Starter guide
Learn how to use Bland’s API in under five minutes
Creating a developer account
To get started, sign up on the developer portal.
Enter your phone number and verification code. Finally, once your developer portal loads, go to the Send phone call page.
Sending your first phone call
Although Bland is an API-first platform, the send phone call page provides a simple interface for quickly testing calls. On the left side you can adjust the call options and on the right hand side you can see how the code updates.
Once you’re satisfied with a call, copy the code on the right side (in Javascript, Python, or cURL) and add it to your application.
Enter your phone number
In the Phone Number field, enter your own phone number.
Write your prompt
For the task box either select one of the example prompts or write your own. For more instrucionts about prompting your AI phone agent, read this blog post.
Send the call
Scroll to the bottom of the page, and press the Send call button. Note, calls are charged at $0.12/minute, billed to the exact second.
To send a phone call programatically, read the API reference.
Testing your phone agent
Once you’ve sent your first phone call, the next step is to test and improve the outputs from your phone agent.
One way to test your agent is to send yourself test calls. A faster way, however, is to use the Bland AI testing suite.
Set up the test suite
Select the model and language and insert your current prompt into the task box.
Write a message
Start messaging your phone agent. Act like you’re the person receiving the call, and purposefully ask edge-case questions to throw the phone agent off.
Update the prompt
Based on the responses you receive, update the instructions in the prompt.
Next steps
You now know how to send and test phone calls, but you’ve only scratched the surface of Bland’s capabilties.
Areas for further exploration:
API Reference
Read the API reference.
Custom tools
Creating custom tools for interacting with external APIs, live, during phone calls.
Prompting guide
Learn how to prompt the exact behavior you want from your phone agent.
Join the community
See what people are building on Bland and get support from other users.