AI receptionist pricing explained: per call, per minute, per customer and flat

Why is AI receptionist pricing hard to compare?

Because the vendors do not sell the same unit. One charges for every call answered. Another charges for minutes on the line. A third charges for each unique customer who calls in a month, however many times. A fourth charges a flat fee as long as you also pay for its field software. Two plans can both say $149 a month and cover wildly different amounts of work, and a plan that looks cheap at the entry tier may need the next tier up before it can book a job on your calendar.

So the way to read any AI receptionist price is to convert it to your own month: how many calls, how long they run, how many are repeat callers, and whether you need the thing to book, transfer or just take a message. We read every figure below on the vendor's pricing page in October 2026. They are US list prices before taxes and overages, and prices change, so check the page before you sign. We have left out the vendors that publish no price rather than guess. To price every vendor at your own call volume, use the AI receptionist cost calculator, and for booking, Spanish and terms as well as price, read the 15 AI receptionists compared.

Per call: Smith.ai and Quo's Sona

Smith.ai's AI receptionist is priced by the call. The Free plan covers 25 calls a month at no charge, then $3.00 a call. Pro is $150 a month, with tiers of 75, 150 or 300 calls at $2.00, $1.80 or $1.67 a call and overage at $2.50, $2.30 or $2.17. Enterprise is $500 a month for 300 to 1,000 or more calls at $1.67 or $1.60 a call. The page calls it a month-to-month service with no long-term contracts, and a spam allowance lets you remove up to 10 percent of calls from the bill. That free tier is a real option for a solo operator with light volume.

Smith.ai's human receptionists are also per call, at a different scale: Starter is $300 a month for 30 calls with $11.50 a call over, Basic is $810 for 90 calls ($10.50 over), and Pro is $2,100 for 300 calls ($8.50 over). Appointment booking is a $1.50 per call add-on, text or email follow-up is $0.50 a call, each extra transfer destination is $15 a month, and outbound caller ID is $10 a month. Month to month, no setup fees, and you can port your existing number at no charge. Our arithmetic: Starter works out to $10.00 a call before add-ons, and the AI Pro plan to $2.00 a call at the 75-call tier.

Quo (formerly OpenPhone) bundles a per-call AI agent called Sona into its phone plans. Its pricing page lists an included tier of 10 calls at $0, then $1.00 a call; $25 a month for 40 calls with $0.75 overage; $49 for 100 calls; $99 for 250; and $199 for 600. It requires a Quo phone plan, which our business phone plans comparison prices.

Per minute: Ruby, Dialzara, Rosie, Sameday and RingCentral

Ruby is a human service priced by the minute: $250 a month for 50 minutes, $395 for 100, $720 for 200 and $1,725 for 500. No fees for activation, onboarding or setup, and its FAQ says no long-term contracts. The overage rate per minute is not shown, and what happens to your number when you leave is not addressed. Our arithmetic: $3.95 a minute on the 100-minute plan, $3.45 on the 500-minute plan. Our Ruby versus Smith.ai page goes deeper on the two human services.

Dialzara lists Business Lite at $29 a month for 60 minutes with $0.48 a minute over, Pro at $99 for 220 minutes ($0.45 over), Plus at $199 for 500 ($0.40) and Elite at $349 for 1,000 ($0.35). There is a 7-day trial, billing is monthly with no setup fees, and an AI texting agent is $19 a month plus $0.05 per message plus carrier fees, or free with an inbound voice plan.

Rosie lists Professional at $49 a month for 250 minutes, Scale at $149 for 1,000 minutes and Growth at $299 for 2,000. The tiers are where the detail is: Professional does not book on your calendar or transfer calls; Scale adds calendar booking and warm and live transfers. Every call is handled in English and Spanish. There is a 7-day trial, you can cancel anytime, annual billing gets two months free (the annual prices are not shown), and the overage rate is not stated. A website texting add-on is $50 a month for 25 conversations and $1 each after. Our arithmetic: Scale is about $0.15 a minute, with the caveat that booking requires that tier.

Sameday lists Launch starting at $449 a month for 500 minutes and three locations, and Scale starting at $789 for 1,000 minutes and unlimited locations. Sign-up is by demo only, and overage, trial and contract terms are not shown. Our arithmetic: Launch is $0.90 per included minute.

RingCentral's AI Receptionist is $49 a month standalone with 100 minutes, or from $39 as an add-on to a RingEX plan, also with 100 minutes. Past that, pay-as-you-go charges of $0.50 a minute apply, and call time is rounded up and billed in 30-second increments. There is a 14-day trial. Our arithmetic: $0.39 a minute for the included minutes on the add-on, then $0.50.

If Rosie's per-minute plans are on your list, our Rosie alternative page compares its plans and booking with a receptionist that books straight into your own CRM.

Per customer: Goodcall

Goodcall prices by unique customers per month and says it never meters minutes. Starter is $79 a month for 100 unique customers, then 79 cents each; Growth is $129 for 500, then 26 cents; Scale is $299 for 2,000, then 15 cents; Enterprise is volume priced. It includes a local number or forwards your existing one. Contract and cancellation terms are not stated. As we read it, a customer who calls three times in a month counts once, which suits a business with many repeat callers; confirm that with Goodcall before you rely on it.

Flat and bundled: Jobber, Yelp and the ones with no price

Jobber's AI Receptionist is a $29 a month add-on, and is listed among the Plus plan's features, as seen on its pricing page. The feature page says you keep your number by forwarding it, and that the receptionist answers calls and texts, books using your online-booking settings, creates work requests and can transfer urgent calls. Its help center says the $29 add-on includes 30 conversations a month, then $0.79 per additional conversation (read October 2026); the details are in AI receptionists that book into Jobber. The honest framing is that $29 is the add-on price; the Jobber plan underneath runs from $29 to $529 a month billed annually, and the receptionist works inside Jobber's booking and request screens, which is exactly what a Jobber customer wants.

Yelp sells one too. Its launch post dated October 21, 2025 says Yelp Receptionist starts at $99 a month for eligible local businesses and answers calls, qualifies leads, and records and transcribes. Yelp's advertising terms say use may be subject to a usage limit per calendar month per location and an overage charge, and the limit is not published, so we state no call allowance.

Housecall Pro's CSR AI, ServiceTitan's AI virtual agents and Workiz's Genius Answering are sold without a public price. A competitor's comparison page quotes a per-call figure for ServiceTitan; it is not on ServiceTitan's site, so we do not repeat it. If you use one of those platforms, get the price in writing and ask the questions below.

The do-nothing option: voicemail to text

The baseline to compare against is transcription. YouMail lists a free personal plan with 100 voicemail-to-text transcriptions a month, and business plans from $19.99 a month billed annually ($239.88) with five numbers, 1,000 transcripts a month, an auto attendant and automatic text replies to missed calls. Google Voice puts voicemail transcripts in your inbox. Transcription makes sure you read the message. It does nothing about the caller who hangs up and phones the next company, which is the whole argument for answering.

What does 300 calls a month cost?

Take a company that gets 300 calls a month and assume three minutes a call, or 900 minutes. The monthly figures below are our arithmetic on the list prices above; they are what each vendor's plan covers, not a measure of quality, and the per-minute ones move with your real call length.

Over 36 months the spread is wide: $75,600 for the human Pro plan, about $18,036 for Smith.ai's AI at the 300-call rate, $5,364 for Rosie Scale, and $1,044 for Jobber's add-on before the plan it needs. That spread is why owners ask about AI reception. It says nothing about which service handles a worried homeowner better at 9 p.m., which is the next question.

What do human services do that AI does not?

A trained person on the line does things no script covers. They hear that a caller is upset before the caller says so, and slow down. They handle the question nobody anticipated by saying they will find out and calling back, and then doing it. They can tell the difference between a tenant, a landlord and a property manager calling about the same leak, and take the message accordingly. They can calm an older caller who is confused by the menu. They can decide, in the moment, that this call should go straight to the owner even though the script says it is not urgent. Ruby and Smith.ai's human plans cost what they cost because that judgment is what you are buying, and for some businesses it is worth every dollar.

An AI receptionist does a narrower job very consistently: answers on the first ring at any hour, asks the questions you wrote, books into the calendar you connected, sends a summary, and does it for ten callers at once. Within the knowledge you give it, it is reliable. Outside it, it should hand off to a person, and the setup should say how. Our AI receptionist versus answering service comparison walks through where each one fits, and many companies run both: people during the day, AI for overflow and nights.

Which features sit on higher tiers?

• Booking and transfers. Rosie's Professional tier does neither; Scale does both. Smith.ai's human plans charge booking per call. Check which tier actually puts the job on your calendar.
• Rounding. RingCentral bills in 30-second increments, rounded up. A 61-second call costs 90 seconds.
• Overage rates that fall with the tier. Dialzara's per-minute overage drops from $0.48 to $0.35 as you move up; Goodcall's per-customer overage drops from 79 cents to 15 cents; Smith.ai's per-call rate drops with volume. A plan one tier too small can cost more than the next tier.
• The software underneath. Jobber's $29 needs a Jobber plan; Quo's Sona needs a Quo plan; RingCentral's $39 add-on needs RingEX. Price the stack, not the add-on.
• Languages. Rosie lists English and Spanish on every call. Ask the others.

What should you ask before you sign?

1. What is the billing unit, and what is the overage rate on the tier I would buy?
2. What counts as a call? Spam, wrong numbers and three-second hang-ups included? Smith.ai lets you remove up to 10 percent as spam; ask what the others do.
3. On which tier does it book on my calendar and transfer live calls?
4. Who owns the phone number, and can I port it out? Smith.ai says you can port your existing number in at no charge; Goodcall forwards yours; Ruby's pages do not address it.
5. Where do the call summaries and transcripts go? Into my CRM, or only into your dashboard?
6. What is the term? Smith.ai says month to month, Ruby says no long-term contracts, Rosie says cancel anytime; Sameday and Goodcall did not state terms on the pages we read.
7. Is there a trial, and can I call it myself at 9 p.m. with a hard question before I pay?

Our guide to questions to ask an AI receptionist provider has the longer list, and AI receptionist mistakes covers what goes wrong after signing.

Where should the call summary live?

Whichever price model you pick, the thing to protect is what the receptionist produces: the caller's name, number, address, problem and the appointment. If those live only in a vendor's dashboard, changing vendors later means losing the record of every after-hours call you ever took. Our AI receptionist service is set up the other way around: the number is ported into a phone system in your company's name, the script and escalation rules are written down with you, and every call becomes a summary on the customer record in your CRM. The per-minute cost of answering is passed through as its own monthly line. To put a number on what unanswered calls might be costing before you compare plans, try the missed-call calculator.

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