Comparison

Aircall vs Dialpad for cold calling

By Abhi Chawla, founder · Last updated October 13, 2026

People search this both ways round, “aircall vs dialpad” and “dialpad vs aircall”, and the answer flips depending on which question you are really asking. As a business phone line, Dialpad is the cheaper product. As a cold-calling dialer it is the dearer one, by a wider margin than any comparison on this SERP reports, because Dialpad’s own dialer now sits on the top Sell tier and not in the plans people price. Here is the whole bill for both, read from their pricing pages and their help centres this week.

TL;DR — our pick, and we build it

For a team whose job is working through lead lists, DialSheet is the better buy than either: about $117 a month all-in for three reps on their own Twilio, against $162 on Aircall Professional and $237 on the Dialpad tier that actually power-dials.

$79is what a Dialpad seat costs before it can run Dialpad’s own dialer. Dialpad’s help centre restricts Dialpad Dialer to Sell Premium licences on a Contact Center, not to the $15 Connect plan every comparison prices, and not to Sell Advanced at $59 either.
$150is the cheapest Aircall bill that can power-dial: Professional at $50 a licence times its 3-licence minimum, whether you have three people or one.
$0is DialSheet’s software bill for one person up to 500 leads and 500 calls a month, power dialer included, so the whole cost at that cap is about $7 of Twilio usage. Teams pay $29 for the first seat and $29 for each teammate, with no seat minimum.
$390is ten reps all-in on DialSheet at 34 dials a day each, against $554 on Aircall Professional and $790 on Dialpad Sell Premium. The gap widens with every hire, because both rivals charge the tenth seat what they charge the first.
89/dayis where that stops being true. Aircall bundles its US and Canada minutes and Twilio meters ours, so past about 89 dials a rep a day, Aircall Professional is the cheaper bill for three reps and this page is telling you to buy Aircall.

Pick something else if you also take inbound calls through IVR menus and support queues (Aircall, or Dialpad Connect), you want AI transcription and coaching running live during the call rather than after it (Dialpad Sell), you want one-click voicemail drop (Aircall Professional or Dialpad Sell Advanced), or each of three reps sustains more than about 89 dials a day (Aircall Professional). Without a Twilio account, the same team can run on a DialSheet managed line: $49/month with 25 hours of calling and Pro included, plus $29 for each teammate on the same line, in the US and Canada.

Short answer

Dialpad is cheaper as a phone system and Aircall is cheaper as a dialer. For a team whose main job is calling lead lists, DialSheet is cheaper than either, at about $117 a month all-in for three reps who each make 34 dials a day on their own Twilio account, against $162 on Aircall Professional and $237 on Dialpad Sell Premium.

Dialpad Connect Standard is $15 per user a month with no minimum; Aircall Essentials is $30 per licence with a 3-licence minimum, so $90 is Aircall’s real floor. But neither entry plan power-dials. Aircall’s Power Dialer needs Professional at $50 a licence, $162 a month for three reps with a caller ID each. Dialpad’s dialer is not in Connect at all: it lives in Dialpad Sell, and Dialpad’s help centre puts the current Dialpad Dialer on Sell Premium at $79 a user billed yearly, $237 a month for three. For an outbound team of three that is $1,944 a year on Aircall against $2,844 on Dialpad.

DialSheet is a browser power dialer that runs on your own Twilio account, free for one person, with a list of up to 500 leads and 500 calls a month. Teams pay $29 a month for the first seat and $29 for each teammate, with no seat minimum. Buy Aircall or Dialpad instead when you need an inbound phone system with IVR menus and support queues. Aircall Professional also becomes the cheaper dialer once each of three reps sustains more than about 89 dials a day, because its minutes are bundled and Twilio’s are metered.

Both are phone systems first. If the team's day is a call list, the dialers built for it are ranked on the best power dialer software in 2026 and priced with their seat floors on the cheapest power dialers.

Neither Aircall nor Dialpad lets you bring your own carrier. Four minutes on what changes when you do: the numbers, the recordings and the bill are yours, and the minutes are metered instead of bundled. Watch the video or open it on YouTube.

Aircall, 3 reps that dial$162/moProfessional ×3 plus two caller IDs at $6

Dialpad, 3 reps that dial$237/moDialpad Sell Premium ×3 — a different product from Connect, and its top tier

DialSheet, 3 reps that dial~$117/moPro software plus own Twilio, 34 dials a rep a day

Aircall vs Dialpad at a glance

	Aircall	Dialpad
Entry price (phone system)	$30/licence annual · ~$40 monthly	$15/user annual · $27 monthly
Next tier up	Professional $50/licence	Connect Pro $25/user annual · $35 monthly
Seat minimum	3 on every published plan	None on Connect Standard
Power dialer lives on	Professional, $50/licence	Dialpad Sell Premium, $79/user — a separate product, top tier
Real floor for a dialing team of 3	$162/mo	$237/mo
Extra phone numbers	~$6/number/mo	~$5/number/mo local
Call summaries and sentiment	Included on Professional (since Sep 23, 2026)	Included lower down the Connect list
Bring your own carrier	No — telephony bundled	No — telephony bundled
Best at	250+ CRM and helpdesk integrations, fast rollout	Real-time AI transcription and live coaching

Aircall read from aircall.io/pricing on September 19, 2026; Dialpad read from dialpad.com/pricing and help.dialpad.com on October 13, 2026. Both columns are annual-billing per-user prices, which is how each vendor leads on its own page; month-to-month is higher on both.

Does Dialpad have a power dialer, and which plan is it on?

This is the question the comparison pages get wrong, because they price Dialpad Connect and stop. Dialpad has two power dialers, and on October 13, 2026 its own help centre said this about each of them.

Dialpad Dialer, the current one, is “available to organizations with Dialpad Sell Premium licenses” and to reps on a Premium licence assigned to a Contact Center. Sell Premium is $79 a user a month billed yearly, $95 month to month. It is a progressive dialer with voicemail detection, calling windows, attempt limits, a DNC scrub and several lines per agent.
The Salesforce Powerdialer, the older one, runs on any Dialpad Sell licence, so from $39 a user. It works only inside Salesforce Lightning, lists cap at 50,000 records, and Dialpad’s help page for it now opens with the line “Legacy feature: check the new Dialpad Dialer”. If you do not run Salesforce, this route is closed to you.
Dialpad Connect, the $15–$25 business phone system, has neither. It is the product almost every “Dialpad starts at $15” sentence on this search result is describing.

What the dialing itself looks like when it is the whole product: number keys log the outcome and jump to the next lead, H hangs up, N skips. Watch the video or open it on YouTube.

Dialpad vs Aircall: the same comparison the other way round

If you arrived from the Dialpad side, the question is usually “we already have Dialpad, is Aircall worth moving to?” The answer turns on one thing: which Dialpad you have.

You have Dialpad Connect and want to dial lists

Moving to Aircall Professional costs $162 a month for three reps and gets you a real power dialer. Staying and upgrading to the Dialpad tier that runs Dialpad Dialer, Sell Premium, costs $237. Of those two moves Aircall is much the cheaper way to add a dialer to a Dialpad Connect team, and most comparison articles never reach that answer because they never separate Connect from Sell, let alone Sell Advanced from Sell Premium. Keeping Connect as the phone line and adding DialSheet for the list work costs less than either move, $162 a month for three reps, at the price of running two tools and making list calls from Twilio numbers rather than your Dialpad ones.

You have Dialpad Sell already

Check which tier. On Advanced at $59 a user you have local presence dialing, voicemail drop and Dialpad’s AI but not Dialpad Dialer, so if your reps are click-to-dialing a list by hand, the dialer you thought you were paying for is another $20 a user up. On Premium you have it, at $237 a month for three, and Aircall Professional beats that on price by about $75 a month while losing the live coaching.

You want the cheapest business phone line and no dialer

Stay on Dialpad. $15 a user with no seat minimum is genuinely cheaper than Aircall’s $90 floor, and if nobody is dialing a list, the dialer tiers are irrelevant to you.

You want AI on every call without an add-on line

Dialpad. Transcription, summaries and coaching sit inside the Connect plans, where Aircall keeps summaries on Professional and sells live coaching as AI Assist Pro at $49 a seat. Across three licences that is $147 a month of add-on before anyone dials.

The whole bill for a three-rep outbound team

Neither Aircall nor Dialpad lets you bring your own carrier, which is the structural point: with both, the seat price and the minutes are one number you cannot shop separately. That is a real convenience and a real markup, and which of those matters more is a volume question, not a taste one.

Setup	Per month	Per year	Does it power-dial?
Aircall Essentials × 3	~$90	~$1,080	No — click-to-dial only
Aircall Professional × 3 + 2 numbers	~$162	~$1,944	Yes, with voicemail drop
Dialpad Connect Standard × 3	~$45	~$540	No — wrong product
Dialpad Sell Advanced × 3	~$177	~$2,124	No — local presence and voicemail drop, but not Dialpad Dialer
Dialpad Sell Premium × 3	~$237	~$2,844	Yes — Dialpad Dialer, on a Contact Center
Dialpad Sell Essentials × 3 + Salesforce	~$117 + Salesforce	~$1,404 + Salesforce	Only the legacy Salesforce Powerdialer, inside Lightning
DialSheet × 3 + own Twilio at 34 dials/day	~$117	~$1,404	Yes, on every tier including free
DialSheet × 3 + own Twilio at 150 dials/day	~$210	~$2,520	Yes — and the bill moves with dials

DialSheet rows are $87 of software plus Twilio computed per rep: billed PSTN minutes at $0.014/min, the browser leg at $0.004/min including unanswered ringing, and ~$1.15/month for each number, at a 25% voicemail rate, a 10% connect rate and 3-minute conversations over 21 working days.

What people complain about, on both sides

Every listicle on this search result prints the features. Here is the other column, taken from the vendors’ own pricing and help pages rather than from sentiment, so each line is something you can check before you sign.

Aircall: the licence minimum is the complaint

Every published plan carries a 3-licence minimum, so a solo caller or a pair pays for 3 chairs: $150 a month to get the Power Dialer, whoever is sitting in them. The Custom tier starts at 25 licences. Call summaries come with Professional only (since September 23, 2026), and the AI voice agents added to the pricing page this month are billed by usage from about $0.19 a minute, which is a second meter on top of the seat.

Dialpad: the dialer is not where the price is

Dialpad is genuinely the cheapest good business phone line here at $15 a user. The complaint is the distance from that number to a working dialer: a different product, its top tier, a Contact Center to attach reps to, and $79 a user. The cheaper way in is Salesforce-only and marked legacy in Dialpad’s own docs.

Both: you cannot shop the minutes

Neither lets you bring your own carrier, so the seat fee and the telephony are one number. At low volume that is a markup you are paying for convenience; past about 89 dials a rep a day on Aircall it turns into a discount, because bundled minutes stop the bill rising.

DialSheet: what we lose on

No inbound phone system, no IVR menus or support queues, no answering-machine detection on the sequential dialer (the rep presses V at the beep to drop a recorded voicemail), no contact database, and about five minutes of Twilio setup before the first call. Transcripts and AI summaries arrive after the call, where Dialpad’s run during it. If any of those is the reason you are buying, buy Aircall or Dialpad.

Screenprint illustration of a stone harbour wall with a cable running from a bollard on the quay down into calm water and out toward the horizon, a single small boat, and a flat green sun setting into the sea

Which should you buy: Aircall, Dialpad or DialSheet?

Our opinion, and we are not neutral

We build DialSheet, so weigh this accordingly. Having priced every dialer in this category line by line: for a team whose day is dialing a list, DialSheet does the same core job as Aircall and Dialpad, with power dialing, call recordings and transcripts, AI call summaries, a built-in CRM and parallel dialing included in Pro, and it costs about $117 a month all-in for three reps, against $162 on Aircall Professional and $237 on Dialpad Sell Advanced. It is also moving faster (we shipped 251 changes across 15 releases in the 30 days to September 8, 2026) because the people using it are the ones asking for the changes. Where it loses to Aircall and Dialpad is narrow and specific, and it is listed below rather than buried. The teams running on it are published with their numbers at dialsheet.io/customers: a 12-seat UK accountancy practice that put a nine-rep calling floor live in a day, a two-person US acquisition team sustaining about 8,200 dials a month, a solo funding desk at 1,335 calls last month, and an insurance agency at about 1,000 calls a month, retained month over month.

DialSheet Free

One person calling a list. No software bill for a list of up to 500 leads and 500 calls a month, power dialer included, so the whole cost is about $7 of Twilio usage at that cap. The cheapest Aircall account with a Power Dialer is $150 a month, because Professional has a 3-licence minimum.

DialSheet Pro

A team working through lead lists. $87 a month of software for three reps, about $117 all-in with their own Twilio at 34 dials a day each, against $162 on Aircall Professional and $237 on Dialpad Sell Advanced. Every seat after the first is $29, so the gap grows with each hire; at three reps the saving holds until each rep passes about 89 dials a day.

Aircall Professional

Reps who each sustain more than 89 dials a day. Its US and Canada minutes are bundled, so the bill stops moving as dialing rises. Past that pace, three licences with a caller ID each at $162 cost less than DialSheet plus metered Twilio, and the plan includes voicemail drop.

Aircall

A support-and-sales team that also takes inbound calls. IVR menus, support queues and 250+ CRM and helpdesk integrations, with Salesforce or Zendesk wired up in an afternoon. DialSheet has no inbound phone system.

Dialpad Connect

A business phone line with no list to dial. $15 a user a month with no seat minimum, against Aircall’s $90 floor, with AI transcription and call summaries lower down its price list than Aircall, which keeps call summaries on its $50 Professional tier. If nobody dials a list, the dialer tiers do not matter.

Dialpad Sell

A team that wants live AI coaching on outbound calls. Transcription and coaching run during the call, and local presence dialing and voicemail drop arrive on Advanced at $59 a user. Budget for Premium at $79 a user if you also want Dialpad Dialer, or keep Advanced and accept click-to-dial. DialSheet’s transcripts and summaries arrive after the call.

Who runs on it

Production numbers on our own customer pages, a customer's account of it on their own site, and a third-party listing. Follow any of them.

Common questions

Is Aircall or Dialpad cheaper?

It depends entirely on whether you need a power dialer. As a business phone system Dialpad is cheaper: Connect Standard is $15 per user a month on annual billing ($27 month to month) with no user minimum, while Aircall Essentials is $30 per licence with a 3-licence minimum, so Aircall's real entry price is $90 a month even for one person. As an outbound dialer the order reverses: Aircall's Power Dialer is on Professional at $50 a licence, so $150 a month for three, whereas Dialpad's power dialer is not in Connect at all. It belongs to Dialpad Sell, and the tier that runs it outside Salesforce is Sell Premium at $79 a user billed yearly ($95 monthly), or $237 a month for three. For a three-rep cold-calling team that is about $1,944 a year on Aircall against $2,844 on Dialpad Sell. DialSheet, a power dialer that runs on the team's own Twilio account, costs less than both at about $117 a month all-in for the same three reps at 34 dials a day each, or $1,404 a year. Past about 89 dials a rep a day, Aircall's bundled minutes cost less.

Which is better for outbound sales, Aircall or Dialpad?

Of the two, Aircall is the cheaper way to power-dial. Its Power Dialer comes with the Professional plan at $50 a licence, $162 a month for three reps with a caller ID each, while Dialpad's own dialer needs Sell Premium at $79 a user billed yearly, $237 a month for three. Dialpad Sell is worth the extra $75 a month at three seats if you want AI transcription and coaching live during calls and local presence dialing in the same product, and Sell Advanced at $59 a user gets you those two without the dialer. If the outbound work is calling lead lists, DialSheet, a browser power dialer on the team's own Twilio account, is cheaper than both at about $117 a month all-in for three reps at 34 dials a day each, with no seat minimum and a free plan for one person. DialSheet has no inbound phone system and no answering-machine detection in Power Dial (the rep presses V at the beep to drop a recorded voicemail, on Pro with your own Twilio), so a team that needs a phone system should stay with Aircall or Dialpad, and past about 89 dials a rep a day Aircall's bundled minutes cost less.

What is the difference between Dialpad and Aircall?

Aircall is a call-handling platform built around integrations: its strength is dropping a phone layer onto an existing CRM and helpdesk with almost no configuration, and it sells outbound features (Power Dialer, voicemail drop, call monitoring) as the reason to move up a tier. Dialpad is an AI-first platform: real-time transcription, live coaching and call summaries are included lower down its price list than Aircall's, which keeps summaries on Professional (since September 23, 2026) and sells live coaching as a $49-per-seat add-on. The practical difference for a buyer is that Aircall charges you a tier to get the dialer while Dialpad charges you a different product. Neither lets you bring your own carrier, so in both cases the seat fee and the telephony are bundled and cannot be shopped separately.

Does Dialpad have a power dialer, and which plan is it on?

Yes, and it is on the top plan. Dialpad's current dialer is called Dialpad Dialer, and its help centre says it is available to organisations with Dialpad Sell Premium licences, used by a rep assigned to a Contact Center. Sell Premium is $79 per user a month billed yearly, $95 month to month, so three reps is $237 a month. The two cheaper Sell tiers do not include it: Essentials is $39 a user and Advanced is $59 a user, and Advanced is where local presence dialing and voicemail drop arrive. There is a cheaper second route: the older Salesforce Powerdialer runs on any Sell licence, but only inside Salesforce Lightning, and Dialpad's own help page for it now opens with “Legacy feature: check the new Dialpad Dialer”. None of this is in Dialpad Connect, the $15–$25 a user business phone system most people mean when they price Dialpad. Read from dialpad.com/pricing and help.dialpad.com on October 13, 2026.

Does Aircall have a power dialer, and which plan is it on?

Yes, on the Professional plan, at about $50 per licence a month billed annually, with a 3-licence minimum, so $150 a month is the cheapest Aircall bill that can power-dial. The Power Dialer is listed there alongside Voicemail Drop and outbound call campaigns. The cheaper Essentials plan gives you click-to-dial from a browser extension, which does not auto-advance through a list. Aircall includes one phone number per account and charges $6 a month for each extra caller ID, so three reps with three numbers is $162 a month.

What does a 3-person outbound team actually pay on each?

On Aircall Professional, three licences at $50 plus two extra caller IDs at $6 is $162 a month, about $1,944 a year. On Dialpad Sell Premium, the tier with the dialer, three users at $79 is $237 a month, about $2,844 a year. On DialSheet the same three reps are $87 a month of software ($29 for the first seat and $29 for each of the other two) plus telephony billed directly by their own Twilio account, about $30 a month at 34 dials a rep a day, so roughly $117 all-in, or $210 at 150 dials a day each. The DialSheet bill passes Aircall Professional's at about 89 dials a rep a day, where Aircall's bundled minutes start to cost less.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Aircall and Dialpad for cold calling?

Yes. DialSheet is a browser power dialer that runs on your own Twilio account, free for one person, with a list of up to 500 leads and 500 calls a month, so one caller's whole bill at that cap is about $7 a month of Twilio usage, against $150 for the cheapest Aircall account with a Power Dialer and $79 for one Dialpad Sell Premium user. Teams pay $29 a month for the first seat and $29 for each teammate, with no seat minimum, which comes to about $117 a month all-in for three reps at 34 dials a day each, against $162 on Aircall Professional and $237 on Dialpad Sell Premium. Ten reps come to about $390, against $554 on Aircall and $790 on Dialpad. At three reps the saving lasts until each rep passes about 89 dials a day, where Aircall's bundled minutes cost less. DialSheet has no inbound phone system, no answering-machine detection in Power Dial and no contact database, and connecting Twilio takes about five minutes. A team that would rather not open a Twilio account can take a DialSheet managed line at $49/month with 25 hours of calling and Pro included, plus $29 for each teammate on the same line, in the US and Canada.

Should I pick Aircall, Dialpad, or something else for cold calling?

Pick Aircall if the phone is one part of a bigger support-and-sales operation, you want it wired into Salesforce, HubSpot or Zendesk with almost no configuration, and you can absorb $150 a month minimum for the tier with the dialer, or if each rep sustains more than about 89 dials a day, the point where its bundled minutes cost a three-rep team less than metered Twilio. Pick Dialpad if AI transcription and live coaching are the point and outbound volume is secondary, or if you want the cheapest decent business phone line at $15 a user and genuinely do not need auto-advance dialing, but not if power dialing is the job, because that means Dialpad Sell Premium at $79 a user. Pick a bring-your-own-carrier tool such as DialSheet if dialing is the whole job: it is free for one person up to 500 calls a month with the power dialer included, then $29 a month for the first seat and $29 for each teammate with no seat minimum, and calls are billed by your own Twilio account at about $0.014 a US minute. Pro adds the parallel dialer, call recordings and AI call summaries. What DialSheet does not do is replace a full business phone system: no IVR-driven support queue, no built-in video, no contact database, and about five minutes of Twilio setup before the first call.

Related guides

Aircall alternatives, priced with the telephonyThe full shortlist with seat minimums, if neither of these two is the answer.
Dialpad alternatives, ranked by real costIf Dialpad is the tool you already have: why its dialer sits on Sell Premium, and ten alternatives priced at their seat minimum.
Aircall vs JustCallThe other comparison people run at this stage; JustCall’s licence floor is two, not three.
Aircall pricing 2026Every tier, the per-number charge and the AI add-ons line by line.
What the Aircall Power Dialer really costsThe Professional gate, the per-session contact cap and the Google Sheets workaround.
Aircall vs NooksThe comparison one tier up: a single-line dialer against a quote-only AI parallel dialer.
Nextiva alternatives for teams that dialThe same phone-system-versus-dialer question from the Nextiva side, where outbound sits on the $75 Scale plan.
Sonetel vs AircallA cheaper virtual-number rival with no dialer at all, for a reader who wants the phone line, not the dialer.

Aircall prices read from aircall.io/pricing on September 19, 2026; Dialpad prices read from dialpad.com/pricing on October 13, 2026. Competitor list prices carry “~” and change without notice, so confirm on the vendor’s own page before buying. DialSheet figures are computed from our published pricing and Twilio’s US voice rates rather than typed in.