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Air AI alternatives: what to use instead
If you are researching Air AI, the short version is that there is nothing to price. The company settled an enforcement action with the Federal Trade Commission in March 2026, and the air.ai domain today belongs to an unrelated business. There is no published plan to compare against the vendors on this site. Below are answering services that do publish prices, sorted by what 300 minutes of calls a month actually costs, plus the three checks that would have flagged the problem before you spent anything.
The short answer. For the safest first purchase, Answrr at $99 a month: published overage on every tier and a trial that needs no credit card. For the lowest entry price, Dialzara at $29. For a bill that cannot surprise you, NextPhone at $199 flat with no overage rate because none exists. For developers, Bland AI at $0.14 a minute all in.
What happened, stated plainly
The Federal Trade Commission sued Air AI in August 2025 over deceptive earnings claims, and a settlement was announced in March 2026. The order carries an $18 million monetary judgment, largely suspended because the company and its operators could not pay it, with $50,000 actually paid toward consumer relief, and it bans Air AI and its owners from marketing business opportunities. The air.ai domain now points to an unrelated company.
We are stating this because it changes what a buyer can practically do, not to make a point about anybody. If you want the authoritative version rather than ours, the FTC publishes the case record: Air.ai at ftc.gov. Two practical consequences follow. There is no current published price for Air AI, so it cannot appear in any honest comparison table. And if you reach that domain today, you are looking at a different company than the one written about in older articles.
The three checks worth running on any vendor
- A published price, with a date. If every path leads to "talk to sales", you cannot compare anything, and third-party estimates for quote-only vendors routinely disagree by hundreds of dollars a month. Two vendors we track publish no usable price at all: Podium AI Employee and Nexa.
- A named billing unit and a published overage rate. Minutes, calls, unique customers, conversations: they are not interchangeable, and the rate past your plan limit is where budgets break. Answrr, Dialzara, Goodcall, Nextiva and AnswerConnect publish theirs. Rosie, Ruby and Abby Connect do not.
- A trial you can start on your own. A vendor confident in the product lets you hear it before you sign. Answrr gives 14 days and 60 minutes with no credit card. Bland AI's entry plan needs no card at all. Dialzara, Rosie and NextPhone all run 7-day trials.
300 minutes a month, priced at every honest vendor
Roughly 60 calls at five minutes each. Every row shows the cheapest route from that vendor, with the working, and every figure comes from their own pricing page.
| Vendor | Cheapest route for 300 minutes | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Bland AI | Start plan, no platform fee, 300 minutes at $0.14 | $42 |
| Goodcall | Starter plan, 100 unique customers, unlimited minutes. Only valid if 100 or fewer distinct people call | $79 |
| Answrr | Starter plan covers 300 minutes (5 hours) outright | $99 |
| My AI Front Desk | Business-in-a-Box covers 200 voice minutes, then 100 minutes of credits at about $0.25 | $124 |
| Dialzara | Business Pro covers 220 minutes, then 80 minutes at $0.45 | $135 |
| Rosie | Professional holds only 250 minutes and no overage rate is published, so Scale at 1,000 minutes is the predictable route | $149 |
| NextPhone | Pro plan, unlimited calls, no per-minute charge at any volume | $199 |
The spread runs from $42 to $199 for the same volume of calls, which tells you that billing model matters more than brand at this end of the market. Bland AI is cheapest, but it is a developer platform: you build the agent yourself, and the figure covers minutes only. The cheapest finished product that answers your phone out of the box is Goodcall at $79. Note also the Rosie row: their Professional plan at $49 is the cheapest headline in this market, but it holds 250 minutes and no overage rate is published, so 300 minutes means stepping up to $149. Unpublished overage costs money even when you never go over, because it forces you to buy a bigger plan than you need.
The transparency scorecard
Same nine vendors, judged only on what a buyer can verify before paying. This is not a quality ranking, it is a disclosure ranking.
| Vendor | Entry price | Billing unit | Overage published | Start without a sales call |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answrr | $99/mo | Per minute | Yes, $0.25 down to $0.12 | 14-day trial, 60 minutes, no credit card |
| Dialzara | $29/mo | Per minute | Yes, $0.48 down to $0.35 | 7-day trial, no setup fees |
| Bland AI | No platform fee | Per minute, all in | The rate is the price, no model pass-throughs | No credit card on the Start plan |
| Rosie | $49/mo | Per minute | No, not published | 7-day trial, cancel anytime |
| Goodcall | $79/mo | Per unique customer | Yes, $0.50 per extra customer | Free trial, length not published |
| My AI Front Desk | $99/mo | Credit pool | Yes, credit rates published per channel | 7-day trial |
| Nextiva XBert | $99/mo | Per conversation | Yes, $0.99 per interaction | No trial, 30-day money-back guarantee |
| NextPhone | $199/mo | Flat rate | None exists | 7 days free, cancel anytime |
| Retell AI | No platform fee | Per minute, per component | Every component priced openly, so budget the realistic mix not the headline | $10 in free credits |
One entry price on that table is not what it looks like. My AI Front Desk also sells a $20 plan. It answers no phone calls at all: it covers email, SMS and chat only, no phone answering. Voice answering starts at the Business-in-a-Box tier at $99. Always check what the cheapest plan actually does before you compare it with anything.
The other two ways a vendor becomes uncomparable
Air AI is the extreme case. Two milder versions are common enough that they are worth naming, because both end with a buyer unable to check a number.
| Vendor | What they publish | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Podium AI Employee | Nothing. No base plan prices and no price for the AI add-on | Podium publishes no prices at all, not for its base plans and not for the AI Employee add-on. Third-party estimates disagree with each other by hundreds of dollars a month. |
| Nexa | Plan sizes by minute bundle, with no price attached to any of them | Publishes plan sizes but no prices at all. You cannot compare Nexa against anyone without a sales call. |
| Synthflow | Enterprise only, from $30,000 a year | Synthflow used to sell $29 to $449 a month plans to small businesses. Those tiers are gone. Their pricing page now shows Enterprise only, from $30,000 a year. Any article still quoting $29 a month is out of date. |
None of those three is doing anything improper. Quote-only pricing and moving upmarket are ordinary business decisions. They simply make a vendor impossible to compare on price, which is a fact a buyer should weigh rather than a scandal. If you were looking at Synthflow specifically, we have a separate page on what replaced their small business tiers.
Who should pick which
You want the safest first purchase
Answrr, $99. 300 minutes (5 hours), every feature on every plan, a published overage rate of $0.25, and a 14-day trial with 60 minutes that needs no credit card. You can hear it answer your phone before you give anyone a payment method. If you want a lower entry, Dialzara starts at $29, though that tier holds about one call a day.
You want a bill that cannot surprise you
NextPhone, $199. unlimited calls at one flat rate with no per-minute charges, so there is no overage rate to hunt for because none exists. Check the tiers first: CRM integrations begin on their $299 plan, and prices are quoted as starting at, so confirm your number before signing.
You are building rather than buying
Bland AI, $0.14 a minute. No platform fee, no credit card, and a rate that includes the language model, speech to text and the voice rather than billing them separately. Retell AI is the alternative if you want each component priced openly, but budget the realistic mix rather than the headline rate.
Every price here can be checked in about two minutes
Read from each vendor's own pricing page on 2026-07-28, with the exact wording quoted on their individual pages. That is the whole standard: if we cannot show you where a number came from, it does not go on the site.
Where to go next
- Answrr pricing, Dialzara pricing and NextPhone pricing
- Synthflow alternatives, the other vendor that stopped selling to small business
- Goodcall alternatives, if per-customer billing is what you are weighing
- AI receptionist vs virtual receptionist, with both categories priced
- How we research prices and why every number carries a date
- All published prices in one table
Frequently asked questions
What happened to Air AI?
The Federal Trade Commission sued the company in August 2025 over deceptive earnings claims and settled in March 2026. The order carries an $18 million judgment, largely suspended for inability to pay, with $50,000 paid toward consumer relief, and it bans Air AI and its owners from marketing business opportunities. The air.ai domain today points to an unrelated company. We are reporting this because it changes what a buyer can do, not to score a point, and the authoritative record is published by the FTC at ftc.gov.
Can you still buy Air AI?
Not from the original company, and there is no published price to compare against anything on this site. If you land on a page at that domain today you are dealing with a different business. Anyone selling you an Air AI reseller package should be asked, in writing, exactly which entity you would be contracting with.
What should I check before buying any AI receptionist?
Three things, all of which take a minute. First, is there a published price with a date on it, or does every route lead to a sales call? Second, is the billing unit named and is the overage rate published? A vendor that will not tell you what happens on the first minute past your plan is asking you to sign a blank cheque. Third, can you start a trial without talking to anyone? Answrr passes all three: $99 a month, per minute, yes, $0.25 down to $0.12, and a trial with no credit card.
Which vendors are most transparent about price?
On our reading, Answrr, Dialzara and Bland AI. Answrr publishes an overage rate for every tier and trials for 14 days with no card. Dialzara publishes a rate for each of its four tiers and starts at $29. Bland AI quotes $0.14 a minute all in and states plainly that there are no token charges or model-provider pass-throughs, which is rare on a developer platform. At the other end, two vendors we track publish no usable price at all and one has moved to a $30,000 a year minimum.