Vida: AI Phone Agent Platform, Pricing and How to Use It (2026)

What is Vida?

Vida is a platform for AI agents that answer and make phone calls, send texts and emails, and chat on websites on behalf of a business. Its most common job is the AI receptionist: an agent that picks up when your team cannot, answers questions from your own information, books appointments, transfers urgent callers to a person and texts follow-ups.

The company, Vida Global, was founded by CEO Lyle Pratt with co-founders Noah Hayes and Brandon Robinson. Pratt previously sold BetterVoice to Inteliquent and worked at Sinch, and that telecom background shows in the product: Vida runs its own voice stack and connects to existing phone networks and business phone systems over SIP. It now markets itself as an “AI Agent OS” for building, deploying and managing agents across voice, messaging, email and web.

The problem it solves is the missed call. Small and mid-sized businesses lose leads every time a call goes to voicemail after hours or during a busy shift. Vida puts an agent on that line that can do something useful, not just take a message. The second market is resellers: telecom providers, MSPs and agencies that want to sell AI agents to their own customers without building the voice infrastructure themselves.

Who it is for

• Service businesses with steady call volume. Clinics, salons, law firms, home services and restaurants (Vida’s docs include example setups for salons, restaurants and professional services) that want calls answered, questions handled and appointments booked around the clock.
• Sales teams that need fast lead response. An agent can qualify inbound callers and text them a follow-up while a human is still on another call.
• Agencies, MSPs and telecom providers. The Growth and Expand plans, the partner programme and white-label options exist so you can resell agents under your own brand and bill clients yourself.
• Developers. Vida has a full API for agents, phone numbers and knowledge, plus webhooks and SIP integration for connecting to an existing PBX.

Vida is not the right fit for a sole trader who gets a handful of calls a week: $500 a month buys a lot of human answering-service time. It is also a weak fit if your customers call in languages beyond English and Spanish, or if you mainly want a business phone system for your team rather than an AI agent. For that, look at Quo.

Key features

• Agent editor. Each agent is configured through a set of options: Instructions (how the agent handles conversations), Functions (actions it can take), Links (external pages such as your FAQ or product pages it can draw on), Voice, Greeting, Language and Contacts. The FAQ sums it up as describing what you want the agent to do, choosing a number and going live.
• Voice library. You pick from a range of high-definition text-to-speech voices in the agent’s voice settings, preview samples and save.
• Call Transfer. Hands a caller to a person or department. You set destination numbers; if none is set, the call goes to you through the Vida mobile app. You can choose whether the transferred call shows the agent’s number or the original caller’s ID, and reach SIP extensions by prefixing the destination with pbx: or ext:.
• Schedule. Books meetings into Google Calendar, checks for conflicts, follows booking rules you define, adds the meeting location and can invite extra recipients.
• Send SMS and Send Email. Notifications and follow-ups during or after a conversation, such as a confirmation text or a summary to your team. SMS goes out from the agent’s dedicated Vida Number.
• Webhooks. Exchange data with another system mid-conversation. You set the trigger condition, HTTP method (GET or POST), URL and, for POST, a JSON payload.
• Phone numbers and routing. Choose a local Vida Number on sign-up, forward calls from your existing number, or port an existing number to Vida.
• Integrations and API. Native app integrations (Google Calendar is the one documented in detail), plus API endpoints for agents, phone numbers and knowledge. API tokens live under Settings -> Developers and need a paid account.
• Reseller tooling. White-label branding, multi-tenant client management, real-time billing and SIP integration for partners. Vida’s site lists HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, STIR/SHAKEN and A2P 10DLC compliance; ask for documentation if those matter to you.

Pricing

Vida sells monthly plans with included agents, voice minutes and messages. The table reflects the public pricing page at the time of writing.

Plan	Price	Aimed at	What is included
Core	$500/month	Small to mid-sized teams	5 agents, 2,500 AI voice minutes, 2,500 outbound AI messages, full API access, inbound and outbound calling, concurrent conversations
Growth	From $750/month	Agencies and resellers	Unlimited agents, AI voice minutes and outbound AI messages
Expand	From $2,500/month	Platform and service providers	Unlimited agents, minutes and messages, plus transcripts and recordings and call routing
Enterprise	Custom	Large enterprises	Unlimited agents, minutes and messages, full API access, concurrent conversations

Two things to check before you buy. First, the pricing page does not say what happens when Core’s 2,500 voice minutes run out, so ask sales for the overage rate. Second, “unlimited” on the reseller plans is the page’s own word; ask whether a fair-use policy applies. We could not find a free plan or free trial on the pricing page. Older third-party listings mention a cheaper entry tier, but it no longer appears on Vida’s site.

How to use Vida: step-by-step

1. Sign up and pick a number

1. Choose a plan on vida.io/pricing, or book a demo if you are a reseller.
2. When you subscribe, you can select a local Vida Number. This is the number your agent answers and texts from.
3. If you already have a business number, decide now whether to forward calls to Vida or port the number. Forwarding is faster and reversible; porting moves the number for good.

2. Build the agent

Open your agent in the Vida app and work through the setup options in order:

1. Instructions. Describe the agent’s job in plain language: who it represents, what it should help callers with, what it must never do, and when to hand off to a human. Vida’s docs advise stating the exact trigger condition for each action and what success looks like, for example “If the caller asks for a quote over $1,000, transfer them to sales.”
2. Links. Add the URLs the agent should draw on, such as your FAQ, services and pricing pages. Keep those pages current, because the agent answers from them.
3. Greeting. Write the first sentence callers hear. Name the business and say it is an assistant, so nobody feels tricked.
4. Voice. Open the voice settings, listen to samples and save the one that fits your brand.
5. Language. Set the language the agent speaks. The docs list English (US) and Spanish (US, Mexico and Spain).

3. Add Functions

Functions are what make the agent useful rather than a talking FAQ. Open Functions in the agent editor and add the ones you need:

1. Call Transfer. Enter the numbers for each person or department. Choose whether the receiver sees the original caller’s ID (the default, and usually what you want). For a desk phone on your PBX, use the pbx: or ext: prefix.
2. Schedule. Connect Google Calendar first (open Integrations, select Google Calendar and complete the authorisation flow). Then set booking rules such as working hours and meeting length, the meeting location and any extra invitees.
3. Send SMS / Send Email. Write the condition (“after booking an appointment”) and the message, such as a confirmation with the date, time and address.
4. Webhooks. For anything else, such as creating a lead in your CRM, set the condition, method, URL and JSON payload. Vida’s integration guide recommends testing the exact action the agent will perform before publishing.

4. Connect your existing number

To have Vida answer your current number, set call forwarding in your phone provider’s settings, or use your carrier’s forwarding codes. Vida’s docs make three points worth following:

• Use conditional forwarding (no answer or busy) if you want your team to pick up first and the agent to catch the rest.
• Make sure forwarded calls carry the original caller’s ID, not your own number, because Vida uses it to track callers.
• Many users forward only unknown numbers and let known contacts ring straight through. This is set in the Vida app under Call Forwarding Settings.

5. Test, publish and review

Call your Vida Number from a phone that is not on your contacts list. Try the easy path (book an appointment), then the hard ones: an angry caller, a question your pages do not answer, a request for a manager. Adjust Instructions after each test. When you are happy, publish and share the agent, then review conversations and transcripts weekly for the first month and fix the patterns you see.

Tips to get better results

• Write instructions as rules, not marketing copy. “Never quote prices for custom work; offer a callback instead” beats a paragraph about your values.
• Give every Function a clear trigger. Vague conditions lead to transfers nobody wanted or bookings nobody confirmed.
• Define a fallback. Tell the agent exactly what to do when it does not know: take a message, text a link, or transfer.
• Keep your Links pages short and factual. Hours, services, prices, policies and team names in plain language work better than long brochure pages.
• Start with conditional forwarding. Let the agent handle overflow and after-hours calls before you trust it with every call.
• Disclose that it is an AI. It reduces complaints and is a legal requirement in some places for some call types.
• Watch your minutes on Core. 2,500 voice minutes is about 830 three-minute calls a month. Check usage after the first week so you are not surprised by overages.

Limitations and common problems

• Price. The cheapest listed plan is $500 a month. For a small business with low call volume, a human answering service or a cheaper AI receptionist may cost less.
• Overage terms are not public. Ask before signing what you pay beyond the included minutes and messages on Core.
• Language coverage. The docs list only US English and Spanish variants. If you need French, German or another language, confirm support in writing.
• Texting needs the Vida Number. Forwarded calls work from your existing number, but SMS only goes through the dedicated Vida Number, so customers may receive texts from a number they do not recognise. Port your number if that matters.
• Calendar options. Native booking is documented for Google Calendar. Outlook, Calendly or practice-management systems need webhooks or custom API work.
• Garbage in, garbage out. The agent answers from your Instructions and Links. Out-of-date pages produce confident wrong answers, so assign someone to keep them current.

Alternatives

• MindStudio - a no-code builder for AI agents and apps; better for text and workflow agents than for phone calls.
• Quo - a business phone system with shared numbers, team texting and AI call summaries, if you want humans to answer with AI help.
• Tidio - website live chat with the Lyro AI agent, for businesses whose customers write rather than call.
• Close - a sales CRM with built-in calling and SMS, for teams that want a dialer and pipeline rather than an autonomous receptionist.

See more options in our AI agents and automation tools directory, and if you write the agent’s instructions with ChatGPT or Claude, our guide on how to write better prompts applies directly.

Verdict

Vida is a serious AI phone agent platform with a real telecom foundation, practical Functions for transfers, booking, texts and webhooks, and a reseller model that agencies and telecom providers can build a business on. Sign up if you have enough call volume to justify $500 a month, or if you want to sell AI agents under your own brand. Skip it if you are a very small business with a few calls a week, need languages beyond English and Spanish, or need native booking into something other than Google Calendar. Before signing, get the overage rate and any fair-use terms in writing.