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REPLACEMENT BRIEF

dev tools

Can AI replace Vapi?

EDITORIAL ANSWERKINDACurated prompt

Route a SIP trunk into a realtime agent, stream speech through STT, LLM, and TTS with interruption handling, run a server-side tool, and save the call outcome.

Build the personal version →

AT A GLANCE

price
varies
replaceable scope
Route a SIP trunk into a realtime agent, stream speech through STT, LLM, and TTS with interruption handling, run a server-side tool, and save the call outcome.
build time
weekend for one inbound agent; ongoing production operations

what AI can build

Route a SIP trunk into a realtime agent, stream speech through STT, LLM, and TTS with interruption handling, run a server-side tool, and save the call outcome.

A 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.

The prompt was editor-reviewed; no completed build is recorded.

The honest tradeoff

why people still pay

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.

what you lose

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

Start with existing software

prior art · use these instead of building, if you'd rather

LiveKit Agents + SIPApache-2.0 realtime agent framework. Pair it with the separately deployed LiveKit Server and SIP service for a self-hosted phone stack.↗PipecatBSD-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 plannerSource-linked calculator and deployment reference for platform, model, SIP, number, infrastructure, and operational costs. It is a planning companion, not an agent runtime.↗

EVIDENCE LEDGER

What this page can prove

The verdict judges replaceability. The evidence level records what DeepFeather actually checked.

Read the methodology →
evidence level
Curated prompt

The prompt was editor-reviewed; no completed build is recorded.

replacement boundaryRoute a SIP trunk into a realtime agent, stream speech through STT, LLM, and TTS with interruption handling, run a server-side tool, and save the call outcome.

known limits · managed realtime infrastructure, scaling, provider failover, and support; assistant, squad, workflow, phone-number, and provider configuration APIs

editorial reviewawaiting manual review
Build promptreviewed prompt · not run

the prompt

Curated prompt
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.
Copy or open in an agent

The prompt stays readable first. Choose a launch option when you are ready.

$ open in your agent (prompt prefilled, you press enter) or copy it raw

BUILD FEEDBACK

Did you try this build?

Report the outcome. Submissions enter a manual evidence queue and never auto-upgrade the verdict.

ElevenLabs
$22/mo · ai audioNOT REALLYReplit
$25/mo · dev toolsKINDAGitHub Copilot
$10/mo · dev toolsKINDA

questions

Can AI replace Vapi?

Possibly for a narrower core workflow, but this catalog judgment is not a verified build. Expected gaps include: managed realtime infrastructure, scaling, provider failover, and support, assistant, squad, workflow, phone-number, and provider configuration APIs. Validate the prompt against your own acceptance criteria before committing.

How much does Vapi cost?

Vapi's pricing is usage-based or varies by plan. Use the linked pricing source for the current amount; the catalog last checked it on 2026-07-31.

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.