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AI receptionist pricing index: the market in numbers
Every statistic on this page is computed from our verified database of 21 vendors, each price read from the vendor's own pricing page with the date recorded. The headline: the median working AI receptionist costs $99 a month, humans cost 2.5 times more at entry, and 5 of 21 vendors will not give you a number you can actually compare.
Entry price by category
The cheapest plan that actually answers phone calls, per category. "Entry" excludes tiers with zero voice minutes and component-only platform rates.
| Category | Vendors | Cheapest | Median | Most expensive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI receptionist | 7 | $29 | $99 | $399 |
| Human answering service | 3 | $75 | $250 | $350 |
| Hybrid (AI + human) | 2 | $99 | $124.5 | $150 |
| Voice AI platform | 1 | $299 | $299 | $299 |
| Business suite add-on | 2 | $78 | $88.5 | $99 |
Cheapest overall: Dialzara at $29. Most expensive entry: Slang.ai at $399.
What a minute actually costs at the entry tier
For vendors whose entry plan bundles a stated number of minutes, dividing price by allowance gives the honest per-minute rate of getting started. AI entry plans work out between $0.20 and $0.49 a minute (median $0.41). Human services run $1.75 to $5.00 (median $3.33). That per-minute gap, not the monthly sticker, is where the real cost difference lives; the full mechanics are in AI against human answering, priced side by side.
The transparency problem, named
4 vendors publish no usable pricing at all: Simple Phones, Nexa, Synthflow, Podium AI Employee. Among vendors who do publish plans with minute allowances, 3 still do not publish what happens past the allowance: Rosie, Ruby, Abby Connect. The first minute over the plan is priced only after you are a customer. The full breakdown per vendor sits in the pricing table and in the "published but not comparable" section there.
Download the dataset
The raw table behind these statistics, one row per vendor: category, billing model, entry price, entry minutes, whether pricing and overage are published, and the verification date. Licensed CC BY 4.0: free to use with attribution.
How to cite this index
"FitMyCall AI Receptionist Pricing Index, July 2026" with a link to https://fitmycall.com/ai-receptionist-pricing-index/. Journalists and bloggers: the CSV above is yours to chart; if you need a cut we do not publish, write to us and we will run it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the median price of an AI receptionist in 2026?
Across the 7 AI receptionists with comparable published pricing, the median entry plan that actually answers phone calls costs $99 a month. The full range runs from $29 to $399.
How much more do human answering services cost than AI?
The median human answering service entry plan costs $250 a month against $99 for AI, which makes humans roughly 2.5 times more expensive at the entry tier. Per minute the gap is wider still: $3.33 against $0.41 at entry-plan rates.
How many answering service vendors hide their pricing?
Of the 21 vendors we track, 4 publish no usable pricing at all and 1 more publish a number that cannot honestly be compared. That leaves 16 vendors, 76% of the market we cover, with pricing transparent enough to put in a table.
Can I use these statistics in my own article?
Yes. Cite "FitMyCall AI Receptionist Pricing Index, July 2026" and link to this page. The underlying dataset is downloadable as CSV below, and every number traces to a vendor pricing page read on a recorded date.