How much does an AI receptionist cost a contractor?

The paid plans in the tables below run from $29 to $997 a month, and the sticker price tells you very little. What you pay depends on how the plan counts your calls and how many minutes you really use. Here are the published prices worked out at three call volumes, ours included.

By Drew Koch, owner of Gladiators Painting and founder of AI Front Desk Helper · Updated October 4, 2026

Four ways these plans charge you

Two products with the same sticker price can cost very different amounts in May. It comes down to what the plan counts.

• Minutes, with an allowance. The most common. You get a set number of minutes, then pay for each one after. Ours works this way. Check two things: the allowance against your busiest month, and whether the extra-minute rate is published at all.
• Calls or conversations. Jobber's AI Receptionist includes 30 conversations and charges $0.79 for each one after. Smith.ai's AI plans are per call: free for 25 calls a month, Pro from $150 for 75, with $1.67 to $3.00 for each call over. Long calls cost the same as short ones.
• Unique callers. Goodcall doesn't count minutes. It counts how many different people call in a month. That suits a company whose callers are mostly repeat customers.
• Bundled, or by quote. Housecall Pro says its CSR AI is included in its own plans ($59 to $299 a month on annual billing). ServiceTitan's Virtual Agent and Avoca don't publish a price; both sell by demo. Independent 2026 reviews put Avoca between $1,000 and $3,500 a month.

Published prices at 100, 300 and 600 minutes a month

For each product I took the cheapest way to cover that many minutes on its published prices: the plan that includes them, or a smaller plan plus its published extra-minute rate when that's cheaper. Where a vendor doesn't publish an extra-minute rate, I used the next plan up.

On a phone, scroll the table sideways.

Setup fees, add-ons and software subscriptions aren't in these monthly figures. Prices were read from each vendor's own pricing page on September 21, 2026 (My AI Front Desk, Dialzara, Rosie, Signpost, Ruby), Sameday's on September 30 and Wakeman's on October 1. RingCentral's figures come from a 2026 review, read on September 21. The Smith.ai, Housecall Pro and Avoca figures further up were read on September 21 too. My AI Front Desk sells extra minutes as credits (25 a minute at a cent each) and lists 1,000 overage credits with its plan, so its real figure may be about $10 lower. Vendors change prices, so check before you buy. If I got one wrong, email drew@aifrontdeskhelper.com and I'll fix it. Competitor names and marks belong to their owners; we are not affiliated with or endorsed by them.

These plans don't all do the same job, so the cheapest row isn't automatically the best buy:

• Booking starts at different prices. Dialzara lists appointment booking on every plan, and RingCentral's books through Google Calendar or Outlook. Rosie's direct calendar booking starts on its $149 plan. Signpost's appointment scheduling starts on its $399 plan. Ours is on every plan, starting with Basic at $297.
• Wakeman's $349 plan books into Jobber. It also has a $149 plan that only answers when you're closed, with 300 minutes. We have nothing at that price.
• Ruby is people. It's in the table to show what a live service costs at the same volumes.

Plans that don't count minutes

For these two I converted minutes to conversations at two and a half minutes each, which is what calls of a minute or longer averaged on my own line (see below). So 40, 120 and 240 conversations stand in for 100, 300 and 600 minutes. That treats every minute as a conversation, and for Goodcall every call as a different caller, so these are the most each could cost. Jobber doesn't count spam calls or calls with no conversation, and it counts a text thread as a conversation too.

Read from Jobber's help center on September 30, 2026 and Goodcall's pricing page on September 21, 2026. Jobber's plan prices are for monthly billing, read from its pricing page on September 21. Jobber's help center says its top plan includes the receptionist with unlimited use; check with Jobber for your plan.

First, find out how many minutes you use

Don't guess. I pulled the numbers for my own company, Gladiators Painting in Omaha, whose main line runs on our system.

Two things stand out.

• Even the longer calls are short. From March 19 to September 30, the calls on that line that ran a minute or longer and weren't flagged as spam averaged two and a half minutes. That's 26 calls where we have the length. The longest was just under six minutes.
• Robocalls used most of the minutes. Three quarters of September's minutes went to calls that were never customers. So ask every vendor whether spam calls count against your allowance. Wakeman says it never bills them, and Jobber doesn't count them as conversations. We count the minutes on every call, in and out. Alex, our AI receptionist, hangs up on the robocalls it recognizes partway through, but the minutes up to that point still count.

To estimate your own month, count the calls on your phone bill for your busiest month. Multiply the calls where you talked to someone by two and a half minutes and add a minute for each junk call. A company with 100 of the first kind and 100 robocalls in a month lands around 350 minutes. These are one painting company's numbers, so treat them as an example, not an industry average. The full count is in what rings a painting company's phone.

What the sticker price leaves out

• Setup fees. Signpost charges $199 on every plan. We don't charge one.
• The software it runs on. Jobber's $29 receptionist needs a Jobber plan. RingCentral's is $39 if you already pay for its phone system, $49 if you don't.
• Add-ons. Rosie lists website texting as a $50 a month add-on. Ours has one too: the estimator, which lets Alex give ballpark prices by phone and text in 12 trades and runs an instant quote page for the trades it covers, is $20 a month on Basic and Pro and included on Elite.
• Texts. Our plans include 500, 1,500 and 4,000 texts a month, and extra texts are $0.10 each. Every text the system sends counts. Ask how texts are counted wherever you buy.
• Extra phone numbers. Our plans come with one, three and five numbers. More are $12 a month each.
• An unpublished extra-minute rate. Rosie, Sameday and Ruby don't show one on their pricing pages. Get it in writing before your first busy month.

What AI Front Desk Helper costs

Extra minutes are $0.30 and extra texts are $0.10, billed the following month. Calls and texts never stop at the limit. Annual billing is two months free. There's no setup fee and it's month to month.

So at 300 minutes Basic is $297, and at 600 minutes it's $327. At 1,000 minutes Basic comes to $447, which is $50 under Pro with its follow-up and reminders.

That's more than most of the table above, and I'd rather say why than hide it. Several of the cheaper products book appointments too. Basic answers, books the estimate on your Google Calendar after checking you're free, captures the lead and texts back missed calls. What our higher plans add is what happens after the call. Pro texts a customer four times over ten days about a quote that hasn't closed, stopping when they reply, and sends appointment reminders. Elite calls your past-customer list. If answering and booking is all you need and a cheaper product covers your minutes, buy the cheaper one. The sixteen-product comparison says which.

Against an answering service, or hiring someone

• A live answering service bills by the minute for a person. Ruby's published plans are $250 for 50 minutes, $395 for 100, $720 for 200 and $1,725 for 500. Ruby takes a message or does basic scheduling; it doesn't check your calendar for an open time first. The answering service comparison covers when a person is still the right call.
• A receptionist on payroll. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts median pay for receptionists at $18.27 an hour, or $38,010 a year, in 2025 (BLS). That's about $3,170 a month before payroll taxes and benefits, for one person during office hours. A good one also runs the office, calms an upset customer and knows your regulars, which software doesn't.
• An AI receptionist is $29 to $997 a month on the paid plans in the tables above, answers nights and weekends, and takes several calls at once.

So what should you budget?

• You just want the phone answered, and you get a few calls a week. $29 to $99 a month. Dialzara, Rosie or My AI Front Desk. Not us.
• You run Jobber or Housecall Pro. Turn on their built-in receptionist first. It's $29 on Jobber, and Housecall Pro says its own is included.
• You're losing jobs after the call, to estimates that never got booked or quotes nobody followed up. $297 to $497 a month: our Basic plan books the estimate on Google Calendar, Wakeman's Front Desk plan books into Jobber, and our Pro plan adds the quote follow-up.
• You have a past-customer list worth calling and reviews and ad spend to keep track of. That's our Elite plan at $997.

Questions contractors ask

Related: sixteen AI receptionists compared, answering service vs AI receptionist, what a missed call costs, and what rings a painting company's phone.