AI receptionist cost: what 14 services charge, and the real monthly bill

An AI receptionist answers your business line, takes messages, books appointments and transfers urgent calls. What it costs depends less on the headline price than on how the vendor counts: per call, per minute, per unique caller, per conversation, or a flat fee. We took the published plans of 14 services and worked out the real monthly bill at 50, 200 and 500 calls a month. Prices checked 21 October 2026; the vendors' own pages are linked so you can check them again.

Some services on this page pay us a commission if you sign up through our links. It doesn't change the numbers: every figure comes from the vendor's published plan. How we compare.

The short answer

• 50 calls a month: $48.20 to $99 across the 12 services we could price at that volume; half cost $56.98 or less.
• 200 calls a month: $59 to $385; half cost $144 or less.
• 500 calls a month: $129 to $800; half cost $258.50 or less.

For comparison, a live answering service costs $575 to $1,965 at 200 two-minute calls on the same published plans, and a full-time receptionist about $3,168 a month in wages alone, at the US median of $38,010 a year (BLS, May 2025). The cheapest plan isn't always the one that fits: the sections below show what changes the bill.

How AI receptionists charge

Five billing units are in use, and each one rewards a different kind of caller:

• Per call (Upfirst, Smith.ai, Quo, KaiCalls): a long call costs the same as a short one. Good when calls run long; watch what counts as a call, because spam and hang-ups can use the allowance unless the vendor excludes them.
• Per minute (Dialzara, Rosie, My AI Front Desk, RingCentral, Answrr, Ooma): cheap for short calls, dear when callers talk. The bill moves with your average call length.
• Per unique caller (Goodcall): a regular customer who calls five times counts once, so it suits a business with repeat callers.
• Per conversation (Cira, AptaBook): close to per call; AptaBook counts a call of up to 30 minutes as one conversation.
• Flat fee (Allo): $64 a month billed yearly, with no published usage limit. Ask what happens at high volume before you commit.

From each vendor's pricing page and help center, checked 21 October 2026. Quo's AI receptionist, Sona, runs on a Quo phone plan; live transfers need the $33 plan.

The monthly bill at 50, 200 and 500 calls

The cheapest plan changes with volume. At 50 calls, Dialzara is lowest at $48.20; at 200 calls, Cira at $59; at 500 calls, Goodcall at $129. At 500 calls the dearest plan costs 6.2 times the cheapest.

Every call answered, 2 minutes on average, the cheapest published plan with any published overage added; plan name in brackets. "Above its plans" means the volume is beyond every published plan and no overage rate is published. *Allo publishes no usage limit for its AI receptionist; $64 is the yearly-billed price. Prices checked 21 October 2026.

Call length: the number that moves per-minute plans

Every figure above assumes 2-minute calls, the length Ooma uses in its own estimate. A clinic or a law firm often has longer calls. Double the average to 4 minutes and the per-minute plans cost more, while per-call, per-caller and per-conversation plans stay where they were:

Cheapest published plan at each length, prices checked 21 October 2026.

Your phone carrier's call log gives you the real average: total minutes divided by answered calls, for the last full month. Price your plan with that number, not with the vendor's example.

Booking and transfers can change the plan you need

Two features decide whether the cheapest plan works for you. In-call booking means the AI writes the appointment into your calendar while the caller is on the line; the alternative is a text with a booking link, which some callers never open. Live transfer means the AI can put an urgent caller through to you. Requiring both at 200 calls a month leaves 9 of the 12 services, from $86.50 (Answrr):

"Books by text link only" means no plan writes the appointment into your calendar during the call; the AI texts the caller a booking link instead.

Caps, overage and yearly billing

• Overage. Most per-minute and per-call plans charge a published rate past the allowance, from $0.15 to $3 a unit on the plans above. Rosie, Ooma, AptaBook and KaiCalls publish none: you move up a plan instead, so a busy month can cost a whole plan step.
• Spam. A per-call plan is only as cheap as its spam filter. Upfirst doesn't count spam, robocalls or calls under 15 seconds; Smith.ai waives known spam numbers plus up to 10% of other calls; Quo doesn't charge for calls under 15 seconds.
• Yearly billing saves about 15 to 20% (Upfirst 20%, AptaBook 15%, Rosie two months free), but Upfirst doesn't refund annual plans, and refused refunds on annual prepayment are among the worst complaints in the reviews we read. Pay monthly until a full month of real calls has gone through it.
• Phone plan underneath. Quo's AI runs on a Quo phone plan ($15 to $28 a month) and Ooma's on Ooma Office. Check whether a service needs its own phone plan or works with your current number before you compare prices.

Free AI receptionists and free trials

A free plan that answers real customer calls every month is rare. Smith.ai has one: 25 live calls a month, then $3.00 a call; it takes a card at sign-up and charges nothing unless you switch on extra calls. Quo includes about 10 AI-answered calls a month in every paid phone plan. The rest sell a trial: Upfirst (14 days) and AptaBook (15 days) start without a card, while Dialzara, Rosie, Cira, Quo and Allo ask for one. Goodcall, KaiCalls and My AI Front Desk let you build and test an agent for free, before any live calls on a number. What each vendor's own pages said on 26 October 2026:

From each vendor's pricing page, help center, comparison pages or terms, read 26 October 2026; demo credits and trial calls as seen in our test accounts on 16 October 2026. My AI Front Desk's billing guide of April 2026 describes a $0 plan with limited usage; its current pricing page lists none. The sign-up screen has the final word on the card.

• Put the end date in your calendar. A trial that took a card turns into the paid plan when it ends, unless you cancel first: Rosie's help center and Allo's FAQ both put the first charge at the end of the trial.
• Read the sign-up screen. It has the final word on the card: on some services the terms ask for a payment method even where the pricing page doesn't mention one.
• Test it on real calls. During the trial, forward only the calls you don't answer, so the AI picks up when you can't and you hear it with real callers; our setup guide lists the forwarding codes. Upfirst says test calls are always free.
• Money-back guarantees are rare. KaiCalls is the one service here that publishes one for its AI plans: 30 days, on every paid plan (KaiCalls pricing). Ooma's 30-day risk-free trial covers Ooma Office and its equipment. For yearly plans, see the refund point above.

Price changes we found

We re-check every price in this guide against the vendors' own pages. On 21 October 2026, 13 of the 18 services in our price model matched our previous check of 30 September; five did not:

• Answrr re-priced all three plans: a new Solo plan at $49 for 250 minutes; Growth is now $99 for 700 minutes (was $199 for 750) and Pro $199 for 1,600 minutes (was $449 for 2,000); overage now runs $0.15 to $0.25 a minute.
• Goodcall changed its allowances and overage: Starter is still $79 for 100 unique callers, but each extra caller costs 79¢ (was 50¢); Growth now covers 500 callers (was 250) at 26¢ over, and Scale is $299 for 2,000 callers (was $249 for 500) at 15¢.
• Quo shows its Starter phone plan, which Sona needs, at $28 a month billed monthly ($15 billed yearly); we had $19.
• Smith.ai added a self-serve Pro 300 plan at $500 for 300 calls, the same price as its Enterprise 300.
• AnswerConnect, a live service: our table now follows its current US price list, $350 for 200 minutes, $395 for 300 and $575 for 400, with $1.85 to $2.50 a minute over the plan.

The same day we re-checked the ten live services in our virtual receptionist guide. Apart from AnswerConnect, above, seven matched; Moneypenny now charges $2.09 to $2.85 for each minute over the plan (was $1.67 to $2.28) and sells AI plans from $99 for 50 calls, and Abby Connect's 50-minute plan is $164 (was $165).

Every figure on this page uses the new prices. The full table, every plan with its price, allowance, overage and the date we checked it, is free to download and reuse with a link to this page: ai-receptionist-prices.csv.

Against a live answering service or a receptionist

Live answering services charge by the minute, so their bill grows faster with volume: at 200 two-minute calls, PATLive comes to $668, AnswerConnect $575, Ruby $1,422.50 and Smith.ai's live receptionists $1,965 a month. A person handles the unusual call better; an AI answers at 3 a.m. for the same price as at noon. Our virtual receptionist guide prices the live services in detail, and the home page covers when a person is worth the difference.

Work out your own bill in three steps

1. Count last month's answered calls and their average length from your carrier's call log. Add the calls you missed: they are the ones the AI is for.
2. Decide what you need on the call: booking into your calendar, transfers, texting, a second language. Drop the services whose plans lack them.
3. Price the shortlist at your numbers with the cost calculator on our home page, then start the trial of the cheapest one that fits. Upfirst's 14-day trial and AptaBook's 15-day trial need no card; the free plans and trials table covers the rest.

Not sure an AI receptionist pays for itself at your volume? Our free case study works out the break-even from your own numbers.