An AI receptionist costs anywhere from $20 a month for a bare-bones voice bot to $800 or more for a full done-for-you service. As of August 2026, per vendor pricing pages, chat-only tools run about $39 to $99 a month, chat plus texting and social DMs runs $99 to $299, and done-for-you services with real voice calls run $297 to $997. The spread is that wide because providers charge in completely different ways, and the sticker price often isn't the price you'll pay.
One disclosure before we start: we sell one of these, so read our numbers with that in mind — every price here comes from the vendors' own published pricing as of August 2026.
The three pricing models (and when each one stings)
Every AI receptionist on the market bills you one of three ways. Knowing which model you're looking at matters more than the headline number.
Per-minute pricing. You buy a bucket of voice minutes and pay an overage rate when you run out. Dialzara ($29–$349/mo) and Rosie ($49–$299/mo, then $0.25/min) work this way, and DIY voice platforms like Retell, Vapi, and Synthflow charge roughly $0.09–$0.31 per minute all-in if you build everything yourself. This model stings when your calls run long. A chatty caller, a complicated booking, even a spam call that the AI politely handles all burn the same metered minutes.
Per-call or per-conversation pricing. You pay for each call or each AI conversation regardless of length. Smith.ai's AI receptionist runs about $95–98 a month for 30 calls with roughly $2.40 per call after that, Goodcall charges $79–$249 per agent based on unique callers, and Tidio's Lyro chatbot bills by AI conversations at about $39–149 a month. This model stings when you get lots of short calls. A twenty-second wrong number costs you the same as a five-minute booking.
Flat monthly pricing. One price, and the volume question mostly goes away. Podium sits here at roughly $399–599 a month plus an AI add-on, GoHighLevel bundles an AI Employee add-on ($97/mo) onto its $97–$497 platform with usage billed on top, and our own plans at Velonyx are flat monthly too. Flat pricing stings in the opposite situation: if you only get a handful of calls a week, you're paying for capacity you don't use.
What 10 providers actually charge
All figures are as of August 2026, per each vendor's pricing page. The Velonyx row is us — judge it accordingly.
| Provider | What it covers | Published price | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| My AI Front Desk | AI voice | $20/mo basic; $99/mo bundle w/ 200 min | $0.25/min overage |
| Dialzara | AI voice | $29–$349/mo by minutes | SMS/chat cost extra |
| Tidio (Lyro) | AI chat only | ~$39–149/mo by conversations | No phone or SMS |
| Rosie | AI voice | $49–$299/mo by minutes | $0.25/min overage |
| Goodcall | AI voice | $79–$249/mo per agent | Billed by unique callers; unlimited minutes |
| Smith.ai (AI) | AI voice | ~$95–98/mo for 30 calls | ~$2.40/call overage |
| GoHighLevel | Platform + AI add-on | $97–$497 platform + $97/mo AI Employee | Usage billed extra; you rent a sub-account |
| Ruby | Human receptionists | $250/50 min to $1,725/500 min | Roughly $3.45–5 per minute |
| Podium | Platform + AI add-on | ~$399–599/mo + $99–399/mo AI Employee | Annual contracts; real spend often $500–800/mo |
| Velonyx (us) | Voice, SMS, chat, DMs, booking | $129/$229/$499/mo for 12 months, then $70/$150/$350 | You own the system after month 12 |
Full plan details for ours are on the pricing section if you want to compare line by line.
What actually drives the price up
Five things separate a $39 plan from a $500 one.
Voice. Real-time phone answering is the expensive part everywhere, because speech processing costs the provider real money per minute. Chat-only tools are cheap for the same reason a website form is cheap.
Channels. Each added channel — SMS, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, web chat — either bumps you a tier or shows up as an add-on. Dialzara, for example, prices SMS and chat as extras on top of its voice plans.
Included volume and overages. Two plans at $99 can cost wildly different amounts at month's end depending on what's included and what the meter charges after. Always find the overage rate before you compare headline prices.
Setup fees. These are uncommon but real: Birdeye has charged $500–$1,500 and AgentZap $499 to get you live. Most providers, us included, charge nothing upfront — we fold the build into the monthly price instead, which is explained on our financing page.
Contracts. Month-to-month is the norm at the low end. At the high end, Podium's annual contracts are typical of the category: the monthly number looks fixed, but you've committed to twelve of them.
AI vs. a human receptionist vs. a human answering service
A full-time human receptionist costs a multiple of any AI plan on this page once you include wages, payroll taxes, benefits, and coverage for lunch breaks, sick days, and vacation. That's not a knock on humans. A good receptionist does things no AI does well: reads an upset caller's tone, makes judgment calls, handles the weird exceptions. If your front desk does complex, sensitive work, a person is worth every dollar.
The middle option is a human answering service, where trained operators answer as your business. Ruby runs $250 for 50 minutes up to $1,725 for 500 minutes, and Smith.ai's human virtual receptionists run $300–$2,100 a month with $8.50–$11.50 per call in overages. You get human warmth, but you pay per minute for it, and the operators follow a script rather than knowing your business.
AI sits below both on price and answers instantly at any hour, books appointments, and answers routine questions without a queue. Its honest weakness: it should hand genuinely difficult conversations to you rather than improvise. The right frame isn't "AI replaces people." It's "AI handles the routine 80 percent so a human only touches the calls that need one."
The hidden-fees checklist
Before you sign anything, get written answers to these:
- What is the overage rate once I pass my included minutes, calls, or conversations?
- Is there a setup or onboarding fee?
- Which channels are included, and what does each additional one cost?
- Is this month-to-month or an annual contract, and what does cancellation cost?
- Does the price change after the first year or after a promo period?
- Is usage (telephony, AI processing) billed separately from the subscription?
- Who owns the phone number if I leave, and can I port it out?
- Who owns the system itself — the scripts, the data, the integrations?
That last question gets a blank stare from most sales reps, because the answer is almost always "we do."
A worked example: a salon with 20 calls and 40 texts a day
Say your salon is open 25 days a month. That's roughly 500 calls and 1,000 texts monthly. Assume calls average two and a half minutes, which puts you around 1,250 voice minutes. Here's how the three models treat that volume, using the published rates above.
Per-minute: on My AI Front Desk's $99 bundle with 200 included minutes, the extra 1,050 minutes at $0.25 adds about $263, landing near $360 a month for voice alone, before texting.
Per-call: at Smith.ai's published entry plan, 30 calls are covered and the other 470 at ~$2.40 each add over $1,100. In practice you'd negotiate a bigger bundle, but the arithmetic shows how per-call pricing scales with volume.
Human, per-minute: at Ruby's roughly $3.45–5 per minute, 1,250 minutes prices into the thousands per month.
Flat monthly: our Elite plan covers voice, SMS, chat, and DMs at $499 a month for the first year, then $350. That's us, so verify it against the alternatives yourself — the point is that at real volume, flat pricing is usually where the math settles.
If the same salon only wanted texting and web chat, the picture changes completely: the $99–$299 band, including our $229 Growth plan, handles it, because voice is the expensive part everywhere.
The 3-year math: renting vs. owning
Here's the section you won't find in other cost guides, because it's the part of the market we built our business around. Every provider above rents you their system. Pay for ten years and you own exactly as much as you did on day one.
We structure it differently: after 12 monthly payments, the entire system — code, database, phone number — transfers to your accounts. The details are on our ownership page. Here's the three-year arithmetic at a typical all-in rented spend of $300 a month versus our Growth plan:
| Path | Year 1 | Years 2–3 | 3-year total | What you own after |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical rented service | $3,600 | $7,200 | $10,800 | Nothing |
| Velonyx Growth, we keep running it (us) | $2,748 | $3,600 ($150/mo) | $6,348 | The whole system |
| Velonyx Growth, you take it in-house (us) | $2,748 | ~$720–$1,440 (direct provider costs, ~$30–60/mo) | ~$3,468–$4,188 | The whole system |
Two honest caveats. If you take the system in-house, those $30–60 a month are the raw hosting, telephony, and AI usage costs, and you or someone you trust becomes responsible for keeping it running. And if $300 a month of rent is genuinely working for you with no friction, the difference is money, not function. The ownership math matters most if you plan to be in business three years from now — which, presumably, you do.
FAQ
What does an AI receptionist cost on average?
As of August 2026, per vendor pricing pages, chat-only AI runs about $39–99 a month, chat plus SMS and social DMs runs $99–299, and done-for-you service with real voice calls runs $297–997. Where you land depends mostly on whether you need the phone answered and how much volume you get.
What's the cheapest way to start?
A chat-only tool or an entry voice plan: My AI Front Desk starts at $20 a month and Tidio's Lyro at about $39. Before spending anything, try one in action — our Playground lets you call, text, or chat with a live AI receptionist right now, no signup.
Are there free AI receptionists?
Free trials, yes. A genuinely free plan you could run a business on, no. Voice minutes cost providers real money, so anything free is either a time-limited trial or capped so low it's a demo. Budget at least $20–50 a month for a minimal setup.
Is it worth it if I only get a few calls a day?
Honestly, maybe not. If you get three or four calls a day and you're usually free to answer them, a clear voicemail greeting and an online booking link may serve you fine at zero cost. An AI receptionist earns its keep when calls arrive while you're with customers, after hours, or in bursts you can't absorb. If that's not your situation yet, save the money.
What happens to the price after year one?
With most providers, nothing good: you keep paying the same rent, annual contracts renew, and some platforms raise rates or move features into add-ons. Our plans work in the opposite direction — after 12 months the price drops from $129/$229/$499 to $70/$150/$350, and the system becomes yours, so you can also stop paying us entirely and run it yourself. Whoever you choose, get the year-two price in writing before you sign.