Ruby vs Vapi
Ruby publishes its pricing; Vapi does not.
Both pages checked by August 19, 2026
- RubyHuman agents
- $115/mo
- Bundled chat add-on — 10 chats plan
- Ruby is a US-based live virtual receptionist and website chat service for small businesses, sold in monthly buckets of receptionist minutes and chats, where AI is used only to assist its human receptionists rather than to answer calls.
- VapiAI only
- Pricing not published
- no published plan
- Developer platform for building voice AI agents: Vapi hosts the orchestration layer and charges a per-minute hosting fee, while you pick and pay for your own speech-to-text, LLM, text-to-speech and telephony providers and write the assistant, tools and server hooks yourself.
The differences that matter
- Ruby is human agents; Vapi is ai only. That is the real decision here, not the price.
- Ruby offers a trial (Money-back guarantee rather than a trial: "Ruby is delighted to offer a money-back guarantee to first time users of both our virtual receptionist service and our chat service. Should you decide to cancel service and obtain a full refund for the cancelled service, please notify us of the service you wish to cancel either within 21 days of your purchase of that service or before your usage exceeds 500 receptionist minutes/50 billable chats, as applicable, whichever occurs sooner."); Vapi advertises none.
- Ruby can put a human on the line; Vapi is bot-only.
- Ruby publishes prices. Vapi makes you ask.
Feature by feature
| Capability | Ruby | Vapi |
|---|---|---|
| Live transfer | Yes | Yes |
| Books appointments | Yes | Yes |
| Text follow-up | Yes | Yes |
| Outbound calls | Yes | Yes |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes |
| Human backup | Yes | No |
| Call recordings | unstated | Yes |
| Transcripts | Yes | Yes |
| Spam screening | Yes | unstated |
| Custom voice | unstated | Yes |
| API | unstated | Yes |
"unstated" means the vendor doesn't claim it in their own documentation. It is not the same as no — it means nobody will put it in writing.
Ruby plans
| Plan | Published price | Includes | Over that |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual receptionist — 50 minutes | $250 /month | 50 min | — |
| Virtual receptionist — 100 minutes | $395 /month | 100 min | — |
| Virtual receptionist — 200 minutes | $720 /month | 200 min | — |
| Virtual receptionist — 500 minutes | $1,725 /month | 500 min | — |
| Live chat — 10 chats | $143 /month | — | — |
| Live chat — 30 chats | $335 /month | — | — |
| Live chat — 50 chats | $520 /month | — | — |
| Bundled chat add-on — 10 chats | Up to 10 chats for $115 (a 20% savings) | — | — |
| Bundled chat add-on — 30 chats | Up to 30 chats for $268 (a 20% savings) | — | — |
| Bundled chat add-on — 50 chats | Up to 50 chats for $416 (a 20% savings) | — | — |
Vapi plans
| Plan | Published price | Includes | Over that |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build | $0.05 / min | — | — |
| Scale | Fixed Platform fee and committed volume(annual billing) | — | — |
Ruby sources
- Plans and pricing (receptionist minute tiers, chat tiers, bundled chat pricing, included features); canonical URL is https://www.ruby.com/plans-and-pricing/ruby.com · read August 19, 2026
- Plans and pricing (canonical URL, same tiers)ruby.com · read August 19, 2026
- FAQs — money-back guarantee, no long-term contract, 60-second rounding statement, Spanish, scheduling, transfers, porting/forwarding, HQ in Portland OR, service arearuby.com · read August 19, 2026
- Ruby billing FAQs PDF (first-party asset host) — 30-second increments, hold time billable, no rollover, overage billed in arrearsassets.ruby.com · read August 19, 2026
- AI at Ruby — Call Nav, transcripts, sentiment analysis, robocall filtering; AI included at no extra cost; explicitly not used to replace human receptionistsruby.com · read August 19, 2026
- Integrations directory (CRM, calendars, legal software, Zapier)ruby.com · read August 19, 2026
- About Ruby — "In 2003, Ruby started as a small business"ruby.com · read August 19, 2026
Vapi sources
- Pricing page (Build and Scale plan cards, full comparison table, usage calculator)vapi.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Docs FAQ (developer positioning, vendor cost pass-through, Server URL requirement, volume discounts, white-labelling, on-prem)docs.vapi.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Docs: Introduction ("the developer platform for building voice AI agents", provider choice)docs.vapi.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Docs: Understanding Call Concurrency (10 slots default, queueing behaviour, buying reserved lines)docs.vapi.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Docs: How voice agent component costs work (billing units: transcriber per minute of audio, model per million tokens, voice per character)docs.vapi.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Docs: Vapi Enterprise (what an enterprise contract can include)docs.vapi.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Docs: Multilingual support (automatic language detection via Deepgram, Google STT, Gladia)docs.vapi.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Docs: Manage pay-as-you-go billing and credits (buy credits, $10 minimum purchase, auto reload, invoices)docs.vapi.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Docs index (transfer-call tool, Google Calendar and GoHighLevel integrations, call recording/logging/transcribing, outbound campaigns, inbound SMS US-only, Twilio/Telnyx/DIDWW number import, custom voices)docs.vapi.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Terms of Service (entity: Vapi Inc., a Delaware corporation)vapi.ai · read August 19, 2026