How Much Does an AI Receptionist Cost? 11 Vendors, One Bill

September 5, 2026. The same 1,500 minutes of answered calls cost $77 plus model fees on Vapi, $189.50 on Retell, $210 on Bland, $249 on Goodcall, $299 on Rosie, $800 on Smith.ai's AI plan, $3,800 on Smith.ai's human plan, and a $2,500 a month minimum on Synthflow. That is a 40x spread among products all sold as an AI receptionist, before a single human answers. We priced eleven vendors from their own pricing pages and terms on September 5, 2026, worked three usage profiles, and logged every place the marketing page and the binding page disagreed. Here is what an AI receptionist actually costs and how to read a quote.

Three pricing models, not one

Vendors charge in one of three ways, and the model tells you more than the headline number.

1. Per call. Smith.ai's AI receptionist charges by answered call: a free plan with 25 real calls a month, then Pro at 75 calls for $2.00 each ($150), 150 calls at $1.80, 300 at $1.67, and Enterprise at 500 calls for $1.60 ($800), with overage calls at $2.10 to $2.50. Every answered call is billable by default, including spam, though you can strike up to 10 percent of your quota per cycle as spam or test calls. Its human plans, for comparison, run $300 for 30 calls to $2,100 for 300, with overage at $8.50 to $11.50 per call, and spam is not charged.
2. Per minute, bundled. Dialzara sells Lite at $29 for 60 minutes up to Elite at $349 for 1,000, billed to the second, with overage from $0.48 down to $0.35 a minute. Rosie sells $49 for 250 minutes, $149 for 1,000 and $299 for 2,000, billed in 60-second increments rounded up, with no per-minute overage at all: exceed the cap and its terms say you are automatically upgraded to the next plan and kept there until you downgrade. My AI Front Desk's $99 Business plan includes 200 voice minutes plus 1,000 credits a month, with voice overage at 25 credits a minute, which is $0.25.
3. Per minute, unbundled. The developer platforms price the components. Retell lists voice infrastructure at $0.055 a minute, text-to-speech at $0.015 (or $0.040 for ElevenLabs voices), a model from $0.003 to $0.16 a minute, and telephony at $0.015 on its own numbers, so a sensible configuration lands around $0.125 a minute plus $2 a month per number. Vapi charges a $0.05 platform fee per minute and passes speech, model and telephony through at cost, so its headline is not the bill. Bland's Start plan is $0.14 a minute with no platform fee and a 100-calls-a-day cap, Build is $299 a month plus $0.12, and Scale is $499 plus $0.11; Build only beats Start above roughly 14,950 minutes a month.

Two vendors sit outside all three models. Goodcall charges per agent with unlimited minutes: $79, $129 or $249 a month for 100, 250 or 500 unique callers, then $0.50 per extra caller, with no fair-use cap anywhere in its terms. Synthflow's pricing page now lists one tier, Enterprise, starting at $30,000 a year through sales, with no self-serve plan.

Three usage profiles, priced

Assume three-minute calls and US telephony. For a small practice taking 150 calls a month (450 minutes): Retell about $58, Bland $63, Goodcall $104 at worst, Rosie $149 on the plan that will not force-upgrade you, My AI Front Desk about $152, Dialzara $199, Smith.ai's AI $270, and Smith.ai's human plan $1,440. For a busy clinic or home-services firm at 500 calls (1,500 minutes): Retell $189.50, Bland $210, Goodcall $249, Rosie $299, My AI Front Desk $414, Dialzara $524, Smith.ai's AI $800, Smith.ai's humans $3,800, Ruby's human 500-minute plan $1,725 with overage at an unpublished rate. At 2,000 minutes: Retell $252, Bland $280, Rosie $299 exactly at its cap, Goodcall about $333, My AI Front Desk $539, Dialzara $699, Smith.ai's AI about $1,151. Synthflow's floor is $2,500 a month at every volume. Vapi is cheapest on paper at every tier, $24.50 to $102, but that excludes the speech, model and telephony providers you must bring or pay for.

Where the marketing page and the binding page disagree

1. Rosie's "unlimited minutes". Solution pages say all plans come with unlimited minutes, directly above plan cards capped at 250, 1,000 and 2,000 minutes; the terms describe an automatic, sticky upgrade when you exceed the cap.
2. Dialzara's included number. The plan cards say every plan includes a US phone number; the FAQ on the same page prices local numbers at $3 a month and toll-free at $5, and its "overage" is not automatic: at zero minutes callers go to voicemail unless you prepay or enable auto-recharge.
3. Smith.ai's spam policy differs by product: human plans do not charge for spam, AI plans bill every answered call with a 10 percent strike allowance.
4. Bland's price rise. The pricing page does not mention that the Start rate rose from $0.09 to $0.14 a minute, a 56 percent increase, on December 5, 2025; only the billing docs do.
5. Ruby's overage. Its pricing page and its terms both refer to your plan's overage rate; neither publishes it, and card payments carry a 3 percent processing fee that appears only in the help center.
6. Goodcall's "15 percent off" annual pricing works out at 16.3 to 16.5 percent. Trivial, but the label is wrong.

What it means for operators

The branded AI receptionists are packaging. Rosie at $299 for 2,000 minutes is about four times the cost of the raw component stack it most likely runs on, and the difference buys you a phone number, a setup flow, a calendar integration and someone to email when it breaks. Whether that is worth it depends on one question: do you have anyone who can configure a Retell or Vapi agent and keep it running? If yes, the platform route saves 60 to 80 percent at every volume in the table. If no, pick the bundled product whose cap sits comfortably above your peak month, because the overage and forced-upgrade clauses are where these bills stop matching the pricing page.

Read the minute definition before the price. Rosie rounds up to the minute, Dialzara bills to the second, Smith.ai bills by call regardless of length, and Ruby counts hold time. A 40-second wrong-number call costs a full minute on some plans, a full call credit on others, and nothing on Dialzara. For a business with a lot of short calls, that arithmetic matters more than the headline rate.

Compare against the human alternative on the same basis, not on a monthly sticker. Smith.ai's human plan at 500 calls is $3,800 against $800 for its own AI plan; Ruby's 500 human minutes cost $1,725 before an unpublished overage. The AI products are cheaper by a factor of five to twenty, which is why our AI receptionist vs answering service comparison argues the two are rarely competing for the same job. And note what none of the AI vendors sells: a human who picks up when the model fails. Transfers go to your own staff. Budget that person in.

How to buy without getting the bill you did not price

1. Pull three months of call logs and compute total minutes, unique callers and average call length; each model prices a different one.
2. Price your peak month, not your average, against the cap, the overage rate and the upgrade clause.
3. Read the terms for the words unlimited, included and overage, which meant three different things across these eleven pages.
4. Ask what a transfer costs and whether billing stops when the call leaves the AI.
5. Confirm the number, the setup fee and the annual discount in writing, since two vendors show a discount with no figure attached.
6. Check the health-care overlay if you handle patient data; Vapi's HIPAA add-on is $2,000 a month, and the compliant options are narrower.

For clinics the shortlist changes shape entirely, which is why we keep a separate guide to HIPAA-compliant AI receptionists and a dedicated healthcare AI receptionist service. For the underlying platforms, our AI voice agents comparison goes deeper on Retell, Vapi and Bland. If you would rather have the agent configured on a platform at platform prices, with your own numbers and a human handoff designed in, that is what our AI voice agent builds do for home services, clinics and firms.