Upfirst review: AI receptionist pricing per call, from $24.95 a month

Upfirst is a self-serve AI receptionist for small businesses. You sign up, enter your website so it can learn about your business, pick a voice, and forward your calls to the Upfirst number that comes with every plan. It answers around the clock, takes messages, qualifies leads, books appointments, warm-transfers calls to your staff and texts callers. You get a summary, recording and transcript of every call by email or text (Upfirst).

Two choices make it easy to recommend for a small business. It prices by calls answered, not minutes, and it puts every feature on every plan, so the cheap plan doesn’t quietly leave out booking or transfers.

Who it’s for

Upfirst suits solo owners and small offices that miss calls and want to set things up themselves: a real estate agent, a law firm, a chiropractor, a plumber, a salon. Its calendar list is unusually broad for the price, with Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly, Acuity Scheduling, Square and Clio Manage (integrations). The Clio link makes it a natural fit for small law firms.

It fits less well if you need a business associate agreement (BAA) for HIPAA on a small budget: Upfirst signs BAAs only on its custom-priced Enterprise plan (pricing).

What callers hear

Callers get an AI voice that answers in your business’s name, answers questions from what it learned from your site, takes a message or qualifies the lead with your questions, books an appointment, or puts the caller through to your team with a warm transfer. Upfirst says it answers in 35+ languages and switches when the caller does (Upfirst). It can also text the caller, for example a booking confirmation.

What it costs at real call volumes

The four published plans are priced by calls a month:

• Starter, $24.95 for 30 calls, then $1.50 per extra call.
• Premium, $59.95 for 90 calls, then $1.
• Pro, $159.95 for 300 calls, then $0.75.
• Scale, $299 for 600 calls, then $0.70, with white-glove onboarding and integrations set up for you.

Paying for a year saves 20%. Annual plans get a yearly bucket of calls instead of a monthly one, so a busy month doesn’t trigger overage as long as the year averages out, but there’s no refund if you cancel mid-year (pricing FAQs).

Spam, robocalls and calls under 15 seconds aren’t counted. That matters more than it sounds: on a per-call plan, every hang-up and wrong number would otherwise cost you.

Take 200 calls a month. Call length doesn’t affect the bill, so the usual 3-minute assumption drops out:

• Premium: $59.95 plus 110 extra calls at $1 = about $170.
• Pro: $159.95 covers it with 100 calls to spare, or $128 a month billed annually.

Pro is the right plan at that volume, at about $0.80 a call, or $0.64 annually. Compared with per-minute services at 600 minutes, Dialzara comes to about $239 and My AI Front Desk to about $189. Rosie’s $149 plan is in the same range, and Goodcall charges $129 if those 200 calls come from fewer than 500 different numbers.

The small plans fill up fast. Starter’s 30 calls is about one a day; a business taking 60 calls a month pays $24.95 plus $45 in overage, more than Premium. Pick the plan from your real count, which the trial will tell you.

Each extra agent, for a second location or business line, is $9.95 a month and shares the plan’s calls.

Trial, contracts and setup

The free trial runs 14 days or 100 calls, whichever comes first, plus 25 texts, and needs no credit card. That’s one of the more generous trials in the category, and 100 calls is enough to see how it handles your real callers. Plans are month to month.

You keep your number by forwarding calls to Upfirst, or port it in at no charge. Setup is self-serve on every plan; Scale and Enterprise add white-glove onboarding.

What it books into

Appointments go straight into Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly, Acuity Scheduling, Square or Clio Manage. Zapier and Make cover other tools. For anything custom, Upfirst offers custom API actions and an MCP server rather than a public API (docs), which is a job for whoever handles your tech.

It doesn’t list field-service software like ServiceTitan or Jobber, so a home service company that wants jobs on its dispatch board should compare the trade tools in our best AI receptionists for home services.

When the AI can’t handle a call

It warm-transfers the caller to your staff or takes a detailed message. Ask what happens when nobody on your team picks up. If you want a live receptionist team behind the AI, compare Smith.ai, which can hand calls to its own live receptionists.

There’s no native mobile app yet; you can save the web app to your phone’s home screen (help center). Call summaries by text and email cover most of what an app would do.

Privacy

Upfirst’s privacy policy says it doesn’t use customer content to train AI models, and that its AI providers work under zero data retention terms. Recordings and transcripts are kept while your account is active and deleted no sooner than 90 days after you cancel (privacy policy).

How it compares

vs Smith.ai. Also per call, but more than twice the price at 200 calls a month, in exchange for live receptionists behind the AI and legal and sales integrations.

vs Goodcall. Bills per unique caller from $79, often cheaper at volume, but English only and Google Calendar only.

vs Simple Phones. Another per-call self-serve option, from $49 for 100 calls.

Verdict

Upfirst is one of the easiest AI receptionists to recommend to a small business. The entry price is low, every feature is on every plan, spam and hang-ups don’t count against you, and the no-card trial lets you test it on up to 100 real calls. It books into more calendars than most at this price, including Clio for law firms. Watch the overage on the small plans, and remember that a BAA means the Enterprise plan. It’s a strong contender on our best AI receptionists for small business page.