Most comparisons of AI receptionists quote a single price per vendor. That is the one number that cannot tell you what you will pay, because these services bill in four incompatible ways: per minute, per call, per month with included volume, and per unique customer.
Two services quoting similar rates can differ several-fold on your actual bill. So this comparison starts with the billing model, then works out what nine services cost at three realistic call volumes.
How this was put together: every figure comes from each provider's own published pricing page, checked on 27 August 2026, and is listed with its source. Where a provider does not publish a number, this page says so rather than estimating one. Several do not publish overage rates, which is itself worth knowing before you sign.
The short answer
- Lowest cost at low or unpredictable volume: Dial Milo, on per-second pay-as-you-go with no monthly minimum.
- Best genuinely free tier: Smith.ai, at $0 for 25 calls a month.
- Best when a human must be able to take over: Smith.ai's human tiers, or Ruby.
- Best for restaurants: Slang.ai, which integrates with OpenTable and SevenRooms.
- Best for high minutes at a flat price: Goodcall, which does not meter minutes at all.
- Most transparent human service: PATLive, which publishes a full rate card including every overage rate.
The billing models, and why they matter more than the rate
Per minute. You pay for connected talk time. Fair, provided the billing increment is honest. A service that rounds up to the next minute charges a full minute for a fifteen-second wrong number. If a third of your calls are short, your effective rate can be double what you agreed.
Per call. A flat fee regardless of length. Predictable, and good when calls run long. Expensive when many calls are brief, because a twenty-second wrong number costs the same as a five-minute qualified lead.
Monthly plan with included volume. A bundle, then an overage rate. The overage rate is the number that decides your bill in a busy month, and it is usually the one printed smallest, or not printed at all.
Per seat or per agent. Unlimited minutes, capped on something else. Goodcall caps monthly distinct callers rather than time, which inverts the usual maths.
Every service, side by side
| Service | Answered by | Billing model | Entry price | Overage published? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dial Milo | AI | Per second, pay-as-you-go | ~6¢/min, no minimum | Yes, single rate |
| Dialzara | AI | Monthly plan + minutes | $29 / 60 min | Yes, $0.48–$0.35/min |
| Rosie | AI | Monthly plan + minutes | $49 / 250 min | No |
| Goodcall | AI | Per agent, unlimited minutes | $79 per agent | Yes, $0.50/customer |
| Smith.ai (AI) | AI, human escalation | Per call | $0 / 25 calls | Yes, $3.00/call |
| Slang.ai | AI | Per location | $399 per location | No |
| PATLive | Human | Monthly plan + minutes | $49 pay-as-you-go | Yes, full rate card |
| Abby Connect | Human + AI | Monthly plan + "Abby Minutes" | $165 / 50 min | No |
| Ruby | Human | Monthly plan + minutes | $250 / 50 min | No |
| AnswerConnect | Human | Quote only | Not published | Not published |
Four of the ten do not publish an overage rate. That does not make them bad services, but it does mean you cannot model a busy month before you commit, and you should ask for the number in writing before signing.
What you would actually pay
Three scenarios, using each provider's cheapest valid plan. Every figure is computed from the published rates above.
| Service | 30 calls (45 min) | 100 calls (200 min) | 300 calls (600 min) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dial Milo | $5.70 | $15.00 | $39.00 |
| Smith.ai (AI) | $15.00 | $200.00 | $501.67 |
| Dialzara | $29.00 | $96.20 | $239.00 |
| Rosie | $49.00 | $49.00 | $149.00 |
| Goodcall | $79.00 | $79.00 | $154.00 |
| PATLive (human) | $99.00 | $349.00 | $938.00 |
| Abby Connect (human) | $165.00 | $599.00 | not priceable |
| Ruby (human) | $250.00 | $720.00 | not priceable |
| Smith.ai (human) | $300.00 | $915.00 | $2,100.00 |
| Slang.ai | $399.00 | $399.00 | $399.00 |
Dial Milo's number includes the $3 monthly charge for a dedicated phone number. "Not priceable" means the provider publishes no overage rate, so the cost of exceeding the plan cannot be calculated from public information.
The gap between AI and human is not subtle, and it should not be. You are comparing software against staffed shifts.
The AI services
Dial Milo
Pay-as-you-go at roughly 6¢ per answered minute, billed per second with no rounding, no subscription and no per-seat fee. A dedicated number is $3 a month, or you can forward your existing line for nothing.
The structural advantage is that a quiet month genuinely costs nothing, and unanswered spam costs nothing because nothing was answered. It handles bookings into a connected calendar, answers from documents you upload, sends SMS mid-call, and detects the caller's language across six or more without a menu or a surcharge.
The structural limit: no human takeover. Transfers ring your own team, so if you are asleep, nobody picks up. There is no Clio or Salesforce integration. And non-US numbers, the UAE included, need business documentation and a few days rather than instant signup.
Best for routine volume that moves around: bookings, opening hours, pricing questions, lead capture.
Dialzara
Four tiers from $29 for 60 minutes to $349 for 1,000, each with a published overage rate falling from $0.48 to $0.35 a minute. Seven-day free trial, no setup fees.
Publishing every overage rate on the pricing page is rarer than it should be and makes Dialzara easy to model. The entry tier is genuinely cheap, though 60 minutes is roughly 40 short calls, so most businesses will land on Business Pro at $99.
Rosie
$49 for 250 minutes, $149 for 1,000, $299 for 2,000, with a seven-day trial and two months free on annual billing. Bilingual English and Spanish, 10+ voices, native iOS and Android apps, Zapier for everything else.
Rosie is the best-value mid-volume AI plan on published rates: at 250 minutes the effective cost is about 20¢ a minute, and the included allowance is generous enough that most small businesses never leave the $49 tier. The gap is the unpublished overage rate, so a spike month is unmodellable.
Goodcall
$79, $129 or $249 per agent per month, 15% off annually. Minutes and AI tokens are unlimited. What is capped is monthly unique customers: 100, 250 or 500 by tier, then $0.50 each.
That inversion is the whole story. If your calls are long, Goodcall gets cheaper per minute the more you talk. Above roughly 1,300 minutes a month with fewer than 100 distinct callers, Goodcall Starter beats per-second billing outright. Below that it is expensive for what it does.
Smith.ai (AI tiers)
$0 a month for 25 calls, then $3.00 per call. Pro at $150 and Enterprise at $500 bring the per-call rate down to $2.00 and $1.67.
The free tier is genuinely free rather than a trial that expires, and below 25 calls a month nothing else here competes. It includes 24/7 answering, recording, transcription, lead qualification and scheduling. The AI escalates complex calls to Smith.ai's own North America-based receptionists, which is a capability none of the pure-AI services have.
The unit works against you as volume rises: per-call billing charges the same for a forty-second wrong number as for a five-minute lead.
Slang.ai
$399 per location on Core, $599 on Premium, built specifically for full-service restaurants and integrated with OpenTable, SevenRooms, Yelp, Fishbowl and Tripleseat.
No published call allowance and no published trial. If you run restaurants, the reservation integrations are worth more than a lower rate elsewhere. If you do not, this is not your product.
The human services
PATLive
The most transparent rate card of any service here: eleven tiers from $49 pay-as-you-go at $2.99 a minute up to $6,899 for 5,000 minutes, every overage rate printed, 14-day free trial on all plans. US-based agents, explicitly no AI.
The billing increment is not published, which is the one figure you should ask for before signing given how much it moves an effective per-minute rate.
Ruby
$250 for 50 minutes, $395 for 100, $720 for 200, $1,725 for 500, with live chat sold separately and bundled at a 20% discount. Fully live receptionists, 24/7, no setup or activation fees.
Ruby is the incumbent brand in this category and prices like it. No overage rate is published and no free trial is offered, so the entry commitment is real.
Abby Connect
$165 for 50 minutes up to $1,380 for 500, with a free trial on every plan and no setup fee. The distinctive mechanic is the "Abby Minute": a human minute consumes one, an AI minute consumes half of one. If AI can handle most of your calls, your allowance stretches twice as far.
AnswerConnect
Publishes no pricing at all; the public pricing URL returns a 404 and quotes are form-gated. Third-party 2026 reviews put it somewhere around $179 to $399 a month for 100 to 300 minutes with $1.75 to $2.50 overage, but those are other people's figures, not the vendor's, and should be treated accordingly.
How to choose without guessing
Work out two numbers before you look at any pricing page: your answered calls per month and your average call length. Almost nobody does this, and without them no comparison means anything.
Then:
- Under 25 calls a month? Take Smith.ai's free tier and stop reading.
- Low or unpredictable volume? Per-second pay-as-you-go, because quiet months cost nothing.
- Steady, predictable volume? A monthly plan with included minutes usually wins, but get the overage rate in writing first.
- Long calls, few callers? Goodcall's unlimited minutes invert the usual maths in your favour.
- Calls where a human must be able to take over? Pay for Smith.ai or Ruby. No pure-AI service does this, and for high-stakes intake it matters more than the rate.
Key takeaway
The billing model decides your bill, not the headline rate. At 100 calls a month averaging two minutes, published pricing ranges from $15 to $915 across these services. Per-second pay-as-you-go is cheapest at low and variable volume, plans with included minutes win at steady volume, and only Smith.ai and the human services can hand a caller to a real person. Four of the ten do not publish an overage rate, so ask for it before you commit.
FAQ
What is the cheapest AI receptionist service?
On published rates at typical small-business volume, per-second pay-as-you-go is cheapest: about $15 a month for 100 calls averaging two minutes, against $49 to $200 for plan-based AI services. Below 25 calls a month, Smith.ai's free tier costs nothing at all. Cheapest always depends on your call mix rather than the sticker price.
Is an AI receptionist better than a human answering service?
They solve different problems. AI handles routine, high-frequency calls well at roughly a tenth of the cost: opening hours, bookings, pricing questions, lead capture. Human services are worth the premium when calls are complex, emotionally charged or high value, and when someone must be able to take over mid-conversation.
Do AI receptionists work with an existing phone number?
Yes. Every service here supports forwarding your current business line to their number, so customers keep dialling what they already know. That also avoids provisioning a new number, which matters in countries where numbering requires regulatory paperwork.
What is a billing increment and why does it matter?
It is the smallest unit a service bills. Per-second billing charges a 20-second call as 20 seconds. One-minute increments charge it as a full minute. If a meaningful share of your calls are short, one-minute rounding can double your effective rate against the same headline number.
Which AI receptionists offer a free trial?
Smith.ai's AI tier is free indefinitely for 25 calls a month. Dialzara and Rosie both offer seven days. PATLive gives 14 days on every plan. Abby Connect and Goodcall advertise trials without publishing a length. Ruby and Slang.ai do not mention one.
