How Much Does an AI Receptionist Cost? A Monthly-Bill Walkthrough

The honest answer to "how much does an AI receptionist cost" is a range that depends on your call volume, and the honest way to give it is to work the bill at several volumes using prices that have been checked. That is what this walkthrough does. We take four call volumes, convert them to minutes, and place each against the published plans of six providers. Where the arithmetic cannot be completed, because a vendor does not publish an overage rate, we say so instead of filling the gap.

Step one: convert calls into minutes

Most packaged receptionists bill by the minute, so a call count has to become a minute count. We use 3 minutes per call as the working average because it sits in the middle of what a short message-taking call and a longer intake conversation tend to run; your own logs may say otherwise, and if they do, use your number. At 3 minutes:

• 50 calls a month is 150 minutes: a solo operator or a very quiet office.
• 150 calls a month is 450 minutes: a typical single-location service business.
• 500 calls a month is 1,500 minutes: a busy shop or a business with several crews.
• 1,000 calls a month is 3,000 minutes: multi-location or high-volume intake.

These are also the four preset volumes in the cost calculator, so you can re-run the same math with a different average call length.

Step two: the cheapest plan that covers each volume

The rule for a flat-minute plan is simple: choose the cheapest tier whose allowance covers your minutes, or, where the vendor publishes an overage rate, the cheaper of that tier and the one below it plus overage. Goodcall is different: minutes are unlimited, so the question is how many unique customers you serve, not how long they talk. The table assumes one Goodcall agent and, for the customer meter, the worst case where every caller is a different customer.

Reading across the 150-call row, the typical single-location business pays $79 to $199 depending on the vendor and the meter. Goodcall is lowest if fewer than 100 distinct people call in a month; Rosie and Torklio tie at $149, though Rosie's $149 buys 1,000 minutes to Torklio's 600, and Torklio's $149 includes calendar booking with conflict checks and website chat; Frontdesk lands at $161.50 once the 250-minute overage is added; Dialzara is $199 because its 220-minute Pro tier is too small and the next tier is priced above the rest.

The 500-call row is where unpublished overage bites. Dialzara and Frontdesk can be priced to the dollar, $524 and $424, because their rates are on the page. Torklio's Pro plan is 500 minutes short and its page gives no rate, so the bill is $249 plus an amount we cannot calculate, or a Growth quote; that is exactly the situation where you should ask for the overage rate in writing before signing. Rosie's $299 Growth plan covers 1,500 minutes cleanly and is the lowest fully priced figure at this volume. At 1,000 calls, only Dialzara ($1,049), Frontdesk ($799) and Goodcall (up to $499, if you accept 7-day retention on Starter is gone and you are on Scale) produce a number without a phone call; Torklio's Growth plan matches 3,000 minutes exactly but is quote-based, and Rosie's largest plan stops at 2,000.

Smith.ai: the same volumes priced per call

Smith.ai bills by call, so minutes are irrelevant and the arithmetic changes. Its AI-first plans are Starter $300 for 30 calls ($11.50 per call over), Basic $810 for 90 calls ($10.50 over) and Pro $2,100 for 300 calls ($8.50 over). Appointment scheduling is a $1.50-per-call add-on and each CRM beyond the first is $0.50 per call.

At 150 calls Smith.ai costs roughly ten times the flat-minute plans. That is not an error; the price includes access to live human receptionists, which none of the other five provide. A 10% discount applies to a 12-month subscription and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee, but no free trial is listed. If a person on the line is a requirement, this is the price of it; if it is not, per-call billing is the most expensive structure in the category for short, frequent calls.

Developer platforms: cheap minutes, expensive engineers

Retell AI publishes an all-in range of $0.07 to $0.31 per minute, so 450 minutes is $31.50 to $139.50 plus $2 per phone number, and 3,000 minutes is $210 to $930. Vapi charges $0.05 per minute in platform fees ($22.50 at 450 minutes, $150 at 3,000) plus models and telephony at cost, or $0 for models with your own keys. Those are the lowest per-minute figures on this page and the least comparable, because neither includes the developer who builds, tests and maintains the agent. Slang AI and Synthflow do not fit the table at all: Slang is $399 per restaurant location with no minute figures, and Synthflow sells only enterprise contracts from $30,000 a year.

Step three: check the line items that do not appear in the headline

The monthly plan price is rarely the whole bill. The items below are the places on a pricing page and in a contract where the bill grows. Check each one for every vendor you shortlist and record the answer next to the plan price. Where a provider publishes the figure, it is noted.

• Setup or onboarding fees. Torklio, Smith.ai, Goodcall, Rosie, Dialzara ("no setup fees"), Frontdesk ("no contracts, no hidden fees"), Retell and Vapi list none. Synthflow's implementation is part of the contract scope; Slang AI does not disclose one.
• Number porting. Moving your existing business number to the vendor, or out again when you leave, may carry a fee and a waiting period. Ask about both directions.
• Telephony pass-through. Retell bills telephony at $0.015 a minute and numbers at $2 a month; Vapi bills telephony through your provider. Packaged receptionists include it in the plan.
• Add-on seats, agents, numbers and locations. Goodcall's price is per agent. Torklio's Pro plan includes 1 number with 2 more available. Slang AI is per location. Retell charges $8 a month per concurrent call above 20; Vapi $10 per line above 10.
• Per-use add-ons. Smith.ai's scheduling is $1.50 per call and extra CRMs $0.50 per call. Frontdesk's SMS is 4 credits ($0.04) per message. Dialzara's SMS agent is $0.05 per AI message once bundled. Retell's knowledge base adds $0.005 a minute and PII removal $0.01.
• Overage rate and rounding. Published: Dialzara $0.35–$0.48 per minute, Frontdesk $0.25, Goodcall $0.50 per unique customer, Smith.ai $8.50–$11.50 per call. Unpublished: Torklio, Rosie. Treat an unpublished rate as unknown, not as zero.
• Retention and storage. Goodcall's Starter keeps call and customer details for 7 days, Growth 30 days, Scale indefinitely. Torklio's plans list 90 days on Starter up to 1 year on Pro. Vapi charges $1,000 a month for zero data retention.
• Compliance. Vapi's HIPAA add-on is $2,000 a month. Torklio does not accept healthcare or other PHI-handling businesses at all.
• Trial conversion and annual assumptions. Torklio, Rosie, Dialzara and Frontdesk list 7-day trials; Goodcall a trial of unstated length; Smith.ai none. Goodcall's $66 and Frontdesk's $79 headline figures require annual billing; the monthly prices are $79 and $99.

Step four: weigh the bill against what missed calls cost you

A $79 to $249 monthly line is only expensive or cheap relative to what an unanswered phone costs your business. If you currently miss a meaningful share of inbound calls and even a few of those callers would have booked, the comparison is not between plan tiers but between the plan and the revenue that is not arriving. That calculation needs your own call volume, missed-call rate, conversion rate and job value; it is a different tool from the cost estimator, and it lives on our sister site.

Use the missed-call calculator on Never Miss A Call to put a monthly figure on the calls you are not answering, then compare it with the plan prices above.

How to keep these numbers honest

Every figure above carries a check date of 2026-09-07. Pricing pages change, and Synthflow's is the reminder: it moved from self-serve tiers to enterprise-only contracts, and most roundups still show the old numbers. Before you sign, open the vendor's pricing page and confirm three things: the plan price, the allowance and the overage rate. If the first two match this page and the third is missing, you have found the question to ask. The pricing table shows the check date next to every provider, and the pricing guide explains each billing model.