An AI receptionist costs roughly $49–$899 per month as a standalone product, about $0.12–$0.15 per minute on usage-priced platforms, or comes bundled into a business platform. Stack Space includes one on every plan, from $25/mo (Launch); most solo service businesses land on Starter at $120/mo. For comparison, a human answering service runs $300–$1,000+/mo and an in-house receptionist $35,000+/year. The number that actually matters isn’t the sticker; it’s which of the four pricing models fits how your phone really rings.
What are the four ways AI receptionists are priced?
1. Per-minute. You pay for talk time, sometimes with a small platform fee. Developer-grade platforms like Retell run $0.13–$0.31/min all-in (per retellai.com’s published pricing); many consumer tools meter around $0.12–$0.15/min. Cheap at low volume, unpredictable at high volume, and you’re assembling the CRM, calendar, and texting around it yourself.
2. Per-call. A flat rate per answered call, common with human-staffed services and some AI tools. Predictable per unit, but a ten-second wrong number costs the same as a ten-minute intake call, and the bill grows exactly when business is good.
3. Flat monthly (standalone). A subscription with a minute allowance. Entry products like Rosie start around $49/mo for ~250 minutes (heyrosie.com, 2026); feature-rich and white-label tiers run into the hundreds, with the category spanning roughly $49–$899/mo and the wider market adding per-minute usage on top.
4. Bundled into a platform. The receptionist is one feature of a bigger system. GoHighLevel sells its AI Employee at $50–$97/mo per location on top of its $97–$497 plans (help.gohighlevel.com). Stack Space includes its AI Receptionist, along with the CRM, booking, texting, reviews, and invoicing it feeds, in every flat plan.
What does Stack Space’s AI receptionist cost?
The whole math, nothing hidden:
- Plans: $25 Launch / $120 Starter / $350 Professional / $800 Agency per month, flat. The receptionist plus all 25 AI agents (Neo, 17 hireable AI employees, and 7 built-in builders) is included on every plan, with unlimited team members. (Billed annually, 2 months free, that’s about $21 / $100 / $292 / $667 effective monthly.)
- Voice minutes included: 20 / 40 / 150 / 350 per month by tier. A typical answered call runs ~2–4 minutes, so Launch covers a handful of calls a month (enough to try it on a real line), Starter suits light volume (~10–20 calls), Professional handles ~40–75 calls, and Agency ~90–175. Past your allowance you add minute packs from the dashboard, 100 minutes for $65 (also 500 for $325 and 1,000 for $650), and the usage meter shows pack pricing before anything bills. No rounding games, no after-hours surcharge.
- The worked example: a busy 60-call month at ~3 minutes a call is about 180 minutes. On Starter that’s the $120 plan (40 minutes included) plus two 100-minute packs at $65, so ≈ $250 all-in, still under the floor of the human answering-service band.
- Managed dedicated text number: $20/mo, if you want the AI texting confirmations from its own line.
- No free trial; plans start at $25/mo, billed monthly, no contracts, cancel in two clicks. The receptionist is included from Launch, at $25/mo, the cheapest way to actually put it on your phones and judge real transcripts.
Every call also ends as a recap on the contact (need, budget, timeline, next-step tasks, follow-up sent automatically), which is where the receptionist quietly pays for itself: the follow-up happens.
How does that compare to a human answering the phone?
| Option | Typical cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Voicemail | “Free” | Most callers never call back |
| Human answering service | $300–$1,000+/mo | Message-taking during staffed hours, per-minute fine print |
| In-house receptionist | $35,000+/yr | A great human, business hours only |
| Standalone AI tool | $49–$899/mo + usage | Answering, thin on booking/CRM/follow-up |
| Stack Space | From $25/mo flat, every plan | Receptionist + CRM + booking + follow-up, 24/7 within plan minutes |
The context that makes any of these worth paying for: a large share of calls to small businesses ring out unanswered, and callers who hit voicemail rarely try again. They call the next result on Google. Multiply your own missed calls by your average job value; against that leak, every row of the table is cheap except the first one.
What hidden costs should you watch for?
- Usage overages. Know your per-minute rate past the allowance and where the meter is displayed. If you can’t see the meter, that’s the answer.
- Per-location and per-seat multipliers. A $50–$97/location add-on (help.gohighlevel.com) looks small until you count locations.
- Integration labor. A standalone tool’s real price includes the CRM, calendar, and texting stack you wire around it, plus your hours doing it.
- Setup fees and contracts. Common with human services, rare and suspicious with AI. (Stack Space has neither.)
The same fine-print habits we documented for human services apply to some AI vendors too; the checklist in the true cost of an answering service transfers directly.
FAQ
How much does an AI receptionist cost per month? Standalone products run roughly $49–$899/mo, with usage-priced platforms metering ~$0.12–$0.15/min on top of platform fees. Bundled, Stack Space includes its AI receptionist on every plan, from $25/mo flat, with 20–350 voice minutes included by tier and $65-per-100 minute packs past that.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than an answering service? Usually by a wide margin. Human answering services run $300–$1,000+/mo for message-taking, while AI options start under $100 and Stack Space bundles one with an entire CRM from $25/mo (most land on Starter at $120/mo). The AI also books appointments and transcribes calls, which the human service’s price doesn’t include.
Are per-minute AI receptionists cheaper than flat plans? At very low volume, yes: a handful of short calls at $0.12–$0.15/min costs almost nothing. But per-minute bills grow with your success and require you to assemble the rest of the stack. Flat and bundled plans win once the phone rings daily.
What do I get on day one? There’s no free trial; plans start at $25/mo (Launch), billed monthly, no contracts, cancel in two clicks. Launch is the full CRM plus real AI usage from day one, receptionist included, so you can put it on real calls and judge transcripts instead of promises. You can also test the voice instantly: the AI receptionist demo on the homepage starts a live voice call in your browser.
Does the AI receptionist cost extra on any Stack Space plan? No. It’s one of the 17 hireable AI employees included on every plan, Launch, Starter, Professional, and Agency, alongside Neo, the AI brain that learns your business (Neo briefs the team; the receptionist answers the phone).
Ready to price it against your own call log? See what it does on a real call at AI receptionist, or the head-to-head with human services in virtual receptionist vs AI receptionist.