The best Twilio alternative for voice AI agents
Give your LiveKit, Pipecat, or custom voice agents a phone number and real-time audio - on carrier-grade infrastructure that runs about half of Twilio's US voice rate, billed per second.
$10 free credit · No credit card required
Why Twilio breaks for voice AI
The platform that powered a generation of apps wasn't designed for sub-second, bidirectional voice agents. Here's where it gets in the way.
Voice that costs about 2x more
Twilio's US SIP termination runs $0.0100/min, more abroad. Plivo is about half that, often 50-90% less internationally, billed per second.
A managed pipeline you don't own
ConversationRelay puts STT and TTS inside Twilio's stack, at $0.07/min on top of voice. Plivo streams raw audio, so your pipeline and models stay fully yours.
Support and add-ons that stack up
Twilio's guaranteed-response support runs from $250/mo or 4% of spend, plus per-minute add-on fees. Plivo includes 24/7 support.
See what you'd save vs Twilio
Pick a country and your monthly outbound volume - these are real, published per-minute voice rates.
Estimate based on published per-minute outbound voice rates (Plivo vs Twilio), as of May 2026. Excludes number rental, taxes, and add-ons; actual rates vary by destination and committed volume.
Plivo vs Twilio for voice agents
The same APIs you already know, on a network built for real-time voice - at a fraction of the cost.
Based on publicly listed pricing as of May 2026: Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking US termination, plus published per-minute fees for Media Streams and ConversationRelay. Final pricing depends on volume and destination.
The telephony & media layer under your agent
You own the conversation logic. Plivo owns the hard part - connecting it to the phone network with low-latency, full-duplex audio. Scroll to walk the stack, or tap any layer.
Your voice agent
Your STT → LLM → TTS pipeline - LiveKit, Pipecat, or fully custom. You own the conversation logic; everything beneath it is Plivo.
Real-time audio streaming
Plivo streams the live call audio bidirectionally over a WebSocket - µ-law or PCM, edge-routed to keep round-trip latency low.
Carrier-grade SIP trunking
Plivo answers and places calls over elastic trunks with no per-channel fees, on direct carrier routes across 190+ countries.
Plivo's carrier network
Plivo's redundant infrastructure, with at least three local carrier connections across countries, reaches the public phone network and connects your agent to any phone, anywhere - the foundation under it all.
Drop Plivo under LiveKit, Pipecat, or your own code
Bring your framework, LLM, and voice models - Plivo handles the calls. Swap it in as the SIP + media layer with a few lines.
Stream Plivo call audio straight into a Pipecat pipeline over WebSocket.
from pipecat.transports.network.fastapi_websocket import (
FastAPIWebsocketParams,
FastAPIWebsocketTransport,
)
from pipecat.serializers.plivo import PlivoFrameSerializer
# Plivo streams the live call audio to your WebSocket
transport = FastAPIWebsocketTransport(
websocket=ws,
params=FastAPIWebsocketParams(
serializer=PlivoFrameSerializer(stream_id),
audio_in_enabled=True,
audio_out_enabled=True,
),
)
# Plug in any STT / LLM / TTS - Plivo just moves the audio
pipeline = Pipeline([transport.input(), stt, llm, tts, transport.output()])Two primitives, everything a voice agent needs
Carrier-grade SIP trunking for the phone path, and real-time audio streaming for the AI.
Carrier-grade calling
Inbound & outbound calling
Place outbound calls to 190+ countries and receive inbound calls on numbers from 60+ countries, over elastic trunks.
Elastic concurrency
No per-channel fees or provisioning. Trunk capacity scales with your traffic; pay-as-you-go accounts start with a default concurrency limit you can raise.
Built-in security
IP authentication, optional TLS/SRTP encryption with Secure Trunking, and fraud detection on every trunk.
Real-time media for AI
Bidirectional WebSocket
Full-duplex audio in and out of your app for natural, interruptible conversations.
Telephony-native codecs
µ-law 8kHz with no transcoding for the lowest latency, or Linear PCM when you need it.
Edge-routed for speed
Audio is routed through the nearest point of presence to keep round-trip latency low.
Voice AI teams running on Plivo
Not benchmarks, production traffic. Real teams shipping real voice agents on this stack today.
Went from beta to 8 million voice AI conversations a month in twelve months, with 99.99% uptime and sub-500ms latency at scale.
Scales AI hiring interviews to 20,000 calls a minute on Plivo, up from 100 calls a minute in three months.
Powers voice agents for D2C, logistics, and e-commerce teams, running over a million calls a month on Plivo.
Enterprise-grade capabilities
Built for scale, security, and reliability from day one.
Move off Twilio without the downtime
A team that knows voice AI walks you through the switch - and stays with you after.
Guided onboarding
Plivo's consultative customer success team provides hands-on technical guidance to architect your SIP and streaming setup.
Painless migration
Free self-service number porting for US and Canada, and an API that mirrors Twilio so most code moves over with minimal changes.
Dedicated support
24/7 premium support and a consultative customer success team to guide your migration and beyond.
Frequently asked questions
SIP trunking is the phone path - it connects your agent to the public phone network so it can receive and place calls. Audio streaming is the media layer - it carries the live call audio bidirectionally over a WebSocket so your STT, LLM, and TTS can hear and speak in real time. Voice AI agents use both: SIP to reach the caller, streaming to power the conversation.
No. You can start with a Plivo number and our audio streaming API and never touch raw SIP. If you already run a PBX or carrier, our SIP trunking is there when you need it. Either way, the setup is API-first and documented.
Plivo sits underneath them as the telephony and media layer. For Pipecat we provide an official WebSocket integration so call audio streams straight into your pipeline. For LiveKit, point a SIP trunk at your Plivo number and calls join as SIP participants. You keep your framework; Plivo handles the phone network.
Yes. Plivo is model-agnostic. Bring any LLM (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, open-source) and any STT/TTS (Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Cartesia, and more). We move the audio; you choose the intelligence.
Plivo streams raw call audio natively over WebSocket with telephony-native µ-law and edge routing, with no per-minute streaming surcharge. Teams like Ringg AI run sub-500ms voice agents on it at 8 million conversations a month. Real-world latency depends on your STT/LLM/TTS choices, but the transport layer is built to stay out of your latency budget.
In the US, Plivo's outbound voice runs about $0.0046/min versus Twilio's $0.0100 - roughly half - and internationally Plivo is often 50 to 90% lower (for example $0.0025/min to Australian landlines versus Twilio's $0.0212). Billing is per second, so you pay only for what you use. See plivo.com/pricing for current rates by destination.
Number porting is available for US and Canada numbers, with free port-in. You submit a port-in request in the console, with a Letter of Authorization where required, and our team coordinates a cutover designed to avoid downtime. Because our API mirrors Twilio's patterns, most application code moves over with minimal changes.
Yes. Plivo is SOC 2 Type II certified and supports HIPAA via a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) on Enterprise plans, with GDPR-aligned data controls, encryption in transit (TLS/SRTP), and built-in fraud detection.
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