What an AI Receptionist Costs in 2026

An AI receptionist costs between $0 and $449 a month at published entry prices, and a small business taking 200 calls a month should expect roughly $60 to $240 a month on the cheaper plans, based on prices we read on September 29, 2026. That figure is our arithmetic, assuming 3 minute calls, and it excludes setup work. Human answering services cost far more for the same calls: about $940 to $1,970 a month at 200 calls. The rest of this post shows the pricing pages, the math, and where the range widens, written for a Las Vegas service business deciding whether to buy.

How was every price read?

On September 29, 2026 we opened the public pricing page of 22 vendors and wrote down what each one publishes. Sixteen published a dollar figure, though one of those, Synthflow, publishes only a contract floor. Six published no price at all. Every number in this post links to the page that showed it, and every price is dated by that read.

This is a refresh of a post first published July 20, 2026. Several things moved since then. Smith.ai now shows AI pricing publicly. PATLive restructured its plans. Rosie added a 1,000 minute plan. Sameday moved its pricing to sameday.ai, and the old address now redirects there. Where an old figure could not be found on today's page, we dropped it rather than carry it forward.

One limit matters more than the rest. An entry price is a shelf price, not a bill. Most cheap tiers cap minutes, calls, or callers, and the overage rate decides the invoice. Where a page did not publish an overage rate, we say so and do not invent one.

What does each vendor publish?

Sixteen vendors published a number, and the AI-native products sit well below the human answering services. Read the last column first: it is where the bill grows. All prices below were read on September 29, 2026.

Vendor	Type	Entry price	Included	Overage
Upfirst	AI, per call	$24.95/mo	30 calls	$1.50/call
Dialzara	AI, per minute tier	$29/mo	60 min	$0.48/min
Rosie	AI, per minute tier	$49/mo	250 min	Not shown on page
Goodcall	AI, per customer	$79/mo per agent	100 unique customers, unlimited minutes	$0.50/customer
Simple Phones	AI, per call	$97/mo	100 calls	Not shown on page
My AI Front Desk	AI, per minute credits	$99/mo ($79 billed annually)	200 min	25 credits/min, $10 per 1,000 credits
Smith.ai AI receptionist	AI, per call	$0/mo	25 calls	$3.00/call
Slang.ai	AI, per location	$399/mo per location	No limit listed	Not shown on page
Sameday AI	AI, per minute tier	$449/mo	500 min	Not shown on page
Abby Connect	Human or AI, pooled	$165/mo	50 Abby Minutes	Plan's Abby Minute rate
PATLive	Human	$99/mo	50 min	$2.29/min
Ruby	Human	$250/mo	50 min	Not published
Smith.ai receptionists	Human, per call	$300/mo	30 calls	$11.50/call
Bland AI	Platform, per minute	$0.14/min, $0 platform fee	Pay as you go	Not applicable
Retell AI	Platform, per minute	$0.055/min voice infrastructure, plus parts	Pay as you go	Not applicable
Vapi	Platform, per minute	$0.05/min platform fee, plus providers	Pay as you go	Not applicable

Synthflow, the sixteenth, states that "Enterprise contracts start at $30,000 annually" and lists no self-serve plan, so it is not in the table. That floor is $2,500 a month by our division, which puts it outside a small business budget.

Abby needs a note. Its page says one minute of AI answering costs 0.5 Abby Minutes, so the $165 plan stretches to 100 AI minutes. That conversion is why Abby's AI and human prices cannot be read straight off the plan card.

Who publishes no price at all?

Six of 22 vendors published no dollar figure, and each replaces a price with a form or a sales call. Numa shows features, case studies and testimonials but no pricing. PolyAI says pricing is "per-minute" and "transparent," then quotes no dollar amount. Nexa lists three plan sizes, mentions that a setup fee covers programming, onboarding and training, and gives no dollar amount for it.

AnswerConnect shows only a "Get your quote" form on its plans page. Podium says to "talk to our sales team for details." Dialpad bills by AI Agent Credits, where a conversation is billable only when the AI retrieves information or takes an action like scheduling or routing, and shows no dollar rate. We could not read Dialpad in July, so it is new to this audit.

Sales-gating is not automatically a red flag. It tells you which buyer the vendor built for. Every vendor priced under $100 a month publishes that price openly, and a ten-line business will rarely find its number behind a form.

Which pricing model costs least at 200, 500 and 1,500 calls?

Four models exist. Flat monthly plans cap minutes or calls. Per-minute plans, sold by Bland AI, Retell AI and Vapi, scale with talk time. Per-call plans, like Upfirst and Smith.ai, scale with call count. Per-customer pricing at Goodcall ignores minutes and counts unique callers. Dialpad's per-resolution model bills only when the AI does real work, but publishes no rate, so we cannot price it.

To compare them we need one assumption no vendor publishes: how long a call lasts. We use 3 minutes, our placeholder for a short booking or message call, so 200 calls is 600 minutes, 500 calls is 1,500 minutes and 1,500 calls is 4,500 minutes. For Goodcall we assume every caller is a different customer, the expensive case. Where a vendor did not publish an overage rate, we price the smallest published plan that covers the volume, and "n/c" means not computable from the page. Setup fees, taxes and phone number fees are excluded.

Vendor	200 calls (600 min)	500 calls (1,500 min)	1,500 calls (4,500 min)
Retell, lean build	$60.60	$151.50	$454.50
Vapi, all in estimate	$53.88 to $85.74	$134.70 to $214.35	$404.10 to $643.05
Bland Start	$84	$210	$630
Goodcall	$129	$249	$749
Upfirst	$159.95	$299	$929
Rosie	$149	$299	n/c
My AI Front Desk	up to $199	up to $424	up to $1,174
Dialzara	$239	$524	$1,574
Bland Build	$371	$479	$839
Slang.ai Core	$399	$399	$399
Smith.ai AI, free tier	$525	$1,425	$4,425
Sameday AI	$789	n/c	n/c
PATLive, human	$938	$2,344	$6,899
Smith.ai, human	$1,965	$3,800	$12,300

The arithmetic behind the cells that need it:

Retell lean is $0.055 voice infrastructure plus $0.015 text-to-speech plus $0.015 telephony plus $0.016 for the cheapest Gemini model line on its page, or $0.101 a minute. At 600 minutes that is 600 × $0.101 = $60.60. A premium build using ElevenLabs at $0.040 and GPT 5.4 at $0.080 is $0.19 a minute, or $114 at 600 minutes and $855 at 4,500.

Vapi is the $0.05 platform fee plus provider costs its page lists: Deepgram transcription around $0.0095 to $0.0099, OpenAI models $0.0077 to $0.0452, ElevenLabs voice $0.0146 to $0.0238, and Twilio transport $0.008 to $0.014. Summed, that is about $0.0898 to $0.1429 a minute, our estimate, so 600 minutes runs $53.88 to $85.74.

Bland Start is 600 × $0.14 = $84. Bland Build is 600 × $0.12 = $72 plus the $299 platform fee, or $371. Goodcall at 200 customers is the $129 Growth plan, at 500 the $249 Scale plan, and at 1,500 it is $249 plus 1,000 × $0.50, or $749.

Upfirst at 200 calls is the Pro plan at $159.95 for 300 calls. At 500 calls it is Scale at $299 for 600 calls, and at 1,500 it is $299 plus 900 × $0.70, or $929. Dialzara at 600 minutes is the $199 Plus plan for 500 minutes plus 100 × $0.40 overage, $239. At 1,500 minutes it is the $349 Elite plan for 1,000 minutes plus 500 × $0.35, $524. My AI Front Desk is $99 for 200 minutes plus overage at 25 credits a minute: 400 extra minutes is 10,000 credits, or $100 at $10 per 1,000, so up to $199. The page also lists a pool of 1,000 monthly overage credits, so the true figure may be slightly lower.

Smith.ai's free tier is 25 calls free and then $3.00 a call, so 200 calls is 175 × $3.00 = $525. The Pro plan lists $150 a month at $2.00 a call, but the page does not settle whether the call charge stacks on the $150, so the free tier row is a ceiling, not a recommendation. Smith.ai's human line at 200 calls is the $810 Basic plan for 90 calls plus 110 × $10.50, or $1,965. PATLive at 600 minutes is the $759 plan for 500 minutes plus 100 × $1.79, or $938, and at 4,500 minutes we used its listed 5,000 minute plan at $6,899.

Ruby and Abby are not in the table because neither covers 600 minutes on a published plan: Ruby tops out at 500 minutes for $1,725 and Abby's largest listed plan is 500 Abby Minutes for $1,380 with no published overage. Slang is flat at $399 per location, and the page lists no call or minute limit, but it is built for restaurant reservations. See answering service prices, human versus AI for a deeper human comparison.

What should a small business expect to pay?

A single-location business taking 200 calls a month should budget about $60 to $240 a month on a self-serve AI plan, with the wide end near $525 if it lands on a per-call free tier. That comes from the table above: Goodcall $129, Rosie $149, Upfirst $159.95, My AI Front Desk up to $199, Dialzara $239. The bottom of that range is a per-minute platform, which trades price for build work you do yourself.

Consider a two-chair salon that gets 200 calls a month, most of them booking requests. On a flat plan it pays about $150 to $240, roughly $1,800 to $2,900 a year (our multiplication by 12). A human service at the same volume runs $938 at PATLive or $1,965 at Smith.ai, so the AI plan saves between about $700 and $1,800 a month, and the salon is comparing that savings to the chance a caller hangs up on a machine.

Now a dealership service lane taking 1,500 calls a month. Flat plans stop fitting: Rosie has no published price above 2,000 minutes, and per-call pricing at Upfirst reaches $929. Goodcall's $749 assumes every caller is new, so repeat callers pay less. This is where per-minute platforms, Bland Build at $839 or Retell at $455 to $855, compete with a flat plan, and where build work grows too. If your real goal is fewer lost calls, our missed call recovery page and missed call statistics cover the volume side of the question.

Which AI receptionists include Spanish, and at what price?

Several vendors include Spanish in the base plan, which makes multilingual pricing a non-issue for a bilingual Las Vegas shop, but a few charge for it or bury it. Every fact here is from the pricing pages read on September 29, 2026.

Rosie says "English & Spanish on every call" on all three plans, starting at $49 a month. Dialzara lists "English + Spanish" on each inbound plan, starting at $29 a month. Upfirst lists "35+ languages" on every plan from $24.95 a month and says it switches languages automatically. My AI Front Desk lists "20+ languages" across all plans from $99 a month. Among human services, PATLive enables bilingual English and Spanish service "at no additional cost," and Abby Connect lists English and Spanish answering as included on all plans.

The rest carry a condition. Slang.ai lists Spanish bilingual support in its $599 Premium tier, not the $399 Core tier, and also names bilingual support as a separate add-on whose price we did not read. Smith.ai lists a dedicated Spanish line at $1.00 as a per-call add-on on its human plans. Ruby says Spanish and bilingual handling is available and gives no separate price. Sameday AI mentions multilingual voices only on its custom Enterprise plan.

Three pages named no Spanish support at all. Goodcall, Bland AI and Retell AI do not mention it on the pricing page, and Vapi does not name languages. That does not prove the products lack it, only that the price page is silent, so ask before you assume. Also note that a vendor listing a language is not the same as a vendor handling it well on a noisy line, and we did not test quality.

What does per-minute pricing leave out?

The headline per-minute rate on a builder platform covers only part of a call. Vapi states a $0.05 a minute hosting fee and prices transcription, the language model, voice synthesis and telephony separately at provider cost. Its own page shows Deepgram at about $0.0095 to $0.0099 a minute, OpenAI models at $0.0077 to $0.0452, ElevenLabs at $0.0146 to $0.0238, and Twilio at $0.008 to $0.014. Add-ons stack on top: HIPAA compliance is $2,000 a month and each extra concurrent line is $10 a month.

Retell AI splits the price into parts too. Voice infrastructure is $0.055 a minute, text-to-speech $0.015 to $0.040 depending on voice, telephony $0.015, and the language model line runs from $0.0016 for a nano model to $0.16 a minute for GPT 5.5. Add-ons include knowledge base at $0.005 a minute and PII removal at $0.01 a minute, and the first 20 concurrent calls are free with $8 a month per extra line. That is why one Retell quote can land at $0.10 or $0.19 a minute.

Bland AI is the exception: its rate bundles the language model, speech recognition and voice, with no token charges. Start is $0.14 a minute with no platform fee. Build is $0.12 a minute plus $299 a month. At 200 calls, 600 minutes, Build costs $371 against Start's $84, because the fee spreads over few minutes. That works out to $371 / 600 = $0.62 a minute, more than four times the quoted rate. Build only wins at higher volume: the plans break even at $299 / $0.02 = 14,950 minutes, about 4,983 of our 3 minute calls.

None of these prices include the work of building an agent that books into your calendar and knows your services. The full analysis, with worked bills at other volumes, is in what per-minute pricing hides in AI call quotes. To compare a per-minute platform with a flat plan, use the table above: the lean builds are the cheapest rows at every volume we modeled, before you count the hours you spend building and testing the agent.

Where do these numbers not hold?

Six things break the table. First, call length. If your calls run 6 minutes instead of 3, every per-minute figure doubles and per-call vendors like Upfirst and Smith.ai look better. Second, Goodcall assumes every caller is new. A shop with many repeat callers pays less. Third, unpublished overage rates: Rosie, Simple Phones, Sameday, Slang, Ruby and Abby leave them out, so any cell above their top plan is not computable.

Fourth, this is a price comparison, not a quality test. We did not test answer accuracy, latency, calendar booking, CRM write-back, or transfers, and two plans at the same price can produce very different booked jobs. Fifth, we exclude your own build and integration time, the largest cost for the platform tier. Sixth, every price was read on one day, September 29, 2026, and this market reprices often. Read the linked page yourself on the day you buy.

Questions owners ask

How much does an AI receptionist cost for a small business?

A small business taking 200 calls a month should expect about $60 to $240 a month on most self-serve plans, based on prices read September 29, 2026. That assumes 3 minute calls and excludes setup. Per-call free tiers can cost more at that volume, and human answering services cost about $940 to $1,970 for the same calls.

What is the cost of an AI receptionist per minute?

Published per-minute rates run from about $0.09 to $0.14 all in on builder platforms, our estimate from Vapi and Retell AI component prices, and $0.14 flat on Bland AI Start. Flat plans work out lower per included minute, such as Rosie at $49 for 250 minutes, or about $0.20 a minute.

Do multilingual AI receptionist pricing plans cost extra?

Not at several vendors. Rosie, Dialzara, Upfirst and My AI Front Desk list Spanish or more languages on every plan. Slang.ai lists Spanish in its $599 Premium tier rather than $399 Core, Smith.ai lists a Spanish line add-on at $1.00, and Sameday mentions multilingual voices only on Enterprise. Check the plan you would buy.

Is there a typical pricing model for small businesses switching to a 24/7 voice AI receptionist?

The typical model is a flat monthly plan with a minute or call cap, from about $25 to $450 a month, with overage on top. Per-minute platforms suit teams that will build their own agent. Per-customer pricing at Goodcall suits shops with many repeat callers. Price your own call log against one flat plan and one per-minute platform.

What to do this week

Pull 90 days of call records from your phone system. Count inbound calls, the share outside staffed hours, and average call length, and replace our 200, 500 and 1,500 call rows and 3 minute assumption with your own.
Open the pricing pages of the two cheapest plans in your row of the table, and email each vendor for anything we marked not shown: overage rate, contract term, setup fee, and Spanish support.
Trial one plan by calling your own line ten times after hours with your hardest real calls, and score what happens before you sign anything.

If you want a second look at a quote against your own call numbers, our free 15-minute audit starts on the AI receptionist page, and the appointment scheduling page covers the booking side.

Prices read September 29, 2026 from vendor pricing pages. Prices change without notice. Verify against the linked page before making a decision.

Drafted with AI assistance, researched, edited, and fact-checked by Elias Musleh on September 29, 2026.