2026-06-22 · 4 min read
How Much Does an AI Receptionist Cost? (From $40/mo)
What an AI receptionist costs versus a traditional receptionist or answering service, across all three plans — and how to work out which one you need.
Pricing for answering your phone ranges wildly. Here's how the main options stack up for a local service business.
The options
- Full-time receptionist: ~$3,500+/mo, plus benefits, and they go home at 5pm.
- Traditional answering service: $1,000–$3,000+/mo, message-taking only.
- AI receptionist: from $40/mo, answering and booking 24/7.
The three plans
- Basic — $40/mo plus a one-time $197 setup. Missed-call text-back, booking and CRM. No AI voice.
- Plus — $97/mo plus $49 setup. Adds the AI voice receptionist, with 75 AI minutes a month included, then metered.
- Core — $297/mo, no setup fee. Unlimited AI minutes, review requests, database reactivation, text-to-pay and 24/7 support.
Paying annually gives you two months free on any plan, and there are no contracts.
Which one do you actually need?
If your problem is that missed calls never get followed up, Basic solves it for $40 a month: every missed call gets an instant text back, and the conversation continues instead of dying. If you want calls actually answered and booked by a voice rather than a text, that is Plus. Core is for businesses whose phone volume is high enough that metered minutes stop making sense.
The real ROI
The cost question is the wrong one. The right one is: how many jobs are you losing to missed calls right now? At most trade ticket sizes, capturing a single extra job covers the entry plan for a year.
Hear it before you decide anything: call 872-246-9117 and try to stump it. That is the AI answering, not a recording.