Best AI Receptionist for Small Business in 2026: Real Costs

For most small businesses taking under about 300 calls a month, a per-call or per-caller service is the cheapest good start: Upfirst, Goodcall, or Quo’s Sona agent if you already use Quo for your phones. If you want people behind the AI, choose Smith.ai. If you need a custom agent that books appointments, takes payments and routes calls into your phone system, choose Vida, but only once your volume justifies its $250 platform fee.

Prices are list prices at the time of writing, in US dollars unless marked, from each vendor’s pricing page on 25 October 2026 (CloudTalk on 28 October). Taxes, phone numbers and texting registration are extra. Vida, Quo, CloudTalk, CallHippo and Calilio are partners in our phone and communication and AI agents directories; partner status did not change any pick or verdict.

Best AI receptionists at a glance

Tool	Best for	Pricing unit	Entry price	Live transfer on entry plan?	BAA stated?	Trial
Upfirst	Low volume, solo owners	Per call	$24.95/mo (30 calls)	Yes, all plans	Custom plan only	14 days, no card
Goodcall	Repeat callers	Per unique caller	$79/mo (100 callers)	You choose who receives transfers	Not stated	Free demo agent
Quo Sona	Teams already on Quo	Seat + per call	10 calls free with a $19 seat	Not confirmed on Starter	Yes (Business, Scale)	7 days
Rosie	Minute bundles, English and Spanish	Minutes	$49/mo (250 min)	No, from Scale ($149)	Not stated	7 days
My AI Front Desk	Minute plans with add-on minutes	Minutes	$99/mo (200 min)	2 transfer actions	Not stated	7 days
Smith.ai	Humans behind the AI	Per answered call	Free (25 calls)	To live receptionists	Not stated	Free plan
Vida	Custom workflows, HIPAA, agencies	Platform + usage	$250/mo + usage	Yes (numbers, SIP)	Yes, with Advanced Privacy	None listed
CloudTalk AI Receptionist	Teams already on CloudTalk	Minute bundles	€99/mo (100-200 min)	Routing included	HIPAA claimed; BAA not checked	14 days, 50 AI min
CallHippo AI Voice Agent	Teams already on CallHippo	Per user + per minute	$45/user + $0.25/min	Not checked	Not checked	10 days
Calilio AI Voice Agent (beta)	Budget, inbound only	Bundled minutes	10 min with $15 plan	Not checked	Not checked	None described
Ruby (human benchmark)	Human receptionists	Receptionist minutes	$250/mo (50 min)	Yes	HIPAA-compliant service	-

What an AI receptionist costs at 200, 500 and 1,000 calls a month

The pricing units differ, and that decides who is cheapest at your volume. This table is our estimate, assuming each call bills 3 minutes, every caller is unique (Goodcall’s worst case), monthly billing and the cheapest plan mix.

Tool	200 calls (600 min)	500 calls (1,500 min)	1,000 calls (3,000 min)
Calilio Premium (beta agent)	$110 ($35 + 500 min × $0.15)	$245	$470
Quo Starter seat + Sona	$118 ($19 + $99 tier)	$218 ($19 + $199 tier)	$398 ($19 + $199 + 400 × $0.45)
Goodcall	$129 (Growth)	$129 (Growth)	$259 (Growth + 500 × $0.26)
Rosie	$149 (Scale)	$299 (Growth)	Not computable (overage not published)
Upfirst	$159.95 (Pro)	$299 (Scale)	$579 (Scale + 400 × $0.70)
CallHippo AI Voice Agent	$195 + seat plan if required	$420 + seat	$795 + seat
My AI Front Desk	$199 ($99 + 400 × $0.25)	$424	$799
CloudTalk AI Receptionist	€299 (1,000-min bundle)	€699 (2,500-min bundle)	Not computable (above top bundle)
Vida Starter	$345 ($250 + $90 + $5 number) + AI tokens	$480 + tokens	$705 + tokens, or Business 500 at $705
Smith.ai	~$385 (150-call tier + 50 × $2.30)	~$800 (500-call tier)	Custom
Ruby (human)	600 min exceeds the top plan (500 min, $1,725)	-	-

What drives the bill:

• Long calls favour per-call and per-caller pricing. At 6 minutes a call, Goodcall, Upfirst, Quo Sona and Smith.ai cost the same. My AI Front Desk at 1,000 calls jumps to $1,549 ($99 + 5,800 × $0.25), and Calilio to $920.
• Repeat callers favour Goodcall, which bills each phone number once a month however often it calls.
• A platform fee only pays off at volume. Vida at 1,000 six-minute calls costs $1,155 on Starter before tokens ($250 + $900 + $5), the same as Business 1k plus a number, which includes $1,000 of usage and leaves $100 for tokens.

Caveats: Smith.ai does not show totals for its 150, 300 and 500-call tiers, so we multiplied its published per-call rates. Vida’s token use per minute is not published. CloudTalk does not say whether the AI Receptionist needs a seat plan, and US customers pay an 11% cost-recovery fee on the software subscription. Quo Starter lacks call transfers; if Sona needs to hand off, budget for Business ($33 monthly), which adds $14 to each Quo figure.

To do your own maths, take calls a month, average length and share of repeat callers from your phone bill, then add numbers, texting registration and tax.

Best for low call volumes and solo owners: Upfirst

Upfirst bills per call, and calls under 15 seconds, silent calls, spam, telemarketing and robocalls are not billed; the log labels which is which. Starter is $24.95 a month ($20 billed annually) for 30 calls, Premium $59.95 for 90, Pro $159.95 for 300 and Scale $299 for 600. It offers live warm handoff on every plan, no contract, and a 14-day trial with no card that can take real forwarded calls.

Drawbacks: overage on Starter is $1.50 a call, so a busy month gets expensive fast, and BAAs are only on the Custom plan above 600 calls.

Best for repeat callers: Goodcall

Goodcall bills per unique customer per month, defined as “one phone number, once a month”, and says it never meters minutes. Starter is $79 for 100 unique customers (79 cents each after), Growth $129 for 500 (26 cents) and Scale $299 for 2,000 (15 cents). Spam and wrong numbers do not count, and you choose who receives transfers. If the same clients call back often, this is the most predictable bill here.

Drawbacks: the pricing page does not state HIPAA terms or annual prices.

Best if you already use a business phone system: Quo Sona

If you run your phones on Quo, its Sona agent is already there: every plan includes 1,000 credits a month, which is 10 calls. Paid tiers run $25 (40 calls), $49 (100), $99 (250) and $199 (600), with overage from $1.00 down to $0.45 a call. Sona can transfer to a teammate, a shared inbox or an outside number, takes messages with a summary and transcript in the inbox, and handles missed calls and texts in beta. Once it hands off, Sona leaves the call, and an unanswered transfer goes to voicemail.

Other phone systems have agents too. CloudTalk’s AI Receptionist handles FAQs, routing, messages and Google or Outlook booking in 70+ languages; bundles run from €99 a month (100 or 200 minutes) to €699 (2,500 minutes), with 50 minutes free in the first month, and the white-glove AI Specialist costs €349 to €1,249. CallHippo charges $45 per user a month plus $0.25 a minute. Calilio’s agent is in beta, answers incoming calls only, up to 5 at once; its homepage quotes lower overage than its pricing page, so confirm the rate. Compare seat prices in our best business phone systems guide.

Best for minute-based plans: Rosie and My AI Front Desk

Rosie costs $49 a month for 250 minutes, $149 for 1,000 (Scale, with warm and live transfers) and $299 for 2,000 (Growth, with waterfall transfers). Every call can run in English and Spanish, and summaries, transcripts and recordings are included. The overage rate is not published, and transfers are not on the $49 plan.

My AI Front Desk costs $99 a month ($79 billed annually) for 200 minutes, then $0.25 a minute, with 2 call-transfer actions per agent and a 7-day trial. Per-minute billing makes it one of the dearest options for long calls.

Neither states HIPAA terms on its pricing page.

Best when you want humans behind the AI: Smith.ai

Smith.ai bills its AI Receptionist per answered call, not per minute. The free plan covers 25 calls a month ($3.00 per extra call); Pro is $150 a month at $2.00 a call, and Enterprise $500 at $1.67, with cheaper per-call rates at higher tiers. Known spam is filtered first, and up to 10% of calls can be removed from the bill as spam. Complex calls can transfer to a live receptionist in North America, though the page does not say how transfers are billed. Cancelling needs 30 days’ notice.

The honest AI-versus-human comparison is Ruby: $250 a month for 50 receptionist minutes up to $1,725 for 500. At 3 minutes a call that is about $10 to $15 a call, against roughly $2 on Smith.ai.

Best for custom workflows, HIPAA and agencies: Vida

Vida is an agent platform rather than a ready-made receptionist. Starter is $250 a month for 1 agent with no included usage; Business 500 is $700 with a $500 usage allowance. Voice costs $0.15 a minute in 60-second increments, AI tokens are billed per model from a rate card, and numbers are $5 a month. Its Functions cover Call Transfer (to numbers or SIP extensions, keeping the original caller ID by default), Schedule (Google Calendar), Request Payment, Take a Message, webhooks and Zapier. It speaks English, Spanish or a multilingual mode. HIPAA workflows need the Advanced Privacy setup and a BAA, and agencies can resell it white-label.

Drawbacks: no trial is listed, token costs are hard to predict, and the $250 floor makes it poor value below about 200 calls a month. Compare other builders in our best AI agent builders guide.

Handing calls to a human: what to check

• Which plan transfers. Upfirst and Quo Sona on every plan (Quo Starter has no transfers in its plan table, so confirm), Rosie from Scale, My AI Front Desk with 2 transfer actions.
• No answer. On Quo, an unanswered transfer goes to voicemail and Sona does not come back. Every route should end in a message.
• Caller ID. Your team should see the customer’s number; Vida passes the original caller ID by default.
• After hours. Late transfers should go to a message or an on-call phone.

Recording consent, AI disclosure and HIPAA

Recording. Some states, including California, require every party’s consent to record a confidential call. Put a recording notice in the greeting.

AI voices on outbound calls. In 2024 the FCC ruled that AI-generated voices count as “artificial” voices under the TCPA, so AI calls need the called party’s prior express consent unless an exemption applies. Answering inbound calls is different, but AI callbacks are not. Close’s outbound Chloe agents, for example, always announce that they are an AI and that the call is recorded.

HIPAA. A practice may share patient information only with vendors that sign a business associate agreement. Vida (Advanced Privacy plus BAA), Upfirst (Custom plan), Quo (BAA, full HIPAA on Business and Scale) and Ruby state this; Smith.ai, Goodcall, Rosie and My AI Front Desk do not on their pricing pages. This is not legal advice.

How to set up an AI receptionist in an afternoon

1. Gather your FAQs, hours, prices and booking rules.
2. Choose a number strategy: forward your existing number on busy, no answer or after hours; port it; or use a new local number.
3. Write a greeting that says the caller is speaking to an AI and that the call is recorded.
4. Connect your calendar and set transfer rules with a message fallback.
5. Make five test calls (a new customer, a mid-call change of mind, a request for a person, a booking) and read each transcript.
6. Review transcripts weekly for the first month.

How we chose

We compared documentation and pricing from vendor pages; we did not test call quality. Dialpad’s AI agent, Dialpad Resolve, is custom-priced, so it is not compared. More options are in the AI agents directory and our other guides.