A missed call is often a missed job. A plumber under a sink, a stylist with a client in the chair or a solo lawyer in a meeting cannot pick up every ring. AI receptionists, also sold as AI answering services or voice agents, answer the phone for you, take messages, book appointments and pass urgent calls to a person.
This guide covers seven real tools aimed at small businesses, as of October 2026. Every plan name, price and limit below is copied from the vendor's own pricing or product page. These products change their plans often, so check the linked page before you sign up. For a wider list of tools for running a small company, see our guide to the best AI tools for small business owners.
How to compare AI receptionists
The headline price tells you little on its own, because each vendor counts usage in a different unit. Most sell a bundle of talk minutes, one charges per call, one charges per unique caller and one adds an AI agent to a per-user phone plan.
Before you pick, estimate three numbers from your own call log: how many calls you get a month, how long a typical call lasts and how many of those calls come from repeat callers. Then check four features:
- Booking: can it put appointments on your calendar, or only text a booking link?
- Transfers: can it pass a live caller to you or a colleague, and does it brief that person first?
- Your number: can you keep your existing business number by forwarding calls?
- Overage: what happens when you go past the plan, and at what rate?
The tools
Goodcall
Goodcall is an AI phone agent that bills per unique customer, not per minute. Its pricing page says "the only thing we count is how many different people it helped." A unique customer is "One phone number, once a month," so one person who calls five times in a month counts once, and spam and wrong numbers do not count.
Plans as listed: Starter is $79 a month for 100 unique customers, "then 79¢ each." Growth is $129 a month for 500 unique customers, then 26¢ each. Scale is $299 a month for 2,000 unique customers, then 15¢ each. Every plan includes a local number, and you can keep your existing number by forwarding it. Instead of a timed trial, Goodcall offers a free demo agent and you "only pay when you connect a number."
Best for: businesses with long calls, such as trades and home services, where per-minute billing adds up.
Smith.ai AI Receptionist
Smith.ai sells an AI receptionist with a human backup. Its FAQ says calls are "handled by our AI first," and a complex call "can be transferred to a live North America-based receptionist." The page lists lead qualification, call routing, AI scheduling through Calendly and other tools, and integrations including Clio and Zapier.
Plans as listed: Free is $0 a month with 25 calls, "($3.00/call after that)." Pro starts at $150 a month for 75 calls, listed as $2.00/call. Extra calls on that 75-call tier cost $2.50 each. Enterprise starts at $500 a month for 300 calls, listed as $1.67/call. Smith.ai filters calls from known spam numbers before the AI answers and lets customers remove up to 10% of calls from each bill for spam. It is month to month, and the FAQ asks for 30 days' notice to cancel.
Best for: firms that want a person available when the AI cannot handle a call.
Rosie
Rosie is an AI answering service for small businesses that learns from your Google profile and website. All plans include English and Spanish on every call, call summaries, transcripts and recordings, and a Zapier integration.
Plans as listed on monthly billing: Professional is $49 per month with 250 minutes, message taking and appointment links sent by text. Scale is $149 per month with 1,000 minutes, booking directly on your calendar and warm transfers, where "Rosie briefs your team before connecting." Growth is $299 per month with 2,000 minutes and transfers that try several numbers until someone answers. The page offers a 7-day free trial and "2 months free" on annual billing.
Best for: owners who want Spanish support at a low entry price, with calendar booking from the $149 Scale plan.
Frontdesk (My AI Front Desk)
Frontdesk bundles the phone receptionist with web chat, text messaging and a built-in CRM. Its page says answering calls "starts at $99/mo on Business-in-a-Box, or $79/mo billed annually," with 200 voice minutes a month. The same plan lists 100 chatbot conversations and 400 SMS, and the page says it supports 20+ languages. After the 200 minutes, each extra minute costs $0.25, drawn from a monthly pool of 1,000 overage credits, and auto-reload adds 1,000 credits for $10. Partner and Enterprise pricing is custom. There is a 7-day free trial.
Best for: businesses that want one tool for calls, chat and follow-up texts.
Dialzara
Dialzara has the cheapest paid plan among the answering services on this list and a clear minute ladder. Its page says plans start "from $29/month" with a 7-day free trial and no contract.
Plans as listed:
- Business Lite: $29/month, up to 60 minutes, overage $0.48/min. Warm transfer, English/Spanish and calendar sync are not included.
- Business Pro: $99/month, up to 220 minutes, overage $0.45/min.
- Business Plus: $199/month, up to 500 minutes, overage $0.40/min.
- Business Elite: $349/month, up to 1000 minutes, overage $0.35/min.
The plans include message taking with custom questions and third-party integrations through Zapier or Make.
Best for: low call volumes where a small minute bundle is enough.
Quo with Sona
Quo is a business phone service (the old openphone.com address now redirects to it), and it includes an AI agent called Sona on every plan. This is the pick if you also need a business phone system for a team, not only an answering service.
Plans as listed on the monthly view: Starter is $19, Business is $33 and Scale is $47, each "Per user/per month," with one phone number per user. Sona's calls use credits: "1 Call = 100 credits," and every plan includes "1,000 free automation credits (10 calls)." Past the included credits, a Sona call costs $1.00, and paid credit tiers from $25 /mo to $199 /mo lower that rate to as little as $0.45. Billed yearly, the plans are $15, $23 and $35 per user a month. Quo offers a 7-day free trial. The Business plan adds AI call summaries and transcripts, call transfers and phone menus.
Best for: small teams that want shared business numbers and an AI agent in one app.
RingCentral AI Receptionist
RingCentral AI Receptionist is the option from a large business phone vendor. Its page says you can train it "using your website, FAQs, or uploaded documents," add it to your existing phone system, and hand complex calls to your team "complete with a call summary." It says the receptionist recognizes a caller's language and switches during the call. Its pricing page lists the standalone AI Receptionist from $49 a month with 100 minutes included, and $0.50 per minute after that, billed in 30-second increments. A bundle with the RingEX phone plan starts at $39 a month for the AI Receptionist plus $30 a month for RingEX Core. The FAQ says it is sold standalone or as an add-on in the US and Canada, and only as an add-on in the UK, Australia and the EU.
Best for: businesses already on RingCentral, or ones that need several locations on one phone system.
Which one should you pick?
- You get few calls and want to test the idea: start with Smith.ai Free (25 calls) or Dialzara Business Lite (up to 60 minutes).
- Your calls run long: Goodcall's per-customer billing does not change with call length.
- You need a human fallback: Smith.ai's pricing page describes transfer to its own live receptionists.
- You need Spanish and calendar booking: Rosie lists English and Spanish on all plans and calendar booking from the Scale plan.
- You need a full phone system for a team: Quo or RingCentral.
Before you switch it on
Test the agent with your own calls first. Ask it your most common questions, try to book an appointment and check that it transfers an urgent call the way you expect. Read the call summaries for the first week and fix any answer it gets wrong. If you work with clients by phone, our guides to AI tools for real estate agents and AI tools for freelancers cover tools for the rest of your day, and our ChatGPT prompts for small business owners can help you write the FAQ answers your receptionist reads from.
Prices and plan limits here were checked on each vendor's page on October 29, 2026. Check the page before you buy.
