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 $30/mo (Launch); Starter, at $125/mo, covers about 63–125 calls a month. For comparison, a human answering service runs $250–$1,725/mo (Ruby publishes $250 for 50 receptionist minutes up to $1,725 for 500 — ruby.com/plans-and-pricing, October 2026) and an in-house receptionist $37,230/year at the US median (BLS, May 2024), before payroll taxes and benefits. The number that actually matters isn’t the sticker; it’s which of the four pricing models fits how your phone really rings.
All competitor prices are as of July 2026 from the vendors’ own pricing pages and public reports; they reprice often, so confirm before you budget.
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 $0.07–$0.31/min all-in (retellai.com, October 2026); many consumer tools meter around $0.12–$0.15/min. (Synthflow, once the best-known self-serve builder, is now enterprise-only from $30,000 a year; see Synthflow alternatives for the per-minute options left.) Cheap at low volume, unpredictable at high volume, and you’re assembling the CRM, calendar, and texting around it yourself. Our own number for context, since we’re about to compare: minutes past your Stack Space allowance come only from prepaid packs, at 17.9–24¢ a minute, and they never expire. On raw per-minute price we are the expensive one, and you buy those minutes up front — the trade is that a block of minutes comes inside a $30 plan and the CRM, booking, and follow-up come with it.
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, July 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, July 2026). Stack Space includes its AI Receptionist, along with the CRM, booking, reviews, and invoicing it feeds, in every flat plan, with texts going out from our registered number under your business name.
What does Stack Space’s AI receptionist cost?
The whole math, nothing hidden:
- Plans: $30 Launch / $125 Starter / $355 Professional / $800 Agency per month, flat. The receptionist is included on every plan, alongside 23 of the 25 AI agents on Launch (Stax, 15 hireable AI employees, and 7 built-in builders) and all 25 from Starter up, where the Social Media Manager and review funnel unlock — unlimited team members on Professional and Agency, up to 10 seats on Launch and Starter. (Billed annually, 2 months free, that’s about $25 / $104 / $296 / $667 effective monthly.)
- Voice minutes included: 45 / 250 / 900 / 1,500 per month by tier. A typical answered call runs ~2–4 minutes, so Launch covers roughly 11–22 calls a month, Starter ~63–125, Professional ~225–450, and Agency ~375–750. Past your allowance, minutes come from prepaid packs you choose to buy — 100 minutes for $24 (24¢/min), 500 for $105 (21¢), 1,000 for $179 (17.9¢) — and pack minutes never expire. Without a pack, the receptionist pauses until your next cycle: calls are logged as missed, the caller is saved as a contact, and they get your missed-call text-back. Nothing is ever auto-billed. 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 fits inside the 250 minutes the $125 plan includes, so $125 all-in, well under the floor of the human answering-service band.
- Managed dedicated text number: $15/mo, if you want texts to come from your own line; it sends as soon as you buy it. Marketing texts, and texting from a number you bring yourself, wait for carriers to approve your registration.
- No free trial; plans start at $30/mo, billed monthly, no contracts, cancel in two clicks. The receptionist is included from Launch, at $30/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, and a follow-up email drafted for you to send, or sent automatically if you switch that on), which is where the receptionist quietly pays for itself: the follow-up is already written.
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 | $250–$1,725/mo | Message-taking during staffed hours, per-minute fine print |
| In-house receptionist | $37,230/yr median (BLS, May 2024) | A great human, business hours only |
| Standalone AI tool | $49–$899/mo + usage | Answering, thin on booking/CRM/follow-up |
| Stack Space | From $30/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, July 2026) 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.
Pricing model settled, pick the product: the 6 best AI receptionists of 2026, compared by category.
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 $30/mo flat, with 45–1,500 voice minutes included by tier and prepaid packs at 17.9–24¢/min past that (never auto-billed) — a higher per-minute rate than the metered tools, against a much lower entry price and no separate CRM bill.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than an answering service? Usually by a wide margin. Human answering services run $250–$1,725/mo for message-taking, while AI options start under $100 and Stack Space bundles one with an entire CRM from $30/mo (Starter is $125/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, on per-minute price alone, yes — and that includes against us: a handful of short calls at $0.12–$0.15/min beats our 17.9–24¢ pack minutes, plainly. Two things flip it as the phone gets busier. Per-minute bills grow with your success, and a metered tool is only the phone: you still buy the CRM, the calendar, and the follow-up separately. Our $30 plan is the receptionist plus all of that, with minutes inside it.
What do I get on day one? There’s no free trial; plans start at $30/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, and the receptionist itself is on every plan — Launch, Starter, Professional, and Agency (Launch carries 15 of the 17; the Social Media Manager and review funnel start on Starter) — alongside Stax, the AI brain that learns your business (Stax 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.