What an AI agent costs

What we charge, and how the fee works

Agent Place charges one flat monthly fee for unlimited agents, month to month: nothing extra per call, minute or message. We give you the price on the call.

1. Every agent you need, for the one fee. We build each agent around the job you describe: what it knows about your business, the rules it follows and the systems it connects to. A second or a third agent is covered by the same fee.
2. The usage is included. The calls, minutes and messages your agents use are part of the fee, so a busy month costs the same as a quiet one.
3. We keep it working. We watch it, fix it when something changes and keep it up to date. Small changes, like new opening hours or a new answer, are done within one working day.
4. Month to month. There is no yearly plan, and you can stop any month.

The fee comes with a guarantee. Fully functioning and delivering value in 30 days guaranteed, or you pay nothing more until your agents are. We set the figure on the call once we know what your agents have to do and what they have to connect to.

What other UK agencies charge to build one

Published UK agency prices run from under £1,000 for one small automation to £15,000 and more for several agents working together. Here is what five of them publish.

Every figure in the table is quoted from that agency's own pricing page, read on 29 October 2026. We do not link to them, and prices change, so check the current figure on the agency's own site before you compare.

What an off-the-shelf agent costs instead

A ready-made agent you set up yourself costs less on the way in, and the AI receptionists in this table start at £10 a month plus VAT, but you pay by the minute, the call or the conversation on top, and you do the setting up.

Answer.co.uk, Answer4u and Zatio were read on their own pricing pages on 21 October 2026, the rest on 29 October 2026. If a simple scripted answer is all you need, one of these is a cheaper buy than having an agent built, and we will tell you so on the call. An agent built for you is worth paying more for when it has to follow your own rules and work inside your own systems.

For phone answering in particular, we have set out more prices in AI receptionists against answering services, and what the UK's best-known answering firm charges in Moneypenny alternatives.

What makes one agent cost more than another

Two things set the price: what the agent has to connect to, and how much work it has to handle. An agent that answers questions and passes messages on is the cheapest to build; one that writes into your own software costs more.

• What it connects to. An AI receptionist that books into Google Calendar, Cal.com or Calendly is a standard build. Booking into Outlook or your practice software is a custom plan, if that system allows it.
• How much it handles at once. Our receptionist answers up to 10 calls at the same time. A business that needs more than that goes on a custom plan.
• Which languages it speaks. English by default; over 30 other languages, including Polish, Spanish and Romanian, on a custom plan.
• How many rules it follows. An agent that only answers is simpler than one that has to decide what counts as an emergency, who to put through and when to hand over to a person.

What it costs next to a person doing the same work

The median full-time receptionist in the UK earns £25,865 a year before employer costs. Setting a year of an agent against that salary is not a like-for-like comparison, and it would be misleading to say it was. An agent does part of a person's job, such as answering every call or reading every invoice, and the person still does the rest. The fairer sum is the hours it takes off someone's week. The median receptionist earns £13.50 an hour, according to the Office for National Statistics' 2026 pay survey (provisional figures), and the National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour from April 2026, so every hour of work the agent takes on is worth roughly that, before employer costs are added.

With us, that sum grows with each agent you add while the fee stays the same, because one flat monthly fee for unlimited agents covers all of them. Add up the hours your agents would take off the week, and weigh them against the price we give you on the call.

Why we guarantee that it works

Because a price is only worth paying once you have seen the agent do your work. Ours runs on your real callers, emails or invoices, checked by us, until it gets them right. Fully functioning and delivering value in 30 days guaranteed, or you pay nothing more until your agents are.

Two of the agencies above go part of the way. Crownbot takes half up front and half when the agent is live and working, and Logica HQ refunds the build fee in full if what it builds does not do what the written scope says within 30 days of launch. Ours is tied to the agent doing your own work, not to the launch or the scope document. Off-the-shelf products usually offer a trial of the product itself, which tells you what the tool can do, but not what it does with your callers once it has been set up for your business.

How we build it

Every agent goes through the same four stages after a first conversation, and each one you add is covered by the same monthly fee.

1. A 30-minute consultation. What comes in today, what usually goes unanswered or takes too long, and what you want done with each kind.
2. Scope. We watch how the job is done today and agree what the agent will do.
3. Build. We build it inside the tools you already use.
4. Test. It runs on your real work, checked by us, until it gets it right.
5. Live. It does the job on its own, and we keep it working.

Fully functioning and delivering value in 30 days guaranteed, or you pay nothing more until your agents are.

Six things to ask any agency before you sign

The headline figure is rarely the whole price, so these are worth asking whoever you talk to, including us.

1. When does the monthly fee start? On the day you sign, the day it goes live, or the day you are happy with it.
2. Is the fee paid month by month or a year up front, and what is the notice period? A monthly figure paid a year at a time ties you in for the year.
3. What is charged on top? Minutes, calls, conversations, credits, licences and hosting are often priced separately.
4. Do the prices include VAT? Several of the pages quoted above exclude it.
5. Can you see it on your own work before you commit? A demo shows the tool; your own callers show the agent.
6. Who changes it when your business changes, and how quickly? New hours, new prices and new staff all need to reach the agent.

Worth a 30-minute conversation

Tell us what you would like an agent to take off your plate. We will tell you on the call what we would build and what it would cost, and if an off-the-shelf tool is the better buy we will say that instead.

One flat monthly fee for unlimited agents, month to month. Fully functioning and delivering value in 30 days guaranteed, or you pay nothing more until your agents are.