AI receptionist pricing: cost and free plans

The plan price is the small part of the decision. The billing unit, the overage rule and who builds the agent decide the bill. Every price below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, checked October 23, 2026. For what an AI receptionist does and how to choose one, start with our AI receptionist guide.

How much does an AI receptionist cost?

An AI receptionist costs about $25 to $500 a month for a small business answering up to a few hundred calls, with a free tier at the bottom and custom quotes above about 2,000 minutes. Volume decides the bill: at 300 minutes a month most AI plans land under $215, and at 3,000 minutes they range from $398 to $1,850.

Every AI option on the chart costs less than an eighth of a full-time receptionist, and the most expensive AI plan costs less than half of the live answering service.

AI receptionist pricing models

AI receptionist pricing comes in four models: a flat monthly plan with a minute cap, a per-call plan, an add-on to a business phone system, and a do-it-yourself platform billed by the minute.

AI receptionist cost per month on flat plans

On flat plans, an AI receptionist costs $29 to $349 a month for 60 to 2,000 minutes, and the overage rule matters more than the price. Rosie charges $49 for 250 minutes, $149 for 1,000 and $299 for 2,000, and if you go over it moves you up to the next plan "at that plan's standard price" until you move yourself back down. Dialzara and My AI Front Desk bill each extra minute instead, at $0.35 to $0.48 and $0.25. Divide the price by the minutes and these plans cost about $0.15 to $0.50 a minute.

Smith.ai pricing and other per-call plans

Smith.ai's AI Receptionist costs $150 to $800 a month for 75 to 500 calls, or $1.60 to $2.00 a call, after a free plan of 25 calls. Per-call plans like it charge for each answered call, whatever its length. Upfirst runs from $24.95 for 30 calls to $299 for 600, with extra calls at $0.70 to $1.50, and it doesn't bill calls under 15 seconds, robocalls or calls where nobody speaks. Per-call pricing suits long calls. Short "are you open Saturday?" calls cost the same as a 10-minute booking.

Goodcall counts a third way: by unique customer. Its $79, $129 and $299 plans cover 100, 500 and 2,000 different callers, and the pricing page says it never meters minutes.

RingCentral AI receptionist pricing

RingCentral's AI Receptionist costs $49 a month on its own, or $39 plus $30 for a RingEX Core phone line, with 100 minutes either way. After that it's $0.50 a minute, billed in 30-second increments. That's the highest per-minute overage of the AI options here, so it's a good fit only if you stay near 100 minutes. Quo's Sona agent is also a phone-system add-on, priced per call: $25 to $199 a month for 40 to 600 calls, on top of a Quo seat. Quo turns overage off by default, so when the calls run out Sona stops answering and calls go to your fallback.

AI receptionist builder platforms, billed per minute

AI receptionist builder platforms charge a per-minute fee and pass the AI and phone costs through. Retell's default setup comes to about $0.15 a minute (its $0.055 voice engine, $0.015 voice and $0.08 for the GPT 5.4 model), Vapi charges $0.05 a minute on top of its providers, and Bland bills $0.14 a minute of talk time on its free-to-start plan. Pick a cheaper model and the rate falls: on GPT 5 nano ($0.0016 a minute) Retell comes to about $0.07. They're the most work: you write the prompts, connect the calendar and test it. Platform by platform: Vapi alternatives, Retell AI pricing and Bland AI pricing.

AI receptionist cost: three real monthly bills

These bills price 300, 1,000 and 3,000 answered minutes a month, with an average call of 3 minutes (100, 333 and 1,000 calls). Each line is the cheapest way to buy that volume on the vendor's published monthly plans.

How each line adds up:

• Quo with overage turned on: Tier 3 ($49) at 100 calls; Tier 4 ($99) plus 83 calls at $0.55; Tier 5 ($199) plus 400 calls at $0.45.
• Upfirst: Premium ($59.95) plus 10 calls at $1; Pro ($159.95) plus 33 at $0.75; Scale ($299) plus 400 at $0.70.
• Rosie: 300 minutes is over the $49 plan's 250, so it's the $149 plan. Above 2,000 minutes Rosie quotes a custom plan.
• My AI Front Desk: $99 plus every minute past 200 at $0.25. Dialzara: Pro ($99) plus 80 minutes at $0.45; Elite ($349); Elite plus 2,000 minutes at $0.35.
• RingCentral: $49 plus every minute past 100 at $0.50. RingCentral sells minute bundles too, without published prices.
• Smith.ai: Pro 75 calls ($150) plus 25 at $2.50; Pro 300 ($500) plus 33 at $2.17; Enterprise 500 ($800) plus 500 at $2.10. Above 1,000 calls it's a custom quote.

At 300 minutes, everything but the human options lands under $215. At 3,000 minutes the spread opens up: $398 to $1,850 for AI.

AI voice agent pricing per minute: what's underneath

AI voice agent pricing per minute starts with four rented parts: a phone line, speech-to-text, an AI model and a text-to-speech voice. At list prices those parts cost roughly $0.03 to $0.09 a minute together. Everything a vendor charges above that pays for its software, its support and its margin.

Deepgram also sells the three AI parts bundled as one voice-agent API at $0.075 a minute. How the parts fit together is in what an AI voice agent is and how it works.

Is there a free AI receptionist?

Yes: Smith.ai's free AI Receptionist plan answers 25 real calls a month with no stated time limit, then charges $3.00 for each extra call. It includes scheduling, call summaries and transcripts. That's enough for a business that misses about one call a day, and nothing more.

Source: Smith.ai AI Receptionist pricing page, October 23, 2026.

Free AI receptionist for small business: what "free" usually means

Most other "free AI receptionist" offers are trials or credits, not plans:

• Free trials: Upfirst gives 14 days with no card. Rosie, Dialzara, My AI Front Desk and Quo give 7 days, and billing starts when the trial ends unless you cancel.
• Free with a paid phone plan: Quo includes 10 Sona calls a month, but only on a paid seat.
• Developer credits: Vapi gives $5 and Retell $10, which covers roughly 35 to 90 minutes. Bland's Start plan has no platform fee but still bills $0.14 a minute. You build the agent yourself on all three.
• Phone features: Google's Call Screen on Pixel phones asks unknown callers who they are and why they're calling, for free. It screens calls on one phone. It doesn't book, answer questions or take orders.

Which AI receptionist is the cheapest?

The cheapest AI receptionist depends on volume. Under 30 calls a month, Smith.ai's free plan or Upfirst's $24.95 Starter wins. Around 1,000 minutes, Rosie's $149 plan is the cheapest we found, just under Retell's default setup at about $152. Retell only wins on price with a cheaper AI model (about $74 on GPT 5 nano), and you build the agent yourself. Above 2,000 minutes, every done-for-you vendor here either charges overage on every minute or moves you to a custom quote.

AI receptionist vs human receptionist

A full-time receptionist costs about $4,611 a month once benefits are counted, against $149 to $572 for an AI receptionist answering 1,000 minutes. The BLS median pay for receptionists is $18.27 an hour, or $38,010 a year (May 2025). Wages are 68.7% of total pay for office and administrative workers in BLS employer cost data (June 2026), so the loaded cost is about $55,300 a year.

That person covers about 40 hours a week. Answering around the clock takes 168 hours, more than four full-time people. The comparison flatters the AI a little: a person also greets visitors, sorts mail and handles the calls that need judgment.

AI answering service cost vs a live answering service

A live answering service costs about $1.43 to $5.00 a minute, roughly ten times an AI plan's effective rate. PATLive charges $479 for 300 minutes and $4,299 for 3,000, billing only the time a receptionist is live on the call. Ruby runs $250 for 50 minutes to $1,725 for 500, and Abby $164 to $1,380 for the same range. Abby counts an AI-answered minute as half a minute. The full side-by-side is in AI phone answering service vs a live answering service.

Is an AI receptionist worth it?

An AI receptionist is worth it for a business that misses calls it could have booked: $50 to $300 a month answers every call, day and night, for less than a week of a receptionist's pay. It's not worth it if your calls need judgment or a relationship the AI can't give, or if you get so few calls that the free plan or voicemail covers them. To choose between vendors, see the best AI receptionist for your business and AI receptionists for small business.

Build your own AI voice agent: what owning costs

An AI voice agent you own runs on your own hosting, and you pay the phone carrier and the AI model at their own rates, with no per-minute platform fee on top. Every AI receptionist rents a carrier and a model. Owning means you own everything above that layer: the conversation logic, the scripts, the calendar and CRM hookups, the recordings and transcripts. The ongoing cost is those usage rates plus hosting, and the build is a one-time project.

Renting is the better call for most businesses on this page. At a few hundred minutes a month, a $50 to $300 plan costs less than paying for a build, and the vendor handles the upkeep. Owning starts to make sense when the receptionist is one piece of a larger rented stack (a dialer, a CRM, texting, scheduling) that already costs a few thousand a month, and the AI needs to read your own customer data to do its job.

That's what we build: one system the business owns, with the code, data and IP handed over. It's typically less than you spend today, paid monthly, and the build payments have an end date. There are no seat fees. Here's how pricing works.

Sources

All checked October 23, 2026. Prices change; check the vendor's page before you buy.

• Smith.ai AI Receptionist pricing and Smith.ai pricing
• Upfirst pricing, Rosie pricing, Goodcall pricing, Dialzara pricing, My AI Front Desk pricing
• RingCentral AI Receptionist pricing, Quo pricing and Sona pricing
• Retell AI pricing, Vapi pricing, Bland pricing
• Twilio US voice pricing, Telnyx call control pricing, Deepgram pricing
• PATLive pricing, Ruby pricing, Abby Connect pricing
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Receptionists (May 2025 wages) and BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, Table 4 (June 2026)
• Google Call Screen help

The SaaS cost calculator adds up your phone, CRM and answering costs in about two minutes. If it comes to a few thousand a month, book a free audit and we'll show you what one owned system would replace.