Cheapest Kannada AI Voice Agent in India (2026): What It Really Costs

What the bill is made of

The cheapest Kannada AI voice agent is the one with the lowest full monthly bill for the calls you will actually make, not the lowest headline rate. On Outpero the bill has four parts, and it helps to see all four before comparing anything.

• —Connected talk time. ₹5 per minute on Standard voices, ₹6.8 per minute on Premium, charged only while a call is connected. Unanswered calls are not billed.
• —A phone number. A dedicated +91 business number is ₹649 a month and includes one channel, which means one call at a time. Live instant-lead calling runs on your own purchased number.
• —Extra channels. Each additional channel is ₹649 a month, can be added or removed in any month, and lets one more call run at once. Five channels mean five simultaneous calls.
• —GST. All prices exclude 18% GST, which is added on top.

There is no setup fee, no monthly subscription, no contract and no lock-in. Calls are paid from prepaid credits at ₹1 per credit, and credits never expire, so a quiet month does not waste money that was already added.

Free Kannada AI voice agent: what free really means

Searches for a free Kannada AI voice agent usually mean one of two things, and they are very different products. One is a free tool that turns typed Kannada text into audio, or changes a recorded voice. The other is a way to try an agent that actually holds a phone conversation without paying first.

On Outpero, free means 50 free credits at signup, with no card required. At ₹1 per credit that is ₹50, which buys about ten minutes of Standard talk time or about seven minutes on Premium. It is a trial balance, not a permanent free plan, and it is meant to be spent on test calls.

Text-to-speech and voice-changer apps are free or cheap because they read words you have written and hand back an audio file. They do not dial a lead, understand a reply, book a visit or write up the call. If the job is a conversation with a customer in Kannada, the free tools above are a different category from a voice agent.

How to spend ten free minutes well

Ten minutes is about five two-minute calls. Use them to check Kannada register, a Kanglish switch, a number read-back and a call interrupted mid-sentence, then read the transcript and summary in the dashboard. The companion guide on how a Kannada AI calling agent works lists a ten-call test, and the first five calls of it fit inside the free balance.

Three illustrative monthly bills

The scenarios assume average connected talk time per call, a Standard or Premium rate, one number with one channel and 18% GST. Dials that go unanswered cost nothing, so the number of dials is higher than the number of connected calls billed. All figures are rounded to the nearest rupee.

Two readings follow from the table. First, the number rental matters most at low volume: in scenario A it adds about ₹1.08 to every connected minute, and in scenario B about ₹0.26. Second, moving from Standard to Premium raises the voice cost by 36% (₹6.8 against ₹5), which is worth paying only when the voice itself is part of the brand.

A GST-registered business may be able to claim input tax credit on the GST it pays, which would lower the effective cost. That depends on the business and its returns, so confirm with a chartered accountant. This is general information, not tax advice.

Against the ₹18,000 telecaller reference

A human telecaller in India costs roughly ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 a month, and ₹18,000 is a common reference figure. A telecaller works one shift and handles one call at a time. Scenario B above, 1,000 connected calls with a Kannada voice agent at a total of ₹15,516 including GST, is a comparable monthly spend, but it is not a like-for-like comparison.

• —The agent can dial a lead within about 30 seconds of the enquiry arriving, at any hour, subject to calling windows and to how quickly your lead source hands the lead over.
• —A telecaller can read a mood, negotiate and close, which an AI voice agent does not attempt. Most teams keep people for the second conversation.
• —The telecaller figure excludes recruitment, attrition, training and management time. The agent has none of those, but it also has no judgement outside its script.
• —The full comparison by call volume is in the guide on Kannada AI voice agents against human telecallers, linked below.

How published prices elsewhere compare

Prices are only comparable when the units match. The table lists what each vendor publishes, flags whether Kannada is named on its pages, and notes what is billed separately. It is not a ranking, and a lower per-minute rate does not always mean a lower bill.

SquadStack's indicative minute rate is lower than Outpero's, and at large volumes a managed vendor with a lower rate can be cheaper even after a setup cost. Outpero's advantage is not the lowest possible rate but the absence of setup fee, subscription and minimum, and a price that can be calculated before a sales call.

Where the bill grows and where it shrinks

• —Longer calls raise the bill linearly. A 4-minute average costs twice a 2-minute one. A tight script and a specific goal per call keep minutes down.
• —Premium voices cost 36% more per minute than Standard. Many teams run Standard for volume campaigns and keep Premium for high-value calls.
• —Extra channels add ₹649 a month each. They only matter when a campaign must work through a list quickly; each channel handles roughly 55 dials an hour.
• —Unanswered calls are not billed, so a list with many non-picking numbers costs less than the dial count suggests.
• —Voice broadcast, which plays one fixed message to a list and is not an AI conversation, is billed at a lower rate than conversation minutes.
• —Custom and enterprise plans for high volumes can go as low as ₹3.5 per minute, quoted on volume and requirements. That is a custom or enterprise rate, not a self-serve tier.

Six ways to keep a Kannada pilot cheap

1. 01Spend the 50 free credits first, on the test calls that matter most: register, Kanglish, numbers and an interruption.
2. 02Pilot on 50 to 100 leads from your own list, not on a full campaign, and read every transcript.
3. 03Write the call goal as one sentence, such as confirming a site visit, so that conversations end when the goal is met.
4. 04Start on Standard voices and move specific campaigns to Premium only if listeners notice a difference that matters.
5. 05Use calling windows and retry settings so that dials happen when people pick up, and avoid paying for connected calls with nobody useful on the line.
6. 06Add the number and extra channels only when the pilot proves the use case, because both are monthly charges that run from the day they are added.

Cheapest is a result, not a starting point. A vendor that costs a third less but mishears one budget in five costs far more in lost leads. Judge the Kannada first, then the full bill.

Frequently asked questions