Bring Your Own Number: Plivo, Vobiz, Twilio and Telnyx, and What Each One Can Do

The short version

If your business already has phone numbers with Plivo, Vobiz, Twilio or Telnyx, your ThinnestAI agent can answer them and call from them. We charge nothing for the number. You keep the number, the carrier account and the carrier bill. We answer the calls and place them.

Calls on an imported number are billed at the same per-minute rate as any other call: from ₹2 a minute for standard voices, in 30-second pulses. Your carrier also bills its own account for the call, as it always has.

Why bring a number at all

• Your customers already know it. A number printed on your website, your invoices and your vans is worth more than a new one.
• You already have a carrier relationship. Rates you negotiated, numbers in countries we do not rent in, a verification you already finished.
• You call people outside India. We rent Indian numbers. A US customer is better rung from a US number, and Twilio and Telnyx both sell them.

If none of that applies, renting a number from us is simpler: ₹349 a month on Pay As You Go, ₹249 on Pro and Scale, one invoice, nothing to connect.

How each carrier connects

All four start in the same place — Phone Numbers → Import — and differ in what you hand over.

• Plivo. Save your account's Auth ID and Auth Token, then set the address we show as the number's Answer URL in your Plivo console. Plivo signs every call with your token, which is how we know a call to your number is really yours, so the number answers only once the keys are saved.
• Vobiz. Set the address we show as the number's Answer URL. It carries a key unique to that number, so Vobiz needs no credentials to answer. Save them only if you want the agent to call out.
• Twilio. Save your Account SID and Auth Token. We confirm the number is on your account and point it at us in Twilio ourselves. There is nothing to paste.
• Telnyx. Paste one API key. We create an application on your Telnyx account called "ThinnestAI voice agent" and assign the number to it. There is nothing to paste here either.

For every carrier, credentials are checked with the carrier before they are saved, and stored encrypted. They are never shown again.

What differs between them

Recording works on every number. On an imported number your agent keeps the recording itself, so nothing has to be switched on at your carrier. It plays with its call in the call log like any other recording.

Voicemail detection and transfer to a person work on ThinnestAI, Plivo and Telnyx numbers. They are not available on Vobiz or Twilio numbers yet. A call from a number that cannot do one of them still goes out, with that feature off for the call, and the console tells you before you call rather than after.

On Telnyx, voicemail detection is Telnyx's own and Telnyx charges your Telnyx account a small fee for each call it checks. A call you transfer to a person goes on your Telnyx bill like any other call.

A transferred call stops our meter

When your agent puts a caller through to a person on a number you brought, we stop charging at the moment of the transfer. From then on two people are talking on your carrier's line, on your carrier's bill, with no agent involved, so there is nothing of ours left to charge for.

On a number you rent from us, a transferred call is billed to its end, because we pay the carrier for those minutes.

Two things to set up on Twilio and Telnyx before you call abroad

• Telnyx calls only the countries your account allows. A new Telnyx account allows the United States and Canada. To call India or anywhere else, add the country to your outbound voice profile in the Telnyx portal first. Telnyx may ask you to verify your account before it allows some countries.
• Twilio has its own country permissions for outbound calls, set in the Twilio console. A call to a country your account has not enabled is refused by Twilio, and shows here as failed.

One account per carrier

A workspace connects one Twilio account and one Telnyx account. Saving a key for a different account while numbers from the first are still imported is refused, because those numbers would stop working. Remove them first. A new key for the same account is always fine.

What we do not import

Numbers on Exotel, Ozonetel or Knowlarity cannot be imported, and neither can a Twilio SIP trunk. If your numbers are there, rent one from us, or move a number to one of the four carriers above and import it from there.

Get started

Build your agent and talk to it in the browser first — that costs nothing. Then import a number under Phone Numbers, choose the agent that answers it, and place a test call from the Playground.

Connect your own number →