What does a receptionist cost in the US?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay for receptionists at $38,010 a year, or $18.27 an hour, as of May 2025. That is the wage alone. The cost to employ somebody is higher once payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, recruitment and cover for holiday and sickness are counted, so treat the median wage as the floor rather than the budget.

Can an AI receptionist replace a receptionist?

It can replace a specific part of the job: the repeated questions, the after-hours enquiries and the straightforward bookings. It cannot replace the parts that need somebody physically present or exercising judgment, which in most practices is a large share of why the role exists. The realistic framing is that software covers the hours and channels one person cannot, not that it removes the person.

How many hours can one receptionist cover?

A full-time role is about 40 of the 168 hours in a week, so roughly a quarter. Covering the rest means more people, not more software, and the hours nobody covers are when a good share of enquiries arrive. That is the gap software is actually filling, and it is a more honest claim than a headcount saving.

Is hiring or software better for a single location?

They answer different problems, so the question to ask is which problem you have. If calls are being missed during opening hours because one person cannot be in two places, software helps immediately. If the problem is that nobody is at the desk to greet patients and chase paperwork, software does not help at all and you need to hire.

Does the job itself have a future?

Federal projections expect receptionist employment to decline about 2 percent between 2025 and 2035, while still projecting around 105,100 openings a year, almost all from replacing people who move on rather than from growth. So the role is not disappearing, it is turning over, and the churn is itself an argument for writing down what the front desk knows instead of keeping it in one person's head.

AI receptionist vs hiring a receptionist: the honest comparison

Federal wage data for the job, the 128 hours a week one person cannot cover, and the calls you should still want a human on. What software replaces, what it does not, and why most practices end up with both.

Sohail Safdar · October 30, 2026 · 6 min read

This gets framed as a replacement decision and it almost never is one. Here is the arithmetic, with the wage data sourced, and an honest account of what each option actually covers.

What the job costs

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the figures for this occupation. From the Occupational Outlook Handbook entry for receptionists, read on 30 October 2026:

Measure	Figure	As of
Median pay	$38,010 a year	May 2025
Median pay	$18.27 an hour	May 2025
Employment	947,500	2025
Projected change	A decline of about 2 percent, roughly 16,000 fewer jobs	2025 to 2035
Projected annual openings	About 105,100, nearly all from replacement rather than growth	2025 to 2035

Median means half the country's receptionists earn more than that, so a competitive offer in an expensive city is a different number. And the wage is the floor, not the budget: employing somebody also costs payroll taxes, whatever benefits you offer, a desk and a phone and a computer, the time and fees to recruit, the weeks before they are useful, and cover for their holiday and their sick days. We are not going to put a multiplier on that, because an honest one depends on your state and what you offer, and an invented one would be the most quotable wrong number on this page. Your accountant has the real figure.

The hours one person cannot cover

There are 168 hours in a week. A full-time role covers about 40 of them, which is a little under a quarter. Nobody is at the desk for the other 128.

That is not a criticism of the role, it is the shape of employment, and it is the single clearest thing software adds. The enquiry that arrives at 8pm on a Sunday is not competing with your receptionist for attention. Nobody is there.

It is also the honest limit of the headcount-saving argument. One person covers a quarter of the week; software covers the rest. Those are additive, not substitutes.

What a person does that software cannot

A front desk is not a phone line, and in most practices the phone is not even the hard part of the job.

Being physically present. Greeting somebody who has walked in, handing over a form, noticing that the person in the waiting room looks unwell, taking a package. No software does any of this.

Judgment, and owning the outcome. Deciding that a situation needs the practice manager now. Reading a room. Saying "leave it with me" and meaning it. A person can take responsibility; software can only create a task.

The hundred small things nobody wrote down. Chasing a lab result, re-arranging a day after a cancellation cascade, knowing which patient will not come on a Friday, knowing that the hygienist runs late on Tuesdays. This is most of why the role exists and almost none of it appears in a job description.

Being trusted by the people who have been coming for years. Some of your customers are calling to speak to a specific person. That is not a workflow.

What software does that a person cannot

Be awake for the other 128 hours. The whole argument, really.

Answer two enquiries at once, and ten. Volume peaks do not form an orderly queue.

Be on every channel at the same time. Most enquiries now arrive as a text, a web chat or a form rather than a ring. One person cannot watch four inboxes while on a call, and our shared inbox puts the call, the text, the chat and the email on one thread per customer.

Answer the same question identically every time. Our knowledge base is the only thing the assistant may answer from, which means the answer somebody gets at 2am is the answer you approved, not an improvisation.

Not forget. Every enquiry becomes a record with a timeline, which is what makes the follow-up possible at all.

Hand over cleanly. The point is not how much it handles. It is whether the person who picks up can see what was already said, so the caller is not asked to start again.

The comparison, side by side

	Hiring a person	AI receptionist
Cost shape	Salary, plus the real cost of employing	A subscription, usually per location
Hours covered	About 40 of 168	All of them
Two things at once	No	Yes
In the room	Yes, and this is the point	No
Judgment on a hard case	Yes	No, and it should hand over
Every channel	Not while on a call	Yes
Consistency of answer	Human, so variable	Identical, from what you approved
Holiday and sickness	Needs cover	Not applicable
Ramp-up	Weeks	Hours, and the hours go into writing down your facts
Leaves, taking knowledge	Yes, and federal projections expect about 105,100 openings a year from exactly this	No
Fails by	Being one person	Answering confidently from information you got wrong

The decision, as a question about your problem

If enquiries are being missed during opening hours because one person cannot answer a call, greet a walk-in and reply to a text at the same time, software helps on the first day and hiring a second person is a more expensive way to get there.

If nobody is at the desk, software does not help. Hire.

If the problem is the evenings and the weekends, software is the only option that is not a night shift.

If your calls need judgment more often than they need information, keep people on the phone and point software at the text and web chat, where the questions are more predictable.

If the knowledge lives in one person's head, that is a risk whichever way you go, and the projected 105,100 annual openings are the reason. Writing down your services, prices, hours and policies is worth doing for its own sake. It happens to be the same work that makes an assistant possible.

What Frontiva does, and what it does not

Frontiva answers text, web chat and email from facts you approve, and answers the phone in a conversation: it can book an appointment on the call, move one, or cancel one, and the call is transcribed into your inbox. An urgent or medical call hears what to do and is put through to a person. Asking for a human works the first time.

The phone half needs a voice-capable number on your own Twilio account, connected under Integrations, with Answer calls with AI switched on for that location. It is off until you switch it on. The integrations page lists what each connection needs from you and what it still cannot do.

What it does not do is stand at your desk, and we would rather say that here than have you find out in week two. If you are weighing this against a hire, the useful comparison is not software against a salary. It is which parts of a front desk you are short of.

Our prices are on the pricing page in full, including what is included and what each unit costs past it, and every plan starts with a 14 day free trial that needs no card. Comparing that against the BLS median above is a fair comparison of two cost shapes, and an unfair comparison of two jobs.