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What every answering service actually charges
18 vendors with published prices, read from their own pricing pages and dated. Sort any column, filter by how they bill you, then open a vendor page for the plan-by-plan breakdown and the catch.
| Vendor | Type | Entry price | What you get for it | Billing model | Free trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dialzara | AI receptionist | $29/mo | 60 minutes | Per minute | 7-day free trial on inbound voice plans |
| Rosie | AI receptionist | $49/mo | 250 minutes | Per minute | 7-day free trial |
| Simple Phones | AI receptionist | $49/mo | 100 calls a month | Per call | 14-day free trial on every plan |
| Jobber AI Receptionist | Business suite add-on | $78/mo | 1 user | Credits | Free trial |
| Goodcall | AI receptionist | $79/mo | 100 unique customers | Per customer | Free trial offered |
| My AI Front Desk | AI receptionist | $99/mo | 200 voice minutes | Credits | 7-day free trial |
| Answrr | AI receptionist | $99/mo | 300 minutes (5 hours) | Per minute | 14-day free trial with 60 minutes |
| PATLive | Human answering service | $99/mo | 50 minutes, about 20 calls | Per minute | 14-day free trial |
| Nextiva XBert | Business suite add-on | $99/mo | 100 interactions | Credits | No trial |
| Smith.ai | Hybrid (AI + human) | Free | 25 calls | Per call | 30-day money-back guarantee up to $1 |
| Abby Connect | Hybrid (AI + human) | $165/mo | 50 minutes | Per minute | Free trial on every plan |
| NextPhone | AI receptionist | $199/mo | unlimited calls | Flat rate | 7 days free |
| Ruby | Human answering service | $250/mo | 50 minutes | Per minute | Not mentioned on the pricing page |
| Bland AI | Voice AI platform | $0.14/min | 10 concurrent calls, 100 calls a day | Per minute | Start plan needs no credit card |
| AnswerConnect | Human answering service | $350/mo | 200 minutes | Per minute | Not stated in the pricing PDF |
| Slang.ai | AI receptionist | $399/mo | per location | Per location | No free trial |
| Retell AI | Voice AI platform | $0.07/min | 20 concurrent calls, $10 free credit | Per minute | $10 in free credits |
| Vapi | Voice AI platform | $0.05/min | 10 concurrent lines | Per minute | Free credits on signup |
Entry price is the cheapest plan that actually answers phone calls. Every number comes from the vendor's own pricing page on the date shown on their comparison page.
Want the market-wide view instead of vendor by vendor? See the pricing index: medians, ranges and transparency statistics, with the raw dataset as CSV.
The vendors who will not tell you the price
3 companies on our list publish no usable pricing. We keep them here on purpose, because "contact sales" is itself a price signal, and because articles that quote numbers for these vendors are guessing.
| Vendor | What they publish |
|---|---|
| Nexa | Publishes plan sizes but no prices at all. You cannot compare Nexa against anyone without a sales call. |
| Synthflow | 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. |
| Podium AI Employee | Podium now publishes base plan prices (Core $399, Pro $599 a month) but still no price for the AI Employee add-on itself. The number you actually need before comparing is the one they do not show. |
Published a number, but not one you can compare
These vendors do put a figure on their site, and it is real, but it does not describe what you would actually pay. Either it covers one component of the bill, or the tier above it is quoted only on request. We do not give them a pricing page of their own, because a page built on one confirmed number would imply a certainty we do not have. Here is what they publish and what it leaves out.
| Vendor | What they publish | What it leaves out |
|---|---|---|
| My AI Front Desk | Business-in-a-Box: $99 a month. | There is no cheap way in any more. The $20 Basic plan, which answered no phone calls, is gone as of September 2026, so the entry price for voice answering is $99 a month ($79 billed annually). The company now brands itself Frontdesk, though the site still lives at myaifrontdesk.com. |
| Vapi | Build: $0.05 a minute. | The biggest gap between headline and reality in this market. The $0.05 a minute is only Vapi margin. Once you add transcription, the model, the voice and telephony, real cost lands around $0.13 to $0.31 a minute. |
Developer platforms in particular are cheap to quote and expensive to run: what the per-minute headline actually leaves out works the full bill through, component by component.
How to read these prices without getting caught
An entry plan is not always a working plan
Several of the cheapest tiers here hold under 100 minutes a month, which is roughly one call a day. They exist to get you in the door. If you take twenty calls a week, price the tier above.
Per-minute headline rates hide the real bill on platform products
Developer platforms quote a rate that covers only their own margin. Transcription, the language model, the voice and the phone line are billed separately, which can multiply the headline figure several times over. Vendors selling to end users usually quote all-in, so compare like with like.
Overage is where the money leaks
Two established vendors in this table do not publish an overage rate at all. That is the single most useful question to ask before signing: what happens on the first minute past my plan?
Frequently asked questions
Which AI receptionist is cheapest?
Dialzara has the lowest published entry price at $29 a month, though the cheapest plan is rarely the right one. Check what the plan actually includes: several entry tiers hold under 100 minutes, which is one call a day.
Why do some vendors not appear in the table?
3 vendors on our list publish no usable pricing at all, including Nexa, Synthflow, Podium AI Employee. They require a sales call. We list them here rather than guessing at numbers, because third-party estimates for these companies disagree with each other by hundreds of dollars a month.
How often are these prices checked?
Every price on this page was read from the vendor's own pricing page and carries the date we checked it. This table was last verified in August 2026 to September 2026. When a vendor changes its model, the page changes with it, which is why some figures here differ from older comparison articles.
What is the difference between per minute, per call and flat rate?
Per-minute plans give you a bundle of minutes and charge overage, so a long call costs more. Per-call plans charge the same whether the call lasts 40 seconds or 6 minutes. Flat rate means unlimited calls for one price. The crossover between per-call and per-minute usually sits around five to six minutes of average call length.