2026 Report

AI Receptionist Cost per Call: 2026 Report

Published 2026 prices from 19 AI receptionist products and platforms, turned into cost per call at 100 and 300 calls a month.

An AI receptionist is software that answers a business’s phone with a voice agent: It greets callers, answers common questions, takes messages and books appointments. This report lines up the published 2026 prices of 19 AI receptionist products and platforms and turns them into cost per call, so they can be compared with each other and with live answering.

Quick answer: An AI receptionist costs $49 to $200 for a 100-call month in 2026, with a median of $99, or about $0.99 per call. A 300-call month costs $139 to $530, with a median of $274, or about $0.91 per call. Build-it-yourself voice platforms run about $0.11 to $0.40 a minute before build costs.

Table 1: Cost per call by product

We found three things in this table:

• AI pricing drops a little with volume, from $0.99 a call at 100 calls to $0.91 at 300.
• The low end is about $0.50 a call. Rosie, Goodcall, Quo Sona and Upfirst all price a 100-call month under $75.
• The products that cost $1.75 to $2.00 a call are sold by answering services that also offer live staff, like Smith.ai, Go Answer and Moneypenny.

Table 2: How AI receptionists charge

We found three things in these models:

• Per-minute AI plans are the safest pick for short calls. At $0.25 to $0.95 a minute, a one-minute message call costs under $1.
• Per-caller and flat plans protect high-volume businesses. A shop with many repeat or long calls pays the same either way.
• The platforms look like the lowest cost on paper, at $0.11 a minute, but someone has to build, test and maintain the agent. They fit companies with a developer, not a small office.

Table 3: What to check before you buy

We found three things in this table:

• Handoff is the term that matters most. A product that can’t pass a caller to a person turns a $1 call into a lost customer.
• Spam filtering is worth real money. Robocalls are counted as calls on some plans and skipped on others.
• Check the overage rate against your busiest month, not your average one.

What changes outside the US

An AI receptionist bill has two parts: The phone line that carries the call, and the AI that talks. On build-your-own platforms, only the phone line changes by country, and it is the small part. This table uses Twilio, the phone network many AI receptionists run on.

We found three things in this table:

• Incoming calls cost about the same everywhere. The gap between the US and the UK is a fraction of a cent a minute, which disappears next to the 7 to 15 cents the AI costs.
• The local number costs $1.85 to $2.35 more a month in the UK and Australia. That is the only phone cost most small businesses will notice.
• Outgoing calls to mobiles are where countries split. An Australian mobile costs about five times what a US one does, which matters only for AI that calls customers back.

The bigger difference is who will sell to you. Most US products publish only US-dollar prices, and some, like Rosie, support only US numbers. In the UK, Moneypenny’s AI receptionist starts at £49 a month. RingCentral launched its AI receptionist from £32 a month in the UK (about $43) and A$62 in Australia (about $44), about 10% above its $39 US add-on price (its standalone US plan is $49), sold as an add-on to its phone plans there.

AI or live answering?

On price alone, AI wins: The median AI receptionist costs about $1 a call, and the median live service costs about $4. The harder question is which calls belong with each. Our AI vs human call answering report compares cost per call, caller preference and resolution rates side by side, and our call answering pricing report has the full live-service price list.

Conclusions

• Expect about $1 a call. That is the median for a packaged AI receptionist at 100 calls a month.
• Pick the pricing model that fits your calls. Per minute for short calls, per caller or flat for heavy volume.
• Never buy without a human handoff. It is the term that protects the callers who matter most.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an AI receptionist cost?

A packaged AI receptionist costs $49-$200 for a 100-call month in 2026, with a median of $99. A 300-call month costs $139-$530, with a median of $274. That works out to about $0.91-$0.99 per call at the median.

Is an AI receptionist cheaper than an answering service?

Yes, on price per call. The median AI receptionist costs $0.99 per call for a 100-call month, and the median live answering service costs $3.98 per call for the same month.

How do AI receptionists charge?

Five ways: Per call ($0.45-$3.00), per minute ($0.25-$0.95), per unique caller, a flat monthly fee, or a build-your-own platform at about $0.11-$0.40 a minute plus build costs.

Does an AI receptionist cost more in the UK or Australia?

Only slightly. On build-your-own platforms the AI engine costs the same everywhere; the phone line adds about $1.85 to $2.35 a month for a local number and a fraction of a cent per incoming minute. In the UK, Moneypenny’s AI receptionist starts at £49 a month, and RingCentral launched its AI receptionist from £32 in the UK and A$62 in Australia, about 10% above its US add-on price. Toll-free numbers are the exception: Incoming UK toll-free calls cost $0.0798 a minute on Twilio, about 3.6 times the US rate.

What should I check before buying an AI receptionist?

Four terms: Whether it can hand callers to a human, what counts as a call (spam and hang-ups), how it rounds minutes, and the overage rate for a busy month.

Sources & methodology
• Product pricing: Vendor pricing pages for Smith.ai, Upfirst, Quo, RingCentral, Moneypenny, Rosie, Dialzara, My AI Front Desk, Answering Service Care, Go Answer, Abby Connect, Retell and Bland, checked October 26, 2026.
• Third-party pricing: Goodcall from CloudTalk (second source lists lower prices); NextPhone, Nextiva and Allo from Upfirst; Vapi from Quiq; Synthflow from Ringly.
• Phone costs outside the US: Twilio voice pricing pages for the US, UK and Australia, October 2026. UK and Australian prices: Moneypenny UK; RingCentral launch announcements for the UK (August 2025) and Australia (November 2025). Rosie US-only: Quo.
• Cost model: 2 billed minutes per call, based on a 63-second median answered call across 626,000 calls (Upfirst, vendor data) plus rounding and note time. Lowest-cost fitting plan plus overage; setup fees excluded.
• About Upcision: We have run outbound campaigns for answering services and phone-coverage providers since 2019, across 14 B2B verticals, for clients ranging from SMB to Fortune 500.
• PDF copy: Want this report as a PDF? Contact us through upcision.com and we’ll send it over.
• Citing this page: Writers are welcome to cite this report with attribution to Upcision Research and a link to this page.

Jared Diamond

Founder of Upcision, a pay-per-result B2B lead generation company that has worked with clients ranging from SMB to Fortune 500.