AI receptionist pricing: what you'll pay at 50, 200 and 500 calls a month

AI receptionist prices run from a free 25-call plan to well over $1,000 a month, and the plans are hard to compare because they count different things. Some charge by the minute, some by the call, some by the unique caller, and a few charge one flat fee no matter how busy you get.

The only honest way to compare them is to pick a call volume and do the sum. Below we do that for three sizes of business, using each vendor’s published plans (linked on each tool’s page, and summed up in the table under this guide).

The three ways you get billed

Per minute. You buy a bucket of talk time, such as 250 minutes, and pay a rate for every minute over (Rosie moves you up a plan instead). Rosie, Dialzara, Phonely, My AI Front Desk, RingCentral, Abby Connect and Sameday AI work this way. Long calls cost more. Watch the rounding: RingCentral bills in 30-second increments, so a 61-second call counts as 90 seconds.

Per call. You buy a number of answered calls. Upfirst, Smith.ai, Simple Phones and Quo’s Sona work this way. A ten-minute call costs the same as a one-minute call. Upfirst doesn’t count spam or calls under 15 seconds, and Quo skips calls under 15 seconds too. Goodcall is a variation: it counts unique callers per month, so a customer who calls three times counts once.

Flat. NextPhone charges $199 a month for unlimited inbound calls with no overage. Restaurant tools such as Loman and Slang AI price per location, and only through a quote.

Which is cheapest depends on how long your calls are and how many you get. That is why the examples below matter more than any “from $X” headline.

The assumptions

We use about 3 minutes per call, which is a reasonable middle for a service business: a booking, a quote question or a message. Three volumes:

• 50 calls a month (150 minutes): a solo tradesperson or a small practice that only needs overflow and after-hours cover.
• 200 calls a month (600 minutes): a busy small business that wants every call answered.
• 500 calls a month (1,500 minutes): a multi-person office or a trade with seasonal rushes.

For each tool we pick the cheapest published plan, or plan plus overage, that covers the volume. Monthly billing, no annual discount. Tax, extra phone numbers and add-ons aren’t included.

At 50 calls a month

Service	Cheapest way to cover it	Monthly	Per call
Simple Phones	Basic, 100 calls included	$49	$0.98
Rosie	Professional, 250 minutes included	$49	$0.98
Phonely	Starter, about 200 minutes included	$50	$1.00
Quo (Sona)	Starter user $19 + Sona Tier 2 $25 (40 calls) + 10 × $0.75	$51.50	$1.03
Upfirst	Starter, 30 calls + 20 × $1.50	$54.95	$1.10
Dialzara	Business Lite, 60 minutes + 90 × $0.48	$72.20	$1.44
RingCentral	Standalone, 100 minutes + 50 × $0.50	$74	$1.48
Smith.ai	Free plan, 25 calls + 25 × $3.00	$75	$1.50
Goodcall	Starter, 100 unique callers	$79	$1.58
My AI Front Desk	Business-in-a-Box, 200 minutes	$99	$1.98
NextPhone	Pro, unlimited	$199	$3.98

At this size, several services land near $50. The differences are in what the cheap plan leaves out. Rosie’s $49 plan texts callers a booking link instead of booking into your calendar; direct booking and live transfers start on its $149 plan. Dialzara’s Business Lite has no calendar sync and only blind transfers. Phonely’s Starter has no outbound calling or CRM integrations. Upfirst puts every feature on every plan. Simple Phones has no overage rate: going over its call limit releases your phone numbers, so size the plan with room to spare.

Smith.ai’s free plan covers 25 calls outright. Overage is off by default, so you’d need to turn it on, at $3 a call, to cover 50.

Abby Connect ($246, with a live human team behind the AI) and Sameday AI ($449, built for the trades) are priced for bigger operations; at 50 calls they cost $5 to $9 a call.

At 200 calls a month

Service	Cheapest way to cover it	Monthly	Per call
Goodcall	Starter + extra callers, or Growth	$105 to $129	$0.53 to $0.65
Quo (Sona)	Starter user $19 + Sona Tier 4 $99 (250 calls)	$118	$0.59
Simple Phones	Advanced, 500 calls	$149	$0.75
Rosie	Scale, 1,000 minutes	$149	$0.75
Phonely	Professional, about 650 minutes	$150	$0.75
Upfirst	Pro, 300 calls	$159.95	$0.80
My AI Front Desk	200 minutes + 400 minutes from credits	$189	$0.95
NextPhone	Pro, unlimited	$199	$1.00
Dialzara	Business Plus, 500 minutes + 100 × $0.40	$239	$1.20
RingCentral	Standalone, 100 minutes + 500 × $0.50	$299	$1.50
Smith.ai	Pro 150 calls ($270) + 50 × $2.30	$385	$1.93
Abby Connect	Professional (400 AI minutes) + 200 × $1.50	$899	$4.50

Goodcall’s range depends on repeat callers. Goodcall estimates 100 unique callers make about 150 calls, so 200 calls is roughly 133 callers: $79 plus 33 × $0.79, about $105. If every call came from a new number, its $129 Growth plan (500 callers) covers it.

My AI Front Desk’s extra minutes come out of a credit pool: 25 credits ($0.25) a minute, with 1,000 credits included each month and $10 per 1,000 after that. So 400 extra minutes use 10,000 credits: the free 1,000 plus nine top-ups, $90.

Sameday AI’s Launch plan covers 500 minutes for $449; the other 100 minutes bill at a rate Sameday doesn’t publish. Its Scale plan covers it outright at $789.

This is the volume where pricing models start to matter. A per-minute plan with a small bucket (RingCentral’s 100 minutes) gets expensive fast on overage. Plans with large buckets (Rosie’s 1,000 minutes) or per-call pricing hold up well.

At 500 calls a month

Service	Cheapest way to cover it	Monthly	Per call
Goodcall	Growth, 500 unique callers	$129	$0.26
Simple Phones	Advanced at exactly 500 calls, or Premium (2,500)	$149 to $249	$0.30 to $0.50
NextPhone	Pro, unlimited	$199	$0.40
Quo (Sona)	Starter user $19 + Sona Tier 5 $199 (600 calls)	$218	$0.44
Upfirst	Scale, 600 calls	$299	$0.60
Rosie	Growth, 2,000 minutes	$299	$0.60
Phonely	Starter, about 200 minutes + 1,300 × $0.25	$375	$0.75
My AI Front Desk	200 minutes + 1,300 minutes from credits	$419	$0.84
Dialzara	Business Elite, 1,000 minutes + 500 × $0.35	$524	$1.05
RingCentral	Standalone, 100 minutes + 1,400 × $0.50	$749	$1.50
Smith.ai	Enterprise, 500 calls	$800	$1.60
Abby Connect	Growth (1,000 AI minutes) + 500 × $1.38	$2,070	$4.14

At this size, flat and unique-caller pricing win clearly. NextPhone’s $199 doesn’t move however much you talk, and Goodcall’s Growth plan covers 500 unique callers for $129. Simple Phones’ Advanced plan has no overage, so the $249 Premium plan is the safe choice if you sometimes go over 500.

RingCentral also sells extra minute bundles but doesn’t publish their prices, so ask what they cost before you commit. Phonely and My AI Front Desk both offer custom enterprise rates at this volume (Phonely advertises as low as 5 cents a minute; My AI Front Desk from 7 cents).

Sameday AI’s $789 Scale plan covers 1,000 of the 1,500 minutes, with the rest at an unpublished rate.

The costs that don’t show in the headline price

• Feature gates. The cheapest plan often skips the thing you need most. Check that calendar booking and live transfer are on the plan you’re pricing. NextPhone’s CRM updates start at $299, and Rosie’s direct booking at $149.
• HIPAA. A medical or dental office needs a signed BAA. Goodcall requires its $299 Scale plan; Upfirst only signs BAAs on Enterprise; NextPhone and Smith.ai can’t be used with patient health information at all.
• Setup fees. Most self-serve services charge none. Quote-only tools can: a competitor’s survey of shared quotes puts Avoca’s setup fee at $600 (Upfirst).
• Annual billing. Paying yearly saves roughly 15 to 20% at Upfirst, Rosie and NextPhone, but Upfirst doesn’t refund a prepaid year if you cancel.
• Per-user pricing. Quo charges per user for its phone system, so a ten-person team pays for ten seats before adding Sona tiers.

Building your own costs less, sometimes

Developer platforms charge per minute for the raw parts. At 600 minutes, Bland AI’s $0.14 rate comes to $84, and Vapi’s own calculator puts 1,000 minutes at $82 to $129, so roughly $49 to $77 (Vapi pricing). That’s cheaper than most of the table, but someone has to build and maintain the agent. See AI voice agent vs AI receptionist.

Human answering services sit at the other end: Ruby’s 500-minute plan is $1,725, and AnswerConnect charges $575 for 400 minutes plus $1.85 a minute after. See AI receptionist vs answering service.

How to pick

1. Count last month’s calls and guess their average length. Your phone bill or carrier dashboard usually shows both.
2. If calls are long or volume is high, favor per-call, unique-caller or flat pricing. If calls are short and few, a small per-minute bucket is fine.
3. Confirm the plan you’re pricing includes booking and transfer, and HIPAA if you need it.
4. Use the free trial on real calls before you pay. Most of the services above have one.

For a ranked shortlist by price, see cheapest AI receptionists.