Oct 3, 2026

AI Receptionist: What It Is, How It Works, What It Costs

A call at 7pm used to go to voicemail, and the caller usually rang the next company on Google. An AI receptionist picks up instead, in your company’s name, and books the job before they hang up.

That’s the promise. How well it holds up depends on what the receptionist is connected to.

The short answer: An AI receptionist is a voice agent that answers your business phone, answers questions, qualifies the caller, books them on a calendar and hands off to a person when one is needed. Self-serve tools run about $29 to $150 a month, billed by the minute, the call or the caller. Carly is the pick for teams: Carly for teams answers your business line around the clock or after hours, knows the caller from your CRM and email, books them on the right teammate’s calendar, texts the confirmation from your business number and logs everything to your team inbox and CRM. The Carly team sets it up with you.

AI receptionists at a glance

US list prices from each vendor’s pricing page, checked October 3, 2026.

Kind	Examples	What happens on the call	Entry price	Who sets it up
Team receptionist, set up for you	Carly	Knows the caller from your CRM and email, qualifies, books on every team calendar, texts, hands off, logs to the team inbox and CRM	Phone line priced on a short call. Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month	The Carly team, with you
Self-serve AI receptionist	Smith.ai AI Receptionist, Goodcall, Frontdesk AI	Answers questions, qualifies, books or transfers	Free for 25 calls (Smith.ai), $79 to $99 a month (Goodcall, Frontdesk AI)	You
Budget entry plans	Rosie, Dialzara	Answers questions and takes messages. Calendar booking sits on higher plans	$29 to $49 a month	You
Build your own	Retell AI, Vapi, Synthflow	Whatever you build	$0.07 to $0.31 a minute plus telephony (Retell). Synthflow contracts from $30,000 a year	Your developer or an agency
Human answering service	Ruby	A person answers, takes a message or schedules	$250 a month for 50 minutes	Ruby

For the full ranking, compare the top tools in our best AI receptionist list.

What an AI receptionist is

An AI receptionist does the phone half of a front desk: it greets callers, answers common questions, books them, routes them and follows up by text. It is not:

A phone menu. Nobody presses 1. The caller just talks.
Voicemail. The call ends with an outcome, not a recording you have to return.
A human answering service. Ruby and AnswerConnect sell people by the minute. See AI answering service costs for the comparison.

Each turn runs through three steps: speech recognition turns the caller’s words into text, a language model decides what to say and which tool to use (a calendar, a CRM record, a text), and a synthetic voice speaks the reply. Retell, a platform for building voice agents, puts that loop at about 600 milliseconds by its own numbers. Point the same technology at outbound calls and it’s an AI voice agent.

What separates a good one is what it’s connected to. A receptionist that reads your calendars and CRM books jobs. One that can’t takes messages.

How a call flows through an AI receptionist

Bennett Landscaping has six people, two of them estimators who are on site all day. Emily Parker calls at 7:15pm on a Thursday about a new patio. Here’s the call on Carly:

Your team gets the first ring. In business hours, routing rings Michael Bennett and the office at once or in order. After hours, or when nobody picks up, Carly answers (or around the clock, if you’d rather).
It answers in the company’s name and says it’s an AI. “Thanks for calling Bennett Landscaping, this is the AI assistant. I can book a quote visit or take a message.”
It knows the caller. Emily’s number matches her HubSpot record and last spring’s email about a yard cleanup, so Carly already has her address.
It answers from your instructions. Service area, whether they build patios, how quotes work.
It qualifies. Michael’s questions run in his order: inside the service area? Budget over $5,000? Starting this season? A soft question informs the estimator. A hard one ends the booking and offers something else.
It books a real slot. Round robin across both estimators’ calendars, Google and Outlook alike: Josh Whitaker, Saturday at 10am.
It follows up. A confirmation text from the business number, an email asking for yard photos, and a workflow that sends a reminder the day before.
It hands off and logs. If Emily asks for a person, Carly rings the right teammate. The transcript and summary land in the team inbox and on her CRM record, and if she texts back tomorrow, the thread picks up there.

Want to hear it on your own line? Book a call with the Carly team.

What AI receptionists still get wrong

Sales pages say the voice is indistinguishable from a person. User reports say otherwise:

Talking over callers. A RingCentral customer posted in March 2026 that its AI Receptionist cut callers off while they gave an email address, then didn’t end the call after booking.
Asking twice. An August 2026 Trustpilot reviewer said Smith.ai’s AI kept re-asking questions callers had already answered.
Long pauses. A March 2026 Retell reviewer running Gemini 3 Flash reported 1.5 to 2.5 second gaps, far off the 600ms headline. The model sets the speed.
Callers who hang up on a bot. In a 90-day test for a UK heating repair firm, 6 of 61 callers hung up once they realized it wasn’t a person. The same line still turned 43 of those 61 previously missed calls into booked jobs.

Most of it is fixable in the setup. Upfirst, an AI receptionist vendor, analyzed 450,702 calls across 503 receptionists in June 2026:

Greetings that lead with the owner being unavailable had about 50% higher odds of a hang-up.
Saying it’s an AI was associated with about 20% fewer hang-ups.
Agents that could text, transfer and book, trained on the business, had roughly 30 to 40% lower odds of a hang-up (Upfirst notes that careful owners probably explain part of that).

What an AI receptionist costs

The billing unit shapes your bill more than the headline price. Four are common:

Per minute. Dialzara is $29 a month for 60 minutes, then $0.48 a minute. Frontdesk AI is $99 a month ($79 billed annually) for 200 minutes, then 25 cents a minute. Long calls, hold time and spam all burn minutes.
Per call. Smith.ai’s AI Receptionist is free for 25 calls a month, then $3 a call. Pro is $150 a month for 75 calls and $2.50 a call after. A 20-second wrong number costs the same as a ten-minute booking.
Per unique caller. Goodcall is $79 a month per agent for 100 unique callers, then $0.50 each, so repeat callers and long calls cost nothing extra.
Per platform minute. Retell AI runs $0.07 to $0.31 a minute plus telephony, and building and maintaining the agent is on you. Synthflow sells enterprise contracts from $30,000 a year.

Watch the tier gates. Calendar booking and live transfers start on Rosie’s $149 plan (the $49 plan texts callers a link), and Dialzara’s calendar sync and warm transfers start at $99. A self-serve receptionist that actually books costs closer to $99 to $150 a month.

Ruby’s human receptionists start at $250 a month for 50 minutes, or $5 a minute. For a full month of calls priced against Ruby, Smith.ai’s live plans and AnswerConnect, see our AI answering service costs.

Carly prices the phone line on a short call with the Carly team, setup included. Everything else: Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month.

Recording and AI disclosure rules

A plain summary of the statutes, not legal advice. Healthcare, legal and financial practices should check with counsel.

Recording. An AI receptionist transcribes every call, and most keep a recording. Federal law (18 U.S.C. § 2511) allows recording with one party’s consent, but several states require every party’s, including California (Penal Code § 632), Florida (§ 934.03) and Washington (RCW 9.73.030). Washington treats consent as given once the recording is announced, if the announcement is recorded too.

Saying it’s an AI. Utah’s 2025 law (SB 226) requires a business using generative AI with consumers to say so when a person clearly asks, and licensed professions to say so up front when a conversation involves health, financial or biometric data or personal advice. Disclosing at the outset and throughout is a safe harbor. Maine’s 2025 law bars using an AI chatbot, defined to include spoken conversation, in a way that could make a reasonable consumer think they’re talking to a human, unless they’re clearly told.

Outbound calls. In February 2024 the FCC ruled that AI-generated voices count as “artificial” voices under the TCPA, so AI calls need the called person’s prior express consent. Calling a lead who just filled in your form is a different case from dialing a cold list. AI outbound calling has the details.

One greeting line handles the inbound side: “You’ve reached Bennett Landscaping. I’m the AI assistant, and this call is recorded.”

How to set up an AI receptionist

Decide when it answers. After hours only, overflow when nobody picks up, or every call. Most teams start with after-hours answering.
Keep your number. Forward or port the line you already have so callers don’t learn a new one. On Carly, connect your own Twilio account, or the Carly team sets up a number with you.
Write the instructions. Hours, service area, prices you’re happy to quote, FAQs, and the qualifying questions, each marked soft (informs the team) or hard (ends the booking).
Connect calendars and CRM. It can only book calendars it can read and only recognize callers it can look up.
Pick a voice and write the greeting. Carly offers OpenAI voices, which react more like a person, and ElevenLabs voices you can sample first. Say it’s an AI, say what it can do, and skip “nobody’s available.”
Call it and try to break it. Ring it as a vague caller, then one who won’t commit. Read the log (the exact prompt, every action, the transcript) and add one line to the instructions for each thing that sounded off. Our build-and-test tutorial shows the loop.
Add texts. A text back after every missed call (missed-call text-back) and a call to every new web lead within about a minute (speed-to-lead tutorial).

On Carly, the team does steps 2 to 4 with you on one short call.

AI receptionist options, Carly first

The short list. Our best AI receptionist ranking goes deeper on each tool.

1. Carly

Carly is an AI assistant for your whole team, and Carly for teams puts it on your business line: it answers and makes calls, texts from the same number and runs the team inbox, following instructions you write in plain English.

Every calendar. Carly works across all of your team’s Gmail and Outlook accounts and calendars at once, so one booking rule covers all of them, round robin included. Callers who’d rather pick a time get a booking page.
Knows the caller. CRM record and past email on the first ring, with transcripts and summaries written back to HubSpot, Salesforce and Dynamics 365.
Texts. Carly answers texts on your business number, a teammate can take over any thread, and carrier registration is part of setup.
Calls from ChatGPT or Claude. Add Carly Teams as a connector and ChatGPT or Claude can place calls, send texts and go through voicemail on your business line. You can build the receptionist’s voice and text agents from the same chat (how to set it up).
One team inbox. Calls, texts and email share one timeline per customer, and a teammate replying pauses the AI.
Workflows on call events. Trigger on call summarized, voicemail or text received. Carly connects to thousands of apps, so the outcome lands where your team works.
Email too. Put an AI email agent on your bookings@ or support@ address.

Best for: Small and mid-sized teams that want calls answered, booked and logged in the tools they already use. Pricing: Phone line priced on a short call. Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month. Setup: Done with the Carly team. Get started or book a call.

2. Smith.ai AI Receptionist

Smith.ai bills its AI receptionist per call, from a free plan covering 25 calls to Pro at $150 a month for 75, and sells human receptionists too. Cancelling takes 30 days’ notice.

3. Goodcall

Goodcall bills per unique caller, from $79 a month per agent for 100 callers, which suits long or repeat calls. Its Starter plan keeps call details for seven days.

4. Rosie

Rosie trains itself on your Google profile and website, from $49 a month for 250 minutes. Calendar booking and live transfers start on the $149 plan.

5. Dialzara

Dialzara is the cheapest way in, at $29 a month for 60 minutes. Calendar sync, warm transfers and Spanish start at $99.

6. Frontdesk AI (My AI Front Desk)

Frontdesk AI bundles calls, texts, chat and its own CRM for $99 a month with 200 voice minutes. Our My AI Front Desk review covers its refund complaints.

Building your own on a developer platform? Start with our Retell AI breakdown. Want a human voice on every call? Ruby, from $250 a month.

How to pick an AI receptionist

Low volume, mostly messages: Dialzara or Rosie’s entry plan.
Long or repeat calls: Goodcall’s per-caller billing.
You may add human receptionists later: Smith.ai.
You have a developer and high volume: Retell AI.
Go with Carly if you want calls and texts answered, booked on every calendar your team uses and logged in your CRM, set up for you, with the option to run the line from ChatGPT or Claude.

More on phone AI: best AI assistants for phone calls.

FAQ

What is an AI receptionist?

A voice agent that answers your business phone at any hour, answers common questions, qualifies callers, books appointments and hands off to a person when needed. The good ones read your calendars and CRM, so calls end with bookings, not messages. Carly does this for teams, set up by the Carly team.

How much does an AI receptionist cost?

Self-serve tools start at $29 to $79 a month, but plans that book onto your calendar run about $99 to $150, billed per minute, per call or per unique caller. Developer platforms like Retell AI charge $0.07 to $0.31 a minute plus telephony. Carly’s phone line is priced on a short call: book a call with the Carly team.

Do I have to tell callers they’re talking to an AI?

In some states, yes. Utah requires it when a caller clearly asks, and up front for licensed professions in sensitive conversations. Maine requires it whenever a caller could reasonably think they’re talking to a person. Saying it in the greeting covers both, and in Upfirst’s analysis of 450,702 calls it was linked to fewer hang-ups.

Can an AI receptionist replace a human receptionist?

For routine calls (questions, bookings, overflow, after hours), mostly yes. A person still reads an upset caller better, so most teams keep people on the first ring and AI for when nobody picks up. Carly rings your team first and hands callers to the right teammate.

Can ChatGPT or Claude answer my business phone?

Not on their own. Add Carly Teams as a connector and ChatGPT or Claude can place calls, send texts and go through voicemail on your team’s business line, and you can build the receptionist’s voice and text agents from the same chat. See how to set it up, or get started with Carly.

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See what people say

"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.

Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.

On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."

Gus Ibrahim, Founder & Director, IHR