Bland vs PolyAI vs Vapi for Genesys Cloud (2026)
Samuel Oram-Jones, 11 min read
Genesys Cloud is a contact center platform billed per seat, and a team running it that wants a voice AI agent has to choose between providers that connect in different ways. This comparison covers Bland, PolyAI, and Vapi: how each reaches a Genesys Cloud queue, what a minute costs, and how each handles security, as of November 2026.
A SIP trunk, the line that connects a phone system to another platform, is the common thread, and a BAA is the contract HIPAA requires before a vendor handles patient information.
Which is best, Bland, PolyAI, Vapi, or Genesys?
For a Genesys Cloud team running high-stakes calls at volume, Bland is the best of the three as of November 2026, because Bland is full stack and builds and runs its own language, speech, and transcription models, so one AI company sits behind each call that reaches a queue. Bland's claim about Genesys stops at SIP: Bland supports SIP trunks, and that is the path a Genesys carrier connection uses.
Use Bland when
- A Genesys team wants one AI company to build the language, speech, and transcription models on every call
- A team wants dedicated orchestration and dedicated GPUs run by Bland
- Finance wants a published per-minute rate before a sales call
Use PolyAI when
- A large consumer-facing company hands PolyAI the build and run of an agent in front of its existing contact center
- A team connects Genesys through PolyAI's documented SIP connector and its per-project token
- A team requests a quoted per-minute price instead of reading a published rate
Use Bland when
- A team wants a contact center agent without assembling a transcriber, model, and voice
- A security team wants to review one AI company, not a chain of them
- Callers need the most realistic voices
Use Vapi when
- A small engineering team wants to monitor, test, and toggle between different language models and voice vendors
- A team keeps running the whole assembly itself and manages each provider bill
- A team sets up custom SIP for its Genesys connection
What these rows mean
- AI on each call: This row shows whether the language model, speech, and transcription behind each call belong to the platform or to other companies: Full stack means all three are the platform's own, Outsourced means its language model and transcription come from other companies, and Mixed means it runs some of its own models alongside outside ones. Bland builds and runs its own language, speech, and transcription models, so a call never passes through an outside AI provider.
- Audio Realism Bench score, 4 August 2026: Audio Realism Bench is Design Arena's blind listening test, where listeners pick whichever of two voices sounds more like a real person, and a higher score means listeners picked that voice more often. In its published results of 4 August 2026, Bland Speech v3 ranked first among AI voices. Each rival number is the highest-scoring voice model in those results available on that platform.
- iMessage: iMessage lets an agent text customers on a channel they already use. Bland offers it natively on Enterprise.
- HIPAA with a BAA: A Business Associate Agreement, or BAA, is the contract that lets a vendor handle patient information under HIPAA. Bland includes its BAA on Enterprise. Vapi sells HIPAA mode as a $2,000 monthly add-on.
- PCI DSS: PCI DSS is a security standard from the card industry for handling card details. Bland self-attests to v4.0.1 and shares its attestation under NDA on Enterprise.
- AI rate per minute: Headline rates cover different things, so a buyer should check what each one includes before comparing them. Bland's self-serve rate covers all of its AI: language model, transcription, and speech. Phone is billed separately at carrier cost, and Enterprise pricing is custom, set with Bland's sales team. PolyAI quotes its managed agent per minute and publishes no rate. Vapi's $0.05 is hosting only, with language model, transcription, and voice billed at provider cost on top.
How do Bland, PolyAI, Vapi, and Genesys compare?
Genesys says "Customers may consume Genesys Cloud Voice services or bring their own carrier", and a voice AI agent usually joins that setup as one more SIP endpoint behind the customer's routing. Each of the three describes that path differently.
Bland overview
Bland is a full stack voice AI provider for enterprises and contact centers running high-stakes inbound and outbound calls at volume. It publishes sub-200ms latency, and its language model is closed source and developed in-house.
Bland lists SIP trunks that run "Inbound and outbound, with failover, live SIP traces, and TLS and SRTP only", and says it integrates with "SIP trunks from any contact-center or telephony provider".
For a Genesys Cloud team that brings its own carrier, the connection runs through a trunk created in Bland's SIP set-up wizard, which probes the customer's endpoint and sends a SIP OPTIONS test over TLS. Signaling runs over TLS 1.2 or higher on port 5061 with no plaintext listener, and audio is carried over SRTP.
Bland runs its own SIP signaling and media servers, so every call is set up, hosted, and processed on Bland infrastructure with no third-party telephony provider in the path.
The customer's session border controller has to allow-list Bland's signaling and media IPs and trust them as SIP peers. A trunk can list primary, secondary, and tertiary SIP servers with automatic failover, and each call's SIP messages can be traced as a ladder diagram to debug a rollout.
Teams build calls in Pathways, which lays a conversation out as connected steps that can be tested before launch. Enterprise customers get dedicated orchestration and dedicated GPUs run by Bland. On Enterprise, branded iMessage agents run natively on the same pathways as voice.
A new Bland agent version takes a small share of calls first, Bland benchmarks it against the previous version, and the rollout pauses when a KPI such as escalation rate gets worse.
Pros
- One AI company on every call, so a security team reviews one vendor
- One published rate for all of its AI, with no token charges
- #1 of 13 AI voices on Audio Realism Bench, 4 August 2026
- Dedicated orchestration and dedicated GPUs run by Bland, on Enterprise
- Native iMessage agents on Enterprise, sharing pathways with voice
- Staged releases that pause a new agent version when it performs worse than the last
- Its own SIP and media servers, with no outside telephony provider in the call path
Cons
- Overkill for a small prototype, because Bland is built for production calls at volume
PolyAI overview
PolyAI sells a managed voice and chat agent platform, and says it "runs on top of the CCaaS platform you already have, instead of replacing it". PolyAI works with Genesys among other contact center platforms, and PolyAI has a SIP connector for Genesys that uses a connector token provisioned for each project. PolyAI's chat handoff also reaches Genesys Cloud through Open Messaging.
PolyAI builds and runs an agent for a customer rather than handing over a toolkit. Its models are a mix: PolyAI's own Raven family, with GPT and Claude models also on its list.
Pros
- PolyAI builds and runs the agent for a customer
- A documented SIP connector for Genesys
Cons
- Managed agent pricing is quoted per minute, with no public rate
- Models from other AI companies sit on its list next to its own
- No iMessage agents
Vapi overview
Vapi hosts calls and exposes each part of a setup through its API, and lists "Custom SIP support" among its telephony features. A dedicated SIP line is part of its Premier package, which is sold through its sales team.
Vapi bills the transcriber, language model, and voice at provider cost on top of hosting, and says "Models pass-through at cost". Every part is also the customer's to keep running, which adds work for a contact center team that already manages a Genesys deployment.
Pros
- Developers can wire each provider through an API
- Custom SIP support
Cons
- Language model and transcription come from companies a customer picks
- Dedicated SIP sits on Premier, behind its sales team
- No iMessage agents
Genesys overview
Genesys sells Genesys Cloud CX, a contact center platform with per-seat plans and messaging channels, and the three agents above sit beside it rather than replace it. Genesys supports Apple Messages for Business. A Genesys team that wants Apple's channel can keep it in Genesys, and Bland adds native iMessage agents on Enterprise that share pathways with its voice agents.
Teams comparing Genesys with other cloud contact center platforms can read Bland vs Twilio vs Amazon Connect vs Genesys vs Google CCAI.
Which sounds more human, Bland, PolyAI, or Vapi?
Bland Speech v3 ranked 1st of 13 AI voices at 1365 on Design Arena's Audio Realism Bench of 4 August 2026, above every outside voice available on PolyAI and Vapi. PolyAI's own voices and Vapi's own voices weren't ranked on that chart.
- #1BlandBland Speech v31365
- 4thOpenAI, on VapiGPT Realtime 21119
- 6thCartesia, on PolyAISonic 3.51096
- Not rankedVapi's own voicesNot ranked
- Not rankedPolyAI's own voicesNot ranked
Ranks are among 13 AI voices, and each rival shows the highest listed voice a customer can choose on it, named for the company that made it. Real human recordings scored 1500, at the right edge of this scale. Bars start at 600, not zero. Source: Design Arena's published results.
Design Arena's blind test has vetted native speakers hear two voices read one script and pick the one that sounds more like a real person. The highest outside voice a PolyAI customer can choose, Cartesia's Sonic 3.5, ranked 6th at 1096, and on Vapi it was OpenAI's GPT Realtime 2, 4th at 1119. Scores come from Design Arena's published results of 4 August 2026.
How much do they cost?
Bland's self-serve Start plan costs $0.14 per minute and self-serve Build costs $0.12 per minute with a $299 monthly platform fee, covering all of its AI, while PolyAI quotes a price and Vapi advertises a hosting-only figure, as of November 2026. Phone sits on top of every one of them, and Genesys Cloud seats are a separate line again. Enterprise pricing is custom, set with Bland's sales team.
Bland pricing
Bland publishes one number per plan, and it covers the language model, transcription, and speech with no token charges. Phone is billed separately, on a customer's own carrier or on Bland's at pass-through cost, as are transfer minutes and a $0.015 minimum on each outbound attempt using Bland's telephony. Warm transfer, a BAA, and dedicated GPUs run by Bland sit on Enterprise.
PolyAI pricing
PolyAI prices its managed agent per minute and publishes no rate. Its Model API lists at 2¢ per connected minute, and PolyAI says "Telephony and orchestration Not included". Its managed-service agreement says "the total handle time is rounded up to the next 30-second increment", while the Model API bills "connected time, with no minimums and no rounding up to the minute".
Vapi pricing
Vapi's $0.05 per minute is hosting only. Transcription tops out at $0.0099, a language model at $0.0452, and a voice at $0.0238 per minute on its calculator, each billed at provider cost, and its Pro package takes 10% of hosting with a $999 monthly minimum. Twilio phone adds up to $0.014 per minute outbound.
Genesys Cloud seats
Genesys Cloud CX 1 lists at $75 USD "per user/month billed annually", CX 2 at $115 USD, and CX 3 at $155 USD. Genesys publishes no per-minute rate for a voice AI agent, so a seat price does not substitute for any of the three bills below.
Genesys sells its AI voice only with its human contact center platform and its seats, and it offers no simulations, AI call grading, or owned infrastructure management as of November 2026.
Value comparison
The bills below price the AI in one minute before phone, using Bland's published self-serve Start rate and the top of every range on Vapi's calculator. PolyAI publishes no managed-agent rate, so it has no bill here. Each total rests on its own basis, so the two do not rank against each other.
What does each Bland plan include?
Enterprise is the plan regulated teams buy. It adds native iMessage agents alongside SMS and web chat, warm transfers, guardrails, a BAA, SSO, data residency, dedicated orchestration with dedicated GPUs run by Bland, and forward-deployed engineers who work beside a customer's team, with concurrency contracted to its volume and custom pricing.
| Included | Self-serve: Start | Self-serve: Build | Enterprise (custom) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price per minute | $0.14 | $0.12 | Custom |
| Platform fee | $0 | $299 a month | Contracted to volume |
| Transfer time per minute | $0.05 | $0.04 | Custom |
| Concurrent calls | 10 | 50 | Custom |
| Calls a day | 100 | 2,000 | Unlimited |
| Knowledge bases | 10 | 50 | Unlimited |
| Voices | 1 | 5 | Unlimited |
| Uptime SLA | 99.9% | 99.9% | 99.9% |
| Pathways, integrations, and automations | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| iMessage, SMS, and web chat | No | No | Yes |
| Warm transfers and guardrails | No | No | Yes |
| BAA, SSO, and data residency | No | No | Yes |
| Dedicated orchestration and GPUs | No | No | Yes |
| Forward-deployed engineers | No | No | Yes |
| Vendor | What a minute pays for | Total per minute | Phone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bland Start (self-serve) | All AI: model, transcription, speech $0.14 | $0.14 before phone | Billed separately at carrier cost |
| Vapi | Hosting $0.05, Transcription $0.0099, Language model $0.0452, Voice $0.0238 | $0.1289 before phone | Free on Vapi numbers, billed on top on Twilio at up to $0.014 a minute |
Bland Start (self-serve): Self-serve Start has no platform fee. Self-serve Build is $0.12 a minute plus $299 a month. Phone and transfers bill separately. Vapi: Hosting plus the top of each range on Vapi's pricing calculator, before phone.
How do they handle security and uptime?
Bland, PolyAI, and Vapi all report SOC 2 Type II, and they part ways on medical calls, deployment, and uptime.
PolyAI says it "has achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance" and "We are certified for ISO/IEC 27001", and says its systems are "designed to meet" HIPAA. Vapi sells HIPAA mode as a $2,000 monthly add-on and lists "99% uptime SLA" on its Pro package and "99.9% uptime SLA" on Premier.
Bland includes a BAA on Enterprise. Its security program self-attests to PCI DSS v4.0.1 and holds FedRAMP 20x Class A, and Bland offers a 99.9% uptime SLA on every plan. Bland's pages on HIPAA compliant voice AI and PCI compliant voice AI go further.
Which should a team pick?
A Genesys team that wants one AI company on each call, dedicated orchestration with dedicated GPUs run by Bland, and the top-ranked voice on Design Arena's August 2026 chart should pick Bland, with more than 250 enterprise customers and over 1.3 billion calls handled. Bland's published rates cover all of its AI, and forward-deployed engineers work beside a customer's team on Enterprise.
A smaller business weighing answering services instead can look at Goodcall vs Smith.ai vs Fin, and one comparing phone-answering tools that bundle a business phone system can try Smith.ai vs Goodcall vs RingCentral vs CloudTalk.
What results look like with Bland
Idaho Housing and Finance Association saves $750,000 a year by replacing its IVR with Bland, which handles 4,000 inbound calls a day and cut average call time by 20%.
"We save thousands of dollars a day."
Greg Blake, Chief Information Officer, Idaho Housing and Finance Association
How was this comparison made?
Bland, PolyAI, and Vapi were compared on who builds the AI, how each handles SIP and contact center connections, price per minute with each basis stated, voice realism, security, and uptime, using each company's own pricing, terms, and documentation as of November 2026. Genesys pricing and carrier terms come from Genesys's own pricing page. Voice scores come from Design Arena's chart of 4 August 2026.
Related comparisons
- Bland against one rival: Bland vs PolyAI and Bland vs Vapi
- Reviews and alternatives: PolyAI review, Vapi review, Best PolyAI alternatives, and Best Vapi alternatives
- Contact center platforms: Five9 vs Genesys vs NICE CXone
- All pages: Bland's comparison hub
Frequently asked questions
Which voice AI agent works best with Genesys Cloud, Bland, PolyAI, or Vapi?
Bland is the better choice for a Genesys Cloud team running regulated calls at volume, because it is full stack and lists SIP trunks with TLS and SRTP. PolyAI has a Genesys SIP connector, and Vapi supports custom SIP.
Does Bland integrate with Genesys Cloud?
Bland lists SIP trunks from any contact-center or telephony provider, and Genesys Cloud lets customers bring their own carrier. Bland's claim about Genesys stops at SIP, so a rollout starts with a trunk validated in testing.
Which of the three is cheapest per minute?
Vapi lists the lowest figure, $0.05 a minute for hosting, though that excludes a transcriber, language model, voice, and phone. PolyAI publishes no managed-agent rate, and Bland's $0.14 on self-serve Start or $0.12 on self-serve Build covers all of its AI. Phone is billed on top of every one.
Does Bland's rate include phone?
No, Bland's rate covers its language model, transcription, and speech, and phone is billed separately, on a customer's own carrier or on Bland's at pass-through cost.
Does PolyAI, Vapi, or Genesys support iMessage?
PolyAI doesn't offer iMessage agents and Vapi doesn't offer iMessage agents, as of November 2026. Genesys supports Apple Messages for Business. Bland runs branded iMessage agents natively on Enterprise, which send and receive photos, videos, files, voice memos, and tapbacks, and share the same pathways as its voice agents.
Which of the three are HIPAA compliant?
PolyAI says its systems are "designed to meet" HIPAA, Vapi sells HIPAA mode at $2,000 a month, and Bland includes a BAA on Enterprise.
Does Bland use an open-source model?
No, Bland operates a closed-source model that it developed itself, so its language model isn't an open-source model and no outside AI lab sits behind it.
Is Bland only for outbound calls?
No, Bland runs inbound and outbound calls, including AI receptionist and contact center work, and it also runs SMS and web chat.
Is Bland only for developers?
No, Bland isn't only for developers. Pathways gives teams a visual builder, Norm helps build agents, and on Enterprise forward-deployed engineers build alongside a customer's team.
