Can AI replace Vapi?
KINDA · weekend projectA focused inbound agent is a credible weekend build with LiveKit Agents or Pipecat. Replacing Vapi as a product is much larger: it combines realtime orchestration, provider abstraction, phone-number and SIP workflows, outbound campaigns, tool calls, testing, observability, scaling, support, and compliance options. Self-hosting can remove Vapi's $0.05 per-minute platform fee, but model, carrier, number, infrastructure, failed-call, monitoring, and engineering costs remain.
Build me a focused, self-hosted alternative to Vapi for one inbound support number. Requirements: - Use Python 3.12 and livekit-agents~=1.5 with one named AgentServer worker. Use direct provider plugins, not LiveKit Inference or another managed agent host. - Run LiveKit Server, Redis, and LiveKit SIP with Docker Compose on one Ubuntu VM. Put Caddy in front of HTTPS/WSS; expose only the documented SIP and UDP media ports. - Provision one Telnyx DID and credential-authenticated SIP trunk. Include checked-in LiveKit inbound-trunk and dispatch-rule JSON that sends calls to support-agent. - Build an AgentSession with Silero VAD, Deepgram Nova-3 STT, gpt-5-mini through the OpenAI plugin, and Cartesia Sonic-3 TTS. Load every secret from .env. - Give the agent one narrow support prompt, interruption handling, and two tools: look up an order in SQLite and save a callback request after caller confirmation. - Persist call id, timestamps, transcript, tool results, and outcome to SQLite. Add structured JSON logs and /healthz; recording is off by default. - Include unit tests for both tools and scripted agent tests for lookup, refusal to invent an order, callback confirmation, and a caller interruption. - Provide make setup, make dev, make smoke, and docker compose up -d commands. The smoke test must work in the LiveKit agent console before a real PSTN call. - README: DNS, TLS, firewall, Telnyx, trunk, dispatch, provider-key, and test-call steps, plus common one-way-audio and SIP authentication checks. - The cost section must say the Vapi fee is removed, while the DID, SIP minutes, model usage, VM, failed calls, monitoring, and operator time remain. Link the source-backed calculator at https://voice.oss.codes for changing rates. - Out of scope: outbound campaigns, a multi-tenant dashboard, squads, billing, automatic provider failover, call recording, compliance claims, and high availability.
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They pay to move from a working voice demo to dependable production calling without operating SIP, RTP, WebRTC, agent workers, provider fallbacks, observability, and capacity themselves.
xmanaged realtime infrastructure, scaling, provider failover, and support
xassistant, squad, workflow, phone-number, and provider configuration APIs
xoutbound campaigns, carrier integrations, spam mitigation, and production telephony debugging
xhosted simulations, evaluations, call logs, recordings, analytics, and retention controls
xenterprise SLAs, compliance add-ons, role controls, and data-residency options
Can AI replace Vapi?
Kinda. The core of Vapi is buildable in a weekend with the prompt on this page, but there are real gaps: managed realtime infrastructure, scaling, provider failover, and support, assistant, squad, workflow, phone-number, and provider configuration APIs. Read the honest list above before committing.
How much does Vapi cost?
Vapi's pricing is usage-based or varies by plan — Vapi hosting is $0.05 per call minute. STT, LLM, TTS, and transport or telephony are separate or passed through at cost. Ten call-concurrency lines are included, then additional lines are $10 per line per month..
What do I lose by replacing Vapi?
Honestly: managed realtime infrastructure, scaling, provider failover, and support; assistant, squad, workflow, phone-number, and provider configuration APIs; outbound campaigns, carrier integrations, spam mitigation, and production telephony debugging; hosted simulations, evaluations, call logs, recordings, analytics, and retention controls; enterprise SLAs, compliance add-ons, role controls, and data-residency options. If any of those are load-bearing for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Vapi?
Yes — LiveKit Agents + SIP (Apache-2.0 realtime agent framework. Pair it with the separately deployed LiveKit Server and SIP service for a self-hosted phone stack.), Pipecat (BSD-2-Clause Python framework with composable voice pipelines and broad model, transport, and telephony integrations. You still own deployment and carrier operations.), Voice OSS cost planner (Source-linked calculator and deployment reference for platform, model, SIP, number, infrastructure, and operational costs. It is a planning companion, not an agent runtime.). Using prior art is also a valid exit; the prompt is for when you want it exactly your way.