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AI receptionist for restaurants

At 7:30pm the phone rings and every person who could answer it is carrying plates. This page prices the two ways out: restaurant software that books straight into your reservation system, sold per location by quote (last shown from $399 a month), and general AI receptionists that answer everything from $79 a month but hand you the reservation to type in yourself.

Prices read from vendor pricing pages in October 2026. Full comparison on the pricing index.

What calls does a restaurant actually miss?

Restaurants miss calls at precisely the hour those calls are worth the most, and the mix is unusual: most of the volume is trivial, and the small remainder is worth thousands.

• The service rush. Between 6:30 and 8:30 nobody can reach the phone. That is also when tomorrow's reservations are being made, and when a caller who cannot get through simply books somewhere else.
• The 20-second questions. Are you open, do you take walk-ins, where do we park, is there a gluten free menu. Individually worthless, collectively they are most of your ring volume and they bury the calls that matter.
• Large parties and private events. The highest value call of the week, and the one most likely to reach a voicemail nobody clears until Thursday. That caller is planning a birthday or a work party and is phoning three restaurants.
• Cancellations you never hear. A table that cancels at 5pm and cannot get through becomes an empty four-top at 8pm on your busiest night, because you never released it.
• Calls in another language. Slang.ai now lists bilingual support on Core and 97 languages on Premium, both inside a quoted price. Decide whether you need it before you pick the tier.

What does one missed call cost you here?

One cover is typically worth $30 to $60 depending on your average check, so a missed four-top is somewhere around $120 to $240 and a party of eight is $240 to $480. A private event booking runs into the thousands. Those are typical ranges to start from, not a claim about your restaurant. Use your own average check and party size.

The important part is that your missed calls are not average. Quick questions dominate your ring count but cost you nothing when missed, while reservations and event enquiries are rare and expensive. So do not multiply every missed call by a cover value. Estimate what share of missed calls were bookings, which for most rooms is somewhere between one in five and one in three, and price only those. Even at the low end, a handful of missed four-tops a week outruns any plan on this page.

Enter the value of a booking, not a single cover, and lower the conversion field to reflect how many missed calls were real reservations. Workings on the missed call calculator.

Which service fits a restaurant?

Slang.ai, if reservations are the business

Slang.ai is the only vendor on this site built specifically for restaurants, and it now sells like it: Core, Premium and Enterprise all say "Get a quote". The last prices its page showed, on 2026-09-25, were $399 a month per location for Core and $599 for Premium. Core covers reservation management and integrations, text confirmations and bilingual support; Premium adds 97 languages, custom branding, cross-selling, private events capture and real-time alerts. Three things to price in before you commit: it is charged per location, the price is now a sales conversation, and no free trial is advertised. If you run several rooms, get the total in writing. Check current Slang.ai pricing.

Nextiva XBert, because most of your calls are 20 seconds long

Nextiva charges $99 a month for 100 interactions and $1.50 per conversation after that, but the definition is what makes it fit a restaurant: a conversation counts only when a call lasts 30 seconds or more, or a chat receives three or more AI replies. Your parking and opening hours calls, the ones that make up most of your ring volume, do not become billable. Run your own volume through it before signing, because the model does catch up with you: 400 conversations lands at $549, $150 more than the $399 Slang.ai last showed for Core, at which point you should be buying on reservation integrations rather than price. Check current Nextiva pricing.

Goodcall, the cheap way to stop the bleeding

If your problem is simply that nobody picks up, Goodcall is the lowest entry price that answers every call properly: $79 a month for 100 unique customers with unlimited minutes, or $129 for 500 unique customers, then $0.79 or $0.26 per unique caller beyond the plan. Because billing is per unique caller rather than per minute, a regular who calls every Friday costs you once a month. Be clear about what you are buying: this is a general receptionist, not a reservations system, so ask exactly what happens to a booking request and where it lands. The worker count matters here too, 5 on Starter and 10 on Growth, if you want events handled by a different specialist from tables. Check current Goodcall pricing.

NextPhone, when the phone genuinely never stops

NextPhone charges $199 a month for unlimited calls with no per-minute charges at all, including booking, transfers, SMS and call recording, with Scale at $599 a month for multiple numbers, custom routing and two-way SMS if you run more than one room. For a high-volume takeaway-heavy operation where any metered plan would run away from you, a flat bill is worth more than a clever billing definition. Their prices are quoted as "starts at", so confirm your own number. Check current NextPhone pricing.

How do the prices compare side by side?

Verified October 2026. Every vendor with published pricing is on the pricing index.

What should you ask before you sign?

1. Does it book, or does it take a message? This is the whole price gap between $79 a month and a quoted Slang.ai plan. Make them create a real reservation in your book during the demo.
2. Is the price per location? Slang.ai is, and it is now quote only. If you run three rooms, get the total in writing before you fall in love with the product.
3. How is a 20-second call billed? Not at all under Nextiva's 30-second rule, once per unique caller at Goodcall, not at all under a flat-rate plan. Given your call mix this question is worth more than any feature comparison.
4. Who gets the private event call, and how fast? Your most valuable caller should not land in a queue. Ask for a real-time alert path, and note that Slang.ai puts real-time alerts and private events capture on its Premium tier.
5. What does Spanish cost? Slang.ai lists bilingual support on Core, inside a quoted price. Published elsewhere: PATLive includes it at no extra cost, AnswerConnect charges $30 a month. If a third of your callers switch language, this is not a detail.

Where to go next

Salons and spas have the closest call pattern to yours, short calls at the busiest hour with bookings hidden among them, and a couple of cheaper options worth borrowing. If you also handle facilities and repair calls for the room, the dispatch questions on the plumbers page explain how the trades you depend on decide whether to answer you. All published pricing is on the pricing index. Reservation calls often come in Spanish, and who bundles that for free is on bilingual answering pricing. On a thin margin, start from the cheapest plans that still answer.