AI receptionist cost calculator.
Every missed call is a customer who called the next business on the list. Slide in your call volume and see what an AI receptionist costs against an in-house hire and a human answering service, plus what those missed calls are already costing you.
What one new customer or booked job is worth to you.
$304to$912
~3,040 call minutes/mo at $0.10 to $0.30 all-in. Answers 24/7, never queues a caller.
- In-house receptionist
- $3,100–$3,900 / mo
- Human answering service
- $4,560–$6,080 / mo
- Typical saving vs in-house
- $2,892 / mo
$17,100 / mo
190 missed calls a month × 30% close rate × $300 per customer. An AI receptionist answers these; it doesn't have to be perfect to pay for itself.
AI receptionist pricing in 2026.
Three ways to buy the same capability. Flat-rate SaaS receptionists ($99 to $500 a month) are the fastest start: sign up, forward your number, done, with per-minute overage once you pass the plan cap. Usage-priced platforms run $0.10 to $0.30 per minute all-in and scale with your actual call volume. Custom-built agents, wired to your calendar, CRM and scripts, cost a one-time build (typically $3,000 to $15,000) and then run near raw platform rates of $0.05 to $0.15 per minute.
The crossover math is simple: below a few hundred minutes a month, flat SaaS is fine. Past 1,000 minutes, or the moment you need real integrations, usage pricing and custom builds win, because SaaS margin is a tax on every minute forever.
AI vs in-house staff vs answering service.
An in-house receptionist costs $3,100 to $3,900 a month with overhead, works business hours, takes leave, and does far more than answer phones: greeting visitors, paperwork, judgment calls. If you need those things, this page is not arguing against hiring. A human answering service bills $1.50 to $2.00 per minute and puts a trained stranger on your calls, competent but scripted, at a price that grows linearly with volume.
The AI receptionist takes the slice of the job that is pure call handling: answer instantly, every time, at 3pm or 3am, book the appointment, take the message, text the caller a confirmation. It costs about a tenth of a hire, and it never puts a customer on hold because two calls arrived at once. Most businesses we build for end up hybrid: AI answers first, humans get the handoffs that matter.
AI voice agent pricing, unbundled.
Every AI receptionist is an AI voice agent under the hood: telephony, speech-to-text, a language model and text-to-speech, orchestrated well. Those raw ingredients cost $0.05 to $0.15 per minute at 2026 platform prices. Everything above that is packaging, and whether it is worth paying depends on volume. If you want the unbundled version built around your business, that is literally what we do.
Common questions.
01How much does an AI receptionist cost?
Expect $0.10 to $0.30 per call minute all-in for a well-built AI voice agent in 2026, which for most small businesses means $60 to $900 a month depending on call volume. Flat-rate SaaS receptionists cluster between $99 and $500 a month with minute caps. A custom-built agent adds a one-time build cost but runs at raw platform rates and does exactly what your business needs.
02What does an AI receptionist cost versus in-house staff?
A full-time US receptionist costs roughly $3,100 to $3,900 a month once you include payroll overhead, and covers about 40 hours a week. An AI receptionist handling the same call volume typically runs a tenth of that and answers around the clock. The honest comparison is not only money: a good human does things AI cannot, but most front-desk call handling is exactly the repetitive triage AI does well.
03AI receptionist vs live answering service: which is cheaper?
Human answering services bill $1.50 to $2.00 per minute, so 3,000 call minutes costs $4,500 to $6,000 a month. The same volume through an AI receptionist is $300 to $900. The service wins when your calls genuinely need human judgment on every pickup; for appointment booking, hours, directions and message-taking, the AI does the job at a fraction of the price.
04What do AI voice agent platforms charge under the hood?
Voice platforms like Vapi and Retell charge roughly $0.05 to $0.15 per minute for the stack of telephony, speech-to-text, the language model and text-to-speech, before any markup. SaaS receptionist products bundle that with a dashboard and support and resell it at $0.30 to $1.00 per effective minute. If your volume is high, that gap is your business case for building custom.
05Will an AI receptionist actually book appointments?
Yes, that is the core use case in 2026. A properly integrated agent checks your real calendar, books, reschedules, answers pricing and hours questions, takes structured messages, and hands off to a human number for anything outside its script. The quality bar is integration depth: an agent wired into your calendar and CRM feels like staff, a generic one feels like voicemail with extra steps.
06How much revenue do missed calls actually cost?
Multiply missed calls per month by your close rate and your average customer value; the calculator above does it live. For a service business missing a quarter of 25 daily calls at a $300 average job, that is roughly $17,000 a month at stake. Even capturing a third of it dwarfs what any receptionist option costs.
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Want an AI receptionist that sounds like your business?
We build custom voice agents wired into your calendar, CRM and workflows, at platform rates instead of SaaS margins. Tell us about your call volume and we'll tell you honestly whether custom is worth it for you.