What is the best AI cold calling software?

For a small team that makes its own calls, JustCall, with a power dialer from US$49 a seat a month billed yearly and AI call scoring on Pro Plus. If you want the AI to make the calls, Bland AI charges 14 US cents a minute with no platform fee.

Is AI cold calling legal?

In the US, an AI voice is legal only with consent. The FCC ruled in February 2024 that AI-generated voices are artificial under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, so a voice agent needs the person's agreement, and the FTC's Do Not Call and calling-hours rules still apply.

Is there free AI cold calling software?

Not for real calling at volume. Bland AI's Start plan has no platform fee and needs no card, Retell gives US$10 of free credit, and Hyperbound's free plan has 45 AI roleplays for practice.

What is the difference between an AI dialer and an AI voice agent?

With an AI dialer you do the talking: it rings the numbers, skips voicemail and connects you to the people who pick up. A voice agent holds the conversation itself and books the meeting or hands the call to a person.

How much does AI cold calling software cost?

Dialers on this list start between US$25 and US$140 a user a month, and voice agents charge by the minute, from 7 US cents at Retell and 14 US cents at Bland AI. Compare them on what each booked meeting costs you.

Can AI help me practise cold calls?

Yes. Hyperbound's free plan gives you 45 prebuilt AI roleplays, including outbound and objection packs, so you can rehearse your opener before you ring a real prospect.

9 best AI cold calling software tools for 2026

How we chose

AI cold calling software is three different products sold under one name, and the first question is who you want on the phone. A voice agent makes the call itself. An AI dialer rings the numbers for you and hands you the live ones. A call coach listens while you talk, or scores the recording afterwards.

Type	Who talks	What the AI does
Voice agent	The AI	Holds the call, books the meeting
AI dialer	You	Skips voicemail, writes the notes
Call coach	You	Prompts you live or scores the call

We judged each tool on what it changes in a seller's week, from the first block of calls to the count of meetings booked. Six questions decided the list:

Who's on the phone? A voice agent suits short, repeatable calls, and a rep suits anything that needs trust.
What's the whole bill per booked meeting? Seats, minutes, numbers and add-ons all count.
How many seats do you have to buy, and for how long? Several tools here sell a year at a time, and two set a minimum team size.
Which plan is the AI on? Rarely the cheapest.
Does it help you keep the calling rules? Look for Do Not Call scrubbing, caller ID and a record of who agreed to hear from you.
Can you try it on your own list first?

We built the list from each product's own site and documentation, pricing pages included, all read on 29 October 2026. We didn't test them hands-on, so there are no star ratings here. Prices are list prices in US dollars, as of October 2026.

The 9 best AI cold calling tools, by job

They're grouped by who does the talking: six where you do, two where the AI does, and one for practice. Read the "Skip it if" lines first. They rule out more tools than the feature lists rule in.

1. JustCall: best for a small team that dials and texts

JustCall is a phone system for sales teams that puts your calls and texts on one dashboard. Its pricing page puts a power dialer on Pro, at US$49 a user a month billed yearly, with unlimited outbound minutes in the US and Canada and unlimited AI transcription. Pro Plus, at US$89, adds AI call scoring, real-time agent assist and sentiment analysis.

Team, the entry plan, costs US$29 a user a month billed yearly. Every plan needs at least two licences. There's a 14-day free trial and no free plan, and the AI voice agent JustCall sells as an add-on only answers incoming calls.

Pick it if two to ten reps make the calls themselves and you want the dialer, the texts and the call notes in one place. Skip it if you sell alone, because the two-seat minimum doubles your bill.

2. Kixie: best power dialer for one rep who lives in the CRM

Kixie connects to your CRM and dials from it. On Professional you click a number in the CRM to call it, and the next two plans on its plans page add a power dialer on one line or on up to four lines at once. Every plan includes voicemail drop, live call coaching and unlimited minutes for calls in the US and Canada.

The AI comes as extras: human voice detection on the multi-line plan, conversation intelligence, and a Do Not Call compliance add-on. Kixie keeps its prices off the page, so you start the 7-day free trial, with no card, and ask for a quote once you know which plan you'd keep.

Pick it if you call alone or in a pair and your contacts already sit in HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive; Kixie pitches its Professional plan as "perfect for individual sales professionals". Skip it if you need the price in writing before you start a trial.

3. Dialpad: best for AI coaching while you're on the call

Dialpad Sell is a business phone built around its own AI. Its pricing page lists Essentials at US$39 a user a month, with AI transcripts and recaps, call recording, CRM integrations and unlimited minutes in the US and Canada.

Advanced, at US$59, adds Live Coach, which prompts you with answers while the prospect is still talking, plus local presence dialing and voicemail drop. The top plan, at US$79, scores calls for quality. Essentials has a free trial.

Pick it if the calls connect fine and you lose them in the first minute, so help mid-call matters more than dialling speed. Skip it if you need several lines ringing at once. Dialpad's plan list doesn't mention a multi-line dialer.

4. CloudTalk: best for calling prospects in several countries

CloudTalk is a cloud phone system with local numbers in more than 160 countries, per its pricing page. Starter costs US$25 a user a month billed yearly, with a one-licence minimum and unlimited calls to the US and Canada.

You pay extra for the power dialer, for a parallel dialer that rings up to ten lines and for AI conversation intelligence, and you can try the whole thing free before you buy.

Pick it if you sell across borders and want a local number in each market your prospects pick up from. Skip it if you want AI and a dialer in the base price, because both cost extra here.

5. PhoneBurner: best for a solo seller who wants a dialer with its own CRM

PhoneBurner is a power dialer with a built-in CRM, one-click voicemails and email sending. Its pricing page says Standard is "great for individuals" at US$140 a user a month billed yearly, or US$165 monthly, with unlimited power dialing.

Call transcription and an AI note-taker come only on the top plan, at US$183 billed yearly. The free trial gives you free minutes to test the dialer.

Pick it if you don't have a CRM and want one tool that holds the list, rings it and sends the follow-up email. Skip it if AI notes are the reason you're buying, because they're on the most expensive plan.

6. Orum: best for an SDR team of nine or more

Orum is an AI dialer for teams who book meetings by phone all day. Its pricing page includes parallel and power dialing, AI detection of voicemail and phone trees, AI call summaries and unlimited dials. If two people pick up at once, Orum's homepage says it connects you to whoever answered first and puts the other number in a list to call back.

Every plan has a nine-seat minimum and the price comes from their sales team. AI roleplays and scorecards are an add-on, and the free trial stops at 500 dials.

Pick it if you manage nine or more reps whose day is mostly dialling. Skip it if your team is smaller than nine, because you'd pay for empty seats.

7. Bland AI: best voice agent with one per-minute price

Bland builds AI phone agents that make and take calls and hand the hard ones to a person. Start costs 14 US cents a minute with no platform fee and no card, and the pricing page says the language model, transcription and voices are inside that rate. Start caps you at 100 calls a day.

Build costs 12 US cents a minute plus US$299 a month, for up to 2,000 calls a day. You can bring your own Twilio account or phone carrier.

Pick it if you have a list of people who agreed to hear from you, such as old web enquiries, and you want one rate to budget with. Skip it if your list is cold mobile numbers in the US (see the rules below), or if nobody on your team will write and test the agent's script.

8. Retell AI: best for trying a voice agent on free credit

Retell is a voice agent platform with outbound campaigns built in: its homepage says you upload the audience, schedule the calls, set pacing and retries, and let the agent handle voicemail. Its pricing page lists pay as you go at 7 to 31 US cents a minute. The model and voice you pick set where in that range you land.

You start with US$10 in free credit and 20 concurrent calls, with no contract.

Pick it if you want to hear a voice agent call your own phone before you spend anything. Skip it if you want one fixed rate, since your choice of model moves the per-minute price.

9. Hyperbound: best for practising cold calls before you dial

Hyperbound doesn't call anyone. It's an AI sales roleplay tool: its pricing page gives a free plan with 45 prebuilt AI roleplays, including outbound and objection packs, and example scorecards.

The paid plans let you build buyer bots from your own prospects, at a price you get on a demo. The Perform plan scores your real calls too.

Pick it if you're new to the phone, or you manage reps who freeze on the first brush-off. Skip it if you already know your opener and what you're short of is conversations.

What each one costs

Three of the nine show no price until you ask their sales team. Seat prices are per user a month, as of October 2026.

Tool	Who talks	Cheapest paid plan	Free to try
JustCall	You	US$29, 2-seat minimum	14-day trial
Kixie	You	On request	7-day trial
Dialpad	You	US$39	Free trial
CloudTalk	You	US$25	Free trial
PhoneBurner	You	US$140	Free minutes
Orum	You	On request, 9 seats	500 dials
Bland AI	The AI	14 US cents a minute	Start plan, no card
Retell AI	The AI	7 US cents a minute	US$10 credit
Hyperbound	Practice	Via demo	45 free roleplays

None of the nine is free for real calling at volume. Before you pay for any of them, call by hand for an hour when your prospects pick up and count every dial; it's free, and most lists leave it out. Pick the hour with the best time to make sales calls, and a week of those counts shows whether you're short of dials, pickups or meetings. Each gap has its own type of tool.

Cost per booked meeting

A seat price and a per-minute rate can't be compared until you turn both into the same number: what you paid for each meeting booked. Add up the month's bill, then divide by meetings.

The seats or minutes. A yearly rate only counts if you'll sign for a year.
Phone numbers, and the carrier if you bring your own.
Add-ons: the AI on a dialer, extra lines, number reputation tools.
The hours you put into the script and the list.

Made-up example: Maya and her two reps sell bookkeeping to restaurants, and in March she tries two ways to fill their calendars.

Her reps use JustCall Pro at US$49 a seat billed yearly, so US$147 for the month. In their morning blocks they make 1,500 dials, reach 140 people and book 11 meetings. That's US$13.36 a meeting.

Then she sets up Bland AI's Start plan to ring 400 old web enquiries, all people who ticked "call me" on her form. Two tries each makes 800 calls, at an average of 1.5 minutes, so 1,200 minutes at 14 US cents comes to US$168. The agent books 6 meetings, US$28 each, and the 100-calls-a-day cap stretches the run over eight working days.

On price the dialer wins by more than double. But the agent's 6 meetings came from people nobody on the team had called in months, so she keeps both: the dialer for the cold list, the agent for the enquiries who asked to hear from her.

The calling rules before you dial

In the US, a voice agent needs the person's consent and a dialer has to stay inside the Telemarketing Sales Rule. The FCC voted unanimously on 8 February 2024 that an AI-generated voice is an "artificial" voice under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, per its news release. So a voice agent can't ring a cold US list. In the words of the FCC's consumer guide to robocalls, "AI-generated voice calls are illegal unless the consumer has agreed to receive them or the caller is exempt."

The FTC's guide to complying with the Telemarketing Sales Rule sets the rest:

Rule	What to do	Source
AI voice	Call only people who agreed to it	FCC
Do Not Call	Re-check your list every 31 days	FTC
Hours	Ring homes 8am to 9pm their time	FTC
Pickup	A live rep within 2 seconds of hello	FTC
Caller ID	Send your number on every call	FTC

The pickup row is the one parallel dialers trip on. The FTC counts a call as abandoned when nobody connects the person to a rep within two seconds of their greeting. Its safe harbour allows no more than 3% of answered calls to be abandoned in a campaign, with a recorded message giving your name and number whenever no rep is free. Ask any dialer vendor how they keep you under that.

On the Do Not Call registry, the FTC says the first five area codes are free and each one after costs US$85 a year. Most calls to a business are exempt from the rule, so a B2B rep ringing a company's office line has more room. A call to someone at work about something for their own use is not exempt.

None of this is legal advice. Outside the US, read your own regulator's page before you dial, and before you load a voice agent with a bought list anywhere.

Where AI calling works, and where it doesn't

AI helps on the parts of a cold call that repeat, and fails where trust matters.

It works for:

Getting more live conversations per hour, by skipping voicemail, phone trees and dead numbers.
Short calls to people who asked to hear from you, like an old enquiry or a missed demo.
Recaps that write the next step down before you dial again.

It struggles with:

A first call to a senior buyer, who wants to know who's calling and why.
Bad numbers, which a dialer only reaches faster.
A weak opener. Fix the first 20 seconds with the cold calling script template before you pay for speed.

Test two tools in one week

A demo shows the tool on its best day. Start two trials on the same Monday and run them side by side on your own list.

Monday: load the same 100 numbers you're allowed to call into both, and run your first block at the same hour in each.
Tuesday: listen to five recordings from each. For a dialer, time the gap between "hello" and your voice. For a voice agent, count the pauses that make a prospect say "hello?" twice.
Wednesday: test the hand-off. Ask each for "something in writing" and for "a person", and see what happens next.
Thursday: in your pipeline review, check that each outcome landed on the right contact with the notes attached.
Friday: run the cost-per-meeting sum for each and keep the cheaper one.

When calls die at the first brush-off, write the lines before you buy anything. Common sales objections has an answer for each, and the cold calling guide covers voicemail and the ask.

After the call

Most cold calls that go well end in "call me next month", and none of these tools decides who you ring back. The dialer logs the call and the agent books the meeting, then the follow-up is yours.

Log the outcome before the next dial: no answer, spoke, interested, not now or do not call.
Write one line on what they said, in their words.
Set the date of the next touch before you close the record.
Honour every "don't call me again" the same day, on every list you keep.

The sales follow-up process sets out how often to chase and when to stop.

No dialer on this list decides who you ring back next month. ActivityTracker's CRM takes your call list from a spreadsheet, lets you undo the import if the columns land wrong, and puts a follow-up badge on each contact's card.

See how the CRM works