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Voice AI agents for business11 min read

AI Receptionist Cost: What Small Businesses Really Pay

AI receptionist plans are billed in minutes, calls, unique customers or tiers with automatic upgrades, so headline prices do not compare. We recorded the plans on six official pricing pages on October 21, 2026, worked a 300-call example with its arithmetic, and set it against live answering services and a U.S. receptionist wage.

A smiling receptionist behind a pink front desk, speaking with a visitor

Photo: RDNE Stock project · Pexels

Disclosure: Call-bot.ai is published by Nehos Groupe, which also publishes Alyas.ai, mentioned in this article. Who we are.

"300" can mean three different things on an AI receptionist price page: 300 minutes, 300 calls or 300 unique customers. The product you buy bills in one of those units, and the unit decides what a busy month costs. On October 21, 2026 we recorded every inbound-call plan with a published price on six official AI receptionist pricing pages and worked one example with its arithmetic shown.

This article covers small-business AI receptionist products that answer inbound calls. For the underlying technology, see what an AI voice agent is; for developer platforms, see the platform comparison. We do not rank products here.

Four ways AI receptionists are priced

  • Included minutes, then a per-minute rate. Dialzara and My AI Front Desk work this way.
  • Included calls, then a per-call rate. Upfirst and Smith.ai's AI-first plans.
  • Unique customers. Goodcall counts one phone number once a month, however often it calls back.
  • Tiers with an automatic upgrade. Rosie moves you to the next plan when you exceed your minutes.

We found no product in this group priced per seat. Slang AI lists "Starting at $399 per location" and "$599 per location" but states no period, volume or overage, so it is not in the table.

What six pricing pages say

Read October 21, 2026, in U.S. dollars, at monthly billing. Annual billing is cheaper on several pages: Upfirst says 20% off, Rosie "2 months free," My AI Front Desk $79 a month.

Product Plan Price per month Included Beyond it
Goodcall Starter $79 100 unique customers (about 150 calls) $0.79 per extra customer
Goodcall Growth $129 500 customers (about 750 calls) $0.26 per extra customer
Goodcall Scale $299 2,000 customers (about 3,000 calls) $0.15 per extra customer
Dialzara Business Lite $29 60 minutes $0.48 per minute
Dialzara Business Pro $99 220 minutes $0.45 per minute
Dialzara Business Plus $199 500 minutes $0.40 per minute
Dialzara Business Elite $349 1,000 minutes $0.35 per minute
Rosie Professional $49 250 minutes automatic move to next plan
Rosie Scale $149 1,000 minutes automatic move to next plan
Rosie Growth $299 2,000 minutes custom plan above that
Upfirst Starter $24.95 30 calls $1.50 per extra call
Upfirst Premium $59.95 90 calls $1.00 per extra call
Upfirst Pro $159.95 300 calls $0.75 per extra call
Upfirst Scale $299 600 calls $0.70 per extra call
Smith.ai (AI-first) Free $0 25 calls $3.00 per extra call
Smith.ai (AI-first) Pro $150 / $270 / $500 75 / 150 / 300 calls $2.50 / $2.30 / $2.17 per extra call
Smith.ai (AI-first) Enterprise $500 / $800 300 / 500 calls $2.17 / $2.10 per extra call
My AI Front Desk Business-in-a-Box $99 200 voice minutes 25 credits ($0.25) per minute

Sources: Goodcall, Dialzara, Rosie, Upfirst, Smith.ai, My AI Front Desk. My AI Front Desk's page also lists 1,000 overage credits a month, credits at $0.01 each and reloads of $10 per 1,000 credits.

What each tier includes

Plans in one product are not feature-identical, so the cheapest tier may lack what you need:

  • Transfers. Dialzara's Lite plan has blind transfer only; warm transfer starts at Pro. Rosie's warm and live transfers start at Scale.
  • Calendar booking. Dialzara's calendar sync starts at Pro. Rosie's Professional plan sends appointment links by text; booking directly on your calendar starts at Scale.
  • History and onboarding. Goodcall keeps 30 days of call history on Starter, 90 on Growth and unlimited on Scale. Smith.ai's Pro plan adds dedicated onboarding; Upfirst adds white-glove onboarding from Pro.

A worked example, with assumptions

Assumptions, not statistics: 300 calls a month, three minutes each (900 minutes), from 200 different phone numbers. Goodcall's page equates 100 customers with "about 150 calls," which is why we assume 200 callers. For each product we took the plan with the lowest total, counting overage.

Product and plan Arithmetic Monthly cost
Goodcall Growth 200 customers, inside the 500 included $129
Rosie Scale 900 minutes, inside the 1,000 included $149
Upfirst Pro 300 calls, inside the 300 included $159.95
My AI Front Desk $99 + 700 extra minutes x 25 credits = 17,500 credits, minus 1,000 included, bought as 17 reloads of $10 $269
Dialzara Elite 900 minutes, inside the 1,000 included $349
Smith.ai AI-first 300-call plan $500

Across these six rows the example ranges from $129 to $500. The spread reflects different billing units and plan sizes; we have not tested call quality. At Dialzara's Pro overage rate a three-minute call costs $1.35 ($0.45 x 3), against $0.75 at Upfirst Pro's extra-call rate; a one-minute call reverses the comparison ($0.45 against $0.75).

What the monthly price leaves out

  • Overage rules differ. Per minute, per call, per customer, automatic upgrade or credits, as above. Check which one your busiest month would trigger.
  • Which calls count. Smith.ai filters out calls from known spammers before they are answered and does not count them; every answered call counts by default, with an allowance to remove up to 10% for spam. Upfirst does not count the spam it detects and blocks, and does not bill calls under 15 seconds or calls where the caller never speaks. Goodcall excludes spam and wrong numbers.
  • Extra channels. Dialzara's SMS agent is $19 a month plus $0.05 per AI message, with carrier fees passed through at $0.0083 per segment; Rosie's website texting add-on is $50 a month for 25 conversations, then $1 each.
  • Telephony. Goodcall and Upfirst include a phone number. Dialzara's "All plans include" list names a US-based phone number, but its pricing FAQ says US and Canada local numbers are $3 a month and US toll-free numbers $5 a month. Our hidden-costs article covers the layers developer platforms bill separately.
  • Your time. Every product sends summaries or transcripts. The time you spend reviewing them and correcting the agent is on none of these price lists; some higher tiers include vendor-side tuning instead, such as Dialzara's ongoing custom prompt engineering on Plus and Elite and Smith.ai Enterprise's ongoing optimization.

The human alternatives

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics lists a 2025 median pay of $18.27 per hour, or $38,010 per year, for receptionists, a job it describes as answering phones, receiving visitors and informing the public about an organization. That is wages only. BLS's June 2026 compensation release says wages and salaries were 70.0% of employer costs for private-industry workers; if the same share applied to this job, $38,010 would become about $54,300 a year (our arithmetic, an assumption). A full-time employee on a 40-hour week also covers 40 of a week's 168 hours, about 24%.

Live answering services publish tables like the AI ones. Ruby lists 50 minutes for $250 a month, 100 for $395, 200 for $720 and 500 for $1,725; its page does not state a price for extra minutes. PATLive lists, among other plans, 50 minutes for $99, 200 for $349, 500 for $759 and 1,000 for $1,499, with extra minutes at $2.29, $1.99, $1.79 and $1.69. Smith.ai's human-first plans list 30 calls for $300, 90 for $810 and 300 for $2,100, with extra calls at $11.50, $10.50 and $8.50. For our example, Smith.ai's 300-call plan is $2,100; at PATLive the lowest total for 900 minutes is $1,475, the 500-minute plan plus 400 extra minutes at $1.79 ($759 + $716), just under its 1,000-minute plan at $1,499, both before the government taxes and fees that PATLive's page says are added; Ruby's largest published plan, 500 minutes at $1,725, is below the example's volume. Sources: Ruby, Smith.ai.

When it is not worth it

  • Most calls need a person. If callers mostly need judgment or reassurance, an AI plan mainly routes calls. Smith.ai's hybrid page lists presets from about $2.50 per call where live agents step in.
  • Your callers' languages are not covered. Rosie states English and Spanish on every call, Upfirst 35+ languages, My AI Front Desk 20+. Check yours.
  • Very low volume. Smith.ai's free plan lists 25 calls at $0, and Goodcall lets you build a demo agent free and pay when you connect a number.
  • Very high volume. Per-call and per-minute prices scale with calls; a salary does not. Several pages send larger volumes to sales: Upfirst above 600 calls, Smith.ai at 1,000 or more, Goodcall above 2,000 customers.

How to compare quotes

  1. Pull 30 days from your phone system: calls, talk minutes and distinct callers.
  2. Price each product in its own unit, using your busiest month, not your average.
  3. Read the overage rule and the tier features before the headline price.

One more example of the category

Alyas.ai, which Nehos Groupe publishes, is another AI receptionist product. Per its own site, read October 21, 2026, it answers the phone day and night, books appointments in the connected calendar, runs one agent across phone, website chat, WhatsApp and Messenger, hands over to your team instead of guessing (call transfer is possible), is set up online without a developer, stores call recordings in Paris and is sold as a monthly subscription with no commitment. Its pricing page is the reference for current plans, so we quote no price here.

Frequently asked questions

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

It depends on the billing unit. For 300 three-minute calls, our example gave $129 to $500 a month across six products. Annual billing and extra channels change that.

Is an AI receptionist cheaper than a human one?

On price, yes in our example: $129 to $500 a month against $1,475 and $2,100 for two live services (PATLive's $1,475 is before the government taxes and fees its page says are added), and about $3,167.50 in monthly median wages before benefits. Coverage differs, though: the AI plans and both live services state 24/7 answering, while one full-time employee on a 40-hour week covers about 24% of the week's hours.

Per minute or per call: which is cheaper?

It depends on call length. A three-minute call costs $1.35 at Dialzara Pro's overage rate and $0.75 at Upfirst Pro's; a one-minute call costs $0.45 and $0.75.

Do AI receptionists charge for spam calls?

Policies differ: Smith.ai does not count calls from known spammers it filters out, counts other answered calls and lets you remove up to 10% for spam; Upfirst does not count the spam it detects and skips calls under 15 seconds or with no speech; Goodcall excludes spam and wrong numbers.

In short

Compare units before prices: minutes, calls and customers do not convert one to one. Six published price pages gave $129 to $500 a month for the same assumed workload, against $1,475 to $2,100 at two live services (PATLive's $1,475 is before government taxes and fees). Overage rules, spam handling and your review time are the costs the plan table hides. To scope a project, talk to us.

Sources

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