How much to charge a small business in Latin America for a voice agent

Start from what a missed call is worth

Your client's question is not what a minute of voice costs: it is how much they earn if they stop losing calls. For a small business that today answers when it can, an unanswered call is a customer who rings the competitor.

Do the sum with the owner of the business, with their numbers and not yours. As an example, picture a clinic:

What a clinic's missed calls cost

Sample data

Missed calls a month

60

Out of every 10, those that would become an appointment

2

Appointments recovered

12

Value of each appointment

US$40

Revenue lost each month

US$480

With that example data, a plan of US$149 a month is less than a third of what is being lost. The conversation stops being “what does the agent cost” and becomes “what does it recover”.

Your cost is the floor

The value to the client sets the ceiling; your cost sets the floor. In the post how to bill your clients for voice-agent minutes we went through the providers' list prices, checked on October 19, 2026: ElevenLabs charges US$0.08 per additional minute with the language model billed on top, Retell advertises US$0.07 to US$0.31 per minute, and the parts of Vapi add up to between US$0.08 and US$0.13 (our sum). For the examples in this post we use US$0.1285 per minute, which includes an assumed US$0.04 for the language model.

On top of that cost comes your payment processor's fee. Stripe Mexico, for example, charges 3.6% plus MXN 3.00 per payment with a domestic card (stripe.com/mx/pricing, seen on October 19, 2026).

One more figure works as an anchor in the conversation, without being your price: in Mexico, the general minimum wage for 2026 is MXN 315.04 a day, in force since January 1 (Bloomberg Línea, in Spanish). That is about 9,600 pesos a month (315.04 times 30.4 days, our arithmetic), before social-security contributions. Use it to size what it costs to cover a phone with a person, not to set what your agent is worth.

Three ways to set a price

We do not publish a market price for the region, because we have no verified data to back one, and you should be wary of anyone who gives you one without a source. What you can do is work out your own. Here are three businesses with an example plan each, calculated with the cost of US$0.1285 per minute:

None of those figures is a price recommendation. They show something more useful: with a cost of that size, the example plans leave between 55% and 61% margin even when the client uses all their minutes. If yours leaves a lot less, or the business uses more minutes than it includes, review the price before you sign.

Dollars or local currency

Quoting in dollars protects your margin when your cost is in dollars, and it is what most providers do. Quoting in local currency is easier for a small business to accept, but leaves you exposed to the exchange rate. If you choose local currency, review the price on a fixed schedule, say every quarter, and put it in the contract. It is a decision for each agency and each country.

Charge setup and support separately

Two things change from one client to the next and are worth taking out of the plan: the setup fee, which pays for the hours it takes to get the agent working, and support, if you offer monthly adjustments to the agent's instructions. That way the base plan stays simple and comparable, and extra work is charged as extra work.

Before you send the proposal

Where teldash fits

teldash is a client portal and billing layer for agencies that sell voice agents. It has not launched yet: it is in development and has a waitlist. What is built so far is security and access; billing with your own Stripe comes before launch, and margin per client after. To set a price today you do not need any tool of ours: a spreadsheet is enough.