Cost guide · 2026

The cheapest way to make cold calls: cost per dial for every route

Last updated September 3, 2026

The "cheapest dialer" articles list seven subscriptions and stop. Nobody prices the two routes most founders actually start on, a cell phone and Google Voice, and nobody divides the bill by the number of dials. This page does both: every route a person considers, per month and per dial, at 20, 50, 100 and 150 dials a working day, computed from the same prices our pricing page uses. Then the part the cheap routes leave out, which is what they cost your phone number.

First, what a dial costs at the carrier

Every route ends at a carrier that bills connected time, in whole minutes, per call. An unanswered ring bills nothing. A voicemail greeting that picks up bills one minute even if you hang up in eight seconds. A three-minute conversation bills three. So the driver is not dials, it is answers. The table assumes a quarter of dials reach voicemail, a tenth reach a person, three minutes when they do, and 21 working days; adjust with how many minutes cold calling uses.

Twilio column is ~$0.014/min for US outbound plus one local number at ~$1.15/month, the rates on Twilio's US voice pricing page as of September 2026, with no markup because there is no reseller. The per-dial figure is the number to keep in your head: under two cents. Whatever you pay above that is software, and software is where the routes diverge.

Every route, per month and per dial

One person, one number. Ranges are published list prices per user from the vendors' pricing pages (see power dialer cost for the sources), and they exclude the minutes that some of them meter on top. The per-dial figure under each monthly figure is that monthly cost divided by the dials in the column.

* Free in money, not in rules: Google's acceptable-use terms for Voice prohibit unsolicited commercial telemarketing, so the realistic cost is the account. The DialSheet row is the free plan at 20 dials a day (420 dials, under the 500-call allowance) and Pro at $29 a month above it, plus the Twilio line from the first table. Per-seat rows do not include the annual commitment some of the low prices require.

Route by route: what the cheap price buys

Your cell phone

Genuinely $0 extra if the plan is unlimited, and the right way to make your first fifty calls: you learn whether the script works before you configure anything. It stops being right the day you want a callback list. There is no disposition, no recording, no export, and the number is the one your family calls. The hidden cost is reputation, covered below, and it lands on a number you cannot retire.

Google Voice

The personal product is free and the terms exclude telemarketing; the business product is roughly $17 a user a month once you count the Workspace licence it requires, and it is a phone system, one call at a time. Fine for a founder who mostly takes calls. Not a dialer. Full treatment in can you use Google Voice for cold calling.

A VoIP seat

Dialpad at ~$15–25/user/mo and RingCentral at ~$20–45/user/mo bundle unlimited US minutes, which sounds like the answer until you notice the outbound features are the ones in the higher tier. A phone system is worth paying for if you have inbound to route. It is not a reason to skip a dialer.

A per-seat dialer

JustCall (~$19–89/user/mo (annual)), Kixie (~$35–65/user/mo) and Aircall (~$30–50/user/mo) are real power dialers and the entry prices are real, with two caveats that matter at this budget: the dialer itself usually starts a tier above the cheapest one, and Kixie bills minutes on top of the seat. The honest comparison is the mid-tier price plus minutes, which is why the table shows a range.

A bundled-unlimited dialer

PhoneBurner at ~$149–169/user/mo includes the minutes, which is exactly why the seat costs what it does. At 150 dials a day it works out to 4.7¢ a dial at the low end, against a telephony cost of 0.8¢: you are paying for the software and for the certainty, not for the calls.

$0 software on your own Twilio

The software is free for one person up to 500 leads and 500 calls a month, then $29 a month for a 3-seat pack. You open a Twilio account, add a card, paste the Account SID and Auth Token into Settings, buy a number for ~$1.15/month, and Twilio bills you at its published rate. We could not find another free power dialer that lets you bring your own Twilio; the closest things are Vicidial (free, self-hosted on a Linux box you maintain, connected to Twilio over a SIP trunk) and Twilio Flex (a contact-centre product at ~$1 per active user hour or ~$150 a named user, list, checked September 2026). If you truly never want a Twilio account, there is a $49/month managed line with 1,500 minutes, but the cheap route on this page is the Twilio one.

What "cheap" costs you: 300 dials a day from one number

The cheapest routes share a flaw the subscription routes partly hide: one number, hammered. Carrier analytics providers score outbound numbers on the pattern that robocallers produce, which is many short calls, few answers, repeated attempts and a rising complaint count, and a cell number or a single VoIP line doing 300 dials a day produces exactly that pattern. The label that results (Spam Likely, Scam Likely, or a silent drop in answer rate) does not announce itself. Your connect rate just halves over a fortnight.

On a personal cell number that is permanent and personal. On a bundled-unlimited seat the vendor usually rotates or replaces numbers for you, which is a real part of what $149 buys. On your own Twilio it is cheap to fix yourself: a second and third local number cost ~$1.15/month each, so three numbers at 100 dials a day cost about $3 more a month than one at 300. Rotate them by area code, register the caller-ID name, and check each one weekly in the free carrier lookup tools. The specifics are in how many calls a day before Spam Likely and warming up a number.

The cheapest setup that is actually complete

1. Make your first 50 calls from whatever phone is in your hand. Learn the objection list before you buy anything.
2. Open a Twilio account and upgrade it with a card; the trial cannot call unverified numbers, see why. Budget $17 a month at 100 dials a day.
3. Buy two local numbers in the area code you call most, ~$1.15/month each. Register CNAM on both.
4. Import the list as a CSV into a free dialer, map the phone column, and put every dial through it so the disposition and callback are recorded.
5. Cap each number near 100 dials a day and rotate. Scrub the list against the DNC registry first if any of it is consumers: DNC and TCPA basics.
6. Pay for software only when you cross 500 calls a month or add a second person: $29 for 3 seats.

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