The best AI receptionist for small business, tested on three questions

Three tests

Can it book, does it know your prices, and how does it refuse

$19.99–$399

published monthly entry prices across ten vendors. Two publish nothing

The demo

was arranged to avoid the one call that tells you anything

The short version

• Lowest published entry: SkipCalls at $19.99 a month with unlimited minutes, then Upfirst at $24.95 for 30 calls and Dialzara at $29 for 60 minutes.
• Vandial’s paid plans start with Standard at $150 a month for 1,000 AI conversations, Pro at $350 for 2,000, and custom Enterprise plans. Contact us to discuss your workflow and setup; free trials and self-service testing are not available. Standard includes one AI channel, Pro three and Enterprise five. Additional AI conversations cost $0.40 each on paid plans. Voice minutes, phone numbers, paid messaging and implementation are quoted separately. See the pricing page for the conversation definition and plan details.
• Free to try on real calls: Smith.ai (25 calls a month), Phonely (100 minutes), Vandial (a free tier you can argue with in the browser).
• Vandial’s paid platform plans start at $150 a month for 1,000 AI conversations. Pro is $350 for 2,000; Enterprise is quoted for your operation. Additional AI conversations are $0.40 each. Channel-provider charges, voice usage, phone numbers and implementation are separate. Compare the current allowances and channels on the pricing page.
• Best if you already run Nextiva: XBert at $99 for 100 interactions. RingCentral's AI Receptionist publishes no price at all.
• Need a HIPAA BAA: Phonely publishes one on its enterprise tier. Vandial does not offer one.
• Vapi, Retell, Bland and Synthflow are not on this list. They are platforms for building an agent, not receptionists you can switch on this afternoon.

The AI-native vendors, on published figures

Read from each vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-05. Voice development platforms are excluded and explained below.

• skipcalls.com/pricing · read 2026-09-05
• upfirst.ai/pricing · read 2026-09-05
• dialzara.com/pricing · read 2026-09-05
• oncallclerk.com/pricing · read 2026-09-05
• heyrosie.com/pricing · read 2026-09-05
• phonely.ai/pricing · read 2026-09-05
• goodcall.com/pricing · read 2026-09-05
• smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist · read 2026-09-05
• nextiva.com/products/ai-answering-service · read 2026-09-05
• slang.ai/pricing · read 2026-08-14
• ringcentral.com/ai-receptionist · read 2026-09-05
• avoca.ai, no public pricing page · read 2026-08-14

How we compared them, and what we have to gain

Every figure on this page was read from the vendor's own public pricing page on the date shown, by us, and copied without rounding. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the cell says so; no estimate from a review site has been substituted, because a reader can check a published price in ten seconds and a wrong one discredits the rest of the page.

Beyond price, the vendors were held to the three questions in the sections below: does it write to a real calendar during the call, are your prices a setting or a memory, and what does it say when it does not know. Those were chosen because they are the three things a demo is arranged to avoid and the three things that produce a wrong answer in your business's name.

We sell one of the products on this list. That is a conflict of interest and it is the reason the ranking is not a ranking: each provider gets the thing it is genuinely best at, Vandial is not placed first by default, and where a competitor is cheaper on a comparable meter the page says so in the first paragraph about them.

Voice development platforms are excluded, deliberately, and the section on them explains why. So are the human and hybrid services, which have their own comparison on the small-business page.

The first test: can it see your calendar

This is the line that splits the category and it is almost never the headline claim. An AI receptionist that answers, captures a name and emails you a transcript has built a nicer voicemail. Genuinely useful, and not a receptionist.

The question to ask is precise: does it read the capacity remaining in a specific window and create the appointment during the call, or does it collect a booking request and hand it to somebody in my business? Vendors are careful with the wording here, so ask it twice. Rosie is the clearest published example of the gap: its $49 tier sends the caller an appointment link by text, and writing to your calendar starts at $149. OnCallClerk, Goodcall, Vandial and Smith.ai's Calendly scheduling put booking on the entry tier.

The second test: are your prices configuration or recall

If your call-out fee lives in a prompt that the model is trusted to remember, it will eventually quote something else. If it lives in a setting the agent reads, it cannot.

The practical version of this question is: can I change my price at eight in the evening and have the next call quote the new one? Dialzara sells a self-editable prompt on every tier and paid prompt engineering on the $199 tier and up, which tells you which side of this line it sits on. Where the answer involves a support ticket, you are a customer of a service rather than an operator of a product, and you will feel that difference every week.

The third test: what it says when it does not know

Ask it to diagnose a fault. Ask what a repair will cost. Ask whether a named person is a client. Every one of those has a correct answer and the correct answer is a refusal with a reason and a next step.

A vendor demo will not show you this, which is exactly why it is the most informative sixty seconds available to you. A confident wrong answer, given to your customer, in your business's name, is the entire risk of this purchase.

SkipCalls, Upfirst, Dialzara, OnCallClerk: the bottom of the market, and what the price buys

Four vendors now publish entries under $30 a month. SkipCalls is $19.99, or $199 a year, with unlimited minutes and no overage published. Upfirst is $24.95 for 30 calls and $1.50 a call after. Dialzara is $29 for 60 minutes at $0.48 a minute over, with warm transfer to your team gated to the $99 tier. OnCallClerk starts at $29 with calendar booking and call transfers included, and full-feature plans from $99 to $299.

These are real prices from real pricing pages and for a business with a few calls a day they are the right place to start. Two things to check before choosing on price alone. First, the meter: 60 minutes is about twenty calls, and a per-minute overage of $0.48 turns a busy month into a $60 one quickly. Second, what the entry tier withholds: warm transfer at Dialzara, calendar booking at Rosie, scenario limits at several. The cheapest tier is often a message-taker, and a message-taker is what you already have.

Rosie and Phonely: two honest mid-market options

Rosie publishes $49 for 250 minutes, $149 for 1,000 with calendar booking, warm and live transfers and mid-call texting, and $299 for 2,000 with unlimited message scenarios and a specialist to onboard you. It trains from your Google profile and website, answers in English and Spanish on every plan, and has native iOS and Android apps, which almost nobody else on this list does. The overage rate is not on the pricing page, so ask.

Phonely gives away 100 minutes, then $50 for 200 at $0.25 a minute and $150 for 650 at $0.30, and it is the one vendor here that publishes a HIPAA BAA, on its enterprise tier. If you run a practice that needs one, start here rather than with us.

Goodcall and Vandial: metered on customers, not conversations

Vandial’s paid plans start with Standard at $150 a month for 1,000 AI conversations, Pro at $350 for 2,000, and custom Enterprise plans. Contact us to discuss your workflow and setup; free trials and self-service testing are not available. Standard includes one AI channel, Pro three and Enterprise five. Additional AI conversations cost $0.40 each on paid plans. Voice minutes, phone numbers, paid messaging and implementation are quoted separately. See the pricing page for the conversation definition and plan details.

The meter is the point. In a trade with a season, the week that produces a third of your annual calls is the week a per-call meter produces a bill you did not budget for; on a customer meter it produces the same bill as a quiet week. Goodcall is $20 cheaper at the entry rung and a low-volume business should look at it first. Vandial's case is dispatch and refusal: a keypress-accepted escalation ladder that no voicemail can intercept, per-trade capture and guardrails across 31 trades, and a configured sentence for every question it should not answer.

Smith.ai, Nextiva XBert, RingCentral: the established names

Smith.ai gives you 25 real calls a month free, then $3.00 a call, with $150 for 75 calls and $500 for 300. It is the least expensive way in the market to find out whether your customers tolerate an AI at all, and it has the one thing no AI-native startup can offer: human receptionists on the same account if the AI is not enough.

Nextiva XBert is $99 a month for 100 interactions and $0.99 each after, as an add-on to a Nextiva plan. RingCentral's AI Receptionist publishes no price and asks you to contact sales. Both make sense if you are already on that phone system; neither is the cheapest way to buy this if you are not.

The same month, priced on every meter

Vandial’s paid plans start with Standard at $150 a month for 1,000 AI conversations, Pro at $350 for 2,000, and custom Enterprise plans. Contact us to discuss your workflow and setup; free trials and self-service testing are not available. Standard includes one AI channel, Pro three and Enterprise five. Additional AI conversations cost $0.40 each on paid plans. Voice minutes, phone numbers, paid messaging and implementation are quoted separately. See the pricing page for the conversation definition and plan details.

Vandial’s paid plans start with Standard at $150 a month for 1,000 AI conversations, Pro at $350 for 2,000, and custom Enterprise plans. Contact us to discuss your workflow and setup; free trials and self-service testing are not available. Standard includes one AI channel, Pro three and Enterprise five. Additional AI conversations cost $0.40 each on paid plans. Voice minutes, phone numbers, paid messaging and implementation are quoted separately. See the pricing page for the conversation definition and plan details.

Those two months are the whole argument about meters, and the arithmetic is the vendor's own. A flat or per-customer plan costs the same in the busy month; a per-call, per-minute or per-interaction plan costs two to three times as much, which is fine if the busy month is rare and expensive if it is your season.

Why Vapi, Retell, Bland and Synthflow are not on this list

They are development platforms for building voice agents, and they are good ones. They are also a completely different purchase: you supply the engineering, the telephony logic, the integrations and the maintenance.

They appear constantly in "best AI receptionist" listicles because their search volume is large and their affiliate programmes are generous. If you do not have an engineer who will own this, comparing them against a finished product is comparing a workshop against a vehicle.

Where each one actually wins

SkipCalls has the lowest published price on the page. Upfirst has the lowest per-call entry. OnCallClerk is the cheapest tier that books into a calendar. Dialzara publishes the clearest per-minute ladder and a 7-day trial. Rosie has the apps and the bilingual default. Phonely has the BAA and 100 free minutes.

Goodcall has the lowest published entry price on a customer meter, the same meter we use. Smith.ai gives you 25 real calls a month free and a human fallback. Slang.ai is deeper in restaurants than anything general can be, from $399 a month per location. Avoca is built for home services and sits in the ServiceTitan marketplace, which matters a great deal if you run ServiceTitan; it publishes no pricing.

Vandial is built around dispatch and refusal, and a flat meter that does not punish you for a busy week.

Hear it before you decide anything

The free tier builds the agent, takes your services and your prices, and lets you talk to it in the browser. Nobody should hand their phone to something they have not argued with first.

Still comparing

The rest of what somebody deciding this actually needs to read.

Answered for your trade, in your words

The questions, urgency rules and escalations are configuration. 31 trades have their own page.

Questions and answers

What is the best AI receptionist for small business?

For the lowest published price, SkipCalls or Upfirst. For the cheapest tier that books into your calendar, OnCallClerk. For free evaluation on real calls, Smith.ai's AI tier or Phonely. For restaurants, Slang.ai. For home services already on ServiceTitan, Avoca. For trades with volatile call volume and real dispatch requirements, Vandial. There is no single answer and any list that gives you one is selling something.

How much does an AI receptionist cost?

Published entry prices run from $19.99 to $399 a month. Some meter per call (Upfirst, Smith.ai), some per minute (Dialzara, Phonely, Rosie), some per interaction (Nextiva), some per unique customer (Goodcall, Vandial), some per location (Slang.ai), and two are flat (SkipCalls, OnCallClerk). RingCentral and Avoca publish nothing at all.

Can an AI receptionist really book appointments?

Some can, into a real calendar with real remaining capacity, on the entry tier: OnCallClerk, Goodcall, Vandial. Some can from a higher tier: Rosie from $149. Many take a booking request or text the caller a link, which is a message with extra steps. Ask the question precisely and ask it twice.

Which AI receptionist is HIPAA compliant?

Phonely publishes a HIPAA BAA on its enterprise tier. Vandial does not hold a HIPAA certification and does not offer a BAA. For any other vendor, ask for the BAA in writing before the trial, not after.

What about Vapi, Retell, Bland and Synthflow?

They are voice development platforms, not receptionists. You supply the engineering, the telephony logic and the integrations. They belong in a comparison of build-your-own tooling, not in a list of things you can switch on this afternoon.

Will an AI receptionist annoy my customers?

Some customers, yes, and no honest vendor will tell you otherwise. The number that matters is not how many dislike it. It is how many hang up compared with how many hang up on your voicemail today.

What should I test before buying?

Ask it something it should refuse, change a price and ring it again, interrupt it mid-sentence, and let a transfer go unanswered to see what the fallback does. Those four cover almost all of the risk, and evaluation access varies by vendor. Vandial handles new inquiries through the contact form and does not offer free trials or self-service tests.