AI receptionist pricing · checked October 31, 2026
AI receptionist pricing: what four vendors charge, and what a month really costs
Plans from $29 to $800 a month, four different meters and four kinds of free trial. Below: every published plan, two desks priced line by line, and where a text-first AI employee on a free 30-day pilot fits.
- Entry plans
- $29–$150/mo
- Largest listed plan
- $800/mo
- Free trials
- 7 days · free plan
- Ottawa receptionist
- C$3,870/mo
In one paragraph
How much does an AI receptionist cost?
Published AI receptionist plans for small business run from $29 to $800 a month (USD), checked October 31, 2026 on the price pages of Dialzara, Rosie, Goodcall and Smith.ai, and Smith.ai also has a free plan of 25 calls. A desk of 100 three-minute calls a month comes to $79–$212.50 depending on how the vendor meters.
Enquiries arrive by chat and email?
The Unistaff AI inbound sales manager answers them from your price list. The pilot runs 30 days on your real web chat and email, free, with no card; after it, one flat fee per AI employee.
Published plans
AI receptionist plans and prices, side by side
Monthly prices in U.S. dollars as printed on each vendor’s price page on October 31, 2026. The last column divides the price by what the plan includes, which is the fair way to compare inside one vendor.
Dialzara
Meter: minutes · 7-day free trial
| Plan | Per month | Included | Over the plan | Per included unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business Lite | Per month$29 | Included60 min | Over the plan$0.48 / min | Per unit$0.48 |
| Business Pro | Per month$99 | Included220 min | Over the plan$0.45 / min | Per unit$0.45 |
| Business Plus | Per month$199 | Included500 min | Over the plan$0.40 / min | Per unit$0.40 |
| Business Elite | Per month$349 | Included1,000 min | Over the plan$0.35 / min | Per unit$0.35 |
Prices shown monthly, annual pricing available, no setup fees. A managed “Done for You” service starts at $1,500 a month. Source: Dialzara price page, read October 31, 2026.
Rosie
Meter: minutes · 7-day free trial
| Plan | Per month | Included | Over the plan | Per included unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Professional | Per month$49 | Included250 min | Over the planNot published | Per unit$0.20 |
| Scale | Per month$149 | Included1,000 min | Over the planNot published | Per unit$0.15 |
| Growth | Per month$299 | Included2,000 min | Over the planNot published | Per unit$0.15 |
Annual billing is offered with “2 months free”. The overage rate is not printed on the page. Source: Rosie price page, read October 31, 2026.
Goodcall
Meter: unique callers · Free demo agent; you pay when you connect a number
| Plan | Per month | Included | Over the plan | Per included unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Per month$79 | Included100 callers | Over the plan$0.79 / caller | Per unit$0.79 |
| Growth | Per month$129 | Included500 callers | Over the plan$0.26 / caller | Per unit$0.26 |
| Scale | Per month$299 | Included2,000 callers | Over the plan$0.15 / caller | Per unit$0.15 |
Counts unique customers a month, with minutes unmetered. The page estimates 100 customers at about 150 calls. Source: Goodcall price page, read October 31, 2026.
Smith.ai
Meter: calls · Free plan: 25 calls a month
| Plan | Per month | Included | Over the plan | Per included unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Per month$0 | Included25 calls | Over the plan$3.00 / call | Per unit— |
| Pro · 75 calls | Per month$150 | Included75 calls | Over the plan$2.50 / call | Per unit$2.00 |
| Pro · 150 calls | Per month$270 | Included150 calls | Over the plan$2.30 / call | Per unit$1.80 |
| Pro · 300 calls | Per month$500 | Included300 calls | Over the plan$2.17 / call | Per unit$1.67 |
| Enterprise · 500 calls | Per month$800 | Included500 calls | Over the plan$2.10 / call | Per unit$1.60 |
AI-first plans; Enterprise is built and run for you. Volumes above 1,000 calls are quoted. Source: Smith.ai price page, read October 31, 2026.
Vendors change their price pages often; the date above is the day these were read. Plans for outbound calling, SMS-only and white-label resale are left out because they answer a different question.
Why the prices differ
Four meters, four ways to read the same month
The headline price matters less than the unit behind it. Convert your own last month of calls into each unit before you compare.
01 · Minutes
You pay for talk time
An allowance of minutes, then a per-minute rate. Long calls (directions, menus, complaints) use it up fastest. Dialzara prints its overage, from $0.48 a minute on the entry plan down to $0.35 on Elite.
02 · Unique callers
You pay per customer, whatever the length
Goodcall counts unique customers a month and leaves minutes unmetered, so one customer calling three times counts once. Extra customers cost from 79¢ on Starter to 15¢ on Scale.
03 · Calls
You pay per answered call
Each real call is a unit. Pro starts at $150 for 75 calls, about $2.00 a call, and the rate falls on bigger tiers; calls over the allowance cost $2.10–$3.00.
04 · Per employee
You pay one flat fee per AI employee
After a free 30-day pilot, one monthly fee per AI employee is agreed on the pilot review, with messages and minutes unmetered. It covers web chat and email; phone and SMS are Planned.
How one month’s bill is built
Every plan in the table follows the same five steps. What changes from vendor to vendor is the unit at step two and the rate at step four.
- 01
A customer gets in touch
A call, or a chat or email on text-first products
- 02
The meter counts it
Minutes, calls, unique callers, or nothing per message
- 03
Allowance used
The plan's included minutes, calls or callers
- 04
Overage
Each unit over the allowance at the plan's rate
- 05
The month's bill
Plan price plus overage, or one flat fee
Worked example
Two desks, priced on every vendor
The call volume is an assumption, printed with each desk; the prices are the published plans above. For each vendor the cheapest plan is picked, overage included where the page prints a rate, and every caller is counted as a new one.
Small desk
100 calls a month, 3 minutes each
= 300 minutes · up to 100 callers
- Dialzara$135
Business Pro ($99) + 80 min over at $0.45
- Rosie$149
Scale ($149)
- Goodcall$79
Starter ($79)
- Smith.ai$212.50
Pro · 75 calls ($150) + 25 calls over at $2.50
Busy desk
300 calls a month, 3 minutes each
= 900 minutes · up to 300 callers
- Dialzara$349
Business Elite ($349)
- Rosie$149
Scale ($149)
- Goodcall$129
Growth ($129)
- Smith.ai$500
Pro · 300 calls ($500)
The order changes with the desk. A per-caller meter is cheapest when callers are few and calls run long; a per-call meter gets expensive as volume grows; a minute allowance sits in between. Run your own numbers through the table, or put your hours into the ROI calculator.
AI receptionist free trials, compared
A trial is worth what it lets you test. Seven days catches a slow week or a busy one, rarely both; a month shows the pattern.
- Dialzara7-day free trial
- Rosie7-day free trial
- GoodcallFree demo agent; you pay when you connect a number
- Smith.aiFree plan: 25 calls a month
- Unistaff.ai30-day pilot on your real web chat and email, no payment and no card
Against a human receptionist
A receptionist in the Ottawa region earns a median $20.00 an hour, with a range of $17.60 to $28.62 (Job Bank Canada, Receptionists (NOC 14101), Ottawa region, updated November 19, 2025). With CPP, EI and vacation pay that is about C$3,870 a month before benefits.
On the U.S. side the site’s cost model uses $35 an hour loaded, near the BLS median total compensation for March 2026, so a 40-hour desk models at $6,062 a month. The line-by-line version is on AI employee vs hiring.
A person still does what no plan above sells: greets walk-ins, settles a complaint, decides on a refund. Keep that person and move the repeat questions to the AI: that is how the AI front desk pages split the work.
Six questions for any AI receptionist price page
- 01
What is the unit?
Minutes, calls or unique callers. Convert your last month of calls into that unit before comparing prices.
- 02
What does one unit over the plan cost?
Dialzara, Goodcall and Smith.ai print their overage rates; Rosie's page does not show one, so ask before you pick the smaller plan.
- 03
How long is the free trial, and what does it cover?
Seven days at Dialzara and Rosie, a demo agent at Goodcall, 25 calls a month free at Smith.ai, 30 days of real enquiries in the Unistaff pilot.
- 04
Who sets it up?
Self-serve plans leave the prompt to you; Dialzara's “Done for You” and Smith.ai Enterprise are built for you at a higher price.
- 05
Monthly or annual?
Dialzara shows monthly prices with no setup fees and offers annual pricing; Rosie offers annual billing with two months free. Lock-in matters most before you know your volume.
- 06
Which channels are included?
The four vendors are built around the phone, and text varies by plan: Rosie includes a website chat widget and sells website texting as a $50 add-on; Dialzara sells an SMS agent and bundles a website chatbot with its voice plans (100 sessions a month). Unistaff starts from web chat and email.
Where Unistaff fits
A text-first AI employee, priced per employee
Unistaff.ai is a different shape of product. The AI inbound sales manager answers web chat on your site and email to a dedicated address, quotes only from your approved price list, records a booking as a request for a person to confirm and hands complaints, emergencies and anyone who writes HUMAN to you. Phone and SMS are Planned.
Before it meets a customer it sits an exam of 12 cases from your trade, each run three times, then works 30 days of probation; the exam log publishes every run of the demo employees.
- First 30 days
- $0 · no card
- After the pilot
- One flat fee per AI employee
- How it is set
- Agreed on the pilot review
- Meters
- None per message or minute
- Channels Live
- Web chat · email
- Phone · SMS
- Planned
Questions about AI receptionist pricing
Published plans for small business run from $29 to $800 a month in U.S. dollars (Dialzara, Rosie, Goodcall and Smith.ai price pages, checked October 31, 2026); entry plans start at $29–$150. Smith.ai also has a free plan of 25 calls a month, and managed setups such as Dialzara's “Done for You” start at $1,500.
Yes, in four different shapes. Dialzara and Rosie give 7-day free trials, Goodcall lets you build a free demo agent and charges once you connect a number, and Smith.ai has a free plan with 25 calls a month. The Unistaff pilot is 30 days on your real web chat and email, with no payment and no card.
Each vendor meters a different unit: minutes at Dialzara and Rosie, unique customers at Goodcall, answered calls at Smith.ai. The same month of calls lands on very different plans, so convert your own call log into each unit before you compare the headline prices.
On the published numbers, yes for the answering part of the job. A receptionist in the Ottawa region earns a median $20.00 an hour (Job Bank Canada, NOC 14101), about C$3,870 a month with CPP, EI and vacation pay before benefits; the site's U.S. model puts a full-time loaded desk at $6,062 a month. The busiest plan in this comparison is $800. A person still owns the decisions, the walk-ins and the calls that go wrong.
You pay the overage rate for each unit over the plan. Dialzara charges $0.35–$0.48 a minute depending on the plan, Goodcall 15¢–79¢ per extra customer and Smith.ai $2.10–$3.00 per extra call. Rosie's page lists no overage rate, so ask before choosing the smaller plan.
The AI inbound sales manager starts with a free 30-day pilot: one AI employee for one company, on web chat and email, with no payment and no card. After it comes one flat monthly fee per AI employee, agreed on the pilot review, with messages and minutes unmetered. No list price is published; the pricing page has the terms.
Phone and SMS are Planned. Today the AI employee answers web chat on your site and email to a dedicated address. If most of your enquiries arrive by phone, a voice product from the table above fits now; if they arrive in writing, the pilot covers them.
Price your own desk with a month of real enquiries
Tell us where your enquiries arrive and what they ask. The team sets up the pilot with you over a call and replies within one business day.
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