How much does an AI receptionist cost? (And which plan you actually need)

An AI receptionist costs $99 to $399 per month for most small businesses. thecallcenter.ai charges $99 for 250 minutes, $199 for 1,000, and $399 for 2,000, billed flat each month. The per-minute math improves as you move up: Foundation works out to 39.6¢ per included minute because it spreads the cost of an always-answered line across a small bundle, while Grow and Scale land near 20¢.

• Foundation: $99/month, 250 minutes, 1 phone number, $0.39 per extra minute.
• Grow: $199/month, 1,000 minutes, 2 numbers, $0.32 per extra minute.
• Scale: $399/month, 2,000 minutes, 3 numbers, $0.25 per extra minute.
• A safety cap at twice your plan's minutes bounds the worst case at $196.50, $519, or $899.
• Calls flagged as spam are never billed, and the free trial covers 14 days or 50 minutes, whichever comes first, with no card required.

What does an AI receptionist cost per month?

Pricing is a flat monthly fee that includes a bundle of call minutes and at least one phone number. There are three tiers — $99, $199, and $399 — and the only things that change between them are the size of the minute bundle, the overage rate, and how many numbers you get.

The fourth column is the one worth staring at. The per-included-minute rate falls as you move up — Foundation carries the fixed cost of a dedicated number that answers 24/7 across a small bundle, so its minutes price out highest, while Grow and Scale land near 20¢. The overage rate also improves, dropping from $0.39 to $0.25 per minute as you move up, which matters only if you regularly exceed your bundle. Full current pricing lives on the pricing page.

Which plan do you actually need?

Pick the tier whose bundle covers a normal month, not your busiest month ever. Overage exists precisely so a spike doesn't force you into a bigger plan year-round. If you have no idea what your call volume is, start on Foundation — it is the cheapest way to find out, and upgrading mid-cycle is not a penalty.

• Under 250 minutes a month: Foundation, $99.
• Regularly over 500 minutes: Grow. That is Foundation's safety cap, and right about where the overage math tips in Grow's favor anyway.
• Over 1,625 minutes: Scale, where the $0.25 rate beats paying Grow's $0.32 on the excess.
• Need more than one published number — separate locations, or a tracking number for ads: Grow (2) or Scale (3).

Strictly on arithmetic, Grow overtakes Foundation-plus-overage at about 507 minutes a month — almost exactly where Foundation's 500-minute safety cap sits. The two signals agree: if you are bumping into the cap, the upgrade already pays for itself.

What happens if you go over your included minutes?

Your receptionist keeps answering and the extra minutes bill at your plan's rate. A safety cap set by default at twice your plan's minutes stops the meter, so a runaway month has a known ceiling rather than an open-ended bill. You can raise or lower that cap from your billing page.

That worst case assumes you burn every minute up to the cap, which almost nobody does. It is there so you can answer the only question that really matters when you sign up: what is the largest number that can appear on my card? Spam calls are screened and never counted, so junk traffic cannot push you toward the cap. See the full FAQ on overage and caps for the current defaults.

How does this compare to hiring someone or using an answering service?

A full-time receptionist costs far more, but does a fundamentally different job. Answering services usually bill per minute or per call, so cost scales with volume in a way flat pricing does not. The honest comparison is not "which is cheapest" but "which cost structure matches how your phone actually behaves."

For scale: the median US receptionist earns $38,010 a year in wages, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS survey (May 2025 estimates). Wages are only about 70% of what an employee actually costs an employer once benefits are included, per the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release (March 2026), which puts the fully loaded figure near $54,400 a year. The Scale plan runs $4,788 a year.

Traditional answering services are harder to compare honestly, because there is no independent survey of what they charge — every figure in circulation traces back to vendor pricing pages. What you can compare is the structure: per-minute or per-call billing, tiered minute bundles, and surcharges for nights, weekends, and holidays. Volume you cannot predict is the expensive case under that model and the cheap case under a flat one. We go deeper on this in AI receptionist vs. answering service.

What is not included in the monthly price?

The monthly fee covers call answering, your included numbers, and the features in your tier. The things that can add to a bill are minutes beyond your bundle and additional phone numbers. There is no setup fee, no per-call charge on top of minutes, and no contract.

• Minutes beyond your bundle, at your plan's per-minute rate.
• Extra phone numbers beyond the count your tier includes.
• Appointment booking, call transfers, CRM and calendar integrations, and the knowledge base start on Grow — Foundation does not include them.

When is an AI receptionist not worth the money?

If your phone rings a handful of times a month and you answer it every time, you are buying insurance against a problem you do not have. The same is true if your intake is legally required to involve a licensed human, or if the calls you get are so unusual that no amount of setup would let software handle them.

The break-even is not really about the monthly price — it is about how many calls you are currently losing, which most owners have never measured. We wrote a separate guide on how to work that number out for your own business: is an AI receptionist worth it?

Related questions

Is there a free trial?

Yes — 14 days or 50 minutes of calls, whichever comes first, with no card required. That is ample for calling the number yourself and testing it hard, but it can disappear quickly once real customer calls are forwarded to it, so pick a plan before you point your main line at it.

Are spam calls billed?

No. Calls screened as spam never consume minutes and never appear on your bill. This matters more than it sounds — on a per-minute answering service, junk traffic is billable traffic.

Is there a contract or a setup fee?

Neither. Pricing is month to month with no setup fee and no minimum term. You can change tiers or cancel from your billing page, and a tier change takes effect without a support ticket.

Does the price change if I have more than one location?

Only through phone numbers. Foundation includes 1, Grow 2, and Scale 3. Multiple locations sharing one published number cost nothing extra, because simultaneous calls are included on every tier.

What to do next

• Compare the tiers side by side and start the free trial.
• See how setup works — most businesses are answering calls the same day.
• Read how to choose an AI receptionist for the questions worth asking any vendor, including us.