How much does an AI receptionist cost? About $0 to $300 a month for most small businesses on public pricing. Goodcall runs $79 to $299 a month, Smith.ai's AI receptionist is free for 25 calls and then $150 a month for 75 calls, and StrideOps starts at $99 a month with usage metered per call. A live answering service costs $250 to $2,100 a month for the same kind of volume (Ruby and Smith.ai's human receptionists), and an in-house receptionist costs about $38,000 a year in wages alone.
Every missed call is a coin flip on revenue. Someone needed something enough to pick up the phone, and nobody answered. Most of them do not call back. They call the next business on the list. For decades the only fix was paying humans to answer. AI receptionists are the third option, and the price gap is big enough to change the decision for most small businesses.
Every price below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, and the wage figure from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, all checked on 15 October 2026.
The three options and what they cost
| In-house receptionist | Live answering service | AI receptionist | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | $38,010 a year median wage, before benefits | $250 to $2,100 a month | $0 to about $300 a month |
| How it bills | Salary | Per minute or per call | Per call, per caller, per minute or usage credits |
| Hours covered | About 40 a week | Often 24/7 | 24/7 |
| Knows your business | Yes | Shallow, from a script | Yes, from your knowledge base |
| A busy month costs | The same | More, through overage | More usage, at a much lower rate |
In-house. The median receptionist in the US earned $38,010 a year ($18.27 an hour) in May 2025, according to the BLS. Add payroll taxes, benefits, holidays and cover for sick days. Calls outside working hours still go to voicemail.
Live answering service. A remote team answers in your business's name. They cover more hours, but they do not know your business deeply, and you pay for every minute or call.
AI receptionist. Software answers in a natural conversation, any hour, from your own information, and books straight into your calendar.
The four ways AI receptionists bill
This is why prices are hard to compare. Vendors meter different things:
| Billing model | Example | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Per call | Smith.ai AI receptionist: $150 a month for 75 calls, $2.50 per extra call on that tier | Short calls cost the same as long ones |
| Per unique caller | Goodcall: $79 a month for 100 unique customers, 79 cents per extra | Repeat callers are cheap; a busy month of new callers is not |
| Per minute | Ruby (human): $250 a month for 50 receptionist minutes | Long calls get expensive fast |
| Usage credits | StrideOps: $99 a month including $10 of credits, each call metered at its real cost | Your voice and model choices move the price |
There is no single best model. If your calls are short and frequent, per-minute or usage pricing is kind. If they are long and from many new callers, per-call pricing protects you.
What 100 calls a month actually costs
To make the options comparable, here is one scenario: a small business getting about 100 calls a month, around 3 minutes each, priced from each vendor's public page.
Monthly cost for about 100 calls of around 3 minutes
- Goodcall$79
- Smith.ai AI$212.50
- Smith.ai human$915
- Ruby$1,725
- In-house$3,168
StrideOps is left off that chart on purpose, because its usage is metered at the real cost of each call rather than a fixed rate per call, so it depends on your voice, model and call length. Your included credits cover the first part of it, and the dashboard shows the exact spend.
The add-ons that change the bill
- Booking and intake fees. Smith.ai's human receptionists charge per call for extras like booking appointments ($1.50), call recording and transcription ($0.25) and extended intake ($1.50).
- Overage. Every plan with included calls or minutes has a rate for the ones after that. Read it before you pick a tier.
- Phone numbers and caller ID. Often a separate monthly line.
- Spam and wrong numbers. Some vendors count them, some do not. Goodcall says spam and wrong numbers do not count as customers.
How StrideOps prices an AI receptionist
StrideOps does not charge a per-call or per-minute rate. You pay the plan, and each call is metered against your usage credits at what it actually costs to run (the speech-to-text, the language model and the voice), then pay as you go once the included credits are used.
| Plan | Monthly | Usage credits included | Active AI voice agents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operator | $99 | $10 | 1 |
| Growth | $299 | $50 | 5 |
| Agency (white-label) | $599 | $150 | 20 |
You bring your own phone numbers (Twilio, Telnyx or Vonage), point a number's voice line at your AI agent, and the same plan includes the CRM, calendars, workflows and AI text agents the receptionist books into and hands off to.
The number that actually matters
Cost per month is the wrong frame. The right frame is captured revenue.
Here is an example with made-up numbers you can swap for your own: say a new customer is worth $50 on the first job, and an AI receptionist catches three calls a day that would have gone to voicemail. Over 250 working days, that is $37,500 a year of business you were losing. Next to a plan that starts at $99 a month, the math is not close. The cost of the tool is small. The cost of the missed call is the whole ballgame.
Where each option wins
To be fair, this is not a clean sweep.
A live answering service still wins when calls are complex, emotionally charged, or need a human to use judgment you have not written down. Some regulated or high-touch businesses want a person on every call, full stop.
An in-house receptionist wins when the phone is a small part of a broader front-of-house job: greeting walk-ins, handling mail, running the office. You are not really buying call coverage there, you are buying a person.
An AI receptionist wins on the repetitive reality of most phone lines: hours, location, availability, booking, qualifying, order status and basic triage. That is the bulk of inbound calls for most businesses.
The strongest setup is usually a blend: the AI handles the repetitive calls and transfers the rest to a person, with the context already gathered.
What a good AI receptionist should do for the money
Answering is the floor, not the ceiling. Whatever you pay, check that it can:
- Answer every call, day or night, without a hold queue.
- Answer from your real information. Hours, pricing, policies and locations should come from your knowledge base, not a guess.
- Book appointments live, offering real open slots from your Google or Outlook calendar and confirming on the call.
- Write everything back to your CRM. A call that does not log a contact, a summary and a next step is a call you will forget. In StrideOps, the call lands on the contact record and can start a follow-up workflow. See AI CRM automation.
- Transfer to a human cleanly when a call needs judgment, and tell that person what was already said. StrideOps can text or email a summary of the call so far when it transfers.
FAQ
The bottom line
An AI receptionist costs a fraction of a live answering service and a small fraction of a hire, and it covers every hour. Compare vendors on the same scenario, read the overage and add-on lines, and judge the price against the calls you are missing today, not against zero.
If you run an agency and want to sell this to clients under your own brand, read how to start a white-label AI agency.
Point an AI agent at your phone line
Answer every call, book into your calendar and log every conversation on the contact, from $99 a month.
About the author
Josh Pocock
Founder & CEO, StrideOps.ai
Josh Pocock is the founder and CEO of StrideOps.ai. He spent eight years building sales and marketing companies - most recently Executive Stride, the AI appointment-setting agency that now runs end to end on StrideOps.ai as customer zero. He went all-in on the platform full-time in late 2025.
Josh Pocock is the founder and CEO of StrideOps.ai. He scaled his own AI agency past $50K a month on GoHighLevel, Vapi and n8n, and his agency Executive Stride has built systems for 400+ businesses. StrideOps started as the platform he built to replace that stack.
Prices from goodcall.com/pricing, smith.ai/pricing (AI-first and human-first), ruby.com/pricing and strideops.ai/pricing, and wages from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, all checked 15 October 2026. Vendors change prices, so check before you buy. First published 2 April 2026 as "AI Receptionist vs Answering Service".Read more
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