Sales dialer pricing: per seat, per minute and credits explained

Sales dialer pricing usually combines a monthly fee per seat with usage: call minutes, phone numbers and often AI and recordings. Some vendors include minutes in an “unlimited” plan with a fair-use policy, and others sell prepaid credits. To compare them, estimate a full month for your team, including the costs that sit outside the seat price.

The 4 common pricing models

Model	How it works	Suits	Watch for
Seats, usage included	A monthly price per rep that includes calls to listed countries	Steady volume to a few countries	Fair-use clauses, excluded countries, extra charges for mobiles
Seats plus per-minute	A monthly price per rep, plus a rate per minute	Teams that want to see usage separately	Billing increments (per second or rounded up to the minute)
Prepaid credits	A monthly price per rep, with usage paid from a balance you top up	Volume that changes month to month	Credit expiry, minimum top-ups, what happens at a zero balance
Usage only	No seat fee, only minutes and numbers	Occasional calling	Higher rates per minute, fewer features

If a vendor offers a lower monthly price for a yearly contract, check the seat minimum, whether seats can go down during the term, and whether a price can change before renewal.

The costs people miss

The seat price is the easiest number to compare and often not the largest one. Ask about each of these:

• Phone numbers. Ask whether numbers carry a monthly fee and how many are included. To estimate how many you need, divide daily calls by the daily cap per number. Teams that dial in parallel need more numbers than teams that power dial. See how many calls a number can make a day.
• Caller ID registrations. Ask whether registering your caller name and business details costs a set-up or monthly fee. Registering outbound business numbers through the Free Caller Registry, run by 3 call-protection companies, is free (Free Caller Registry). Ask what is done for you.
• Call authentication. US voice service providers must implement STIR/SHAKEN in their IP networks (47 CFR 64.6301). Ask whether it is included and what attestation your calls get. See STIR/SHAKEN attestation levels.
• Recordings and storage. Ask how long recordings are kept, and whether longer storage costs extra.
• Transcription and AI. Transcripts, summaries and AI answer detection may be priced per minute, per call or in a higher plan.
• Voicemail and phone menus. These calls connect on the network, so ask how they are billed.
• International calls. Rates differ by country, and often between mobiles and landlines in the same country.
• Taxes and regulatory fees. In the US, the FCC’s proposed universal service contribution factor for October to December 2026 is 42.0% of contributors’ interstate and international end-user telecommunications revenues (FCC DA 26-946, released 14 Sep 2026). Whether and how a fee like this appears on your invoice depends on the vendor and the service, so ask.
• CRM integrations. Ask whether CRM integration is in every plan or only in a higher one.

A worked monthly estimate

Every rate below is made up to show the math. They are not any vendor’s prices. Swap in the rates from each quote.

The example team: 5 reps, 20 working days a month, 200 dials per rep per day. That is 1,000 dials a day and 20,000 a month. Assume 2,000 calls reach a person and last 3 minutes on average (6,000 minutes), and 4,000 calls reach voicemail or a phone menu and last 30 seconds (2,000 minutes). With a cap of 50 calls per number per day, the team needs 20 numbers.

Line	Quantity	Example rate	Monthly total
Seats	5	US$100 per seat	US$500
Call minutes	8,000	US$0.02 per minute	US$160
Phone numbers	20	US$2 per number	US$40
Transcription	6,000 minutes	US$0.01 per minute	US$60
AI summaries	2,000 conversations	US$0.05 each	US$100
Total			US$860

In this example, seats are US$500 of US$860, about 58%, and everything else is 42%. Taxes and fees come on top. Change one input and see what moves: doubling dials per rep doubles minutes and numbers but leaves seats the same, while adding a sixth rep raises every line.

Questions to ask about pricing

1. Can we see a sample monthly invoice for a team of our size and volume?
2. What does “unlimited” include, and what does the fair-use policy say?
3. Are calls billed per second or rounded up to the minute?
4. What do phone numbers and caller ID registrations cost, set-up and monthly?
5. How are transcripts, AI features and recording storage priced?
6. What are the rates for each country we call, for mobiles and landlines?
7. Do credits expire, and what happens when the balance runs out?
8. Which taxes and fees are added to the invoice?

For the other areas to compare beyond price, see how to choose a sales dialer. For how lines per rep change your volume, see what a parallel dialer is.

How DialSavvy handles this

DialSavvy charges per seat, per month, in US dollars. Calls, numbers and AI are paid from prepaid credits at published rates, and every call is itemized in your credits ledger. Auto top-up adds credits from a saved card when your balance runs low, up to a monthly limit you set. When the balance reaches zero, new calls pause and a call in progress finishes. Budgets and alerts are coming, and so is an included AI credit. See current plans on the pricing page.

Take your team’s real numbers (reps, dials a day, countries) and fill in the table above with each vendor’s quote before you compare.