Most small businesses pay about $30 to $300 a month for an AI receptionist. Per-call plans work out at roughly $1.67 to $3 a call, per-minute plans $0.25 to $0.50 a minute, and self-built voice agents about $0.10 to $0.30 a minute. Setup time, a booking-system connection and overage charges come on top.
Which pricing model you're on matters more than the headline price, because the same month of calls can cost three times as much on the wrong one. A business with short, frequent calls does well on per-minute pricing; one with long new-customer calls does better per call; one where the same customers ring again and again suits per-caller pricing. So start from your own call log, not from a price list.
Four ways AI receptionists charge
List prices from the vendors' own pricing pages, checked in September 2026. They change often, so confirm before you buy.
| Pricing model | Examples and list prices | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per call | Smith.ai AI Receptionist: free for 25 calls a month ($3 a call after); Pro $150 a month for 75 calls; Enterprise $500 a month for 300 calls (about $1.67 a call) | Long calls, such as new-customer enquiries | Overage per call once the bundle runs out |
| Per minute | RingCentral AI Receptionist: $49 a month standalone or $39 as a RingEX add-on, each with 100 minutes, then $0.50 a minute billed in 30-second steps. Rosie: $49 for 250 minutes, $149 for 1,000, $299 for 2,000. My AI Front Desk: $99 a month ($79 annually) with 200 minutes, then about $0.25 a minute | Short calls: hours, directions, quick bookings | Rounding, long greetings and transfers all use minutes |
| Per unique caller | Goodcall: Starter $79 a month ($66 annually) for 100 unique customers, Growth $129 ($108) for 250, Scale $249 ($208) for 500; $0.50 per extra customer; unlimited minutes | Regulars who ring repeatedly | Features such as logic flows limited on lower tiers |
| Per conversation | Jobber Receptionist: $29 for 30 conversations, then $0.79 each (for Jobber users) | Businesses already on that software | Tied to one platform |
There's a fifth route, building your own on a voice AI platform, covered further down. It is the cheapest per minute and the most expensive in your time.
The vendors' own pages are the place to confirm current figures: Smith.ai's AI Receptionist pricing, RingCentral's AI Receptionist pricing and Goodcall's pricing show the three main models side by side.
Pull three numbers from your call log first
Every price comparison depends on three figures you can get from your phone provider's call log, usually as a download:
- Calls a month that the AI would answer. All calls, or only after-hours and overflow calls, depending on your plan for it.
- Average call length in minutes. Many logs show it directly; otherwise total minutes divided by calls.
- Unique callers a month. Count distinct numbers. If you paste the log into a spreadsheet, a "remove duplicates" on the caller column does it.
Two more help: the share of calls that are spam or sales calls (they may or may not be billed), and the share arriving outside opening hours. If you'd rather not do it by hand, remove the last few digits of each number and ask a chat assistant to summarise the log, then check its totals with a spreadsheet sum.
The full cost: one-off, monthly and your own time
| Item | One-off or monthly | Typical range for a small business |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription or usage | Monthly | $30 to $300, higher for large call volumes |
| Overage above the bundle | Monthly | $0.25 to $0.50 a minute, $0.50 per extra caller, or $2 to $3 per extra call |
| Writing the call script and knowledge document | One-off (your time) | 4 to 8 hours |
| Testing with real call scenarios | One-off (your time) | 2 to 4 hours |
| Call forwarding or number setup | One-off | Usually free to set up with your phone provider; check your own tariff |
| Booking or CRM connection | One-off plus possibly monthly | Free if built in; otherwise an automation tool such as Zapier from $19.99 a month billed annually |
| Human fallback for difficult calls | Monthly, if used | Per call, often several times the AI rate |
| Reviewing transcripts and fixing answers | Monthly (your time) | 1 to 2 hours |
The time lines are the ones owners forget. A vendor's onboarding can shorten them, and higher tiers sometimes include a done-for-you setup, but somebody at your business still has to decide what the receptionist says about prices, emergencies and cancellations. Writing call scripts and escalation rules for an AI receptionist covers that work in detail.
One clinic's month of calls, priced six ways
An illustration with round numbers. A two-practitioner osteopathy clinic wants the AI to answer every call, because the practitioners are treating patients and there's no full-time receptionist. Its call log shows:
- 220 calls a month, of which about 20 are spam or sales calls.
- Average length about 3 minutes, so roughly 660 minutes.
- 150 unique callers (many patients ring to reschedule or ask a question more than once).
Priced on list prices, with the caveat that every plan has features and limits beyond the price:
| Plan | How the month adds up | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Goodcall Growth | 150 unique callers, inside the 250 included; minutes unlimited | $129 ($108 on annual billing) |
| Goodcall Starter | $79 for 100 callers, plus 50 extra at $0.50 | About $104 |
| Rosie Scale | 660 minutes, inside the 1,000 included; includes appointment booking | $149 |
| My AI Front Desk | $99 with 200 minutes, plus about 460 minutes at $0.25 | About $214 |
| RingCentral AI Receptionist (standalone) | $49 with 100 minutes, plus about 560 minutes at $0.50, before rounding | About $330, a little more after 30-second rounding |
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist | About 200 billable calls once known spam is filtered: Pro at $150 plus overage, or Enterprise at $500 for 300 calls | Roughly $460 to $500 |
On price alone, per-caller pricing wins for this clinic by a wide margin, because repeat callers cost nothing extra. But the cheapest line isn't automatically the right one. The clinic's real question was whether the receptionist could book directly into its practice-management software, move appointments, and pass a caller with a new injury straight to a practitioner's mobile. Two of the six options connected to its booking system; one of those was mid-priced. It chose that one at about $150 a month and accepted paying $40 more than the cheapest for a receptionist that could actually book.
Against that, the clinic estimated it had been missing about 45 calls a month during treatment sessions, and that about a third of missed callers were new patients who didn't ring back. At an illustrative first-appointment value of $85, winning back even five new patients a month covers the subscription several times over. Measuring an AI receptionist's return in the first 90 days shows how to check an estimate like that against real bookings.
Cheap, mid and high: three realistic scenarios
Cheap, about $30 to $60 a month. An illustrative mobile podiatrist who works alone and only wants after-hours and missed calls answered: about 60 calls a month at two minutes each. RingCentral's standalone plan would be $49 plus about 20 extra minutes at $0.50, so around $59. Smith.ai's free plan covers the first 25 calls, with the other 35 at $3 each, about $105, so the free tier is only the cheapest option at very low volumes. If the practitioner already ran their business on Jobber, its receptionist add-on would be $29 plus 30 conversations at $0.79, roughly $53. Setup time is the main cost here: an afternoon writing the script.
Mid, about $100 to $350 a month. The osteopathy clinic above: every call answered, bookings made directly, urgent calls transferred. Most two-to-five person appointment businesses land here. Add a few hours a month reviewing transcripts.
High, about $300 to $800 a month or more. An illustrative busy veterinary practice with 800 calls a month, several reception staff and the AI handling overflow and after-hours calls, with transfers to the out-of-hours service. Plans at this level include more minutes or calls, more logic flows and multiple locations: Rosie's $299 plan with 2,000 minutes, Goodcall's Scale plan, or Smith.ai's Enterprise tier. Integration work and careful emergency routing are where the real effort goes, and a vet practice should test every emergency path before going live.
Building your own on a voice AI platform
Platforms such as Retell AI and Vapi let you assemble an AI phone agent yourself, paying per minute for each part: the voice platform, the speech-to-text, the language model, the text-to-speech voice and the phone line. Some list prices from their pricing pages:
- Retell AI: voice infrastructure $0.055 a minute, phone line from about $0.015 a minute, voices from $0.015 to $0.040 a minute, plus the language model, which varies widely by model. Phone numbers from $2 a month. New accounts get $10 of free credit.
- Vapi: a platform fee of $0.05 a minute, with transcription, model and voice costs passed through on top. Its own calculator estimates about $82 to $129 for 1,000 minutes a month with no support package.
All-in, most builds land somewhere around $0.10 to $0.30 a minute. For the osteopathy clinic's 660 minutes that's about $66 to $198 a month, which can be cheaper than a packaged product. The catch is everything else: designing the conversation, connecting the booking system through its API, handling transfers, testing, monitoring and fixing it when a model update changes its behaviour. Expect 10 to 20 hours to build a basic version if you're comfortable with technical tools, or a developer's fee if you're not. For most small businesses, a packaged receptionist is better value until call volumes run into thousands of minutes a month.
Hidden costs that change the answer
- Rounding. Per-minute plans that bill in 30-second or one-minute steps charge a 61-second call as 90 seconds or two minutes. Across hundreds of short calls, that adds 10% or more.
- Spam. Smith.ai filters known spam numbers before answering and doesn't count them, and lets customers remove up to 10% of calls each billing cycle as spam. Other plans may bill every answered call or minute. Ask.
- Transfers and hold time. On per-minute plans, the time a caller spends being transferred to a person can count as AI minutes.
- Features locked to higher tiers. Appointment booking, live transfers and SMS follow-ups are often on the second or third tier, not the entry price. Rosie, for instance, lists booking and warm transfers on its $149 plan rather than its $49 one.
- Integrations. A native link to your booking system may cost nothing; a workaround through an automation tool adds a monthly fee and something else to maintain.
- Human fallback. If the plan sends difficult calls to human agents, those calls are usually charged at the human rate.
- Getting it wrong. A double-booked appointment or a missed urgent call costs staff time and goodwill. The fix is testing, and the process for errors is in what to do when an AI receptionist gets a booking wrong.
What people and human services cost by comparison
An AI receptionist rarely replaces a good front-desk person; it covers the hours and the calls they can't. Still, the comparison helps with the budget:
- A human answering service. Smith.ai's human-first virtual receptionist plans start at $300 a month for 30 calls ($11.50 a call over that), $810 for 90 calls and $2,100 for 300 calls, roughly $7 to $10 a call. Its AI plans work out at roughly $1.67 to $3 a call.
- A part-time receptionist. Wages vary too much by role and area to give one figure. As an illustration only, 15 hours a week at $18 an hour is about $1,170 a month before employer costs, and covers those 15 hours, not evenings or the lunch rush when both practitioners are treating.
For most small businesses the choice is not AI instead of a person, but AI for overflow and out-of-hours calls, with people for the calls that need judgement. AI receptionist or answering service for a booking-based business weighs the two in more depth.
How to cut the bill without losing callers
- Match the pricing model to your log. Many repeat callers: per caller. Long calls: per call. Short calls: per minute.
- Route only what you need to. If staff answer during the day, send the AI only after-hours and unanswered calls. That can halve volume.
- Shorten the greeting. On per-minute plans, a 20-second introduction on 600 calls is 200 minutes a month.
- Text a link instead of reading details aloud. Directions, price lists and forms sent by text take seconds instead of a minute of speech, where the plan supports it.
- Pay annually once you're sure. Goodcall and My AI Front Desk both list lower annual prices, and Rosie advertises two months free for annual payment. Only after a month or two on monthly billing.
- Don't buy the booking tier if you only need messages. If the receptionist only needs to take a message and send it to you, the entry tier or a simple missed-call text-back setup may be enough.
Checking the bill in the first month
At the end of month one, compare three things:
- The vendor's count against your phone log. Calls or minutes billed should roughly match what your phone provider shows was forwarded. A big gap means rounding, spam or transfer time you didn't expect.
- Ten transcripts, read in full. Did the AI get the caller's name, reason and preferred time right? Were urgent calls passed on?
- Cost per useful outcome. Divide the month's bill by the bookings or qualified messages it produced. An illustrative $149 bill and 38 bookings is about $3.90 per booking, easy to weigh against what a booking is worth to you.
If the cost per booking is reasonable and the transcripts are clean, stay on monthly billing for one more month, then decide on annual. If not, the call log you pulled at the start makes it quick to price the alternatives again. Setting up an AI receptionist without losing callers covers the launch steps that make that first month go smoothly.
AI receptionist costs: other questions
Is there a free AI receptionist?
Smith.ai's AI Receptionist has a free plan covering 25 calls a month, with calls after that charged at $3 each. Most others offer a trial instead, such as 14 days on RingCentral's AI Receptionist and 7 days on Rosie. A free plan suits testing or very low volumes; check what happens to calls once the allowance runs out partway through a month.
Do I have to change my business phone number?
Usually not. Most services give you a number to forward calls to, either all the time, after hours, or when your line is busy or unanswered, which you set up with your phone provider. Some also let you move your existing number to them. Forwarding is easier to undo, which makes it the safer way to start.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than a human answering service?
Per call, usually by a wide margin. Smith.ai's own human-first plans start at $300 a month for 30 calls, about $10 a call, while its AI plans work out at roughly $1.67 to $3 a call. Humans still handle upset or complicated callers better, which is why hybrid plans that pass difficult calls to a person exist.
Further reads
- What Does an AI Receptionist Cost a Dental Practice in 2026? — The same costs worked through for a dental practice.
- AI Receptionist for Tradespeople: What It Costs and When It Pays — Costs and payback for trades businesses on the road.
- Best AI Receptionists for Salons, Compared by Price — A price comparison for booking-heavy salons.
- Can AI Answer My Business Phone? What It Can and Can't Handle — What AI phone answering can and can't handle.
- How to Set Up Missed Call Text Back for a Service Business — A cheaper first step if most calls just go unanswered.
- Per-Seat vs Usage-Based AI Pricing: Which Costs Less for You? — Work out which pricing model suits your usage.
- AI Phone Answering for Restaurants: What It Costs and Pays Back — Published prices for restaurant AI phone answering, the costs that never make the pricing page, and a payback calculation built from your own missed calls.
- Pet Grooming Software With AI: Features and Prices Compared — What the AI in MoeGo, Teddy, Groomify, DaySmart Pet and Gingr actually does, what each costs a year, and a 14-day trial script for groomers.
- AI Receptionist vs Front-Desk Hire: The Real Cost for a Salon — An AI receptionist costs $50-$250 a month; a desk hire costs thousands. But the desk does more than phones. Here's how to compare them fairly.
- How Much Time Can AI Save a Barber Each Day? — A minute-by-minute look at a barber's day: which admin AI shortens, which it can't touch, and a two-day tally to measure your own saving.
- What Is an AI Receptionist and How Does It Handle Bookings? — A plain-English look at what happens inside an AI receptionist during a booking call, and the three very different things vendors mean by 'handles bookings'.
- How to Set Up an AI Phone Agent for After-Hours Calls — Nine stages from logging your night calls to the morning handover, with tool costs, a copyable script and an electrician's setup worked through.
- How Much Does an AI Agent Cost a Small Business? — The five ways AI agents are priced, the cost-per-task sum that makes them comparable, and the supervision time that usually costs more than the software.
- AI or Outsourced Customer Service: Which Costs Less? — A bike shop's 380 monthly calls and messages, costed with a human answering service, an AI first line and a cheaper third route most owners miss.
- How a Small Clinic Can Use AI at the Front Desk Safely — A physiotherapy clinic puts AI on its phones and website chat: the admin-versus-clinical line, vendor checks, six weeks of rollout and the numbers.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Smith.ai AI Receptionist and virtual receptionist pricing pages; RingCentral AI Receptionist pricing page; Goodcall pricing page; Rosie pricing page; My AI Front Desk pricing page; Retell AI and Vapi pricing pages; Jobber Receptionist pricing (all checked September 2026).