The formula
load = calls in busiest hour × average call seconds ÷ 3600share that finds every slot busy = Erlang B(load, calls at once)calls at once needed = fewest calls at once with that share ≤ target- calls in busiest hour: Calls that start in the one-hour period with the most calls, which ITU-T E.600 calls the busy hour.
- average call seconds: The average length of a call, from connection to hang-up.
- load: The average number of calls in progress during that hour, in erlangs. One erlang is the load of one slot kept busy.
- calls at once: How many calls the plan lets run at the same time.
- Erlang B: The standard telephone traffic formula. Given the load and the number of calls at once, it returns the share of calls that arrive when every slot is busy, assuming calls arrive at random and a call that finds every slot busy does not get through.
- target: The share of calls you accept finding every slot busy: no more than 1 call in 100, 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 20 in the calculator.
Calls at once on each plan, and the price of one more
Retell's pay-as-you-go plan has 20 calls at once included, counted per workspace, and sells more at $8 per extra concurrent call per month. Vapi includes 4 calls at once without a package, 10 calls at once on Core and 30 calls at once on Pro, and charges $10 per extra call line per month on any package.
Bland lists 10 calls at once on Start and 50 calls at once on Build. ElevenLabs goes from Free: 4 concurrent calls to Business: 40 concurrent calls. Telnyx's voice AI pricing page gives 500 calls at once (Pay as you go) and Synthflow lists 25 calls at once (Freshworks Pro plan). Ultravox on Pay As You Go: Up to 5 calls at once.
The monthly price of one more call at once, by vendor: Bland, not publicly listed; Telnyx, not publicly listed; Ultravox, not publicly listed; Synthflow Enterprise, not publicly listed. ElevenLabs, once burst pricing is switched on for an agent, bills calls over its limit by the minute instead (Burst calls: $0.16 per minute).
What happens to the call that does not fit
Vapi blocks both directions: New outbound calls cannot start and inbound calls are not accepted until a slot frees. Retell splits them. Inbound calls over the limit wait briefly for a free slot. Outbound calls over the limit are rejected unless burst is on; batch and dialer calls wait. ElevenLabs: At the limit, new calls are rejected unless call queueing holds them. Queueing is on by default for new agents and excludes outbound and batch calls.
Two vendors' docs describe an error for the buyer's own software to catch. Ultravox on Pay As You Go: Above 5 calls, new calls are refused at once with HTTP 429. Telnyx: Outbound calls over the limit are refused (SIP 403). Synthflow's docs give either outcome: Extra calls get an HTTP 429 error or wait briefly in a queue, depending on account setup.
Burst, once switched on, lets extra calls through at a higher price. At Retell the ceiling is one rule (Burst up to the lower of 3 times your limit or your limit plus 300) and the price another (Burst calls above the concurrency limit: +$0.10 per minute for the whole call). ElevenLabs has a similar rule (Burst up to 3 times the limit or 300 calls, whichever is lower, at twice the rate) and a second one (Burst calls get lower priority for speech processing).
Where the same words mean different things
For an agency with one organization or subaccount per client, the plan's number can be the total for all of them. Vapi: Concurrency is counted per subscription and shared by its organizations. Synthflow: Subaccounts share the main account's limits.
Telnyx's pricing page figure does not say whether it counts inbound or outbound calls, and its developer docs cap outbound calls by account tier, separate from the billing plan: 5 outbound calls at once (Paid account tier).
Ultravox Pro has no hard cap (Hard cap on calls at once: 5 on Pay As You Go; none on Pro or Enterprise), with a caveat (Paid plans: under extreme load a new call may be refused with HTTP 429).
On Enterprise, Retell's pricing page gives three answers (Enterprise: "No Cap", "High Cap" or 50+) and Bland's pages give two: Custom (pricing page) or Unlimited (docs).
How the calculator works out the calls at once
The calculator first finds the average number of calls in progress: calls in the busiest hour times average call seconds, divided by 3,600. ITU-T Recommendation E.600 calls this traffic intensity and measures it in erlangs. Because calls bunch, the calculator then adds calls at once until Erlang B puts the share of calls that find every slot busy at or under the target picked. ITU-T Recommendation E.520 (1988) recommends reading the number of circuits a group needs from tables or curves based on the Erlang B formula, with a loss probability of 1% during the mean busy hour for automatic operation.
Example: 120 calls in the busiest hour, 3 minutes each, is 120 × 180 ÷ 3,600 = 6 calls in progress on average. By Erlang B, with 6 calls at once about 26 calls in 100 would find every slot busy, and with 12 a little over 1 in 100. Thirteen bring it to about 5 in 1,000, so at the default target the answer is 13 calls at once. On an example plan with 10 calls at once included and $10 for each extra one, the other 3 would add $30 a month.
The vendor table lists only some of the plans named on this page: Vapi Pro, Retell's and Bland's Enterprise plans and Synthflow are not in it. For each plan it lists, it uses only that plan's included number, its own monthly price for more calls at once and its plan fee, leaving out burst surcharges, hourly and per-second caps, Telnyx's tier caps and sharing across organizations. Erlang B also assumes calls arrive at random, which an outbound dialer's paced calls do not, and it counts a blocked call as lost even where a vendor queues it.
What to check before launch
Add up every agent and client that draws on the same limit at the hour their traffic overlaps, and confirm which direction the limit covers and whether burst is on. Then go over the limit on purpose and note what the extra caller hears or which error comes back.
Charges for extra calls at once land at different times, and Retell's own pages give two. Purchased concurrency: billed at the end of the month (billing docs) or when added (changelog). Vapi takes $10 per extra call line per month from credits on the first day of the month.
A count of calls can bite before the limit on calls at once does. Bland's Start plan allows 100 calls per hour.
Often confused with
- Calls per second (CPS). How many new calls an account may start each second, whatever the limit on calls in progress. Telnyx: 30 dials per second per account (default).
- Hourly and daily call caps. A count of calls started in an hour or a day, however short each call is. Bland: Calls over the daily or hourly cap are rejected.
- Burst capacity. Room above the concurrency limit, billed per minute at a higher rate where a vendor offers it; the included limit stays the same.
- Call queueing. Holding callers on the line until a slot frees. The caller hears something different at the limit and waits longer, but no more calls run at once.
Vendors cited on this page
Bland AI, ElevenLabs Agents (ElevenAgents), Retell AI, Synthflow AI, Telnyx Voice AI Agents, Ultravox, Vapi. Each profile lists everything that vendor publishes, with its sources. All of them are side by side in the comparison.
Sources
- ITU-T Recommendation E.520 (11/88): Number of circuits to be provided in automatic and/or semiautomatic operation, without overflow facilities (free PDF linked from this page) read 14 Nov 2026
- ITU-T Recommendation E.600 (03/93): Terms and definitions of traffic engineering (free PDF linked from this page) read 14 Nov 2026
Checked against its sources on 14 Nov 2026. Vendor figures on this page open their source when clicked. Lexicost has no commercial relationship with any vendor named on this site.