How Much Does an AI Receptionist Cost in 2026? Prices at 100, 300 and 1,000 Calls

Short answer: for a small business taking 300 calls a month of about 3 minutes each, an AI receptionist costs $129 to $500 a month on the plans we priced, verified on vendor pages in October 2026. Goodcall Growth is cheapest at $129, Trillet follows at $199, and Smith.ai's AI plan sits at the top of that range. Smith.ai's human receptionists cost $2,100 for the same 300 calls.

Picture a 5-person plumbing or cleaning business that loses jobs because nobody picks up after 6 pm. The question is not whether AI answering is cheaper than a person; it is which billing unit fits your calls. Vendors charge per minute, per call or per unique caller, and the same month of calls can cost nearly four times more on the wrong one.

What an AI receptionist costs at 100, 300 and 1,000 calls a month

Sorted by cost at 300 calls. Scenario: every call lasts 3 minutes (300, 900 and 3,000 minutes a month) and, for Goodcall, every caller is a different person, the most expensive case for its per-caller billing. Totals are our arithmetic on prices read on each vendor's pricing page on 28 October 2026, on monthly billing, using each vendor's cheapest plan for the volume.

Dupple data: at 300 calls a month, Smith.ai's human plan costs about 16 times Goodcall Growth, and the spread between the cheapest and dearest AI option is $371 a month (our arithmetic on the table above, October 2026).

How we worked out the totals

Every number above comes from a printed plan price plus its printed overage rate. The math, shown once for 300 calls (900 minutes):

• Goodcall: Growth covers 500 unique customers for $129, so 300 calls cost $129 whatever their length.
• Trillet: $49 includes 150 minutes; the other 750 minutes at $0.20 add $150, so $199.
• My AI Front Desk: $99 includes 200 voice minutes plus a monthly pool of 1,000 overage credits (40 voice minutes at 25 credits each). The remaining 660 minutes cost 16,500 credits, or $165 at $0.01 a credit, so $264.
• Dialzara: Business Elite at $349 includes 1,000 minutes, so it beats Business Plus ($199 + 400 minutes x $0.40 = $359).
• Smith.ai AI: the 300-call tier of Pro is $500.
• Smith.ai human: Pro is $2,100 for 300 calls.

At 1,000 calls, Smith.ai's AI figure is its 500-call Enterprise tier ($800) plus 500 extra calls at $2.10; Smith.ai quotes 1,000+ calls as a custom plan.

Per minute, per call or per caller: which pricing is cheaper?

Per-minute billing wins when calls are short, and loses fast when they run long. Trillet is the example: at 1-minute calls, 300 calls are 300 minutes and cost $79, but at 3 minutes the same calls cost $199. Long booking calls, quote requests and anything with a transfer push per-minute bills up.

Per-caller billing does the opposite. Goodcall counts one phone number once a month, so five calls from the same customer bill once and a nine-minute booking costs the same as a wrong number. It also says spam and wrong numbers do not count at all. For a business with many repeat callers, that is the most predictable bill on this page.

Per-call billing sits in between. Smith.ai argues that per-minute services profit from longer calls, which is true of the incentive, but its lowest per-call rate is $1.60, so a 3-minute call costs more there than on any per-minute plan here, even at Dialzara's highest overage rate. Smith.ai's case is the human backup: its AI can transfer complex calls to a live North America-based receptionist.

Where the order flips: at 100 calls Goodcall Starter and Trillet tie at $79. At 1-minute calls Trillet becomes the cheapest at 300 calls. At 1,000 calls Goodcall stays cheapest at $259, because its Growth overage is 26¢ a caller.

Goodcall: priced per customer, not per minute

Goodcall sells three self-serve plans with no per-minute or per-token charges: Starter $79 a month for 100 unique customers then 79¢ each, Growth $129 for 500 then 26¢, and Scale $299 for 2,000 then 15¢. Enterprise is quoted. Every plan includes a local number, or you forward your existing one.

The weakness is the limits around the calls. Starter allows 1 team member and 1 external tool, and Growth 5 of each, so a business that wants its CRM, calendar and job software all connected may need Growth even at low volume. There is no free trial in the usual sense: you build and test a free demo agent and start paying when you connect a number.

Trillet: the lowest per-minute rate for owner-operators

Trillet's AI Receptionist is one $49 plan with 150 minutes, then $0.20 a minute with no plan change. It keeps your number, books into your calendar and emails a summary after each call. Trillet sells it with a 28-day money-back guarantee instead of a trial, and no setup fee or contract.

The low price comes from a deliberately slim product. Trillet says the receptionist is inbound-only, has no outbound calling or campaigns, and connects to calendars only. A business that needs CRM sync or several agents is pushed to its white-label platform, which starts at $99 a month.

My AI Front Desk: voice bundled with chat, SMS and a CRM

My AI Front Desk prices Business-in-a-Box at $99 a month, or $79 billed annually (a 20% saving), with 200 voice minutes, web chat, 2-way SMS, a built-in CRM and automations. A 7-day free trial lets you measure your real minutes before the first bill.

Overage runs on credits worth $0.01 each: a voice minute costs 25 credits, an SMS 4 and a chatbot conversation 5. Each month brings 1,000 overage credits that expire if unused, and auto-reload adds 1,000 more for $10. On annual billing our three scenario totals drop by $20 each.

Dialzara: four minute buckets and a managed option

Dialzara prints four inbound plans: Business Lite $29 a month with 60 minutes ($0.48 a minute after), Pro $99 with 220 ($0.45), Plus $199 with 500 ($0.40) and Elite $349 with 1,000 ($0.35). Every plan includes a US phone number, call recordings, summaries and 24/7 answering, with no setup fee and a 7-day free trial.

The entry plan is a trap for anyone who wants calls handed to a person mid-conversation: Lite has blind transfer only, and warm transfer, bilingual English/Spanish, calendar sync and after-hours rules start on Pro. Dialzara says annual pricing is available but does not print it.

Smith.ai: AI with a human safety net, or humans outright

Smith.ai's AI Receptionist bills per call. Free costs $0 for 25 calls a month, then $3.00 per call. Pro runs $150 for 75 calls, $270 for 150 and $500 for 300; Enterprise $500 for 300 and $800 for 500, with custom AI prompting and full-service setup. Extra calls cost $2.50 to $2.10 depending on the tier.

Smith.ai's human receptionists cost $300 a month for 30 calls (Starter), $810 for 90 (Basic) and $2,100 for 300 (Pro), with overage at $11.50, $10.50 and $8.50 per call. All plans carry a 30-day money-back guarantee and no setup fees.

AI receptionist vs human answering service: what is the cost gap?

At 300 calls, a human answering service from the same vendor costs $2,100, about four times its own AI plan and 16 times the cheapest AI plan we priced. The gap widens with volume: at 1,000 calls Smith.ai's human Pro reaches $8,050.

The human service still earns its price in some cases: legal intake, conflict checks, payments taken over the phone and callers who will not talk to a bot. Handling those in house is the other route, covered in our customer support software guide for small businesses. Smith.ai prices several of those as per-call add-ons, which is the clearest sign of what the AI plans leave out.

Toolradar data: Toolradar, our software directory, tracks 132 AI voice tools as of 27 October 2026, and 70% of them are free, freemium or open source, with a median cheapest paid plan of $11 a month across the 41 that publish one (Toolradar AI voice ranking). It also tracks 54 call center tools, where only 15% are free, freemium or open source (call center ranking). Vendor profiles: Goodcall, Dialzara, My AI Front Desk, Smith.ai.

What hidden fees do AI receptionists charge?

• Managed setup: Dialzara's Done for You service starts at $1,500 a month; Smith.ai includes full-service setup only on Enterprise.
• Text messages: Trillet charges $0.02 per SMS ($0.01 with your own Twilio or Telnyx). Dialzara's AI SMS agent is $19 a month plus $0.05 per AI message, with carrier fees of $0.0083 per segment.
• Website chat: Dialzara bundles 100 chat sessions a month with voice plans, then $0.15 per session.
• Human-service add-ons at Smith.ai: appointment booking $1.50 per call, SMS or Slack notifications $0.50, call recording and transcription $0.25, a dedicated Spanish line $1.00, and $0.50 per call for each extra CRM.
• Spam: Smith.ai's AI plan counts every answered call by default, filters known spammers automatically and lets you remove up to 10% of calls from each bill. Goodcall does not bill spam or wrong numbers.
• Notice periods: Smith.ai's AI Receptionist is month to month but needs 30 days' notice to cancel.
• Testing: Goodcall's test runs are capped by plan, with top-ups at $5.

Is there a free AI receptionist?

Yes, one: Smith.ai's AI Free plan answers 25 calls a month at $0, then charges $3.00 per call, so 100 calls would cost $225 on it, more than every paid AI plan in our 100-call column. Dialzara and My AI Front Desk offer 7-day trials, Trillet a 28-day money-back guarantee, and Goodcall a free demo agent. Our AI receptionists ranking compares the features behind these prices.

Which AI receptionist is cheapest for a small business?

For most small businesses with 3-minute calls, Goodcall is the cheapest on our numbers at every volume, followed by Trillet. Pick Trillet instead if your calls are short and you only need answering and calendar booking; pick Dialzara or My AI Front Desk if you want more channels bundled; pick Smith.ai if a human must be one transfer away.

If how natural the voice sounds is your main worry, our AI voice generators ranking explains how synthetic voices differ. If you are weighing a receptionist against a full phone system, our virtual phone systems guide and call center software ranking cover the other side. For outbound or custom-built voice bots, see our AI voice agents list, and for the chat equivalent of this page, what an AI chatbot costs. Booking-heavy businesses can compare calendar tools in our appointment scheduling software ranking.

Methodology

We read the pricing pages of Goodcall, Trillet, My AI Front Desk, Dialzara and Smith.ai (AI and human plans) on 28 October 2026. The scenario is 100, 300 and 1,000 inbound calls a month at 3 minutes each, priced on monthly billing with each vendor's cheapest plan for the volume. All totals are our arithmetic on printed prices and overage rates; we did not test call quality. Prices are re-checked every 60 days.

FAQ

Bottom line

Choose the billing unit before the vendor. Long calls and repeat callers point to Goodcall's per-caller pricing, short calls to Trillet's per-minute rate, and a need for human backup to Smith.ai, at the top of the AI price range. Prices were read on 28 October 2026 and change often, so recheck the vendor page before you sign.

Cite this: Dupple, "How Much Does an AI Receptionist Cost in 2026? Prices at 100, 300 and 1,000 Calls", November 2026.

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