Best AI Receptionists in 2026

TL;DR: For most US small businesses, the best AI receptionist in 2026 is Rosie: $49 a month for 250 minutes, English and Spanish, live in about 10 minutes. Pick Smith.ai if you want live receptionists behind the AI, and Goodcall if you would rather pay per caller than per minute. RingCentral AI Receptionist answers in six languages and works with any phone system. If you have developers, build on Retell AI, Vapi or Bland AI. For local businesses in Romania, or with Italian-speaking callers, use Onist, an AI receptionist for local businesses.

Disclosure: Deduxer builds Onist. We list it for Romanian and Italian-speaking businesses, not as the pick for the US market.

Every price below was read on the vendor's own pricing page on 2 November 2026. Prices are in US dollars and exclude sales tax, except Onist, which bills in Romanian lei.

AI receptionists compared

The best AI receptionists, one by one

1. Rosie

Rosie is a done-for-you AI receptionist for home services and other small businesses.

• Professional: $49 a month for 250 minutes, or $41 a month billed yearly ($490 a year).
• Scale: $149 a month for 1,000 minutes. Growth: $299 a month for 2,000 minutes.
• No per-minute overage. If you go over, Rosie moves you up to the next plan.
• 7-day free trial.
• English and Spanish on every call.

Good for: owners who want a receptionist running the same day, with no per-minute overage bills.

Watch out for: going over the limit moves you a whole plan up, so a busy month on Professional costs $149, not $49 plus a few minutes.

2. Smith.ai

Smith.ai answers with AI first and can transfer complex calls to live receptionists based in North America.

• Free: $0 a month for 25 calls, then $3.00 per call.
• Pro: $150 a month for 75 calls ($2.00 per call). Extra calls cost $2.50.
• Enterprise: from $500 a month for 300 calls, built and run by Smith.ai.
• Human receptionist plans start at $300 a month for 30 calls, with overage at $11.50 per call (human pricing).
• English and Spanish.

Good for: businesses that want a real person on hand when the AI is not enough.

Watch out for: pricing is per call, so lots of short calls cost the same as long ones.

3. Goodcall

Goodcall is a done-for-you AI phone agent that bills per unique caller, not per minute.

• Starter: $79 a month for 100 unique customers, then 79 cents each.
• Growth: $129 a month for 500 unique customers. Scale: $299 a month for 2,000.
• "We never meter minutes." One caller counts once a month, however often they call.
• Build a free demo agent and pay only when you connect a number.

Good for: businesses with long calls or the same customers calling back several times a month.

Watch out for: the pricing page does not say which languages the agent speaks. Ask before you buy if you need more than English.

4. My AI Front Desk (Frontdesk)

My AI Front Desk, now branded Frontdesk, bundles an AI receptionist with SMS, a website chatbot and a CRM.

• One plan: $99 a month, or $79 a month billed yearly.
• 200 voice minutes a month. Extra minutes cost $0.25.
• 7-day free trial. No permanent free plan.
• The vendor claims 20+ languages and setup in 5 minutes.

Good for: small teams that want calls, texts and chat in one tool.

Watch out for: 200 minutes runs out fast for a busy front desk. At $0.25 a minute, 400 extra minutes add $100.

5. Dialzara

Dialzara is a done-for-you AI receptionist with the cheapest entry plan in this list.

• Business Lite: $29 a month for 60 minutes, then $0.48 a minute.
• Business Pro: $99 a month for 220 minutes. Plus: $199 for 500. Elite: $349 for 1,000.
• 7-day free trial, no setup fee, no contract.
• "Most customers go live the same day."

Good for: a sole trader who gets a handful of calls a day.

Watch out for: Spanish is not on the $29 plan. It starts at Business Pro.

6. RingCentral AI Receptionist

RingCentral AI Receptionist is RingCentral's AI answering product, sold on its own or with RingEX.

• Standalone: $49 a month with 100 minutes included.
• With RingEX Core: $39 a month for the AI Receptionist plus $30 a month for RingEX.
• After the included minutes: $0.50 a minute, billed in 30-second steps.
• 14-day free trial.
• English, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portuguese.

Good for: businesses with callers in several European languages, and anyone already on RingCentral.

Watch out for: 100 minutes is the smallest allowance among the $49 plans here.

7. Ruby

Ruby is a live receptionist service. AI features such as call transcripts come free with every plan, but people answer the phone.

• 50 minutes: $250 a month. 100 minutes: $395. 200 minutes: $720. 500 minutes: $1,725.
• No activation, onboarding or setup fees.
• Overage, trial and yearly prices are not published.
• Spanish and bilingual call handling.

Good for: businesses where every caller should hear a person.

Watch out for: at $5 a minute on the smallest plan, Ruby costs many times more than the AI tools above.

8. Retell AI

Retell AI is a developer platform for building voice agents.

• Pay as you go: $0.07 to $0.31 a minute for voice agents, depending on the models you choose.
• $10 in free credits and 20 free concurrent calls.
• No minimums, no contracts.

Good for: product teams that want to build their own receptionist with testing and templates included.

Watch out for: someone has to design, build and maintain the agent. It is not a receptionist you switch on.

9. Vapi

Vapi is a developer platform where you bring your own speech and language models.

• $0.05 a minute for Vapi hosting, plus model and telephony costs at cost.
• $5 in free credits. Core plan: $29 a month, with 10 concurrent calls.
• HIPAA compliance add-on: $2,000 a month.

Good for: engineering teams that want full control over the model stack.

Watch out for: the real cost per minute depends on the models you pick, and HIPAA is an expensive add-on.

10. Bland AI

Bland AI is a platform for enterprise phone agents.

• Start: $0.14 a minute, no platform fee.
• Build: $0.12 a minute plus a $299 monthly platform fee.
• Telephony is billed separately.
• 40+ languages.

Good for: companies with large call volumes and an engineering team.

Watch out for: Bland says most production agents go live in two to six weeks.

11. Synthflow

Synthflow is an enterprise voice-agent platform.

• No public price. It is sold as an annual enterprise agreement, scoped to your call volume.
• No free plan or trial.
• Goes live in weeks, with Synthflow's engineers.

Good for: contact centers that want a vendor to build and run the agents.

Watch out for: it is not a small-business product. Older roundups still quote monthly plans that no longer exist.

12. Onist (for Romanian and Italian-speaking businesses)

Onist is an AI phone receptionist for local businesses in Romania: tyre shops, car services, salons, barbers, vet clinics, rent-a-car companies and tradespeople. Deduxer builds it.

• 3 lei per answered call, never more than 499 lei a month per location, plus VAT.
• The first 5 calls are free. No subscription, contract, setup fee or card at the start.
• No charge for spam, silent calls or calls shorter than 15 seconds.
• Money back if Onist brings no new job or booking in the first 30 days.
• Answers 24/7 in Romanian, English or Italian.
• Says in its first sentence that it is an AI assistant.
• Books into the Onist calendar, sends the caller an SMS confirmation and sends the owner a summary and transcript of every call on WhatsApp.
• Quotes prices only from the business's own list, and hands the call to the owner when asked.
• The business keeps its number and forwards unanswered calls to Onist.

You can hear it answer in your business's name without an account on the Onist demo page. We wrote up how we built it in the Onist case study.

Good for: local businesses in Romania, and businesses whose callers speak Italian.

Watch out for: Onist is built for Romania. It uses Romanian phone numbers and bills in lei, so it is not the right pick for a US business.

How we chose

We started from the Google results for "best ai receptionist" and "ai receptionist" on 2 November 2026. We counted which tools the top roundups list most often: Smith.ai, Rosie, Goodcall, My AI Front Desk and Retell came up most. We added RingCentral and Ruby, which appear in several lists, and the three developer platforms people compare them with.

Then we opened each vendor's own pricing page and checked:

1. Published price. Can an owner see the monthly cost and the overage rate without booking a sales call?
2. What is included. Minutes, calls or callers per month, and what costs extra.
3. Languages on the phone. Which languages the voice agent speaks, and on which plan.
4. Setup effort. Minutes for an owner, or weeks for a developer.
5. Human handoff. Can the call reach the owner or a live receptionist?
6. Honesty about being AI. Does it tell the caller it is an AI?

We did not run paid trials of every tool. Prices change often, so check the vendor's page before you sign up.

What to ask before you buy

1. What counts as a billable call or minute? Rosie, Dialzara, RingCentral and Frontdesk bill minutes. Smith.ai and Onist bill calls. Goodcall bills unique callers. Ask whether spam and wrong numbers count.
2. What happens when you go over? A per-minute rate ($0.25 on Frontdesk, $0.50 on RingCentral), a per-call rate ($2.50 on Smith.ai Pro), or a move to the next plan (Rosie).
3. Does it book into your calendar? Some tools book during the call and text a confirmation. Others only take a message.
4. Can it hand the call to a person? Check that a caller who asks for a human reaches you or a live receptionist.
5. Can you keep your number? Most tools work with call forwarding, so your number stays on your van, your sign and Google Maps.
6. Which languages work on the phone? A vendor may list many languages for chat, or keep Spanish for a higher plan.
7. Does it say it is an AI? In the EU this is the law. Article 50(1) of the EU AI Act says AI systems that interact with people must be designed so that people are told they are dealing with an AI, unless that is obvious. The rule applies from 2 August 2026. Some vendors advertise that callers cannot tell their agent is an AI. If you are an EU business, ask how the agent introduces itself.

Sources

Pricing pages checked on 2 November 2026:

• Rosie pricing: heyrosie.com/pricing
• Smith.ai AI receptionist pricing: smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist
• Smith.ai human receptionist pricing: smith.ai/pricing/receptionists
• Goodcall pricing: goodcall.com/pricing
• My AI Front Desk pricing: myaifrontdesk.com/pricing
• Dialzara pricing: dialzara.com/pricing
• RingCentral AI Receptionist pricing: ringcentral.com/pricing/ai-receptionist
• Ruby plans and pricing: ruby.com/plans-and-pricing
• Retell AI pricing: retellai.com/pricing
• Vapi pricing: vapi.ai/pricing
• Bland AI pricing: bland.ai/pricing
• Synthflow pricing: synthflow.ai/pricing
• Onist pricing and demo: onist.ro
• EU AI Act, Article 50: Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 on EUR-Lex