AI Receptionist Pricing in 2026: I Costed 200 Calls on 7 Services

Two hundred inbound calls a month. Same business, same callers, same three-minute average. Goodcall bills that month at $129. Smith.ai bills the identical month at $1,965. Both numbers came off the vendor's own pricing page on 4 October 2026.

About fifteen times, for the same work. What each company decided to count is doing almost all of that work: a call, a minute, a bucket of minutes, or a unique customer. Almost none of that gap is about how human the voice sounds.

I run an AI agent platform, so other people's pricing pages are most of my reading. I keep a running note on the cheapest AI agent platforms for the same reason. For this post I read seven answering-service pricing pages on 4 October 2026, fixed one ordinary workload, and worked out the cheapest qualifying plan on each. The arithmetic is written out so you can redo it with your own call log.

What I did not do: I did not place a test call, I did not sign up anywhere, and I have not heard any of these agents speak. This is a costing exercise. If you want to know whether the thing sounds like a person, you will still have to dial the number yourself.

One warning before the table. Posts ranking for this query keep repeating that Smith.ai starts at $150 a month for 75 calls. Smith.ai's own page says 30 calls for $300. Check every number in this category against the vendor, mine included.

How I compared them

On 4 October 2026 I opened each vendor's pricing page with a desktop browser and wrote down every tier, every included allowance and every overage rate it published. Then I defined one workload and costed it on all seven. Five questions did the work:

• What unit does the bill count? Calls, minutes, a flat bucket of minutes, or unique customers. This is the single most useful thing on any of these pages.
• What does the cheapest qualifying plan cost for the same workload? I costed the plan that actually covers the month, overage included, which on most of these pages sits a tier above the headline entry price.
• What happens when you cross the allowance? Some publish the rate. Some do not, and you find out on the invoice.
• Is a free trial published on the page? Two of the seven publish one. For the rest I am reporting silence as silence.
• What is published versus what you have to ask for? A page with one number on it is a page that wants you on a sales call.

Two absences worth naming. Numa's pricing page rendered no price text I could read, which means the page did not load its prices for me, so I have no figure for it and will not guess one. Several vendors from the first page of Google, including NextPhone, HiReceptionist, SkipCalls, Trillet, Aira and Voksha, I never checked first-hand. They are not in this post because I have nothing verified to say about them.

And to repeat the limit, because it matters: I read pages and did arithmetic. No calls, no signups, no voice quality judgements.

What 200 calls a month actually costs

Here is the workload. A home-services business or a small clinic takes 200 inbound calls in a month. The average call runs about three minutes, so 600 minutes of talk time. Those 200 calls come from roughly 150 different people, because some callers ring back. That is an unremarkable month for a two-van plumbing firm or a single-chair dental practice.

For each service I took the cheapest published plan that covers that month, added overage where the plan runs short, and wrote down the total. Every figure is monthly billing, because month one is what you actually risk when you try a service.

Cheapest qualifying configuration on each vendor's published monthly pricing, read on 4 October 2026, for 200 inbound calls, 600 minutes of talk time and about 150 unique callers. Gravity is not in this table: Gravity does not answer phone calls.

The working, so you can check me:

• Goodcall Growth, $129. Covers 250 unique customers with minutes unlimited, so 150 callers sit comfortably inside and talk time never enters the bill at all.
• Rosie Scale, $149. A thousand included minutes against 600 used. Nothing to add.
• Upfirst Pro, $159.95. Premium covers 90 calls at $59.95 and extra calls cost $1.00, so 110 extras would make $169.95. Pro covers all 200 for $159.95 and wins by $10.
• Dialzara Business Plus, $239. The $199 plan carries 500 minutes, the remaining 100 bill at $0.40 each, which is $40. Elite covers 1,000 minutes for $349 and is the worse deal at this volume.
• Simple Phones, $97 and upward. One figure is published: $97 a month for 100 calls. This month is double that allowance and the next tier is not on the page.
• Smith.ai Basic, $1,965. The $810 plan carries 90 calls. The other 110 bill at $10.50 each, which is $1,155. Pro covers 300 calls for $2,100, so Basic plus overage is still the cheaper route. Add the $1.50 booking charge and a month where all 200 calls end in an appointment costs another $300.
• Ruby, $1,725 and upward. The published ladder stops at 500 minutes for $1,725, and this month needs 600, so the real bill is higher than the figure in the table.

$129 to $1,965. Same calls, same callers, same month.

The four billing units

Seven services, four different things being counted. This is the part of the decision that actually moves the invoice, and it is usually the last thing anyone looks at.

• Per call (Upfirst, Smith.ai, Simple Phones). A 40-second wrong number costs exactly what an eight-minute booking costs. It punishes a business that fields a lot of short junk calls and rewards one with long, substantial ones.
• Per minute of talk time (Dialzara, and Ruby on the human side). Chatty callers get expensive fast. A ten-second spam call is almost free.
• Flat, with a bucket of minutes (Rosie). Entirely predictable until the month you cross the bucket, which is usually the month something good happened to your marketing.
• Per unique customer, minutes unlimited (Goodcall). The only unit in the set that does not meter talk time at all.

Goodcall is the outlier and it is worth sitting with for a second. Two hundred calls from 150 people costs the same as 400 calls from the same 150 people. Call length is irrelevant. What Goodcall sells is reach into a customer base, and airtime comes free with it.

So the buying order is: measure your average call length, measure your repeat-caller ratio, then pick the unit. AI agent pricing explained walks the same trap through the wider agent market, where the counted unit is a run, a seat or a token.

1. Goodcall: the cheapest fit here, and the only one that ignores talk time

Goodcall prices per agent and meters unique customers a month. Minutes and tokens are unlimited on every self-serve plan. As of October 2026, Starter is $79 a month per agent ($66 on annual billing) with 100 unique customers, Growth is $129 ($108 annual) with 250, and Scale is $249 ($208 annual) with 500. Every unique customer past the allowance is $0.50. Enterprise is custom, and annual billing is priced about 15% below monthly.

The ladder between plans is really a ladder of logic flows, people and call history. Starter gives you one logic flow, three team members, three directory contacts and seven days of call detail. Growth takes that to three flows and 30 days of call history. Scale goes to 25 flows and keeps the history with no cut-off.

For the 200-call month, Growth at $129 is the cheapest qualifying plan in this entire post. Goodcall is not a budget product. Its unit just happens to match the shape of that month.

Who the unique-customer meter favours

Any business whose callers come back. A repair shop with a book of regulars qualifies, so does a clinic where the same patients ring about the same appointment three times, and so does the kind of repeat-contact work in AI agents for real estate agents, where you field the same buyers all week. Each of those people costs you once a month however often they ring and however long they talk.

The meter turns against you when every caller is a stranger. A lead-generation business taking 600 brand new callers a month needs Scale at $249, and the 100 customers past its 500 allowance add $50 on top.

Best for

A business with a known, repeating customer base and calls that tend to run long.

Pricing

Starter $79 a month per agent ($66 annual), Growth $129 ($108), Scale $249 ($208), Enterprise custom. $0.50 per unique customer over the allowance, annual billing priced about 15% below monthly. As of October 2026.

Free trial

None published on the pricing page I read on 4 October 2026.

Verdict

If your callers are regulars, this is the cheapest unit in the category and the arithmetic is not close.

2. Rosie: flat monthly with a bucket of minutes

Rosie sells three flat plans, each with a bucket of minutes included. As of October 2026: Professional $49 a month for 250 minutes, Scale $149 for 1,000 minutes, Growth $299 for 2,000 minutes. Annual billing gives you two months free. The page states that discount in months, so I am leaving it in months.

The plans separate on what the agent is allowed to do. Professional takes custom messages across two scenarios, texts an appointment link, screens spam and includes a website chat widget. Scale raises that to five scenarios, books straight onto your calendar and adds call routing. Growth is unlimited scenarios with waterfall transfers. Website texting is a separate add-on at $50 a month for 25 conversations, then $1 per extra conversation.

What happens when the bucket runs out

The page does not publish a per-minute rate beyond the included minutes, and that is the one thing I would want in writing before signing. For this workload it does not bite: 600 minutes against Scale's 1,000 leaves real room, so the month costs $149 flat and nothing moves. The month to watch is the one with a marketing push behind it.

It suits an owner who wants a predictable number and no surprises to reconcile. There is a 7-day free trial, as of October 2026. Scale at $149 is the plan that fits the 200-call month, which puts it $20 above Goodcall's Growth for a bill that does not care who called or for how long.

3. Upfirst: the lowest entry price, if your volume is genuinely low

At $24.95 a month for 30 calls, Upfirst Starter is the cheapest published way onto this page as of October 2026. Premium is $59.95 for 90 calls, Pro $159.95 for 300, Scale $299 for 600. Annual billing takes 20% off, which lands those four at $20, $48, $128 and $240 a month.

The extra-call rate falls as you climb: $1.50 on Starter, $1.00 on Premium, $0.75 on Pro, $0.70 on Scale. Upfirst prints the Pro rate as $.75 on its own page; I am writing it as $0.75.

Upfirst also recognises returning callers and can recall what was said on previous calls. That is a useful feature. The bill still counts calls either way, so caller recognition never reshapes the invoice the way Goodcall's meter does.

Run this sum before you pick a tier

Compare the next plan up against the overage on the plan you are on. For 200 calls: Premium at $59.95 plus 110 extras at $1.00 is $169.95, while Pro covers all 200 for $159.95. Pro wins by $10. At 120 calls a month the answer flips and Premium plus overage is the cheaper home. Do that comparison at your own volume first, with your own worst month in mind.

Best for

A solo operator or a new business taking a handful of short calls a day and unwilling to commit real money yet.

Pricing

Starter $24.95 for 30 calls, Premium $59.95 for 90, Pro $159.95 for 300, Scale $299 for 600, per month. Extra calls $1.50, $1.00, $0.75 and $0.70 respectively. Annual billing 20% off. As of October 2026.

Free trial

None published on the pricing page I read on 4 October 2026.

Verdict

The right first purchase at low volume, and it stays competitive up to the 200-call month at $159.95.

4. Dialzara: minutes, with an overage rate that falls as you spend more

Four plans, each a bundle of minutes with a published per-minute rate beyond it. As of October 2026: Business Lite $29 for 60 minutes then $0.48 a minute, Business Pro $99 for 220 minutes then $0.45, Business Plus $199 for 500 minutes then $0.40, Business Elite $349 for 1,000 minutes then $0.35. Dialzara's page labels the set "Pricing as of 2026".

Publishing the overage rate at all is worth something. Most of this category makes you discover it.

Overage starts at minute 501 on Business Plus

At 600 minutes, Plus plus overage is $239 and Elite is $349, so the smaller plan wins. Cross 875 minutes and Elite becomes the cheaper home. That crossover is the number to write on a sticky note, because a busy month carries you across it without saying anything.

Plus and Elite also include ongoing custom prompt engineering, which is Dialzara absorbing the configuration work you would otherwise be doing on a Sunday evening.

There is a 7-day free trial, no contract and cancellation any time, as of October 2026. For the 200-call month the bill is $239: $199 for Business Plus and $40 of overage. The whole $110 gap to Goodcall's Growth plan comes from the unit.

5. Simple Phones: one published number and nothing behind it

Simple Phones publishes a single figure. Plans start at $97 a month for 100 calls, and its FAQ repeats the same line in the same words. As of 4 October 2026 that is the whole of the pricing on the page. It works out to $0.97 a call at that entry tier, and it is the one legible headline price in this set, with no tier maze to decode.

I cannot cost the 200-call month for it honestly. Two hundred calls is double the entry allowance, and the page says nothing about what the next tier costs or what call 101 bills at. The table carries $97 and upward because that is the only defensible number I have.

An entry tier tells you where billing starts, not where it lands. Without a published rate for call 101, a business doing 200 calls a month is budgeting a figure it cannot check, and the only way to find out is to ask sales. Every other service here publishes the next tier, and several publish the overage rate on every tier.

Treat the $97 as a conversation starter. Before you port a number, get two things in an email: what 200 calls costs, and what happens on call 101.

6. Smith.ai: human backup, and the figure the round-ups keep getting wrong

Start with the correction, because it is the most useful thing in this section. Several posts ranking for this query say Smith.ai starts at $150 a month for 75 calls. On smith.ai/pricing on 4 October 2026, the cheapest published plan was Starter: 30 calls for $300 a month. That is double the monthly price for fewer than half the calls, and it is the figure I would check first in whatever round-up you read after this one.

Smith.ai's published plans, read on smith.ai/pricing on 4 October 2026. Enterprise is custom.

That is a different order of magnitude from everything above, and the product explains it. Smith.ai is an AI receptionist with a human receptionist option behind it. Part of what you are buying is people, and people cost what people cost.

The add-ons that ride on every call

Per-call charges sit on top of the plan: $1.50 to book an appointment, $0.50 for an SMS or Slack notification with $0.25 per additional ping, $0.50 for a Microsoft Teams notification, $0.50 for text and email follow-up, $0.50 for a conflict check, $0.50 per extra CRM. Lead qualification is free. A month where all 200 calls end in a booking adds $300 to the bill before anything else is counted.

The page also makes a point of saying a 2am call costs the same as a 2pm one. That matters more than it sounds if your business is the kind people ring at 2am, because it is the clause that stops out-of-hours cover becoming a premium line item.

Best for

A law firm, specialist clinic or other business where one mishandled call costs more than the annual difference in price.

Pricing

Starter 30 calls $300 a month ($11.50 overage), Basic 90 calls $810 ($10.50), Pro 300 calls $2,100 ($8.50), Enterprise custom. Per-call add-ons from $0.50, booking $1.50. As of October 2026.

Free trial

None published on the pricing page I read on 4 October 2026.

Verdict

Priced for high-value leads and nothing else. If that is you, budget four figures and count the add-ons, which put another $300 on a month where all 200 calls end in a booking.

7. Ruby: real people, and the ceiling the AI prices are set against

Ruby is a human receptionist service, priced by the minute. I put it in this post because it is the number every AI service here is implicitly quoting against. As of October 2026: 50 minutes $250 a month, 100 minutes $395, 200 minutes $720, 500 minutes $1,725. Chat is bundled separately at $115 for 10 chats, $268 for 30 and $416 for 50, each described on the page as a 20% saving.

The published ladder stops at 500 minutes and this workload needs 600, so $1,725 is a floor. Above the top tier you are on a sales call.

When paying for people is the right answer

When one badly handled call costs you more than the difference. If a single retained client or signed contract covers a year of the service, the choice between $1,725 and $129 stops being an arithmetic problem. Below that threshold, the gap is most of a part-time salary and the AI services are doing a serious job of looking reasonable.

Best for

High-value, low-volume inbound where a human voice is part of what the client is paying you for.

Pricing

50 minutes $250 a month, 100 minutes $395, 200 minutes $720, 500 minutes $1,725. Chat bundles $115 for 10, $268 for 30, $416 for 50. As of October 2026.

Free trial

None published on the pricing page I read on 4 October 2026.

Top of the published ladder

500 minutes for $1,725 a month. Four of the AI services in this post cover the same 600-minute month for $239 or less.

Which one should you choose?

Measure two things before you shop. Your average call length, which your phone bill or call log already knows. Your repeat-caller ratio, which is unique numbers divided by total calls. Those two numbers choose the unit, and the unit chooses the service.

Then route on this:

• Long calls from people who ring back: Goodcall. Unique-customer billing makes talk time free, and at $129 a month for the 200-call workload it is the cheapest thing in this post as of October 2026.
• You want one predictable number and no reconciliation: Rosie Scale at $149 a month, with 1,000 included minutes against the 600 you use.
• Low volume, short calls, small commitment: Upfirst from $24.95 a month for 30 calls. Run the plan-versus-overage sum at your own volume first.
• Volume you cannot predict, and you want the overage rate in writing: Dialzara, where all four tiers publish theirs.
• A missed lead is a legal or clinical problem and you want humans available: Smith.ai, at four figures once the per-call add-ons are counted.
• Every call has to be handled the way a person would handle it: Ruby, from $250 a month for 50 minutes and $1,725 for 500.
• You would rather build the phone agent than rent one: none of these. The developer platforms bill per minute instead of per call, which is a different arithmetic problem. For 1,000 minutes a month the four with self-serve pricing run from about $40 to about $140, and the fifth starts at a $30,000-a-year enterprise contract. I costed all five in AI voice agent pricing, including the crossover point where a platform fee starts paying for itself.
• Your customer contact is mostly text, chat and order questions: a phone agent is the wrong first purchase. The patterns in AI agents for ecommerce stores fit that shape better.

Two things I deliberately will not tell you. Which of these sounds most human, and which resolves the most calls without a transfer. No service in this set publishes a resolution rate I could verify, and I placed no test calls, so any ranking I gave you on voice quality would be invented. Shortlist on the unit, then dial each shortlisted number yourself and listen to what picks up.

And check my figures against the vendor before you buy. Everything here was read on 4 October 2026, this category reprices often, and the round-up posts you will read next are quietly copying each other's 2025 numbers.

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