AI receptionist pricing: what each plan really costs a month and a year

The plan price is not the cost. What the service counts as one unit changes the total:

• Per call (Upfirst, Smith.ai people and AI): Per answered call. Spam/robocalls, calls under 15 seconds, and calls where the caller never speaks are not billed. Smith.ai: Billed per call, not per minute. A longer call costs no more.
• Per minute (Rosie, Dialzara, My AI Front Desk, RingCentral, Ruby): a 3-minute call uses 3 units, so minutes rise with call length. RingCentral rounds up and bills in 30-second increments.
• Per unique caller (Goodcall): One unique customer is one phone number, once a month. Repeat calls from the same number count once. We count 1.5 calls to a unique caller, as its own pages do.
• Per conversation (Jobber's Receptionist): One conversation, calls and texts both. It is an add-on, below.

Estimates. Lowest-cost plan that covers the month, 12 months, monthly billing, USD, no tax. A service that prints no overage rate is priced only on a plan whose allowance covers the month and is not priced above its largest plan (Rosie says it moves you up to the next plan at that plan's standard price, so a bigger month is priced on the bigger plan; Ruby says nothing about overage). Read 2026-10-27.

From each vendor's own pricing page. Smith.ai's AI page lists further call tiers than the three plans shown, and only its Free plan's overage is confirmed by us, so a month past a paid Smith.ai AI plan's calls is not priced on it. Goodcall's allowances are unique callers, about 1.5 calls each. Rosie prints no overage price.

• Overage and upgrades. Past the allowance, Upfirst charges US$0.70 to US$1.50 a call by plan, Dialzara US$0.35 to US$0.48 a minute, Smith.ai's AI Free plan US$3 a call (its paid-plan overage is not confirmed by us). Rosie moves you up to the next plan at that plan's standard price; Ruby prints no overage rate.
• Add-ons. Smith.ai people plans sell booking appointments, texting and Spanish as add-ons by the call; booking is US$1.5 a call.
• A service that needs another product. Jobber's Receptionist is US$29 a month for 30 conversations, but only on a paid Jobber plan, so it is not a standalone service.
• Contracts and setup. Where stated: Upfirst and Dialzara have no contract, Smith.ai is month to month, Ruby has no long-term contract, and Smith.ai and Dialzara list no setup fee. Annual billing is cheaper where offered (for example Upfirst Premium US$48 a month billed annually against US$59.95).
• Quality. Price tells you nothing about what a service says to your caller. What four of them did on one plumbing call.

At 90 calls a month and 3 minutes a call, the cheapest AI plan we priced is Upfirst Premium at US$719 a year (US$60 a month). The cheapest of the 2 person-answered plans we priced is Smith.ai Basic at US$9,720 (US$810 a month), 13.5 times as much. Other person-answered services exist that we did not price. Across the AI services priced the range is US$719 to US$2,340; across the person-answered plans, US$9,720 to US$20,700.

How we set each one up. Our plumbing test calls used a deliberately thin setup (business name, services, a US$129 call, hours, an after-hours message; no website training). Vendors say results improve after a few rounds of tuning, so budget about an hour to tune any AI service on your own calls. How we set each one up.

What our one plumbing call showed about the difference: the person-answered service we called (ReceptionHQ) took about 8 seconds to connect plus a hold of about 30 seconds and emailed name, number and reason; the AI services answered in one to two seconds and emailed a summary within about 21 seconds. We do not have ReceptionHQ's rate (not published) and we have not tested Smith.ai, Abby Connect or Ruby, so this is not a quality comparison. The test calls.

We tested nothing for property management: no call, no trial. Every service above bills the same way for a property manager as for a plumber, so the price table applies; what changes is volume (tenant and after-hours maintenance calls add up) and what you need handled (triage, tenant versus owner calls). Price your own volume in the tool. We did not check what each service offers property managers, so read each service's own pages for that. Not tested by us.

How much does an AI receptionist cost?

B2B Fees priced 9 answering services from their own pages (read 2026-10-27) for 90 calls a month at 3 minutes each: AI services cost US$719 to US$2,340 a year, about US$60 to US$195 a month. The same calls billed per call, per minute or per unique caller land at different totals, so the billing unit matters as much as the plan price.

Is an AI receptionist cheaper than a person?

On published plan prices, yes, by a lot: at 90 calls a month and 3 minutes a call the cheapest AI plan we priced is US$719 a year (US$60 a month) and the cheapest of the 2 person-answered plans we priced is US$9,720 (US$810 a month), 13.5 times as much. Other person-answered services exist that we did not price. That is price against price, not a test of quality.

What is not included in an AI receptionist price?

Often booking, texting and extra languages are add-ons, overage is billed past the allowance, and some services print no overage rate: Rosie says it moves you up to the next plan, at that plan's standard price, when you go over, and Ruby says nothing about overage. Jobber's Receptionist is an add-on to a paid Jobber plan, not a standalone service.

Is there a free AI receptionist or a free trial?

Trials we read on each vendor's own pages: My AI Front Desk (7-day free trial); Goodcall (Start free with a demo agent); Dialzara (7-day free trial); Rosie (7-day free trial); Upfirst (14 days or 100 calls, whichever comes first, no credit card); RingCentral AI Receptionist (14-day free trial). Smith.ai's AI receptionist also has a US$0 plan with 25 calls a month and US$3 a call after that. Trial terms change; check the vendor before you rely on one.

How much does an AI receptionist cost compared with hiring an employee?

We did not price a full-time employee, so this page does not compare the two. The comparison we can make from published prices is AI against person-answered services: the cheapest AI plan we priced costs 13.5 times less a year than the cheapest person-answered plan we priced.