Frontdesk vs Vapi
Vapi is a developer-first voice API for building and orchestrating voice agents, with fine control over models, latency, and telephony. Frontdesk is a finished AI receptionist: trained on your business, answering calls, booking appointments, and writing to your CRM without any engineering.
Jump to: full feature comparison · which one fits you · pricing
At a glance.
Watch the invoice: a Vapi build is four bills, not one
Vapi is unusually good at the thing it is for. The orchestration is clean, latency control is real, and if you want to swap models or providers to tune a conversation, it does not fight you. Engineers like it for a reason.
It is also, by design, one layer of a stack rather than the stack. You pay Vapi per minute for orchestration, then separately for the language model, separately for speech-to-text and text-to-speech, and separately for telephony numbers and minutes. Each is metered, each moves with volume, and none of them is the biggest line — that is the engineering time spent gluing them together and keeping them glued.
The forecasting problem follows from that. Four usage-based bills plus a build make cost-per-call hard to state before the fact, which is awkward when someone in finance asks what the front desk costs per booked job. A flat plan answers that question in one number.
The clean split, and what most teams settle on, is by workload. Vapi keeps the voice features embedded in the product you sell, where control is worth the complexity. Frontdesk takes the business phone line, where the value is in booking, CRM writes, escalation rules, multichannel coverage, and someone else being responsible when a provider degrades at 7pm — for $99/month, on one invoice.
Where Frontdesk is a better fit than Vapi.
Vapi is excellent at what it is for: giving engineers control over a voice pipeline. It is not trying to be a receptionist, and treating it as one means you are the one building, testing, and maintaining the receptionist.
Buy the outcome, not the toolkit
Frontdesk is a receptionist that answers, qualifies, books, logs, and follows up out of the box. Vapi gives you the pipeline to build one, which is a different purchase with a different timeline.
Business integrations included
Live calendar booking, native CRM writes, SMS confirmations, reminders, and escalation rules are configuration in Frontdesk. On an API you are writing and owning each of those.
One bill instead of a stack
API builds accumulate model, transcription, telephony, and platform charges that move with usage. Frontdesk is $99/mo with minutes bundled — one line item, forecastable.
Multichannel without extra systems
Two-way SMS, email, and website chat share the same agent and memory as the phone, rather than being separate services you glue together.
Compliance and security posture provided
SOC 2 and HIPAA-ready configuration ships with the product, instead of being an architecture you have to design, document, and defend.
Operators can edit it, not just engineers
Scripts, hours, prices, services, and transfer rules change in a dashboard. Nothing about running the front desk needs to enter your sprint backlog.
Reliability is the vendor’s problem
Latency regressions, provider outages, and edge-case call failures are Frontdesk’s to fix. On a self-hosted pipeline, they are yours, at whatever hour they happen.
Not sure whether Frontdesk or Vapi fits your call flow?
Send us your current setup and we will map it against Vapi on a call — volume, escalation rules, calendars, CRM, and what the switch would actually look like. No obligation.
Frontdesk vs Vapi: full feature comparison.
Vapi can be made to do nearly every row here — that is what an API is for. What the table shows is which of them arrive done and which arrive as tickets.
| Capability | Frontdesk AI | Vapi |
|---|---|---|
| Call answering | ||
| Answers every call 24/7, including nights and holidays | Included | Included |
| Runs the whole call with no human queue | Included | Included |
| Picks up on the first ring, no hold music | Included | Included |
| Custom greeting, script, and brand voice | Included | You build it |
| Spam and robocall screening | Included | You build it |
| Booking and scheduling | ||
| Books the appointment live, during the call | Included | You build it |
| Google Calendar, Outlook, and Calendly availability | Included | You build it |
| SMS confirmation sent before the call ends | Included | You build it |
| Automated appointment reminders and no-show follow-up | Included | You build it |
| CRM and data | ||
| Native HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive writes | Included | You build it |
| Structured lead fields, not just a transcript | Included | You build it |
| AI-native CRM included at no extra cost | Included | Not available |
| Full transcripts, recordings, and call summaries | Included | Included |
| Zapier, webhooks, and open API | Included | Included |
| Channels | ||
| Inbound voice | Included | Included |
| Two-way SMS agent | Included | You build it |
| Email agent | Included | Not available |
| Website chatbot and voicebot | Included | You build it |
| Outbound calling and follow-up campaigns | Included | Included |
| Routing and escalation | ||
| Rule-based live transfer by intent, keyword, time, or caller | Included | You build it |
| Multi-location call flows and portfolio rollups | Included | You build it |
| Missed-call text-back | Included | You build it |
| Urgent-call escalation to an on-call human | Included | You build it |
| Languages, compliance, and partners | ||
| 20+ languages with mid-call auto-detect | Included | Model-dependent |
| Bilingual on the same phone number | Included | You build it |
| SOC 2 and HIPAA-ready configuration | Included | You build it |
| White-label and reseller partner program | Included | Included |
| Setup and pricing | ||
| Self-serve setup, live the same day | Included | Developer signup |
| Keeps your existing business number | Included | You configure it |
| No engineering or prompt plumbing required | Included | Not available |
| Published, self-serve pricing | Included | Included |
| No long-term contract or setup fee | Included | Included |
Frontdesk capabilities reflect the product today. Vapi capabilities describe its generally available offering and are marked as add-ons or plan-dependent where that applies. Competitor columns last reviewed August 2026; vendors change features and pricing often, so check Vapi’s own pricing and feature pages before deciding.
Which one fits your team.
Pick Frontdesk if
- You want a receptionist, not a voice pipeline
- You need calendar, CRM, and transfer logic already working
- You want one predictable monthly bill
- You need SOC 2 / HIPAA-ready controls without building them
- You want non-engineers to own the front desk
Pick Vapi if
- Voice is a feature of the software you sell
- You need control over models, latency, and turn-taking
- You have engineering capacity to own the agent long term
- Your workload is not front-desk reception
The bottom line
Vapi is the right tool if voice is part of what you sell and you need to control the pipeline. For a front desk it is four metered bills plus a build plus an on-call rotation, to arrive at something Frontdesk provides for $99/month with the booking, CRM, and compliance layers already done. Most teams end up running both, split by workload.
Researching a replacement rather than a head-to-head? Read the full Vapi alternative guide.
Multiple locations, regulated intake, or a team to roll this out to?
Our sales team scopes multi-site call flows, HIPAA-ready configurations, white-label deployments, and volume pricing. Tell us what you are running and we will put together the plan.
How to move from Vapi to Frontdesk.
Start with the invoice rather than the architecture. Adding up what a Vapi-based front desk really costs per booked call is usually what settles the internal argument, because most of the cost is not on the Vapi line.
- 1
Total the four bills, then add the build
Sum Vapi orchestration, model usage, speech-to-text and text-to-speech, and telephony for last month, then add a fair estimate of engineering hours spent on the agent. Divide by booked appointments, not calls — that is the number to compare against $99/month.
- 2
Decide which workloads stay
Product-embedded voice features stay on Vapi, where the low-level control earns its complexity. The front desk — inbound reception, booking, intake, follow-up — is the workload to move, and it is usually the one generating the maintenance.
- 3
Move the config, not the code
Your system prompt, function definitions, and business rules become knowledge base content and settings in Frontdesk. Calendar, CRM, and SMS stop being services you host and become integrations you toggle.
- 4
Decommission deliberately
Keep the pipeline running on a spare number for a week while Frontdesk takes live calls, then shut down the telephony numbers, cancel the unused provider accounts, and remove the phone line from on-call.
Frontdesk answers calls from $99 a month.
One published price, no per-seat fees, no setup fee, and no contract — so you can compare it against Vapi on real numbers. Start with a 7-day free trial and hear it handle your own calls first.
1–10 interactions / day
Business-in-a-Box
For growing small businesses
or $79/mo billed annually
Everything you need to run a fully automated front office. Voice, chat, SMS, CRM, and automations in one plan.
- 200 voice minutes / month
- 100 chatbot convos · 400 SMS
- 1,000 monthly overage credits + auto-reload
- Zapier + verified outbound number
- 3 notification recipients
25+ interactions / day
Partner / Enterprise
For scaling teams & agencies
Tailored for your volume
Volume discounts, API access, custom integrations, and white-glove onboarding with a dedicated account manager.
- Everything in Business, plus:
- Volume pricing (voice from 7 credits/min)
- API access & custom integrations
- Dedicated account manager + Slack
- White-glove onboarding
- Custom data retention options
FAQ
AI Receptionist FAQs
Common questions about deploying an AI receptionist. If you don't see your question, our team can walk you through it.
Contact supportYes, and it is a common split. Frontdesk runs the business phone line — reception, booking, intake, follow-up — while your engineering team uses Vapi for product-embedded voice features where low-level control matters. Frontdesk’s API and webhooks let the two exchange data where it is useful.
Compare Frontdesk with other providers
Try Frontdesk before you commit to Vapi.
Free to start. Forward your existing number, train the AI on your business, and take real calls today.