Twilio Pricing & Plans: A Closer Look at Their Products

Twilio is a cloud-based CPaaS provider offering a wide range of flexible communication software products–including prebuilt applications and standalone channel APIs like voice, video, SMS, webchat, and email.

However, navigating Twilio’s flexible pricing plans for all its products can feel overwhelming.

This article outlines Twilio pricing, discussing each product’s features, channels, plans, and pricing structure.

• An Overview of Twilio Products and Plans
• Twilio Applications Pricing
• Twilio Communication Channel APIs Pricing
• Should You Use Twilio?

An Overview of Twilio Products and Pricing Plans

Twilio’s CPaaS products break down into two general categories: applications and channel APIs.

Twilio’s applications are prebuilt software solutions that combine Twilio’s APIs into a ready-to-use interface and dashboard, each geared toward specific use cases. Some Twilio apps are charged per use, but many use a subscription pricing model, paid per user by the month or minute.

Twilio’s communication channels are standalone communication APIs that provide your pre-existing app or website with specific functionality–like phone, video, or messaging. These APIs are typically charged per use, such as by-the-message or by-the-minute.

Twilio Applications Pricing

Below, we’ve outlined the pricing for each Twilio application.

SendGrid Marketing Campaigns

SendGrid Marketing Campaigns is an email campaign application ready to use right out of the box. Unlike the email API, the Marketing Campaigns app does not require any code–instead, users can choose between the code editor or the drag-and-drop visual editor.

The dashboard lets you customize, automate and evaluate every step of the email campaign process: managing contacts, designing emails, setting up the sending structure, and testing campaign success.

SendGrid Marketing Campaigns allows you to build promotional, transactional, and automated use cases–such as newsletters, product announcements, automated welcome emails, onboarding series, and upcoming event reminders.

SendGrid Marketing Campaigns Features:

• Contact management: Batch add contacts, connect Twilio to CRM data, and segment contacts by features or particular events
• Email design: Customize email settings, build, and style–including color, borders, text, images, and more dynamic content. The drag-and-drop builder includes marketing and transactional templates.

• Campaign set up: Schedule your campaign, create series and triggers, and set follow-up timing

• Testing and analytics: Real-time tracking dashboards, inbox previews, engagement data and open rates, A/B tests, and more

SendGrid Marketing Campaigns Pricing

SendGrid Marketing Campaigns offers three plans, charged monthly based on how many contacts you store and how many emails you send. Prices range from $15 to $60 per user, per month. Custom, quote-based plans are also available.

Twilio Flex

Twilio Flex is Twilio’s programmable contact center platform that provides one interface for omnichannel customer communication–combining email, VoIP phone, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WebChat. 

It also offers real-time analytics and call center metrics, workflow automation tools, integrations with third-party apps, the ability to add remote agents and modify channels, and intelligent call routing.

The platform is API-programmable, which means you can combine Twiio’s APIs to design and build a contact center that personalizes customer experience and engagement.

Twilio Flex Features:

• Interface: The dashboard provides a birds-eye, omnichannel view of all communication channels, activity, workflows, relevant data, and customer profile information. With one or two clicks, users can jump between all communication needs.
• Omnichannel communications: Users can contact customers via any channel within the Flex interface, with just a few clicks. Omnichannel conversations with each customer compile in a multichannel inbox, for agents to easily manage activity.
• Task management: Users can create, assign, and complete tasks right within Flex. A user’s tasks appear in their main dashboard, overviewing that day’s needs.
• Customer data and context: When an agent opens a customer conversation, they have access to the full multichannel conversation history as well as a detailed customer profile with contact information, preferences, shipping and order information, and notes
• Integrations: Integrate the Flex contact center with CRM platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce, calendar platforms like Microsoft Outlook, database platforms, and other business tools

Twilio Flex Pricing

Flex offers 5,000 free hours and two pricing options: $1 hourly per user, or $150 monthly per user.

The hourly rate works best for part-time agents that only access the contact center a few days per week. However, full-time agents with frequent use should opt for the monthly pricing.

Twilio Flex users can add on Agent CoPilot for $0.035 per minute and $0.005 per message. Agent CoPilot is an AI-powered tool that supplies agents with suggested responses, call summaries, and automated wrap-ups.

Flex Mobile, Twilio's mobile application is included with all Twilio plans, but can also be purchased as a standalone, mobile only plan for $50 per user, per month.

Customer Data Platforms: Twilio Connections and Engage 

Twilio Engage is a marketing and customer engagement solution that combines a customer data platform and an omnichannel communication platform.

Twilio Connections, part of Engage, is a customer data platform that gathers customer information in real-time and updates dynamic user profiles. Engage allows you to use this customer information to segment customers and learn their contact preferences, generating multichannel customer journeys based on their unique preferences and usage history. Engage includes analytics providing feedback on how each customer relationship and campaign is going, to improve performance.

Twilio Customer Data Platform Features

• Profiles: Real-time, dynamic customer profiles that track every interaction and the customer’s journey across all apps and touch points.
• Journeys: Build multi-step, multichannel customer journeys that act in response to customer preferences, information, and behavior. Target particular audiences, curated by data.
• Analytics: View delivery statistics, read status, and the percentage of messages and journeys that led to a successful result
• AI Recommendations: AI-powered product and trait recommendations to help drive conversions , boost cross sells and upsells, and customize interactions.
• AI Predictions: Leverages AI to predict customer behavior and tailor campaigns and journeys accordingly.
• Audiences and Profile Enrichment: Automatically segments customers based on behavior, traits, and events.
• Protocols: AI-powered add-on that allows users to maintain clean customer data with automated quality assessment, strict controls to block non-conforming events, and real-time validation.

Twilio Connections and Engage Pricing

Twilio Connections offers three plans: Free, Team, and Business.

The Free version includes tracking, profiling, and journey creation for 1,000 users monthly, can involve two customer-interaction sources like apps or websites, and supports over 700 integrations. The Team plan expands to 10,000 visitors, unlimited data sources, and connects to one data warehouse where you can store and view customer data.

Twilio Engage allows users to build AI-powered audiences for a complete customer view, unify events and warehouse data, and activate profiles across tools to power journeys and campaigns. Twilio Engage has custom, qu0te-based plans only.

Twilio Communication Channel APIs

Channel APIs are isolated communication channels that you can embed into applications, websites, and tools your team already uses.

For example, the programmable chat API allows you to add live chat to a mobile or desktop webpage or application.

These Twilio APIs include software development kits (SDKs) and documentation to guide your team’s developers through the setup process. Twilio APIs are compatible with numerous coding languages like PHP, Ruby, Python, Java, C#, and more.

Twilio Channel API Offerings:

• Programmable Messaging API: Transactional one-way messages via SMS, MMS, and WhatsApp
• Conversations API: Two-way SMS messaging, webchat, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp
• Pay-As-You-Go Phone Numbers
• Programmable Voice: Make and receive phone calls around the world
• Programmable Video: Build video meeting functionality
• SendGrid Email API: Automated email capabilities

Programmable Messaging API

The Programmable Messaging API is a single API for multiple channels, allowing you to send transactional, automated one-way messages to customers through SMS text messages, MMS, and WhatsApp.

Send bulk messages at scale to over 180 countries, using Twilio’s super network of local senders, global guidelines, and over 1500 tier-1 carriers. Twilio provides DID virtual phone numbers to support all messaging and calling capabilities.

Programmatic messaging supports automated and bulk use cases, including appointment reminders, account notifications, delivery notifications, emergency alerts, and verifications like two-factor authentication (2FA).

Programmable Messaging API Features:

• Messaging insights: Live analytics displaying message delivery, engagement, and read status

• Real-time route optimization: Twilio automatically reroutes messaging traffic every 75 seconds, to optimize delivery even when outages occur

• Message scheduling: Schedule messages to be sent at a later date and time

• Inbound message replies: Create webhooks that automatically forward inbound messages to Twilio Conversations, for a hand-written reply

Programmable Messaging API Pricing

Twilio’s programmable messaging API is charged on a pay-as-you-go, per-use basis. The price varies depending on the type of message you send–SMS, MMS, webchat, or WhatsApp–the destination country, and the number you send it from.

In addition to the prices listed below, Twilio offers volume discounts when you reach 5 million, 25 million, 100 million, 250 million, 400 million, and 600 million messages.

WhatsApp messages incur two costs at once: a per-message rate and a per-conversation rate for each 24-hour conversation. Twilio offers your first 1000 monthly conversations free.

• WhatsApp Per-message rate: $0.005 per message (plus Meta's per-template message fee)

Sample WhatsApp API Monthly Totals:

Conversations API

Twilio’s Conversations API provides back-and-forth 1:1 or multiparty messaging through multiple channels: webchat, SMS, MMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger.

Communicate with customers globally in real-time through the messaging channel they prefer. Conversations API use cases include customer support, digital marketplaces and eCommerce help, retail engagement, and relationship building.

Conversations API Features:

• Multichannel messaging and orchestration: Enable your app with multichannel communication capabilities, without writing any additional code
• Web SDKs: Setup guides to help developers build chat into web-based applications and webpages
• Mobile SDKS: Setup guides to implement chat features in your mobile application
• Delivery statuses: View received status and read receipts
• Scalable conversations: Facilitate messaging conversations, ranging in scale from 1:1 to thousands of participants
• Message persistence: Maintain conversation history with each customer

• Webhooks: Add triggers and automations connected to functions or channels within your app

Conversations API Pricing 

Twilio’s Conversations API combines a per-user and per-message pricing structure.

Costs start at just $0.05 per user per month, plus media storage fees beginning at $0.25 monthly per GB of storage. Standard Twilio programmable SMS and WhatsApp rates also apply, in addition to the monthly charges for all active phone numbers.

Conversations API Volume Discounts: 

• Up to 200 users: free
• 201-5000 users: $0.05 per user
• 5,001 to 10,000 users: $0.0475 per user
• 10,001 to 20,000 users: $0.0450 per user

Pay-As-You-Go Phone Number Pricing

Twilio offers a variety of DID virtual phone numbers–including toll-free numbers, short codes, vanity numbers, and 10-digit long codes throughout the world. These numbers are charged by the month and support SMS, MMS, and voice calling.

Twilio also allows you to use their communication APIs and service network with your pre-existing numbers.

Programmable Voice

Programmable Voice is a cloud communication-based API to embed PSTN, SIP, or business VoIP calls into your app or website.

Agents can use the Voice tool from any VoIP phone number and any device, choosing from local and toll-free numbers in the United States. These HD audio calls are supported by Twilio’s super network of global carriers and private cloud connections.

Scale and modify your application’s voice functionality with features like IVR, recording, transcriptions, and more. Set up dial plans and routing menus using Twilio Studio, a drag-and-drop call flow editor that links phone numbers, announcements, and multichannel functionality.

Programmable Voice Features:

• Live call monitoring and call whisper
• Text-to-speech and speech recognition
• Alerts and notifications
• Call recording
• Call transcription
• Call queues
• Call tracking and sourcing
• WebRTC-powered applications
• Global conference calling with up to 250 participants
• Conversational IVR
• Voice Insights
• Virtual Agent

Programmable Voice Pricing

Twilio’s cloud voice pricing structure varies based on which type of phone number you use–local, toll-free, browser-based or app-based–and whether you choose pay-as-you-go or bring-your-own-carrier (BYOC) pricing. Intelligent Service features are priced separately and charged in addition to standard calling capabilities.

Volume and committed use discounts are also available, but the tables below outline the pricing structure for pay-as-you-go, BYOC, and intelligent service costs only.

Pay-as-You-Go Pricing

BYOC Trunking Pricing

Intelligent Service Features Pay-As-You-Go Pricing

Programmable Video

Twilio’s programmable video API enables your app or website video-conferencing functionality. Video meetings host 1:1 sessions or up to 50 participants, a good fit for companies providing telemedicine services, or those looking for alternatives to Zoom for Educators.

HD video-conferencing capabilities are accessible across browsers and devices–including iOS and Android. Customize video-meeting layouts, use virtual backgrounds, and generate encrypted recordings.

Twilio Video API Features:

• Screen sharing
• Visual whiteboarding 
• Meeting recording
• Video insights and performance
• Background noise cancellation
• Video chat
• One-on-one peer-to-peer rooms
• Group rooms for up to 50 participants
• HIPAA compliance

Programmable Video Pricing

Twilio video allows users to pay for the features they use without any subscription costs. Available features include video calling, participant recordings, video transcription, video call compositions, and media storage, and are priced as shown below.

Twilio SendGrid Email API

The SendGrid email API enables your app with automated email functionality. It uses Twilio’s network of email providers and organizations to navigate emails to the recipient’s inbox, avoiding getting filtered or ending up in the spam folder. The Sendgrid email API integrates easily within your app and includes an intuitive interface where you can modify email formats and view deliverability statistics.

The email API works best for transactional use cases like account creation and password recovery, and marketing use cases like nurture campaigns and monthly newsletters.

Email API Features:

• Interactive API docs: Integrate SendGrid easily into your pre-existing app using Twilio’s interactive documentation and setup guide

• Deliverability: Twilio’s globally distributed architecture of email providers, a mail-transfer agent built to send emails at scale, email address validation API to ensure your emails reach a real address, and more

• Analytics: Real-time email analytics, deliverability insights, engagement and open tracking, bounce classifications, and more

SendGrid Email API Pricing

SendGrid Email API offers four pricing plans: 

• Free: The free version allows 100 emails per day, with use permissions for one teammate. It includes all core features–APIs, deliverability tools, the template editor, and analytics. The main drawback is the 100-email email daily limit.
• Essentials: The Essentials plan allows you to send up to 50,000-100,000 emails per month, for $19.95 monthly. It includes all the same core features as the Free plan, but with a drastically expanded monthly sending limit.

• Pro: The Pro plan is a good fit for large and Enterprise companies that send hundreds of thousands, or even millions of monthly emails. Pricing starts at $89.95 monthly for 100,000-2,500,000 monthly emails.

• Premier: Premier plans have custom pricing and include support directly from Twilio team members, in addition to the features in lower-tier plans.

Should You Use Twilio?

Based on the flexible pricing structure and the option to purchase individual communication APIs or prebuilt applications, Twilio is one of the most customizable CPaaS platforms on the market today.

Though it provides high-uptime communications for companies of all sizes, it especially serves large corporations with high daily volumes of customer interactions across multiple communication channels–especially those who have in-house developers to integrate the communication APIs.

Looking for Twilio alternatives?

Our interactive tables make it easy to Twilio with top competitors, like Plivo or Bird.