Pricing

AI receptionist vs answering service: which pays off?

A live answering service only wins on price at low volume, against the cheapest per-call services. Above somewhere between 40 and 230 calls a month, depending on the service, and against US plans priced per minute, an AI receptionist costs less – and for difficult calls the best setup is AI first, with a transfer to a person.

1 Nov 20266 min read

A woman in a dark green polo shirt stands at the reception desk of a small clinic, touching a mobile phone that lies next to an open appointment book with a pen and a mug, with an open door to a treatment room and a treatment bench behind her, lit by a desk lamp

A live answering service is cheaper than an AI receptionist only at low volume, and only if it prices per call. Against the cheapest per-call services we found in the UK and the Nordics, people win up to somewhere between 40 and a couple of hundred calls a month. Against the US plans we checked, at roughly $1.50–5 a minute or $8.50–11.50 a call, an AI agent costs less at almost any volume. Where a wrong answer is expensive – distress, complaints, formal intake – the best setup is usually both: AI answers first and transfers to a person.

By answering service we mean people at another company who answer your phone in your name. Hiring your own receptionist is a different calculation, covered in AI receptionist or a hire?

How answering services charge

Providers sell bundles of minutes, a price per call, or a monthly fee plus a price per call. Their own pages, as of October 29, 2026:

Provider	Model	Published price	Hours
Ruby (US)	Minute bundles	50 min $250, 100 min $395, 200 min $720, 500 min $1,725 a month	24/7, no surcharge
PATLive (US)	Minute bundles	$49 a month at $2.99/min; 100 min $189; 1,000 min $1,499; extra minutes $1.49–2.99 depending on plan	24/7
Smith.ai (US)	Per call	30 calls $300, 90 calls $810, 300 calls $2,100; overage $8.50–11.50 a call; booking +$1.50 a call	24/7
Answer (UK)	Per call	£2.20 a call plus VAT, no monthly fee	24/7
ReceptionHQ (UK)	Monthly + per call	£19 a month plus £1.40 a call, or bundles: 50 calls £65, 100 calls £115, 300 calls £340, then £1.30–1.35 a call; plus VAT	24/7, no surcharge
Cellip (Sweden)	Monthly + per call	SEK 395 a month plus SEK 9 a call, and SEK 9 a minute after the first minute, excl. VAT	Weekdays 08–17
TopCall (Denmark)	Tiered by calls	DKK 600 a month for up to 20 calls, DKK 1,400 for 51–100, DKK 3,500 for 251–300, then DKK 12 a call, excl. VAT	Not stated

US services cost several times the Nordic rate per call but include round-the-clock cover; the Nordic ones are cheapest but mostly answer in office hours. Before you sign, ask how a call or a minute is counted: short calls, spam, transfers, rounding.

What an AI receptionist costs

AI receptionists are almost always priced per minute. Our own pricing as an example: Start is €59 a month plus €0.35 a minute; Pluss is €219 with 500 minutes included and €0.30 a minute after that; Premium is €349 with 2,000 minutes included and €0.25 after. Yearly billing is 20% cheaper in exchange for a twelve-month commitment. Each call is billed rounded up to whole minutes. The minute price is the same at 3 am as at 11 am. With your own carrier (a SIP trunk or Twilio) it is lower, but you pay the carrier as well.

The market shows the gap itself: Answer, the UK service above, sells an AI option at £10 a month and £0.85 a call, against £2.20 for a person. Per-minute pricing means call length drives the bill – see The price of a voice agent isn't a number.

Same calls, priced both ways

Assumptions: every call lasts 2.5 minutes – PATLive's own rule of thumb (50 minutes is "about 20 calls") – which Threll bills as 3 minutes, since each call is rounded up. Each provider is on its cheapest monthly plan for the volume. Where we compare currencies we use £1 ≈ €1.15 and €1 ≈ $1.16; check today's rates.

Calls a month	40	120	400
PATLive	$189	$479	$1,499
Smith.ai	$415	$1,125	$2,950
Answer (UK), per call	£88	£264	£880
ReceptionHQ (UK)	£65	£142	£470
Threll	€101 (Start)	€185 (Start)	€349 (Premium)

The currencies differ. At 40 calls Answer and Threll cost about the same (£88 is about €101), and ReceptionHQ stays cheaper than Threll past 120 calls; at 400 calls Threll is the cheapest in the table. Answer offers up to 20% off larger call bundles.

Run the numbers on your own calls

Put an AI receptionist on your own number, let it take evenings and peaks for a week, and compare the bill with your answering service.

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A simple break-even

Per-call service: base fee + calls × price per call. Per-minute AI: base fee + calls × average minutes × price per minute. Set them equal and solve for calls. Against Answer's £2.20 (about €2.53), Threll Start at 2.5-minute calls, billed as 3 minutes, costs €59 plus €1.05 a call, so the person is cheaper below roughly 40 calls a month, or 50 if your calls bill at four minutes. ReceptionHQ is cheaper per call: on its 100-call plan (£115, then £1.35 a call) it stays below Threll up to roughly 155 calls a month. Against Cellip in Sweden the line sits around 230 calls a month; against the Danish call centres we checked, AI already costs the same or less at 20 calls. Your phone system's statistics give you both numbers.

Where a person is better

Distress and judgment. A worried or angry caller wants to be heard. An experienced receptionist reads the tone; an AI is polite but does not know when to step outside its instructions.
Formal intake. Law firms and clinics need to know who hears what. Ruby advertises HIPAA-compliant services, and Smith.ai sends intake to legal CRMs such as Clio. An AI can take a structured message too, but check your data processing agreement and your sector's rules first, whoever answers.
The unexpected. A person handles what nobody wrote instructions for. An AI should transfer it.
Callers who will not talk to a machine. In the EU an AI receptionist must tell callers they are talking to an AI (Article 50 of the AI Act). Some callers will then ask for a person, so that path must exist.

Where AI is better

Bookings in your own system. Smith.ai charges $1.50 per booked appointment on top of the call. An AI connected to your booking system books during the call at the normal minute price.
Answers from your own information. Opening hours, prices, where a case stands – what otherwise becomes "we'll call you back".
Peaks. Several calls are answered at once. The ceiling is known in advance: on Threll 2 simultaneous inbound calls on Start, 4 on Pluss and 8 on Premium, with extra lines at €4.50 a month. Read The agent always answers – until everyone calls at once before you count on unlimited capacity.
Languages. Ruby offers English and Spanish. If your callers speak Norwegian, Swedish or Danish, a Nordic voice agent can answer in their language – see The caller answers in Swedish.
A record of what was said. Every call is transcribed and summarized, not just reduced to a message – though Ruby also offers AI transcripts.

After-hours cover, often the first argument for AI, counts for little against US and UK services that include 24/7 at no surcharge. It counts against the Nordic ones that answer in office hours only.

Combine: AI first, people as backup

It is rarely either-or. Two setups are common:

AI answers every call and transfers to a colleague when a person is needed. The transcript is in the console right away, so your colleague can see what has already been said. See How to design escalation from voice agent to human.
The answering service takes office hours, AI the rest. Forward your number to the agent after hours and on no answer – see How to forward a phone number to a voice agent.

Or the other way round: when every line is busy, Threll can put the caller through to a number you choose, such as your answering service.

A rule of thumb

Count one month of calls: how many, what share comes outside office hours, and how many should have become a booking.

Low volume, mostly daytime messages: a per-call answering service can be cheapest – up to about 40 calls a month against Answer, about 155 against ReceptionHQ, and up to about 230 against Cellip in Sweden. Compare several price lists; providers differ more than you would expect.
More than that, peaks where callers hit a busy signal, or calls that should become bookings: let AI answer first.
Calls where a wrong answer is costly: let AI sort and transfer, or let a person take them from the start.

If you are unsure, test on real calls: How to run a two-week pilot that actually settles the question.

Threll.ai answers around the clock in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and English, connects to your booking system and transfers to you when a person is needed. You set it up yourself, and monthly plans can be cancelled at any time.

Frequently asked questions

It varies. Answer, ReceptionHQ, Cellip and TopCall state that their prices exclude VAT, and PATLive adds government taxes and fees on top of its plans. Ask every vendor, including AI vendors, which way their list prices are shown, and compare like with like.

Most of the US and UK services we checked do not: Ruby, Smith.ai, Answer and ReceptionHQ say round-the-clock calls cost the same, and PATLive answers 24/7. The Nordic services mostly answer in office hours, such as Cellip on weekdays 08–17 and City Call Center in Denmark on weekdays 8–17, which offers round-the-clock service by agreement. An AI receptionist has the same minute price day and night.

Yes. A common setup is that the answering service covers office hours and your number is forwarded to the AI after hours and on no answer. You can also do it the other way round: let the AI answer first and put callers through to the answering service when every line is busy.

That depends on your confidentiality rules and data protection law, not on whether a person or an AI answers. Either way the provider handles caller data on your behalf, so you need a data processing agreement. For privileged or health information, check with your professional body or a lawyer before routing those calls outside the firm.

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