How much to charge for an AI receptionist, with real prices and a worked example

Most pages on AI receptionist pricing list a few vendor plans and stop. If you want to resell one, the real question is the gap between what the platform costs you and what a local business will pay, and almost nobody shows the sums.

The prices below come from each company's own pricing page, read in October 2026. The board figures come from the 19 AI receptionist ideas among the 370 we have researched, explained in how we research. Revenue numbers are our estimates of potential, not earnings. Prices change, so check each page before you quote a client.

What do AI receptionists and answering services charge?

Four published price points give you the market, at the time of writing (October 2026):

Two things stand out. First, self-serve AI answering is cheap, and Goodcall says it does not meter minutes at all. Second, human answering is far dearer per minute: Ruby's $250 plan for 50 minutes works out at $5 a minute, our arithmetic from its page, and its 500 minute plan at $1,725 is $3.45.

That is the position you are selling into. A business can already buy an AI answering product for under $100 a month, so a reseller needs a reason to charge more, which we come back to below.

What does the platform cost you to run?

If you build the receptionist yourself on a voice platform, you pay per minute of talk. Retell AI, which appears in 13 of the 19 receptionist ideas on our board, lists its voice agents at $0.07 to $0.31 a minute at the time of writing. The cost is built from four parts:

• Voice infrastructure: $0.055 a minute.
• Language model: varies by model, from $0.0016 a minute for a small one to $0.16 for GPT 5.5 and $0.08 for Claude 4.6 Sonnet on the standard tier.
• Speech (the voice itself): $0.015 a minute for Retell's own voices, $0.040 to $0.10 for ElevenLabs voices.
• Phone line: $0.015 a minute for listed countries, and a number costs $2 a month.

There is $10 of free credit, which is enough to build and test one agent. If you bring your own Twilio number, its US page lists $1.15 a month for a local number and $0.0085 a minute for inbound calls.

Worked example: what does one client cost and what do you charge?

This is an illustration, not a quote. We assume a plumber or dental practice that gets 300 calls a month, each lasting three minutes on average. We use Retell's standard-tier figures: $0.055 infrastructure, $0.04 language model (the figure in Retell's own calculator), $0.015 voice and $0.015 phone line.

• Rate per minute: 0.055 + 0.04 + 0.015 + 0.015 = $0.125
• Minutes: 300 calls x 3 minutes = 900
• Usage cost: 900 x $0.125 = $112.50
• Phone number: $2
• Total cost: $114.50 a month

At a price of $299 a month, that leaves $299 minus $114.50, which is $184.50, or 62%, before your time, tax and payment fees.

Now stress it. Swap the language model for the $0.16 option and the per-minute rate becomes 0.055 + 0.16 + 0.015 + 0.015 = $0.245. Then 900 x $0.245 = $220.50, plus $2 is $222.50, and the margin falls to $76.50, or 26%. Longer calls hurt too: at four minutes a call, the base example costs $152 and the margin drops to 49%.

How should you structure the price?

Price in tiers by number of calls, and put the usage limit in writing. Using the same assumptions:

The margin narrows as volume grows, which is fair, because heavier clients bring more support. These prices are ours, chosen for the illustration, not a recommendation of what the market will bear.

Be honest about the competition. Goodcall's $129 plan covers 500 customers, which is cheaper than our $299 tier for 300 calls. You will not win a price comparison with a self-serve product, so you charge for what it does not do: setting up the booking calendar, writing the greeting in the owner's own words, handling the odd call types of one trade, and checking the calls each month. If you cannot name that extra, you are reselling a commodity.

What do our board numbers say about this model?

The 19 AI receptionist ideas have a median potential of $4,500 a month, the highest among the fast models, and a median of 3 weeks to a first dollar, with none taking longer than 6. All 19 can start for under $500. 12 of the 19 need 5 to 10 hours a week, and 74% list selling as a required skill, which fits with the sums above: the technology is cheap, and the work is persuading a business owner. Only 16% are beginner ideas.

That $4,500 is the size of the opportunity, a number of clients at one price, not what a first client brings in. At $299 a month it would take about 15 clients. Our guide to starting an AI receptionist business covers how to find the first of them, and how to get your first client covers the outreach.

What should you do before you quote a price?

1. Build one agent on a free credit and time ten real test calls, so your average call length is measured, not guessed.
2. Work out your cost per call using your model, and add a 30% cushion.
3. Set tiers with a stated call limit and a price for going over.
4. Name your extra: the setup and monthly checking that a self-serve product leaves to the customer.
5. Check recording and consent rules in the client's state before you go live.

The 60 second quiz shows whether this model fits your hours and skills. For how this ranks against other AI services, see the best AI side hustles in 2026.