AI Receptionist Pricing 2026: What Six Popular Options Really Cost at 100 and 300 Calls a Month

Short answer: In October 2026, the median paid starting price for an AI receptionist is $99 a month, and the middle half of published starting prices sits between $49 and $250 (AI Front Desk List, 264 vendors, data checked Oct 18, 2026). But the sticker price is rarely your bill. Each vendor counts something different: minutes, calls, "conversations" or unique customers. At 100 three-minute calls a month, the six options we priced below range from about $29 to $213 a month. At 300 calls, the spread is about $97 to $500. Pick the billing unit that matches how your phone actually rings, then budget for the setup and integrations, which is where the real cost sits.

We build and test AI receptionists at Wrk Less, mostly on Retell with n8n behind it. Every price below was checked on October 19, 2026 against the vendor's own pricing page or help center. The monthly totals are our own arithmetic from those published rates.

If you want the integration checklist and the 10-call test script, read our AI receptionist buying guide. This post is only about price: what each vendor charges for, and what that adds up to at your volume.

How do AI receptionists charge in 2026?

There are five billing units in the market right now. They sound similar and behave very differently.

Billing unit	Example (published, Oct 19, 2026)	What actually counts
Per minute	Retell: $0.07–$0.31/minute pay as you go. RingCentral AI Receptionist: $49/month with 100 minutes, then $0.50 per minute	Every second the line is open, including silence and hold time on Retell. RingCentral rounds up and bills in 30-second increments
Per call	Smith.ai AI Receptionist: Free plan includes 25 calls ($3.00/call after that). Pro is $150/mo for 75 calls ($2.00/call). Enterprise is $500/mo for 300 calls ($1.67/call)	Every answered call by default, with an allowance to remove up to 10% of calls as spam
Per conversation	Jobber Receptionist: $29 per month add-on, then $0.79 per additional conversation. Included with unlimited usage on the Plus plan	Calls and text threads. A text conversation stays open for up to 24 hours. Spam and "no conversation" calls don't count
Per unique customer	Goodcall: Starter $79 a month for 100 unique customers, then 79¢ each. Growth $129 for 500. Scale $299 for 2,000	Each phone number once a month, no matter how many times or how long they call
Flat plan with an allowance	GoHighLevel AI Employee: Growth $50/month per enabled location with 100 AI Agent minutes. Unlimited $97/month per enabled location, subject to fair use	AI minutes only. Phone System charges are separate on every plan

The market mix is lopsided. Of the 264 vendors AI Front Desk List tracks, 34% use tiered plans, 26% are quote only (68 vendors publish no price list), and only 3.8% use per-call billing as their main model (AI Front Desk List). Among the 55 vendors that publish a per-minute rate, as the main price or as overage, the median is $0.30 a minute.

Jobber has one wrinkle worth knowing. Its Receptionist help article says the $29 add-on includes 30 conversations, while its add-ons article says it "Includes 100 conversations per month." Ask Jobber which count applies to your account before you do the math.

What does an AI receptionist cost at 100 and 300 calls a month?

Here's the same call volume priced six ways. We assumed a 3-minute average call and that every call comes from a different person. That's the worst case for Goodcall's per-customer billing and the typical case for a small shop.

Option	100 calls/mo (300 min)	300 calls/mo (900 min)	What the number leaves out
Retell (build platform), calculator default $0.11/min + $0.015/min Retell telephony + $2/month number	about $40	about $115	The build: prompts, calendar and CRM wiring, testing. Retell is a platform, not a finished receptionist
GoHighLevel AI Employee	Growth: $50 + 200 extra minutes at pay-per-use (from $0.06/min) ≈ $62	Unlimited: $97 (fair use)	Phone System charges on every plan, LLM tokens on pay-per-use minutes, and the GoHighLevel subscription itself
Goodcall	Starter: $79	Growth: $129	Repeat callers count once, so your real bill may be lower. Connected tools are capped per plan
Jobber Receptionist add-on	$29 if 100 conversations are included, or $29 + 70 × $0.79 ≈ $84 if 30 are	$187 (100 included) to $242 (30 included)	Your Jobber plan, and texts count as conversations. Plus includes unlimited usage
RingCentral AI Receptionist	$49 + 200 × $0.50 = $149	$49 + 800 × $0.50 = $449 at pay-as-you-go	RingCentral sells additional minute bundles, which may cost less than overage
Smith.ai AI Receptionist	Pro 75: $150 + 25 × $2.50 = $212.50	Enterprise: $500 for 300 calls	Smith.ai includes human backup and, on Enterprise, full-service setup

Two things jump out. First, per-minute and per-customer pricing is cheapest at small-business volume, and per-call pricing is the most predictable. Second, the cheapest number on this table is the one that needs the most work to become a receptionist. Retell at $40 a month is raw usage. You or someone like us still has to build the call flow.

Want this table run on your real numbers? Book an AI systems assessment and we'll price your actual call count, call length and repeat callers across these billing models.

Which pricing model fits your business?

Match the billing unit to how your phone rings:

• Long calls, like intake, quotes or service questions: per call or per customer. Smith.ai bills by the call and Goodcall by the customer. As Goodcall puts it, "A thirty-second wrong number and a nine-minute booking cost exactly the same, nothing extra." Per-minute billing punishes long calls.
• Lots of short calls, like hours, directions or "are you open?": per minute. A 45-second call costs under 10 cents on Retell or GoHighLevel pay-per-use, versus a full call fee on a per-call plan.
• Lots of repeat callers, like property managers, clinics or service plans: per unique customer. Goodcall counts one phone number once a month, so the same tenant calling five times is one customer.
• You already run your business on Jobber or GoHighLevel: price the add-on first. Jobber's Receptionist reads your existing services and booking settings. GoHighLevel's Unlimited plan covers Voice AI minutes for a flat fee. We compare the two in Jobber Receptionist vs. GoHighLevel Voice AI, and cover when native GHL is enough in our GoHighLevel AI receptionist guide.
• Heavy texting: watch per-conversation plans. On Jobber, a text thread counts the same as a call.

Trades shops are in the cheap part of the market. AI Front Desk List puts the median paid starting price for HVAC, home services and trades vendors at $94, against $199 for dental (AI Front Desk List).

What hidden costs should you budget for?

The plan price is the floor. These are the line items we see surprise owners most often:

1. Phone charges. GoHighLevel says plainly that Phone System charges apply on every plan, Unlimited included. Retell charges $0.015/min on its own Twilio numbers plus $2.00/month per number. Jobber requires a Jobber dedicated phone number even if you keep your existing one by forwarding.
2. Rounding and silence. RingCentral bills in 30-second increments, rounded up. Retell bills for silence and hold time because the transcriber keeps listening. A caller on hold for two minutes is two paid minutes.
3. Transfers. On Retell, the AI agent fee stops when a call is transferred, but telephony keeps running. If you transfer a lot, see how we set up AI-to-human transfers so the handoff doesn't cost you the caller.
4. Spam. Smith.ai counts every answered call by default, with up to a 10% spam allowance. Jobber and Goodcall say spam doesn't count toward usage. On a line that gets a lot of robocalls, that difference adds up.
5. Premium voices and models. On Retell, the voice alone runs from $0.015/minute for platform voices to $0.10/minute for ElevenLabs v4. On GoHighLevel, the ElevenLabs and speech-to-speech options cost more than the base voice. A premium voice can nearly double your per-minute rate. Our voice models guide covers when that's worth it.
6. Setup and integrations. Only a minority of vendors publish a setup fee, and AI Front Desk List warns that "no fee listed" is not the same as "no fee." The real work is connecting the receptionist to your calendar, CRM and text follow-up, then testing it. On a custom build, that one-time work usually costs more than the monthly usage.
7. Texting compliance. Follow-up texts need consent and working opt-outs. Read our FCC opt-out rules breakdown before you switch on automatic texts.

How do you estimate your own AI receptionist cost?

Pull one month of call logs from your phone provider and answer five questions:

1. How many calls did you get, and how many came from repeat numbers?
2. What's the average call length? Leave out instant hang-ups and wrong numbers.
3. How many calls arrive after hours? An after-hours-only setup may be a fraction of your total volume.
4. How many calls should go to a person? Every transfer has a cost on most platforms.
5. How many texts do customers send you? On conversation-based plans, they count.

Then price each shortlisted vendor at that volume, add phone charges, and add the one-time cost to connect it to your calendar and CRM. If you only need to stop losing unanswered calls, a narrow missed-call capture flow is often the cheapest place to start.

Get a straight price for your call volume

At Wrk Less, we design and build AI receptionists that book into your real calendar, write every call into your CRM and hand urgent calls to a person. We'll tell you which billing model fits your calls, including when an off-the-shelf add-on is enough.

Book an AI systems assessment and bring last month's call log. We'll walk through what an AI receptionist would cost at your volume.