How Much Does an AI Receptionist Cost? (2026 Pricing Guide)

Most AI receptionist services are priced on calling minutes rather than per seat, and entry plans commonly sit in the low hundreds of dollars per month. DialsDone starts at $89 per month for 200 calling minutes, with $499 per month for 1,000 minutes.

What decides your actual bill is not the sticker price but your minutes: how many calls you take, how long a real conversation runs, and whether calls you are currently missing start getting answered. That last one is the number most people forget, because it does not appear anywhere in their current phone bill.

If you are still working out what an AI receptionist does rather than what it costs, start with our complete guide to AI receptionists.

Nearly every provider uses one of three, and the differences matter most when your call volume is uneven.

Do this before you look at any pricing page. It takes two numbers you already have and it is the only thing that makes quotes comparable.

1. Count your inbound calls per month. Your phone system or carrier will have this.
2. Estimate the average length of a real conversation — not including rings and voicemail. For most small businesses this is one to three minutes.
3. Multiply. 100 calls at two minutes is roughly 200 minutes a month.
4. Add the calls you currently miss. After-hours calls, calls during busy periods, and callers who hang up while on hold all become answered calls once an agent is live. This is the step people skip, and it is why the first month often runs higher than forecast.

Then add headroom for seasonality rather than buying exactly what you calculated. Being one plan too small is more disruptive than being slightly too large, particularly if your provider stops answering when a bundle runs out.

On direct cost the comparison is not close. A full-time receptionist in the US typically represents a salary in the tens of thousands of dollars per year before payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and cover for holidays and sickness. AI receptionist plans are priced in hundreds of dollars per month.

But cost is not the whole comparison, and it would be dishonest to present it as one. A person greets people who walk in, handles the situation nobody wrote a process for, notices that a caller sounds upset, and builds relationships with repeat clients over years. If those things matter in your business, the cheaper option is not automatically the better one.

The more realistic framing for most small businesses is not replacement but coverage: an AI agent answers the calls that currently reach voicemail — evenings, weekends, and the moments when everybody is already on the phone.

Answering services are typically priced per minute or per call against a monthly minimum, and per minute they generally cost more than AI, because a person is occupying the line for every second billed.

Compare them on cost per handled call rather than headline price, and make sure both sides of the comparison include the same calls — particularly out-of-hours ones, where an answering service may charge a premium and an AI agent usually does not distinguish.

There is a capability difference too, and it runs in both directions. Answering services take messages reliably but often cannot book directly into your calendar or answer detailed questions about your business. An AI agent can do both, and it will not exercise judgment about an unusual caller the way a trained operator might.

Ask about all six before committing. Any of them can change the real total.

Flat monthly plans, priced on calling minutes, with no per-seat fee, no annual contract and cancellation at any time. The same plans cover the AI Receptionist, the AI Sales Agent and the AI Follow-up Agent — minutes are shared, so you are not buying a separate subscription per agent.