Worked example: pricing a 20,000-call inbound support line
Here is a full estimate built by hand, so you can see exactly what the calculator does with your inputs. It uses the same US rates the calculator uses (see the Rates as of date at the top of the page).
The scenario
- One US toll-free number, inbound voice only
- 20,000 calls a month, averaging 4 minutes in Connect (IVR, queue and talk time)
- That is 80,000 billable minutes a month
Option A: Customer Basic
| Line item | Calculation | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Connect voice usage | 80,000 min × $0.018 | $1,440.00 |
| Toll-free inbound telephony | 80,000 min × $0.0050 | $400.00 |
| Toll-free number | 1 × $0.06/day × 30 days | $1.80 |
| Total | $1,841.80 | |
Option B: Connect Customer Pricing (bundled)
| Line item | Calculation | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Connect voice usage | 80,000 min × $0.038 | $3,040.00 |
| Telephony and number | same as above | $401.80 |
| Total | $3,441.80 | |
For plain voice, Customer Basic is clearly cheaper. The bundled model starts to win once you add the features it includes, such as Contact Lens conversational analytics, AI agent assistance, Lex self-service and Polly prompts. Under Customer Basic each of those is billed separately per minute or per request. Switch the pricing mode in the calculator with your real feature mix to see where the break-even point is.
What the per-call figure tells you
Option A works out to about $0.092 per call ($1,841.80 ÷ 20,000). Compare that with your current platform's cost per call, not its cost per seat. Connect bills for usage, so cost scales with call volume and duration rather than agent headcount.
Where estimates usually go wrong
- Counting only talk time. You pay from the moment the call enters Connect, so IVR and queue minutes count too. Use average total contact duration, which you can get from CTRs (
DisconnectTimestamp−InitiationTimestamp). The CTR Parser shows it per contact. - Forgetting transfers. An external transfer or callback creates outbound legs with their own telephony charges.
- Toll-free versus DID. Toll-free inbound costs more per minute than DID in most countries. Moving even part of your traffic to a local number can be a big saving.
- Region and country. Telephony rates vary widely by country. Always price with the country your numbers are in, not the AWS Region.
- Separately billed services. Lambda, Lex (under Customer Basic), S3 recording storage, Kinesis streaming and CloudWatch logging are charged under their own services. They are small per contact but add up at scale.
Turning the estimate into a business case
Use the calculator's ROI section to compare against your current per-seat licences, then add a margin of 10–15% for growth and unmodelled usage. Before you commit numbers to a customer or finance team, re-check the rates on the official AWS pricing page. Telephony in particular is re-priced from time to time.