What an AI calling plan is made of
A Troika Tech plan is three separate things, and conflating them is how quotes end up looking incomparable.
- Usage, the calling itself. ₹10–12 a minute for connected calls, inbound or outbound, to domestic mobile numbers, billed per second rather than rounded to the minute. This is the part that scales with how much you call.
- Setup, one-time. Conversation design, CRM integration, WhatsApp and payment-gateway connections, number provisioning and TRAI registrations. Paid once, quoted against what the build actually involves rather than from a rate card.
- Platform, monthly. Hosting the agents, dashboards and analytics, custom voices and additional languages. Quoted with the engagement.
Troika Tech publishes a rate for the first only, because it is the only one that is the same for everybody. A single-language reminder campaign and a nine-language qualification flow wired into two CRMs are not the same build, and pretending otherwise produces a quote that gets revised later.
The four credit tiers, in minutes and calls
Credits are the unit a Troika Tech plan is sold in. Nobody plans a campaign in credits, so here is the same thing in units you can budget with.
| Tier | Credits | Minutes | Calls at 2 min | Hours of talk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | up to 10,00,000 | 16,666 | ~8,300 | ~278 |
| Growth | 10,00,000+ | 16,666+ | ~8,300+ | 278+ |
| Business | 50,00,000+ | 83,333+ | ~41,600+ | 1,388+ |
| Corporate | 2,00,00,000+ | 3,33,333+ | ~1,66,600+ | 5,555+ |
One credit is one second, so the conversions above are exact rather than indicative. The tier you fall into is decided by the credits you buy, and the per-minute rate falls at each boundary.
Working out which tier you need
You do not need a forecast, only three numbers you already have.
- How many numbers are you calling? The list size for the campaign, or the monthly volume if this is ongoing.
- How many of them will answer? A third is a reasonable working figure for a decent list. Use your own if you have called it before, marketplace leads run lower, your own enquiries run much higher.
- How long is a useful conversation? A reminder or confirmation runs 30–45 seconds. A qualification call with five questions runs closer to two minutes. Unanswered calls cost nothing because billing starts on connect.
Multiply the three. A list of 50,000 with a third answering and two-minute conversations is about 33,000 minutes, or roughly 20,00,000 credits, inside Growth. The same list with 40-second reminder calls is about 11,000 minutes, comfortably inside Starter.
If your estimate lands near a boundary, buying up to the next tier is usually cheaper than buying twice, because the rate falls at the boundary.
Why per-second billing changes the sum
Most of this market bills in 30- or 60-second pulses. The difference is larger than it sounds, and it is the reason credits are measured in seconds here.
On 60-second billing, a 34-second call is charged as 60. A 61-second call is charged as 120. Across a campaign where many calls are short, reminders, confirmations, quick refusals, you can pay for close to double the time you used.
A worked example on 20,000 connected calls averaging 40 seconds: that is 13,333 real minutes. Billed per second you pay for 13,333. Billed in 60-second pulses you pay for 20,000, 50% more, for identical conversations.
When comparing quotes, ask what a 34-second call costs. It is the fastest way to find out which basis you are being quoted on. There is more on this in compare AI calling rates.
What comes with the plan, and what does not
This is what a Troika Tech plan covers and what it does not. The dividing line matters more than the rate, because it is where surprise costs live.
- Included in every plan. Planning, scripting and reporting. Number provisioning and DLT registration. DND scrubbing before each run. Campaign scheduling inside permitted hours. Transcripts and captured fields written to your CRM.
- Included from Corporate. Dedicated support, custom integrations with legacy systems, and additional regions and numbers.
- Quoted separately. The one-time setup, and the monthly platform fee. Both depend on how much building the agent actually needs.
- Not included. Your contact list. Anything requiring a human on the call, we transfer to your team, we do not staff it.
How this compares to buying software
Self-serve platforms publish lower per-minute rates. The comparison is real but it is not like for like.
A platform rate of around ₹3 a minute buys the engine. The call flow, the telephony, the DLT registration, the CRM integration and somebody to run it are yours to arrange. A managed plan includes those, which is most of the difference between ₹3 and ₹10–12.
Which is cheaper depends entirely on whether the person who would operate a platform already exists on your payroll. If they do, buy the platform. If hiring or borrowing them is the plan, their time is the largest cost of your first quarter and it appears on no pricing page.
Fourteen vendors with their published rates are set out on top AI voice agent platforms in India.
What the headline rate leaves out
A per-minute figure is a quotable number, not a bill. These are the things that commonly sit outside it. None is concealed: every one is stated somewhere on the pricing pages it applies to, which means you can check each against any quote you are given.
- How the call is rounded. Many platforms bill in 30 or 60 second pulses, rounding every call up. A 34 second call then costs the same as a full minute. On a campaign of short reminders and confirmations that can mean paying for close to double the talk time you used. We bill per second, so a 34 second call is charged as 34 seconds.
- Whether the phone line is in the price. Some rates cover the platform only and leave the carrier to invoice you separately. Others include calling. The same number means two different things on those two quotes, and comparing them directly gets the answer wrong.
- Monthly charges per phone number. Numbers are often rented by the month on top of usage. One number is easy to overlook; a campaign running several is not.
- Voice quality sold as a tier. Where the same service is priced by which voice you choose, the headline rate is the cheapest voice. The one you would actually put in front of customers may sit a tier or two above it.
- Rates that only apply above a volume. A flat rate quoted with a monthly minimum attached is not that rate for anyone below the minimum. The same is true of tiered recharges, where the advertised figure is the largest recharge.
- A platform or licence fee. Charged monthly whether or not you call. At low volume this alone can move the effective per-minute cost by more than the rate itself.
- The one time build. Conversation design, integrations, number provisioning and registration. It varies enormously by what the agent has to do, which is why we quote it rather than publishing a figure that would be wrong for most people.
The practical test is to ask for a quote as a single monthly number for your own volume, with everything in it, rather than a rate. Any provider who cannot produce that has not told you the price.
The sum that actually decides it
The per-minute figure decides less than it looks like it does. This is the sum that decides it, with the assumptions in the open so you can replace them with your own.
Say you need 10,000 useful conversations a month, averaging two minutes. Two things drive the bill: the rate, and the share of dials that reach a person. The second is rarely quoted and moves the answer more.
- A lower rate with a weaker connect rate. If fewer than half your dials reach someone, getting to 10,000 conversations takes well over 20,000 attempts and roughly 44,000 billed minutes. A cheap minute multiplied by a lot of minutes is not a cheap campaign, and any monthly platform fee sits on top of it.
- A higher rate with a stronger connect rate. If around two thirds of dials connect, the same 10,000 conversations need about 15,000 attempts and roughly 31,000 billed minutes. Fewer minutes at a higher rate can land close to, and sometimes under, the first number.
Whether that reverses depends on your figures, not ours, and we are not going to pretend it always favours us. What reliably matters is the billing basis once your calls are short. A 40 second conversation billed to the next full minute costs half as much again as the same conversation billed per second, and across twenty thousand dials that gap is usually wider than the difference between two headline rates.
Use your own connect rate. It is a number you already have from any list you have called before. Then ask every provider, us included, to convert their pricing into one monthly figure for that volume.
Five questions that settle a quote
Put these to Troika Tech as readily as to anyone else. Each one has a number as its answer, which is the point.
- “What does a 34-second call cost?” It exposes the billing basis instantly. Per-second billing charges 34 seconds. A 30-second floor with 60-second rounding charges a full minute, nearly double, on a length that is extremely common in reminders and confirmations.
- “What is the monthly minimum?” A low rate above a ₹5,00,000 floor is not a low rate for a ₹1,00,000 campaign.
- “Is Hindi charged at the same rate as English?” If most of your calls are in Hindi or a regional language, a surcharge is your real price, not an exception to it.
- “What connect rate do you see on lists like mine?” The range across this market is roughly 30–65%, and it moves your cost per conversation more than the rate does.
- “Who pays for DLT registration and DND scrubbing?” If the answer is you, add the lead time as well as the cost.
Questions about AI calling plans
One credit is one second of connected talk time. A 72-second call uses 72 credits. Unanswered calls, busy numbers and switched-off numbers use none, because billing starts when the call connects.
10,00,000 credits is 16,666 minutes, which is roughly 8,300 calls at two minutes each, or about 25,000 at 40 seconds. The number of calls depends entirely on how long your conversations run, which is why credits are sold in seconds rather than in calls.
Usage is ₹10–12 a minute with per-second billing, falling at each volume tier. On top of that there is a one-time setup fee and a monthly platform fee, both quoted against what the build involves. We publish the usage rate because it is the same for everyone; the other two are not, and a rate card for them would be fiction.
Credits are bought as a recharge against a campaign rather than as a monthly allowance that lapses. Confirm the terms for your tier when the plan is scoped, it is a fair question to ask any provider and a revealing one.
Most first campaigns fit inside Starter. Take your list size, assume about a third will answer, multiply by your expected call length, and convert to seconds. If the answer lands near a tier boundary, buying up is usually cheaper than buying twice.
Plans are scoped per engagement rather than sold as a fixed monthly licence. Below a few hundred numbers the setup dominates and a person with a phone is genuinely cheaper, we will say so rather than take the work.
Because most calls are not whole minutes. On 60-second billing a 34-second call costs the same as a 60-second one. Across a campaign of short calls that can mean paying for half as much time again as you actually used.
Yes. The tier follows the credits you buy, so moving up happens at the next recharge rather than requiring a new contract.
Plans scoped around your campaign
Troika Tech runs the campaign rather than handing you a dialler, and the plan is scoped around what you are actually trying to get done.
Usage is ₹10 to ₹12 a minute, billed per second with no rounding, across 9+ Indian languages with switching inside a single call. Setup and the monthly platform fee are quoted against your build, because a single-language reminder campaign and a nine-language qualification flow wired into two systems are not the same piece of work.
Troika Tech registers the numbers and the DLT templates, scrubs lists against DND before every run, schedules inside permitted calling hours, and writes transcripts and captured fields into your CRM as the calls happen. Campaigns are live in 48 hours where registration is in place.
Tell us the list size, the languages and the outcome you need from the call, and we will work the monthly figure for your volume rather than quoting a rate. If the arithmetic says a platform suits you better, we will say so.