AI Receptionist vs Answering Service

AI receptionist vs answering service on price

An AI receptionist. We checked the published prices of 33 providers selling to UK businesses, and 100 calls a month costs £124.95 to £230 with a human answering service and £69 to £99 with an AI receptionist on plans priced by the call. Most human plans charge between £1.10 and £2.99 a call or a minute; most AI plans charge between £0.10 and £0.85.

Price is not the whole answer, though. A person is still better on the calls that need judgement, and plans on both sides differ in what they actually do. The rest of this page sets out what each one costs, what sits outside the headline price, and which calls each one handles better, so you can match it to the calls you actually get.

The difference between an AI receptionist and an answering service

An answering service is a team of people who pick up your calls in your business name, take a message and pass it on. An AI receptionist is software that picks up the same calls, answers questions from what you have told it, and books, takes a message or puts the caller through to you. Both stop calls going to voicemail. The difference is who is on the line, what each call costs, and what happens to the call next.

How an answering service works

You divert your number to the service when you are busy or closed. A receptionist answers with a script you have agreed, takes the caller's details and sends them to you by email or text, and you ring back. Plans are priced by the call or by the minute, usually as a monthly bundle. Some services also book into your diary or transfer calls; ask whether yours does, and on which plan.

How an AI receptionist works

The divert is the same. The agent answers, works out what the caller wants and does that job: it answers from the information you gave it, offers real free slots and books one, takes a message, or puts the caller through. It answers the same way at three in the morning as at nine on a Monday. Plans are priced by the minute, by the call, or as a flat monthly fee with no limit on calls.

What an answering service costs in the UK

Mostly between £1.10 and £2.99 a call or a minute on the published prices we checked, usually as a monthly bundle. The cheapest way in is pay as you go: Answer.co.uk charges £2.20 a call plus VAT with no monthly fee, and Answer4u charges £19.99 a month plus calls from £1.75.

Bundles change the shape of the bill more than the price of a call. Pocket Receptionist's Pro plan is £230 for 100 calls, which is £2.30 a call, and its Enterprise plan is £635 for 300 calls, or £2.12 a call. Services that charge by the minute work the same way: AnswerConnect's smallest plan is £45 for 25 minutes, £1.80 a minute, and gtele's is £60 for 60 minutes, then £1.10 for each minute after.

The best-known name does not publish a price at all. Moneypenny asks you to get in touch for a quote.

Not every service answers all night, either. Pocket Receptionist's plans cover 08:00 to 20:00, with round-the-clock cover sold as a separate 24/7 service, and Answerpoint lists weekdays 9 to 6 and Saturdays 10 to 4, with no overnight cover. If your calls come in the evening, check the hours before the price.

What an AI receptionist costs in the UK

From £10 a month, with most small-business plans between £39 and £99, and extra minutes from £0.10 to £0.54. Answer.co.uk's AI Lite is £10 a month plus £0.85 a call, IONOS starts at £39 for 30 calls, and Moneypenny, which keeps its human prices private, publishes its AI receptionist from £49.

Some charge a flat fee with no limit on calls: Ringzel from £99 a month and Hey Jodie from £49. At the other end, the largest plan we found is Intavia's, at £1,249 a month for 2,600 minutes, which is for a practice taking a lot of calls rather than a small business.

Per call or per minute

This is where the plans are hardest to compare. A price per call is easy to budget, because you know roughly how many calls you get. A price per minute depends on how long your calls run, and a booking takes longer than a question about opening hours. Before comparing a per-minute plan with a per-call one, look at your phone bill or your phone system for your average call length.

What each provider publishes

These are the plans a small business would start on, with the provider's own price, what it includes and what the next call or minute costs.

What 100 calls a month cost

£124.95 to £230 with a human answering service, and £69 to £99 with an AI receptionist, on plans priced by the call. Per-minute plans are left out here, because what they cost depends on how long your calls run.

• Answer.co.uk, live receptionist: 100 calls at £2.20 is £220.00 plus VAT.
• Answer4u, Receptionist 100: £175.00 for 100 calls.
• Answerpoint, Growth: £49.95 for 50 calls, then 50 more at £1.50, which is £124.95.
• Pocket Receptionist, Pro: £230 for 100 calls.
• Answer.co.uk, AI Growth: £30 for 50 calls, then 50 more at £0.85, which is £72.50 plus VAT.
• IONOS, mid tier: £69 for 100 calls, excluding VAT.
• WiseCall, Starter: £99 for 100 calls, excluding VAT.

The cheapest human plan here costs £25.95 a month more than the dearest AI one. That is the number to hold against everything below.

When one company sells both

You get the cleanest comparison there is, because the same firm has priced a person and an AI for the same job. Answer.co.uk charges £2.20 a call for a person and £0.85 a call for its AI receptionist, a difference of £1.35 a call. Answer4u charges from £1.75 a call for a person and £0.27 a minute for AI.

That gap, on the same company's own pages, is roughly what a person on the line costs.

The costs that aren't in the headline price

In VAT, setup fees, how minutes are rounded, what happens past the bundle, and the notice period. None of them is hidden, but each is easy to miss on a pricing page.

• VAT. Some prices exclude it (Zatio, IONOS, WiseCall and DPOM say so), Ringzel says it does not currently charge it, and many pages do not say. If your business is not VAT-registered, a price plus VAT costs you a fifth more at the standard rate.
• Rounding. AnswerConnect bills in whole minutes, rounded up, so a call that runs just over a minute is billed as two. Its help centre also quotes a lower rate for extra minutes than its plans page does, so ask which one applies.
• Past the bundle. A bundle's price only holds up to its limit. Pocket Receptionist's Pro plan works out at £2.30 a call, but every call over 100 is £2.99.
• Setup. Answer4u's AI plans carry a £25 setup fee, Answer.co.uk's AI Lite needs a £25 deposit, and Zatio offers an optional £179 done-for-you setup.
• Notice. Most plans here are month to month. WiseCall asks for 30 days' notice and DPOM for 31.

The calls a person handles better

The ones that need judgement, comfort or a decision nobody wrote down. A caller who is upset, a complaint, a situation the business has never seen before: a trained person reads those better, and a well set-up AI receptionist passes them on rather than trying.

That is the line to draw when you set one up. Write down the calls it should handle, and for everything else decide where it goes: to you, to a colleague, or to a message you return the same day.

The calls an AI receptionist handles better

The routine ones, and the ones that come out of hours: booking, moving and cancelling appointments, opening hours and prices, and whether you cover an area. If most of your calls are like that, the lower price per call is the whole argument.

Booking is the clearest difference. A message from an answering service still leaves you to ring back and agree a time. A receptionist agent reads your calendar and books the slot while the caller is still on the line, which is the job of an AI appointment booking agent. Some answering services book into your diary too, so ask whether yours does.

Using both together

Yes. The simplest version is an AI receptionist that takes every call and passes on the ones it should not handle, to you or to a human answering service. You pay the AI price for the routine calls and the human price only for the calls that need a person.

Two providers in the table, Answer.co.uk and Answer4u, sell both, which means one supplier and one bill for the pair.

What to ask before you sign

Six questions cover most of the surprises above. Ask them of a human service and an AI one alike.

1. What counts as a call or a minute, and how is it rounded?
2. What does a call over my bundle cost?
3. Is the price with or without VAT?
4. Is there a setup fee, and what notice do I give to leave?
5. Which calls get passed to me, and how quickly does the message arrive?
6. Can I try it on my own calls first?

The last one is usually yes. Most providers here offer a free trial, from seven days at Pocket Receptionist and Ringmere to a month at Answer4u and IONOS.

Which to choose

An answering service if most of your calls need a person's judgement, or a human voice on every call is worth the price per call to you. An AI receptionist if most of your calls are routine, come out of hours, or end in a booking, because it handles those for a fraction of the price.

We build AI receptionists, so read this knowing that. Every price above comes from the provider's own page, checked on 21 October 2026. Ours is not in the table, because the table is for off-the-shelf plans and we build the agent for your business. Agent Place charges one flat monthly fee for unlimited agents, month to month: nothing extra per call, minute or message, so a busy month costs the same as a quiet one. Fully functioning and delivering value in 30 days guaranteed, or you pay nothing more until your agents are. We give you the price on the call. What ours does is on the AI receptionist page.

If that is the agent you want built, book a free consultation.