A Dialpad alternative for teams that do not need the transcript
Dialpad sells the transcript, the summary and the coaching. If you want the call and not the analysis, you are buying a licence per person for a feature nobody on the team opens.
01What it is
What Dialpad actually is
Dialpad transcribes calls as they happen, writes a summary afterwards, and prompts whoever is on the line while they are still on it. Around that sits a full business phone system with meetings and messaging. The AI is the actual product and it is good at it, which is why the whole thing is priced per person.
02The model
How Dialpad is priced
A licence per user per month across tiers, with the AI features that are the reason to buy it gated to the higher ones, and an annual commitment usual. Everyone with a login is a licence whether or not they placed a call.
We describe Dialpad by what it does, never by what it charges. Seat prices change, vary by country and often sit behind a sales call, so a figure copied here would go stale faster than anyone would re-check it. Read theirs on their own pricing page. Ours is published in full at /rates and is generated from the same table the keypad quotes from.
03Where it stops
Where it stops, if the problem is international calling
The feature you are paying for is per person, and calling is not.
A transcript is worth something for the person having the conversation. On a team where three people talk to customers and twelve are on the account so they can be reached, twelve licences buy three transcripts.
The tier that has the AI is not the tier that has the price.
The entry plan is a phone system. The reason most teams choose Dialpad sits above it, so the figure worth comparing is the one for the tier you would actually be on.
International minutes are still metered on top.
Bundled calling is bundled by destination, and the destinations that are bundled are rarely the ones a diaspora or supplier corridor uses. Check the specific countries you call rather than the number of countries listed.
Transcription is not a substitute for knowing whether it connected.
The thing a summary cannot tell you is what happened on the calls with no transcript, which are the ones that rang out, hit a menu, or reached a voicemail nobody labelled.
04What we are not
What you would be giving up
Airlophone is calling, not a phone system. These are the specific things Dialpad does that it does not, stated before the price rather than after it.
No live transcription and no call summaries.
Not built. The plumbing exists and it stays switched off, because recording a call is a consent question in most of the places this is used from and it is not a feature to ship for being technically easy.
No coaching, no sentiment scoring, no keyword alerts.
Nothing listens to the call, so nothing prompts you during it and nothing scores it afterwards. What is recorded is what happened: who called, where, how long it rang, how long it lasted and what it cost.
No meetings, no video, no team messaging.
This makes and takes phone calls. It is not where your team talks to each other, and it will not replace the tool where they do.
No native app, on a phone or a desktop.
It runs in a browser tab. Nothing to install is the point of it, and it also means no icon on a home screen and no notification reaching you when the tab is not in front of you.
05Stay put if
When Dialpad is the right answer
Stay where you are.
The transcript is the artefact your team works from, a manager coaches off recorded calls, or the summary is what goes into the CRM. Take that away and you have not saved money, you have removed the reason the tool was bought.
06What it costs
What the calling itself costs here
No licence, no seat, no minimum and no commitment. You fund one balance, the team spends from it, and a colleague who made no calls this month costs nothing. Rates for a distributed team calling head office and clients, from $0.02 a minute across 220+ countries:
| Destination | Landline | Mobile |
|---|---|---|
| United States | $0.02 | $0.02 |
| United Kingdom | $0.07 | $0.09 |
| India | $0.15 | $0.12 |
| Philippines | $0.59 | $0.89 |
| Australia | $0.07 | $0.25 |
Per minute in US dollars from a US caller ID, billed per minute with part of a minute counting as a full one. Read live from the published card, so this table cannot disagree with what you are charged. A landline and a mobile in the same country are priced apart because they cost different amounts to reach, and the band is resolved from the digits you dial rather than from a question you are asked.
A shared balance, a monthly cap per person enforced when they press Call, and an answer rate per member rather than a call count: see how the team account works, including the five things it deliberately does not do.
07Try it
Price a call your team actually makes
Type a real number from your own call log. The exact rate for that number appears before anything dials, and the first minute is free without a card.
Type a number to see its exact price.
Sign up and call. First minute on us, no card details.
08Questions
Common questions
What is the best Dialpad alternative without AI features?
If the AI is not what you use, the honest answer is that you are looking for calling rather than for a phone system, and the alternatives are pay-as-you-go calling accounts. One prepaid balance, no licence per person, a published per-minute rate per country, and no transcript. What you lose is real: no summaries, no coaching, and no recording of any kind.
Does Airlophone record or transcribe calls?
No. Neither is built. Recording a call is a consent decision that differs by country and often by which end of the call you are on, and the countries this product is used from are exactly the ones where that is complicated. What is kept is metadata: the destination, the duration, the ring time, the outcome if you label it, and the charge.
Is there a business calling service with no per-user licence?
Yes. Airlophone charges per minute against one shared prepaid balance, with no licence and no per-person fee, so a colleague who made no calls this month costs nothing. Each member can be given a monthly cap that is enforced when they press Call rather than reported afterwards. It is calling rather than a phone system, so there are no queues, no meetings and no messaging.
How do I compare international calling costs between providers?
Price the specific numbers you call, not the countries. A landline and a mobile in the same country are frequently priced several times apart, and a rate card that quotes one figure per country is quoting an average of the two. Airlophone publishes both bands for every country it covers and resolves the band from the digits you dial, so the figure you see is the one for that number.
Price it against your last Dialpad invoice
Take a number off your own call log, type it in, and read the per-minute rate for that exact number. No licence, no seat count, no commitment, and the first minute is free without a card.