What an AI receptionist costs at 100 calls a month

AI receptionists are priced in at least five ways. Some charge per minute, some per call, some per unique caller, some a flat monthly fee, and some sell credits. A monthly fee on a plan page tells you very little until you know how many calls it covers and what happens after.

So every listing here carries one figure: what the service costs at 100 calls a month. We also show 500 calls, for a business that is growing. Both come from the vendor’s own published prices, worked out the same way for every product.

The standard month

We price the same month for everyone.

• 100 inbound calls. The second figure uses 500.
• Each call lasts 2 minutes 30 seconds. Vendors’ own numbers put a typical receptionist call at 1 to 3.5 minutes, and 2.5 is the figure their plan sizing uses. PATLive’s pricing sells 50 minutes as about 20 calls. Every call has the same length, so billing increments compare fairly.
• Every call is billable. Free spam filtering or free short calls vary by vendor. We show them on their own row and never take them off the total.
• Every call is from a different caller. For services that bill per unique caller this is the highest their bill can be, and the listing says so.
• One location, one number, at the vendor’s minimum number of seats.

Which plan we use

We take the cheapest published way to get the basics: the call is answered, a message is taken and you get the summary. Booking, a second language and CRM sync are not needed for the figure. If the cheapest plan leaves one out, that feature’s row on the listing says so.

The total is the monthly fee, plus any recurring fee you cannot decline, plus overage for the usage past the plan’s allowance. A phone system that needs its own seat under the AI add-on counts that seat.

Left out of the total and shown separately: one-time setup fees, sales tax and VAT, launch discounts and optional add-ons.

Billing increments

The same 2.5-minute call costs a different amount depending on how a vendor rounds it.

How the vendor bills	Minutes charged for one call
Per second	2.5
30-second increments	2.5
First minute in full, then per 6 seconds	2.5
Whole minutes, rounded up	3

Over 100 calls that is 250 minutes or 300. When a vendor does not say how it rounds, we use per second, the reading that favours the vendor, and the listing says what the figure would be if they round up.

When a figure is marked partial

Some prices cannot be worked out fully. A plan sold only per year is converted to its monthly equivalent. A plan whose overage is not published drops out, and the next plan that covers 100 calls is used. In both cases the figure is marked partial and the listing says why.

A vendor that only gives prices on a sales call has no figure. It is listed after the products that do, never ranked among them.

Checked against the source

Every input on a listing comes with the vendor’s own words and the page they are on: the plan, its price, its allowance and its overage rate. The total is calculated from those inputs, so the same prices always give the same answer.

If you sell one of these services and a figure looks wrong, send us the page that shows the right price and we will check it.