Answer
What an AI receptionist actually costs
Short answer
A custom AI receptionist costs from $2,000 to build, scoped to complexity, plus roughly $45 to $190 a month in running costs paid directly to the platforms in your own accounts. Self-serve template products run $49 to $300 a month instead, with no build fee and no custom logic.
The two pricing models
Every product in this market is one of two things, and they are priced nothing alike. Templates are software you configure yourself: a monthly fee, no build cost, and the limits of whatever the vendor decided to support. Custom builds are work done for you: a one-time fee, then only the platform costs underneath.
What a custom build costs
Ours starts at $2,000 and is scoped to complexity, because a single-location practice taking bookings is not the same job as a firm routing intake across six partners. That is a one-time cost. You own the result: the accounts, the phone number, the workflows and the data.
What it costs to run
Roughly $45 to $190 a month by call volume, about $50 at 100 calls and $180 at 500. Those go directly to the voice, telephony and automation platforms in your own accounts. We do not mark them up and we never hold them.
The optional part
A retainer of $100 to $200 a month buys monitoring, tuning and changes. It is optional. Stop paying and your agent keeps running, because you own it. The retainer buys attention, not the right to keep using what you already paid for.
Which one is worth it
If a template fits your business, use one. They are cheaper and they work. The build is worth paying for when your pricing logic, your booking rules or your intake questions do not fit a form someone else designed. That difference shows up on the awkward calls, not the easy ones.
Call statistics: NextPhone, analysis of a 1.4 million call dataset (2026); 411 Locals, 85 businesses across 58 industries (2024). Pricing is ours and current.
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