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, describes full write actions as an early-access feature on Business, Enterprise and Edu. For ChatGPT, check your ChatGPT plan can add a custom connector with write actions before you subscribe.

Twilio or Telnyx: build it yourself on a phone line#

Twilio and Telnyx are phone providers. Developers buy numbers from them and build their own agent on top. Texts are priced by the segment, so a long message can count as several charged units. Their pricing pages list:

• Twilio charges $1.15 a month for a local number, $0.0140 a minute for calls out, $0.0085 a minute for calls in, and $0.0083 a text segment, plus a fee from the mobile network.
• Telnyx charges $1.00 a month for a number, $0.10 a month more to add texts and picture messages, and $0.004 per text segment, plus a mobile network fee.

If you build on Twilio or Telnyx, you choose the AI and write your agent's instructions. Before you send texts in the US, you also register with the mobile networks, which is how they check who is texting. Bland is an official Twilio partner. Twilio hasn't reviewed this list. If your business already runs on Twilio, building your own agent there may suit you better.

AgentPhone: number, calls and texts in one developer service#

AgentPhone gives every agent its own number and sends calls and texts to software you write. The receiving web address is called a webhook. Your own AI handles them, or AgentPhone can run the AI for you at a higher rate. Despite the similar name, AgentPhone has no connection to Bland. Your agent can start its own signup there. Outbound calls need a card on file.

AgentPhone's pricing page lists these charges. Check which of its two registration fees applies before budgeting for texts:

• A US or Canadian number, every 30 days: AgentPhone charges: $3.00
• A minute of calling when your own AI handles it: AgentPhone charges: $0.13
• A minute of calling when AgentPhone runs the AI: AgentPhone charges: $0.22
• A text segment: AgentPhone charges: $0.02
• Registering with US mobile networks before you can send texts: AgentPhone charges: A one-time $25 or $70
• Free credit for a new account: AgentPhone charges: $5 once
• An Apple iMessage line that only receives: AgentPhone charges: $150 a month
• An Apple iMessage line that can also send: AgentPhone charges: $250 a month

ClawCall: a ready-made calling agent on a flat plan#

ClawCall is an AI that makes the phone call itself and talks to whoever answers. You ask your own AI agent to use ClawCall, and ClawCall dials. No paid plan charges by the minute.

• Unlimited plan: Price a month: $8.99; What it gives: Calls from a shared number
• Reserve plan: Price a month: $14.99; What it gives: A number of your own
• Reserve Plus plan: Price a month: $18.99; What it gives: Your own number, and it also answers calls to it

ClawCall makes one outbound call at a time, only calls US numbers and doesn't send texts.

What does ClawCall's free trial cover?#

ClawCall's free trial is 30 calls or 30 minutes, whichever comes first, and needs no card.

ClawdTalk: a free phone line for OpenClaw#

OpenClaw is an AI agent that runs errands for you. ClawdTalk is a phone line built only for OpenClaw, run by Telnyx, and despite the similar names it's a separate service from ClawCall. ClawdTalk's free plan uses a shared number and gives 15 call minutes and 20 texts a month. On the free plan, your agent can call only your own phone number, and only after you verify that number. A number of its own starts with the $12 a month Starter plan, plus a $20 setup fee for the number.

DialMCP: no new number at all#

DialMCP is a calling tool your AI agent connects to. It calls from your own phone number once you confirm the number is yours. It's free during launch, though its page says pricing may be introduced later with notice. Its page sets these limits:

• Where and when it calls: DialMCP: The US and Canada, between 8:00 and 21:00 in the time zone of the person being called
• How long a call lasts: DialMCP: 6 minutes by default, and never more than 10
• Voicemail: DialMCP: It doesn't leave voicemail
• Texting and calls in: DialMCP: It doesn't text or take calls
• How many calls you can make: DialMCP: 3 an hour and 10 a day, with no more than 2 a day to the same number

For developers: what DialMCP is#

DialMCP is a hosted MCP server. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a standard way for an AI app to use outside tools, and hosted means DialMCP runs the tool for you, so your agent only needs its web address.

call4me: calls to more countries#

The AI at call4me places calls from a short brief your agent writes. Each account gets a free US number, and you pay from prepaid credit, starting at $10. Calls cost $0.25 a minute from the moment someone picks up, and half that for time spent on hold. From that free number, call4me's page lists calls to the US, Canada, the countries of the EU, the UK, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, the UAE and Japan. It doesn't mention texting.

How does call4me charge for unanswered calls?#

Unanswered, busy and failed calls are free.

Hail: prepaid credit from $0.10 a minute#

Hail supplies hosted phone tools for an AI assistant, including calls and texts. You buy prepaid credit that your agent's use draws down. Check Hail's setup instructions for your AI app and how much code you will need before buying credit. Its pricing page lists:

• A minute of calling, excluding the recording surcharge: Hail charges: $0.10
• Recording, which is on by default and kept 30 days: Hail charges: $0.01 extra per recorded minute
• A text to a US number: Hail charges: $0.018
• A shared number, which is where you start: Hail charges: No rental fee
• A number of its own: Hail charges: $1.00 a month, or $0.50 for calls only

How do you pick?#

Pick by how often your agent uses the phone and which countries it calls.

For an agent that runs a few errands a day, a flat plan like ours keeps the bill the same every month. An agent that rarely uses the phone may pay less on per-minute pricing, and that bill grows with every minute. Our plan runs one call at a time. If you need more calls at once, see Build on our pricing page, which lists Bland's bigger plans.

If your agent needs to call outside the US and Canada, Bland's plan and DialMCP are out, ClawCall only calls the US, and among the ready-made services here, call4me is the one whose page lists calls to other countries.

Choose your setup guide on our AI phone number page when you're ready to connect an agent.