Aircall Alternatives: Dialpad, RingCentral and Quo on Price

For a three-person team on price, Quo and Dialpad Standard are the cheapest Aircall alternatives, at about $45 to $69 a month against Aircall's $90 to $150. Quo Business adds AI call summaries at $23 a seat on yearly billing. RingCentral Core sits in the middle at $60. Choose Aircall only if you need its dialler and sales features.

Those figures use each vendor's published list price for three seats on yearly billing, and three conditions move them: the billing term, which AI is included rather than sold as an add-on, and what texting costs. Pay month to month, for example, and Aircall costs about a third more while RingCentral Core rises by $10 a seat. The sums below price the same three people on each system, then cover AI minutes and the steps to move your numbers without losing calls.

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Aircall's own price for three seats

Aircall's pricing page, read in November 2026, lists two plans for small teams. Essentials is $30 per licence a month and Professional is $50, both on annual billing, with the page saying "save 25% by paying annually". Both need a minimum of three licences, include one local or toll-free number in the plan, and charge $6 a month for each additional number. Enterprise is custom priced and starts at 25 users.

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Aircall also sells add-ons: AI Assist Pro, with real-time coaching during calls, at $49 per seat a month; Analytics+ at $15 per seat; WhatsApp at $10 per seat. The AI Voice Agents, which answer calls without a person, can be bought on their own from a $99 monthly minimum, at $0.29 a minute on pay-as-you-go, or in bundles from 1,000 minutes for $250 a month on an annual commitment. The $90 and $150 above are annual-billing figures. Aircall's FAQ says annual plans are 25% cheaper than monthly pricing, so expect month to month to cost roughly a third more, and the three-licence minimum applies on either billing cycle. For a deeper look at the two plans, see our tutorial on Essentials versus Professional for a sales team.

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The same three seats on Quo

Quo is the new name for OpenPhone. Its pricing page shows Starter at $19 a month ($15 on annual billing), Business at $33 ($23 annual) and Scale at $47 ($35 annual), per user. All plans include one new or ported number per user, calling and texting to numbers in its listed regions, voicemail transcripts, the Quo API, and the Sona AI agent, with 1,000 free automation credits, which Quo says is about 10 Sona calls.

The AI call summaries and transcripts are listed on Business and above, together with group calling, call transfers, phone menus, auto call recording and HubSpot and Salesforce integrations. Scale adds AI call tags, onboarding support and priority support.

The Sona AI agent is billed by call beyond the free allowance. Quo's page lists tiers: $0 for 10 calls, $25 for 40, $49 for 100, $99 for 250 and $199 for 600, with overage per call falling from $1.00 to $0.45 as you move up. If Sona answered 30 calls a month, the free tier would cost about $20 ($1 for each call beyond the first 10), and the $25 tier covers up to 40 calls, so the free tier is cheaper until a team handles about 35 calls a month. Texting has its own small charges: Quo's comparison table lists a one-time $19.50 carrier review and set-up fee, a messaging fee of $1.50 to $3 a month, and extra numbers at $5 a month each. Our tutorial on Quo plan prices for a three-person business goes through those fees in more detail.

The same three seats on Dialpad

Dialpad's Connect product, the one for small teams, lists Standard at $15 per user a month and Pro at $25, with Enterprise by quote. The page shows one price per plan despite a monthly and annual toggle, and the buy links suggest yearly billing, so confirm the term at checkout. Dialpad's FAQ says the displayed price may differ for your region and currency.

Standard lists HD calls and meetings with real-time transcripts and instant call summaries. The FAQ for Connect adds that AI Recaps give summaries and action items from calls and meetings. Pro adds key CRM integrations and 24/7 support. Dialpad's other products, Sell, Support and Resolve, are priced separately and aimed at sales teams and contact centres.

For a straight comparison with Aircall Essentials, Dialpad Standard costs half as much per seat and lists call summaries without an add-on. What the Standard plan lacks, on the page I read, is the power dialler and call whispering that Aircall lists on Professional. Dialpad's Sell product covers sales calling and is priced separately: its pricing page shows Sell Essentials at $39 a user a month and Advanced, which adds local presence dialling and voicemail drop, at $59, both on yearly billing. Our guide to what Dialpad costs for five seats covers the plan choice in more detail.

The same three seats on RingCentral

RingCentral's RingEX plans, read in November 2026, show Core at $20 per user a month on annual billing ($30 if paid monthly), Advanced at $25 ($35 monthly) and Ultra at $35 ($45 monthly). The page has a user-count switch (1-5, 6-100 and 100+ users); these are the 1-5 figures, the band a three-person team falls in, and the page says annual billing saves up to 33%.

Each plan lists the AI Virtual Assistant (AVA) as included. The AI Receptionist, which answers and routes calls, is an add-on from $39, and Conversational Intelligence, for call insights and coaching, is an add-on from $60. Core has unlimited domestic calling, on-demand call recording, 100 toll-free minutes and 25 text messages per user a month. Advanced adds CRM integrations, multi-site connection, core reporting, 1,000 toll-free minutes and 100 texts per user.

If you want an AI receptionist to answer calls, RingCentral's AI Receptionist page prices the add-on per month, not per user: $39 a month on top of a RingEX plan, with 100 minutes included and $0.50 a minute beyond that, billed in 30-second steps. So Core plus the AI Receptionist comes to about $99 a month for three seats on annual billing ($60 + $39). Where RingCentral sells it on its own, without RingEX, the page lists it from $49 a month. For the add-on's pricing and minutes, see RingCentral AI Receptionist pricing.

All four side by side for three people

Lining the cheapest sensible plan of each against the plan with fuller AI makes the differences clear.

Aircall costs roughly two times the nearest alternative at the same AI level: Quo Business at $69 and Dialpad Pro at $75 against Aircall Professional at $150 for three seats. That doubling is the case for switching. The case for staying is features the others do not list as plainly: a power dialler, call whispering and barge-in, and a long list of integrations. If you do not use those features, you are paying about $900 a year more than you need.

AI minutes: what a cap means in practice

Three of the four systems meter some AI, so work out whether you would hit the limit.

• Aircall Essentials lists 50 minutes of AI Voice Agents a month. Beyond that the standalone rate is $0.29 a minute. Fifty minutes is about 12 calls of four minutes. Aircall's FAQ calls them the 50 free minutes "all customers get every month", which reads as per account rather than per licence, so confirm before you count on 150. New accounts also get 100 minutes at sign-up.
• Quo includes about 10 Sona-answered calls free and then charges per call by tier. Per-call pricing suits a team where a handful of calls a month go to the agent, such as after-hours enquiries.
• RingCentral sells the AI Receptionist as an add-on from $39 a month with 100 minutes included, then $0.50 a minute, so there is a flat entry price with a cap.
• Dialpad lists AI transcripts and recaps as part of Connect, with its agentic AI sold by conversation credit on a separate product line.

A practical check: count the calls you missed last month, and the ones that came after hours. If it was 12 calls, Aircall's 50 minutes or RingCentral's 100 receptionist minutes cover it, and Quo's 10 free Sona calls nearly do. If it was 120, none of the included allowances will, and you are pricing a paid voice agent, which is a different decision from choosing a phone system.

A worked choice for three people at a catering company

An illustration. A catering company has three staff: an owner who takes enquiry calls, a sales coordinator who follows up quotes, and an operations lead who talks to suppliers. They need a shared number, call recording for disputes about orders, a summary of each enquiry call logged to a CRM, and a missed-call text-back. They do not need a power dialler.

Scoring: Aircall Professional ($150) would work but includes tools they will not use. Quo Business ($69) lists call summaries, auto recording, phone menus and HubSpot and Salesforce integrations. Dialpad Pro ($75) lists key CRM integrations. RingCentral Advanced ($75) lists CRM integrations. The cheapest that does everything is Quo Business, a saving of $81 a month ($972 a year) over Aircall Professional. The sensible next step is a trial on Quo Business, with five real enquiry calls, to see whether the summary is accurate and logs to the CRM.

Now a different team: a sales team of three making 60 outbound calls a day each. Here, the power dialler and live monitoring justify Aircall Professional, or a sales-focused product from Dialpad. The cheaper systems would save money and cost the team in call volume. The right answer depends on what the three people spend their day doing.

A scorecard to run during the trials

Prices narrow the field, but the trial decides it. Give each system the same five tests and score each out of five. This is a filled-in example for the catering company's three-person team (the scores are illustrative, not measurements of the products).

In this example Quo Business and Aircall Professional finish close, and at $69 against $150 the cheaper one wins. Your scores will differ, and that is the point of doing it. If a cheap system fails the summary test on your real calls, the saving is false, because staff will end up typing the notes themselves.

A test call script for the summary check

To score the summary test fairly, make the same call on each trial. Ask a colleague to phone as a customer and read from a script like this one (illustrative), at normal speed:

"Hello, I'm enquiring about a buffet for 45 people on the 14th of next month. We'd need vegetarian and gluten-free options for about eight guests. Our budget is around $1,800 and delivery is to a hall with no kitchen. Can you send a quote by Friday? My name is [first name] and my email is on your website form."

A good summary lists the date, 45 guests, eight special diets, the $1,800 budget, the no-kitchen constraint and the Friday deadline. Mark each missed item. A summary that misses the no-kitchen constraint would cost you a ruined event, so give that one extra weight. Repeat the call with a background-noise version, such as a radio on, since a quiet office call is the easiest case and a delivery driver on a loud road is the hardest.

Questions to put to each vendor in writing

List prices leave gaps, and a written answer closes them. Send these to the sales contact of each system you are seriously considering:

1. What is the exact monthly cost for our three users on the plan we want, on monthly and on annual billing?
2. Is there a minimum number of users, and what happens if we drop below it later?
3. Which AI features are included, and are any limited by minutes or calls? Are the limits per user or per account?
4. What do texts cost, and is carrier registration needed? How long does it take?
5. What is the charge to port a number in, and how long does it usually take?
6. How long are recordings and summaries kept, and can we export them in bulk?
7. If we cancel, what do we lose on the day, and what can we take with us?

Treat a vendor that will not put numbers in an email as a warning. Keep the replies in one folder with the date, so that in a year you can show what you were told.

Steps to switch without losing calls

1. List what you have. Write down every number, every ring group, every menu and every integration on the Aircall account. A missing number on the new system is the cause of most switching failures.
2. Export what you need. Download or export call recordings, call logs and contacts you want to keep. Check how long Aircall retains recordings on your plan, which its page gives as up to one year on Essentials by request, with six months visible in the dashboard.
3. Start a trial on the new system. Set it up on temporary numbers so nothing live is disturbed. Recreate the menu and routing and test with real people.
4. Check texting registration. Business texting often needs carrier registration before messages are delivered, which can take days. Start it as early as you can.
5. Request the number port. The new provider will ask for your account details and a signed authorisation. Do not cancel the old service until the port completes, or you can lose the number.
6. Connect the CRM. Re-link the integration, test that a call logs to the right record, and check the field mapping matches.
7. Run both for a short while. Forward the old numbers to the new ones for a week or two so nothing is dropped.
8. Cancel the old plan at the end of the term. Yearly plans may carry a commitment, so check the date you can leave without fees. Our tutorial on cancelling a phone contract and porting numbers covers the same trap on another system.

The mistake that dropped a week of enquiries

Picture a small event venue that cancelled its old phone service on the day it started the port. The port took six days, and the number went dead on day two when the old provider closed the account. For four days, enquiry calls reached a "number not in service" tone. The venue noticed because bookings dried up. The fix was to ask the old provider to reopen the number, which cost a reconnection fee. The rule is simple: the old account stays open until the new one confirms the number is live, and you place a test call from a mobile on that number.

A second common slip is forgetting that call recordings live on the old system. If a client later disputes what was said on a call in March, you need the recording, and it will be gone with the account. Export first, cancel second.

Which of the four fits which kind of team

• Cheapest with AI summaries: Quo Business ($69 for three, annual) or Dialpad Standard ($45).
• Sales calling with a dialler: stay on Aircall Professional, or price Dialpad's sales product.
• An AI receptionist at the front door: compare RingCentral's add-on from $39, Aircall's voice agent and Quo's Sona on your expected call counts.
• Only a shared number and a voicemail: Quo Starter or Dialpad Standard.

The vendors' pages change often, so recheck the figures before you decide. Aircall's current prices are on aircall.io/pricing. For a broader look at AI answering across four systems, our tutorial on VoIP with an AI receptionist compared goes further, and if you would like to talk through the choice, that is part of my AI implementation consultation.

Switching away from Aircall: common questions

Do I have to keep three licences if I switch to another system?

No. The three-licence minimum is Aircall's rule. The other systems here price per user and let a one- or two-person team start, though a team plan may have its own floor. Check the system's checkout for a minimum before you design around one seat.

Can I keep my existing phone numbers?

Usually yes, through number porting, where the new provider asks the old one to release the number. You normally need the account details and a signed authorisation, and the old service must stay open until the move finishes. Ask each provider how long a port takes and what it costs before you start.

Which system has the most AI included for the money?

On the prices I read, Dialpad Standard and Quo Business both list AI call summaries on a $15 to $23 seat, while Aircall puts conversation intelligence on its $50 Professional plan. RingCentral includes its virtual assistant on every plan but sells its AI receptionist as an add-on from $39.

Is a cheaper phone system worse for sales calling?

Not necessarily, but dialler features differ. Aircall's Professional plan lists a power dialler and call whispering. If your reps make high-volume outbound calls, test those features specifically on a trial of the alternative before you commit, since a missing dialler costs more than the licence saving.

How long should I run both systems side by side?

Long enough to cover one full busy period, typically two to four weeks. Keep the old system live until every number has ported and every integration has been checked, and cancel it only once you have confirmed that recordings and contacts you need are exported.

Further reads

• Aircall Pricing per Minute: AI Voice Agent Rates, Bundles, Limits — Per-minute AI voice agent rates and bundles in detail.
• Dialpad Connect vs Support vs Sell: A Five-Question Test for Small Teams — Which Dialpad product suits a small team.
• Aircall UK: Pricing, Local Numbers and the AI Voice Agent — What a UK team pays Aircall in pounds, how numbers and SMS work, what recording needs, and what the AI Voice Agent adds.
• Dialpad Pricing in the UK: Plans, VAT and Local Numbers — Dialpad's UK list prices, the VAT sum to run before you budget, the number types on offer, and a checklist for the quote.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Aircall pricing page and its FAQ; Dialpad pricing page (Connect and Sell); RingCentral RingEX plans and pricing page and its AI Receptionist pricing page; Quo pricing page and plan comparison (all read November 2026).