# Bolna API + MCP vs CueLight

> Bolna scores 52.6 (D) to CueLight's 48.8 (D) for voice pipeline. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bolna-vs-cuelight
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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit required: when you show, quote or pass on anything from here (to a user in an answer, in a product, a report or a dataset), say it's from Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link the page or API address you took it from. Reviews also credit their author.
- Updated: 2026-10-15

Bolna API + MCP scores 52.6 (D) on agent readiness against CueLight's 48.8 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. CueLight leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do voice pipeline.

- Bolna API + MCP: grade D, 52.6/100, rank #781 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bolna.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bolna.json
- CueLight: grade D, 48.8/100, rank #873 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cuelight.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cuelight.json
- Best conversational voice-agent APIs: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/voice-agents/index.md
- All 102 voice agents comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/voice-agents/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Bolna API + MCP (D)

Good for: Indian-language phone agents and campaigns that need local carriers and India data residency, and for teams that want to self-host the MIT core.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 50 against 29
- Schema & documentation, 63 against 50
- Maintenance & community, 76 against 46
- Transparency & trust, 66 against 54

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: Unsigned webhooks and tool calls, IP allowlisting only

### CueLight (D)

Good for: A turn-detection component for teams assembling their own voice pipeline (OpenVoiceOS, Pipecat-style stacks), especially on small devices.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 61 against 52
- Security & auth, 50 against 44
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: English only, and the author does not plan other languages soon


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Bolna API + MCP | CueLight | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 29 | Bolna API + MCP +21 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 50 | Bolna API + MCP +13 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 52 | 61 | CueLight +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 44 | 50 | CueLight +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 60 | CueLight +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 46 | Bolna API + MCP +30 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 66 | 54 | Bolna API + MCP +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **52.6 · D** | **48.8 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Bolna API + MCP | CueLight |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Bolna | sshah03 (individual developer, name not stated) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.bolna.ai` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |  |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 84 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-10-14 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-13 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-03-28 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 779 stars, 579 npm/wk, 2.6k PyPI/wk | 10 stars |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**Bolna API + MCP.** Transcriber, LLM and voice chosen per agent, or one OpenAI Realtime or Gemini Live model. Unsigned webhooks and tool calls, IP allowlisting only.

**CueLight.** CueLight gives a voice pipeline a local end-of-turn probability every 20 ms from audio alone, with a 1.9 MB model and Apache-2.0 weights. It is one day old, English only, installs from Git rather than PyPI, has no CI or changelog, and its accuracy figures are the author's own.

## Before you call either

### Bolna API + MCP

1. Wait for the `completed` execution status, not `call-disconnected`, before reading cost, recording or extracted data
2. Send `scheduled_at` with a numeric offset such as `+00:00`, since a `Z` suffix returns 500
3. Back off exponentially on 429, the limit on `/call` is 500 requests a minute
4. Reject webhook and tool requests that don't come from 13.203.39.153, 13.126.9.249 or 13.202.133.53
5. Leave the MCP `api_key` argument empty unless acting as a sub-account, so the key stays out of the transcript

### CueLight

1. Feed 320 float32 samples at 16 kHz mono per `push`. Resample first, or the call raises an AssertionError
2. Spell the preset as `snappy` or `careful`. Any other name silently uses default thresholds
3. Call `clear()` before a new call or session. Pass `reset_on_turn_start=False` if your pipeline already resets per turn
4. Pin weights by downloading them to a local folder and passing that path to `from_pretrained`
5. Don't use it to identify speakers or clone voices. The training data's conditions forbid it

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Bolna API + MCP or CueLight?

Bolna API + MCP scores 52.6 (D) on agent readiness against CueLight's 48.8 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. CueLight leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and payments & pricing.

### Can an agent call Bolna API + MCP and CueLight without installing anything?

Bolna API + MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://api.bolna.ai. No hosted endpoint is listed for CueLight.

### Are Bolna API + MCP and CueLight open source?

Yes. Bolna API + MCP is open source (MIT). CueLight is open source (Apache-2.0).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bolna-vs-cuelight.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bolna-vs-cuelight.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "bolna", "b": "cuelight"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare bolna cuelight`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bolna.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cuelight.json

## Other comparisons with Bolna API + MCP or CueLight

- [AssemblyAI Voice Agent API vs Bolna API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/assemblyai-voice-agent-vs-bolna.md)
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- [Bland AI API + MCP vs CueLight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bland-ai-vs-cuelight.md)
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