9 Best AI Receptionists of 2026

Upfirst ranks first because its cheapest plan already does the full front-desk job that most small businesses want. Starter costs $24.95 a month for 30 calls, or $20 billed annually, and every plan includes 24/7 answering, appointment scheduling into Google, Outlook, Clio, Acuity, Calendly and Square, warm and waterfall transfers, two-way texting, call recordings and transcripts. The agent switches between 35+ languages and translates the transcript into yours, and a knowledge base lets you train it on hours, services and pricing. You can choose whether it takes every call, only overflow or only after-hours calls, and keep your existing number. Billing is per call, with spam excluded, and extra calls cost $1.50 on Starter, falling to 70 cents on Scale at $299 a month for 600 calls. The limits are a small Starter allowance and setup help that only starts on Scale, so a busy shop should price Premium at $59.95 for 90 calls.

Rosie is built for the owner who wants answering working quickly without writing a script. It trains itself from your Google profile and website, and you add custom FAQ answers on top. Professional costs $49 a month for 250 minutes and includes 24/7 answering, custom message taking for 2 scenarios, appointment links sent by text, automatic spam detection and a website chat widget. Every plan has English and Spanish on each call, 10+ voices, a chosen area code, transcripts and recordings, native iOS and Android apps and a Zapier connection to 1,000+ apps. Scale at $149 adds 1,000 minutes, direct booking on your calendar, warm transfers that brief your team and texts sent during the call. Growth at $299 adds waterfall transfers, document uploads for training and white-glove onboarding. The catch for appointment-led businesses is that true calendar booking costs $149, while Upfirst includes it at $24.95.

Smith.ai is the pick when the cost of a bad answer is high. Its AI Receptionist handles every call first, and when something complex comes up the call can move to a live North America-based receptionist at any hour, which suits law firms, accountants and clinics. The Free plan is a real starting point: 25 calls a month at $0, then $3.00 per call, with 24/7 answering, recording, transcripts, lead qualification, call routing, AI scheduling through Calendly and native integrations with Clio and Zapier. Quality Studio lets you run test and simulated calls before the AI goes live. Pro at $150 a month covers 75 calls and adds dedicated onboarding and live phone, email and chat support, with volume options at 150 and 300 calls. Enterprise starts at $500 and includes custom prompting and full-service setup. The trade-off is price per call: at $1.67 to $2.00 a call, a busy line costs more here than on Upfirst or Rosie.

RingCentral AI Receptionist brings a large phone vendor's compliance and routing to a $49 plan. The standalone license includes 100 minutes and works with any business phone system through call forwarding or SIP, so you do not need to switch carriers. It routes calls by name or intent to users, extensions, queues or outside numbers, hands off live with context, and supports multi-location setups with their own hours and location-aware answers. Setup imports your website or Google Business Profile, and the knowledge base takes unlimited document uploads. Appointment booking runs through Google, Outlook and Calendly or by SMS link, and leads sync to Salesforce, Zoho and HubSpot. The plan lists HIPAA and SOC 2 compliance, which matters for clinics. The limits are the small allowance and the overage: extra use costs $0.50 a minute, billed in 30-second increments, so a busy line should price a minute bundle.

Goodcall prices differently from everyone else on this list: you pay for each different person your AI phone agent serves in a month, and minutes, calls and tokens are never metered. A caller who rings five times in March counts once, and spam and wrong numbers are free. Starter costs $79 a month for 100 unique customers, then 79 cents each, which Goodcall estimates at about 150 calls. Growth at $129 covers 500 customers with 5 team members and 5 external tools, and Scale at $299 covers 2,000. You build the agent by talking to Gabi in plain English and add workers such as a booker or message taker, and external tools can be APIs, MCP servers or code blocks. A free demo agent lets you hear it before you connect a number. Starter is tight on seats and tools, with 1 team member, 1 external tool and 30 days of call history.

My AI Front Desk, branded Frontdesk on its site, sells the receptionist as part of a wider AI front office. Business-in-a-Box costs $99 a month, or $79 billed annually, and includes 200 voice minutes plus 100 website chatbot conversations, 400 SMS, 500 drafted emails, 300 form submissions, an AI-native CRM and unlimited follow-up sequences. The AI can also place up to 20 outbound calls a day for reminders and follow-ups, and a pool of 1,000 overage credits with auto-reload covers spikes. It supports 20+ languages and Zapier, and the vendor says setup takes 5 minutes. The bundle is good value if you would otherwise pay separately for chat and texting, but it also means more to configure than a call-only tool. There is a single self-serve plan; volume pricing, API access and custom integrations need a Partner or Enterprise quote.

Dialzara is a low-cost entry for businesses that get only a few calls a week. Business Lite costs $29 a month with 60 minutes of talk time, a self-editable prompt, message taking with custom questions, blind transfers and Zapier or Make integrations. Every plan includes a US local or toll-free number, call recordings and summaries, email and SMS notifications, over 50 voices and 10 languages including English and Spanish. The jump to Business Pro at $99 matters for appointment businesses: it adds 220 minutes, warm transfers, after-hours rules and Google or Outlook calendar sync. Business Plus at $199 adds multi-agent and multi-location setup, and Elite at $349 includes initial prompt setup and API access. For owners who want none of the setup, the Done for You service starts at $1,500 a month. Watch the overage, which runs from $0.48 a minute on Lite to $0.35 on Elite.

Quo, the business phone service previously called OpenPhone, includes its Sona AI agent on every plan, so a small team can get a shared phone system and AI answering from one vendor. Starter costs $19 per user per month, or $15 billed annually, with one local or toll-free number per user, calling and texting to US and Canadian numbers and voicemail transcripts. Sona runs on credits: each call uses 100 credits and every plan includes 1,000 credits, about 10 calls a month. More capacity is sold in tiers, from $25 a month for 40 calls to $199 for 600 calls, with overage falling from $1.00 to $0.45 per call. Business at $33 per user adds call transfers, phone menus, AI call summaries and HubSpot and Salesforce integrations. Quo ranks lower here because AI answering is an add-on to a phone plan rather than the core product, and 10 included calls will not cover a busy line.

Abby Connect is a long-running virtual receptionist company that added an AI receptionist to its human service. One subscription covers both: you decide which calls the AI takes and which go to Abby's US-based receptionists, and you can change the mix at any time. Usage is measured in Abby Minutes, where one human minute uses one Abby Minute and one AI minute uses half, so an all-AI Starter plan stretches from 50 to 100 minutes. The AI Receptionist greets callers in your company's name, answers questions, screens and transfers calls, takes messages and books appointments, in English and Spanish. Abby says the AI was trained in-house on more than 20 years of call handling with over 6,200 businesses. Every plan has a free trial, no setup fee and month-to-month terms. The drawback is cost: Starter is $164 for 50 Abby Minutes, so a purely AI line is far cheaper on Upfirst, Rosie or Dialzara.