Most answering services publish their prices, and the prices still don't answer the question. One sells minutes, one sells calls, one sells a receptionist's hours. The number you actually know is how many times your phone rings in a month, and only the services that sell calls price in it, each counting a call a little differently.
So start with that number. Your phone carrier's call log has it, usually with the length of each call. Once you have it, every price below turns into a bill.
What each option costs
Voicemail or a phone menu: about $10 to $30 a month. Google Voice, Grasshopper and Quo all sit in that range, per user. It's the cheapest option, and it answers nothing: the caller hears a recording and decides whether to wait for you or dial the next number.
A live answering service: $99 to $250 a month for 50 minutes. Real people on the line. PATLive's 50-minute plan is $99, which it estimates at about 20 calls, and it answers around the clock; Ruby's is $250. PATLive also has a $49 pay-as-you-go plan at $2.99 a minute. On PATLive, each minute past the plan is $2.29 on the $99 plan; ask Ruby its rate. They take messages, and PATLive lists appointment scheduling and call transfers on every plan.
An AI answering service: about $25 to $150 a month to start. Self-serve apps like Upfirst, Rosie and Goodcall start between $25 and $80, and you set them up yourself. Smith.ai's AI receptionist is free for 25 calls a month, then $3 a call, or $150 for 75. Mine is $199 for 100 calls, then $1.50 a call, and I set it up and tune it for you.
A receptionist on payroll: about $2,050 a month, part-time. That's 20 hours a week at the Phoenix median of $18.92 an hour (Bureau of Labor Statistics wage survey, May 2025), plus about a quarter more for payroll costs. Full-time, with benefits, is about $4,790.
Either way, they cover the hours they're at the desk, not 7 p.m. on a Saturday. What you get for the money is something no service matches: a person who knows your customers by name and runs the rest of the office between calls.
Where the bill goes as the phone gets busier
Per-minute billing is cheap on a quiet line and adds up on a busy one, which is what the chart at the top shows. At 20 calls a month, PATLive's $99 plan is half what I charge. Around 40 calls the two are about even. At 100 calls the per-minute plan is about $450 against my $199, and at 200 it's $759 against $349.
The chart leaves out two things. It assumes you're on the cheapest plan for each month's minutes; in practice you choose a plan ahead of time and either pay for minutes you don't use or pay the overage in your busy month. And it compares prices, not calls: on the live line, a person picks up.
Here's what that first point looks like. Take an HVAC shop that gets 40 calls in February and 160 in July, on PATLive's 200-minute plan. February is $349, and half those minutes go unused; July is $747 with the overage. On mine, the same two months are $199 and $289. That's an illustration, at 2.5 minutes a call.
Read the plan before you sign
50 minutes
About 20 calls 1
$99/month
Additional min $2.29 2
Plus government taxes and fees. 3
Appointment scheduling · call screening & transfers · 24/7 4
- 1“About 20 calls” assumes 2.5 minutes a call. Your call log shows your real average; a shop whose calls run four minutes gets about 12.
- 2This is the price that matters. In a busy month every minute past 50 is $2.29: 100 calls at 2.5 minutes would be $557 on this plan, which is why you'd move up to the 200-minute one.
- 3Taxes and fees come on top, so the bill is a little more than the plan.
- 4Not listed, so ask: are hold and transfer time billed, and do spam calls count?
Per-call pricing is easier to predict than per-minute, because a long call costs the same as a short one. Ask any service, mine included, what counts as a call. I don't count spam, wrong numbers or hang-ups under 15 seconds, and a call over 10 minutes counts as two.
What AI is good at here, and where it isn't
An AI answering service is good at the parts of a call that repeat. It picks up on the first ring, asks the same intake questions in the same order, answers from your hours, prices and service area, books into your calendar once it's connected to your scheduling software, and texts you a summary. It doesn't get tired at 2 a.m., and four calls at once is four answered calls.
It's weaker on calls that need judgment. An upset caller usually wants a human, and a good setup transfers them. After hours, handing over means a transfer to whoever's on call, or a message if nobody is: a live service is the only option here that puts a person on the line at 2 a.m. A question your information doesn't cover should get “I'll have someone call you back,” not a confident guess, and that only happens if it's set up to say so. And it only knows what you gave it: change your prices and forget to tell it, and it quotes last month's. If most of your calls are judgment calls, a live service or a person is the better buy, and worth the difference.
So which one
Under about 40 calls a month, mostly messages: a live service's smallest plan is the cheapest way to get a real person on the line. Or skip paying for anything yet and fix your voicemail first; the missed-call guide has four free fixes.
Under about 75 calls, and happy to do the setup yourself: Smith.ai's AI receptionist or a self-serve app costs less than mine. Smith.ai is free for 25 calls; Upfirst is $24.95 for 30.
Steady calls, a lot of them after hours, mostly the same few questions: at 100 calls a month mine costs less than half of PATLive's per-minute billing, and it doesn't go home.
Calls that need someone who knows the business, during office hours: hire the person. You can also do both: a receptionist during the day, and a service for nights and weekends.