How much does an AI receptionist cost?

The four ways AI receptionists are priced

Providers price the same thing, a phone call answered by software, in four different shapes. Each one suits a different kind of business, and each one has a catch.

1. Per minute. You pay for the minutes the assistant is on the line, often with no base fee. Good for a business with a handful of calls a week. The catch: a long call costs more than a short one, and a busy month costs more than a quiet one, and you find out afterwards.
2. Per call. A fixed amount for each answered call, whatever its length. Good if your calls are long and predictable. The catch: junk calls and wrong numbers cost the same as a customer.
3. Flat monthly. One price, with a stated allowance of minutes or calls and a rule for what happens above it. Good for a business that wants a number it can budget. The catch: you pay the same in a quiet month, so it only makes sense once you have a steady call volume.
4. Tiered. Flat monthly plans at several sizes, chosen by minutes included. Good when your volume is known. The catch: the tier you outgrow is usually discovered on the bill.

If you only take one thing from this page: ask which of the four a provider uses before you ask what it costs.

What goes on the bill besides the plan

The plan price is the line everyone quotes. These are the lines that show up under it.

• Setup or onboarding, for building the script and the knowledge the assistant answers from.
• A phone number, if the provider issues one rather than forwarding yours.
• Text messages, if the assistant texts callers or texts you summaries, sometimes per message.
• Transfers to a person, sometimes billed as minutes on both legs of the call.
• Integrations: a calendar, a CRM, a shop system, each sometimes a tier up.
• Extra seats or locations.

None of these is unreasonable on its own. The problem is a quote that leaves them out, so the first real bill is the first honest one. Ask for a sample invoice for a business your size.

What happens to the bill in your busiest month

Take the month you most want the phone answered. For an HVAC company that is the first heat wave; for a dental office, the January insurance reset; for a law firm, whichever month the calls came in. Now price that month under each model.

Per minute and per call rise with it. That is the month you get the most value, and it is also the month the bill is highest, which is a strange thing to want from a receptionist. A flat plan stays level until the allowance runs out, and then the only question that matters is what happens next: does the assistant stop, does it keep answering at an overage rate, and who decides.

Ask that question in writing. "What happens in the month I go over" is the single most useful sentence in this whole comparison.

Compared with a receptionist or an answering service

A human receptionist is a wage, and a wage is the right answer for a business with a front desk that needs a person at it. An AI receptionist is not a cheaper receptionist; it is cover for the hours and the overflow where no person was answering.

A human answering service is the closer comparison, and it is usually priced per minute or per call, which means the busy-month problem above applies to it too. Our article on how much an answering service costs goes through those bills line by line, and the comparison of an AI receptionist against an answering service covers everything that is not price: who answers, when, and what happens with an upset caller.

Whichever you pick, the price only means something against what the missed calls are costing you. Our pillar on what missed calls cost a service business shows how to work that out from your own numbers, and the missed call calculator does the arithmetic.

Questions to ask before you sign

1. Which of the four pricing models is this, and what is included?
2. What happens in the month I go over: stop, overage, or my choice?
3. Is there a cap I control, so the bill cannot pass a number I set?
4. Is there a setup fee, and what happens to the setup if I leave?
5. Are texts, transfers and integrations in the price or on top?
6. Is there a contract, and how do I cancel?
7. Does the assistant tell callers it is an AI, and can I switch that off? (If the answer to the second is yes, that is your risk, not theirs.)

What ours costs

So you can hold us to the same questions. Every figure below renders from the same file as our pricing page, so it cannot drift from what you would actually pay.

• Reviews: $197 a month. Every finished job asks for a Google review, without you remembering.
• Reviews + Chat + Booking: $397 a month. Your website answers, captures the lead, and books the job.
• Everything + Voice: $597 a month. Nobody reaches a voicemail again.

The plan with the phone line is Everything + Voice. It is flat: $597 a month with 500 voice minutes included. Past those minutes, the assistant still answers every call, takes a message and texts the caller back. You are never billed for extra minutes, so you cannot be billed past $597. Minutes reset on the 1st. No setup fee, no contract, and your first month starts the day the system goes live. The full description is on the AI receptionist page and the plans are side by side on pricing.

The honest caveat, since this page asked for one from everyone else: a flat plan is the wrong choice for a business with a few calls a week. If that is you, a per-minute provider or a plain missed-call text will cost less, and the calculator above will tell you so.