What an AI receptionist costs, and what the price usually hides

AI receptionists are priced three ways: a flat monthly subscription, a usage price per conversation or per minute, or a price per seat. The subscription rarely covers everything. Phone numbers, carrier messaging fees, registration and your own setup time sit outside it. Compare the total monthly cost at your real volume, not the headline number.

The three pricing models

Flat monthly. One price, usually with a conversation or message allowance and an overage rate. Easy to budget, and it punishes very low volume: a business with thirty conversations a month pays the same as one with three hundred.

Usage. Per conversation, per message, or per minute of voice. Cheap to start and hard to budget, and it gets more expensive exactly when the product is working, because more conversations means more cost. Ask what a conversation is: one message, one thread, one day?

Per seat. Priced per team member with access. Odd for software whose point is answering without a person, but common when the AI is bundled into a wider inbox or CRM. Ask whether a read-only owner login counts as a seat.

The costs outside the subscription

• Phone number rental. A local or toll-free number typically costs a few dollars a month per number. Multi-location businesses need several.
• Carrier fees. Each SMS carries a small per-message fee from the carriers, separate from the vendor's price. Fractions of a cent, and reminders send a lot of messages.
• A2P 10DLC registration. Registering your brand and campaign to send business texts in the U.S. has one-time and sometimes recurring fees. Small, but real, and some vendors pass them through without saying so. Our 10DLC guide explains what you are paying for.
• Setup and onboarding. Some vendors charge a one-time fee. All of them cost you an afternoon of loading knowledge and a week of reviewing drafts.
• Voice. If the price is for text only, voice is often an add-on with its own per-minute rate.

What to compare it against

A human receptionist costs salary, benefits, and the hours nobody covers: lunch, evenings, sick days. An answering service is usually priced per minute or per call, with a monthly minimum, and it takes messages rather than booking. And doing nothing costs the calls that go to voicemail and never come back.

Do not take a vendor's number for that last one. Count your own: missed calls last month, times the share that were new customers, times what a new customer is worth to you. That is the figure to hold each quote against.

Questions to ask before you sign

1. What exactly is included at the quoted price, and what is the overage rate?
2. Is the phone number mine? Can I port it out if I leave?
3. Can I export my contacts and conversations at any time?
4. Is voice included, or text only?
5. What is the contract length, and what happens at renewal?

A fair way to compare two quotes

Take your last thirty days: calls, texts, and appointments booked. Price every vendor on that exact volume and ask for the monthly total in writing, including numbers and carrier fees. Then add the cost of your own time in the first month. The cheapest headline price is rarely the cheapest total.

Frequently asked questions

Is a cheaper AI receptionist worse?

Not necessarily. Price mostly tracks which channels are included, whether voice is included, and the level of support. What matters is whether it answers correctly from your facts and hands off when it should, which the price does not tell you.

Are there free AI receptionists?

Free tiers exist, usually capped at a small number of conversations. Find out what happens at the cap. A receptionist that stops answering on the twentieth of the month is worse than none, because customers assume they were ignored.

Can I keep my existing phone number?

Usually, either by porting it to the vendor or by forwarding missed calls from it. Ask which, and what happens to the number if you cancel.

What Frontiva does here

Frontiva's pricing page lists the plans, which count locations, team members, conversations, AI agent runs and SMS segments; launch pricing is still being finalized. SMS runs through your own Twilio account, so number and carrier fees are billed by Twilio. If you are weighing it against a person or an answering service, AI receptionist vs answering service sets out what each one actually does with a call.

Price aside, the thing being priced varies a lot between vendors. The AI agents page sets out what is included here, and what is an AI receptionist covers the category.