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

Author: Kris Hubbard
Published: October 19, 2026
Updated: October 19, 2026
Canonical: https://wrkless.com/blog/ai-receptionist-pricing-2026

**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](https://aifrontdesklist.com/reports/ai-receptionist-pricing-2026), 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](/blog/ai-receptionist-small-business-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](https://www.retellai.com/pricing): $0.07–$0.31/minute pay as you go. [RingCentral AI Receptionist](https://www.ringcentral.com/pricing/ai-receptionist.html): $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](https://www.smith.ai/pricing/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](https://help.getjobber.com/en/articles/receptionistpowered-by-jobber-ai/): $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](https://www.goodcall.com/pricing): 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](https://help.gohighlevel.com/support/solutions/articles/155000003906-ai-employee-access-rebilling-and-reselling): 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](https://aifrontdesklist.com/reports/ai-receptionist-pricing-2026)). 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](https://help.getjobber.com/en/articles/receptionistpowered-by-jobber-ai/) says the $29 add-on includes 30 conversations, while its [add-ons article](https://help.getjobber.com/en/articles/add-on-features-to-your-jobber-plan-subscription/) 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](https://cal.com/kris-hubbard-wrk-less/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](/blog/jobber-receptionist-vs-gohighlevel-voice-ai), and cover when native GHL is enough in our [GoHighLevel AI receptionist guide](/blog/gohighlevel-ai-receptionist-2026).
- **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](https://aifrontdesklist.com/reports/ai-receptionist-pricing-2026)).

## 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](/blog/ai-receptionist-transfer-to-human) 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](/blog/ai-receptionist-voice-models-2026) 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](/blog/fcc-opt-out-rules-2026) 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](/blog/after-hours-answering-service-plumbers-hvac) 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](/missed-call-capture.php) 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](/ai-receptionist-for-small-businesses.php) 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](https://cal.com/kris-hubbard-wrk-less/ai-systems-assessment) and bring last month's call log. We'll walk through what an AI receptionist would cost at your volume.

## Questions people ask

### How much does an AI receptionist cost in 2026?

AI Front Desk List's October 2026 data puts the median paid starting price at $99 a month across the vendors it tracks, with the middle half between $49 and $250. Your real bill depends on the billing unit. In our math at 100 three-minute calls a month, six popular options ranged from about $29 to $213 in usage, before setup and integrations.

### Is per-minute or per-call pricing cheaper for an AI receptionist?

Per-minute pricing is usually cheaper when most calls are short, and per-call or per-customer pricing is cheaper and more predictable when calls run long. Per-minute platforms such as Retell also bill for silence and hold time. Price your real average call length under each model before you choose.

### How much is Jobber's AI Receptionist?

Jobber's help center lists Receptionist as a $29 per month add-on, with $0.79 per additional conversation, and includes it with unlimited usage on the Plus plan. Jobber's Receptionist article says the add-on includes 30 conversations, while its add-ons article says 100, so confirm which applies to your account. Texts count as conversations, and you need a Jobber dedicated phone number.

### Does GoHighLevel's Unlimited plan include phone charges for Voice AI?

No. HighLevel's AI Employee Unlimited plan is $97 per month per enabled location and includes Voice AI usage subject to fair use, but HighLevel says Phone System charges are separate on every plan. The Growth plan is $50 per month per location with 100 AI Agent minutes, then pay-per-use rates.

### What hidden costs come with an AI receptionist?

The common ones are phone and number charges, minute rounding, billing for silence or hold time, transferred-call telephony, spam calls that count toward usage, premium voice and model surcharges, and the one-time work to connect the receptionist to your calendar, CRM and text follow-up. Texting also needs consent and working opt-outs.

## Sources

- https://aifrontdesklist.com/reports/ai-receptionist-pricing-2026
- https://aifrontdesklist.com/ai-receptionist-cost
- https://www.retellai.com/pricing
- https://www.ringcentral.com/pricing/ai-receptionist.html
- https://www.smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist
- https://help.getjobber.com/en/articles/receptionistpowered-by-jobber-ai/
- https://help.getjobber.com/en/articles/add-on-features-to-your-jobber-plan-subscription/
- https://www.getjobber.com/pricing/
- https://www.goodcall.com/pricing
- https://help.gohighlevel.com/support/solutions/articles/155000003906-ai-employee-access-rebilling-and-reselling
- https://help.gohighlevel.com/support/solutions/articles/155000006652-ai-product-pricing
- AI Front Desk List report, data checked Oct 18, 2026: 264 vendors listed; median paid start $99/month among 142 vendors; middle half $49-$250; 68 vendors (26%) quote only; tiered 34%, per call 3.8%; 55 vendors publish a per-minute rate, median $0.30/min; trades median $94, dental $199
- Retell pricing, checked Oct 19, 2026: $0.07-$0.31/minute; calculator default $0.11/min; Retell Twilio telephony $0.015/min; numbers $2.00/month; ElevenLabs v4 TTS $0.10/minute; billing covers silence; agent fee stops on transfer
- RingCentral AI Receptionist pricing, checked Oct 19, 2026: $49/month with 100 minutes; $0.50 per minute pay-as-you-go overage; billed in 30-second increments; minute bundles available
- Smith.ai AI Receptionist pricing, checked Oct 19, 2026: Free 25 calls/mo then $3.00/call; Pro $150/mo 75 calls ($2.00/call), extra $2.50; Enterprise $500/mo 300 calls ($1.67/call); 10% spam allowance
- Jobber help center, checked Oct 19, 2026: Receptionist article (updated July 9, 2026) $29/month incl. 30 conversations, $0.79 per additional conversation, unlimited on Plus, dedicated phone number required; add-ons article (updated Aug 13, 2026) says 100 conversations per month; a text conversation stays open for up to 24 hours; spam and no-conversation calls don't count
- Goodcall pricing, checked Oct 19, 2026: Starter $79/mo 100 unique customers then 79 cents; Growth $129 500; Scale $299 2,000; no per-minute charges (79¢ each); 'A thirty-second wrong number and a nine-minute booking cost exactly the same, nothing extra'; one phone number once a month
- HighLevel help center, checked Oct 19, 2026: AI Employee Growth $50/month per location, 100 AI Agent minutes; Unlimited $97/month per location, fair use; Phone System charges separate; pay-per-use Voice Engine $0.045/min + OpenAI TTS $0.015/min + LLM tokens
- Wrk Less arithmetic, Oct 19, 2026: 3-minute average calls; 100 calls = 300 min, 300 calls = 900 min; published rates only, excludes taxes, setup and integrations. 100 calls: Retell 300 x $0.125 + $2 = ~$40; GoHighLevel Growth $50 + 200 x $0.06 = ~$62; Goodcall Starter $79; Jobber $29 (100 included) or $29 + 70 x $0.79 = ~$84 (30 included); RingCentral $49 + 200 x $0.50 = $149; Smith.ai Pro $150 + 25 x $2.50 = $212.50 (~$213); range $29 to $213. 300 calls: Retell 900 x $0.125 + $2 = ~$115; GoHighLevel Unlimited $97; Goodcall Growth $129; Jobber $29 + 200 x $0.79 = $187 or $29 + 270 x $0.79 = ~$242; RingCentral $49 + 800 x $0.50 = $449; Smith.ai Enterprise $500; range $97 to $500. 45-second call on Retell ~$0.09 (under 10 cents)