--- title: "How Much Does an AI Receptionist Cost? (2026 Guide for Trades)" entity: "blog" canonical_url: "https://www.wildwingdesign.com/blog/how-much-does-an-ai-receptionist-cost" markdown_url: "https://www.wildwingdesign.com/llms/blog/how-much-does-an-ai-receptionist-cost" lastmod: "2026-08-06T01:05:11.405Z" --- Ask five vendors what an AI receptionist costs and you will get five answers that are hard to compare, because they are not selling the same thing or billing the same way. Some quote a number per minute. Some quote a monthly plan. Some quote both and then add a setup fee. Here is how the pricing actually works, what pushes it up, and how to tell if it earns its keep on your jobs. ## The short answer AI receptionists are sold four ways: per minute of talk time, per call answered, a flat monthly fee, or a monthly fee with an included allowance and an overage rate after that. Setup fees, phone number fees, and add ons like text follow up or calendar booking sit on top of whichever model you pick, so two quotes with the same headline number can land in very different places. Wild Wing Design keeps it simple with one flat price, $297 a month CAD with no contract, which covers the AI front desk, a website, and an automated Google review engine. Whatever you get quoted, judge it against the margin on one job a month you would otherwise have missed. ## How much does an AI receptionist cost? There are four ways vendors charge, and most use some blend of them. **Per minute.** You pay for talk time. Common with human answering services, and some AI vendors copied it. A quick booking is cheap. A caller who wants to tell you about their whole basement is not. If you are weighing the two kinds of service against each other, read [AI receptionist vs answering service](/blog/ai-receptionist-vs-answering-service). **Per call.** A flat amount every time the phone is answered, regardless of length. Simpler to predict than per minute, but you pay the same for a wrong number as for a booked job unless the vendor excludes those. **Per month.** A flat fee that covers the service. Usually the easiest to budget around, because the bill does not move when your season does. **Usage tiers.** A monthly fee that includes a set number of minutes or calls, with overage after that. This looks like a flat fee until you have a busy week, then it behaves like per minute. On top of any of those you may see a setup or onboarding fee, a per number fee, and charges for extras like text follow up or calendar integration. ## What actually drives the price Voice minutes are a real cost, so anything that keeps callers on the line longer costs the vendor more. But most of the price difference between vendors is not the phone call. It is the work around it. Setting the thing up properly takes effort. Someone has to load your service area, your trades, your pricing rules, your hours, and what counts as an emergency. Someone has to connect your calendar so a booking actually lands in it. Someone has to listen to real calls in the first weeks and fix the parts that came out wrong. Cheap tools skip that and hand you a blank template. That is the real difference between a bare bones self serve tool and a done for you service, and it shows up in whether the thing books jobs or just annoys your customers. ## What to watch for in the contract Before you sign anything, get straight answers on these: - **Length of term.** A twelve month lock is common. Ask what happens if you want out in month three. - **Setup fee.** Is it real work or just a charge to start? - **Overage rate.** If there is a minute or call cap, what does going over cost, and what happened to similar businesses in their busy season? - **Who owns the number.** If you port a number in, can you take it with you when you leave? - **What is extra.** Text follow up, extra staff, extra locations, and calendar syncing are all common upcharges. - **Who fixes it.** When the greeting is wrong or it books outside your service area, who do you call, and how fast do they fix it? Get those in writing. A cheap monthly fee with a long term and steep overage is not cheap. ## Doing the math on one booked job Forget the industry averages and use your own numbers. You know what a service call is worth to you. Take your average job, subtract materials, and you have a rough margin. Now ask two questions. How many calls a month do you currently miss or send to voicemail? And how many of those would have booked if someone had picked up? If you want a way to work that out on paper, we walk through it in [what missed calls cost Halifax trades](/blog/cost-of-missed-calls-halifax-trades). You do not need a precise answer. For most trades, if a front desk saves you a single average job a month, it has covered a typical monthly fee with room to spare. The bigger your average ticket, the faster that math works. A roofer needs it to save one job a quarter. A drain cleaner needs it more often, but a drain cleaner also gets more calls. The one number nobody can promise you is the conversion rate. Anyone who quotes you a guaranteed percentage is making it up. ## How our pricing works We do it the boring way, on purpose. The Front Desk plan is $297 a month CAD, no contract. That is a flat fee. It does not change when your phone gets busy in February or when a windstorm fills your voicemail overnight. That price is not just phone answering. It includes three things: - The AI front desk itself, answering your phone, handling questions, qualifying the lead and booking the job 24/7. - A [website](/websites) built and hosted for you, so the people who find you have somewhere to land. - An automated [Google review engine](/google-reviews) that asks happy customers for a review after the job without you remembering to. If you want the plain explanation of what the front desk piece actually does, read [what an AI front desk is](/blog/what-is-an-ai-front-desk) or the [AI front desk](/ai-front-desk) page. Plumbing shops can see the trade specific version on [AI receptionist for plumbers](/ai-receptionist-for-plumbers). The full breakdown of what is in each plan sits on the [pricing](/pricing) page. If you later want marketing, content, ads and outreach on top, that is the Back Office plan. Most shops do not start there, and you do not need it to get your phone answered. ## Questions, answered ### Is a cheaper per minute plan better if my phone is quiet? It can be. If you get a handful of calls a month, per minute billing may land under a flat fee. Do that math with your own call log, not with a sample bill from the vendor. And check the overage rate before you assume a quiet month is your normal month. ### Why do some AI receptionists cost so little? Usually because you are doing the setup. You get an account, a blank script and a help article. That is a legitimate product if you have the time and patience to tune it. It is a poor deal if you are on a roof all day and expect it to work in week one. ### Are there hidden costs I should budget for? Watch for setup fees, phone number fees, per user charges, and anything sold as an add on that you assumed was included, like calendar booking or text follow up. Ask for a sample invoice from a real customer month, not a pricing page. ### Does it replace anyone on my team? For most small trades shops there is nobody to replace, which is the whole point. If you already have a person answering, this typically covers the hours they cannot, nights, weekends, and the times they are on another line. A real receptionist who knows your customers is worth keeping. ## Hear it before you pay for it Book a 15 minute call at [/book](/book). We ring the front desk right there on the call so you hear it handle a customer, ask the right questions, and book the job. Then a straight price, $297 a month, no contract.