The short answer: normalised to 100 answered calls a month, Goodcall ($79) is the cheapest of the five providers priced here, followed by Dialzara (~$135), Rosie ($149) and Smith.ai ($200–$270). None of those match the advertised entry prices, which are $79, $29, $49 and $0. Frontdesk's $20/month plan does not answer phone calls at all, its answering plan starts at $99.
The PxlPeak option at a glance
- What it costs
- Voice plan from $297/mo, including 1,000 minutes, then $0.35/minute. See full pricing.
- Integrations
- Calendly or Cal.com for booking, HubSpot or Salesforce for your CRM, and custom webhooks.
How a call is handled
- 1. AnswerThe agent picks up every call on the first ring, including when you are busy or closed.
- 2. QualifyIt asks your questions, follows your triage rules and captures the caller's details.
- 3. Book or escalateIt books into your calendar, or transfers to a person on the conditions you set.
Disclosure: PxlPeak sells a competing service. Our Voice plan is $297/mo for 1,000 included minutes, then $0.35/minute, and it is a managed custom voice agent rather than a self-serve subscription. We have left it out of the ranking below on purpose so the comparison stays about the vendors you are actually shopping. Every price below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on August 30, 2026, and each vendor is linked so you can check it. The per-call figures are our arithmetic on those published rates, not test results. We did not call these services.
Every list on page one is written by a seller
Search ai receptionist for small business and the results look like independent research. They are mostly not. On the page-one results we checked on August 30, 2026, NextPhone's "5 Tested" list put NextPhone first. Allo's "6 Best" list put Allo first. Dapta's list put Dapta first, Upfirst's put Upfirst first, and CallAgentAI's put CallAgentAI first.
That is ordinary content marketing, and those pages often contain genuinely useful detail. But it explains why five "best of" lists produce five different winners, and it explains why a Reddit thread ranks third for this query, people are actively looking for someone who is not selling. Read the vendor lists for features. Do the pricing arithmetic yourself, or use ours below.
The real problem: no two providers bill for the same thing
You cannot compare $29, $49 and $79 because they are prices for different units. This is the single biggest reason small businesses overspend on call answering.
| Provider | What you are actually billed for | Overage when you exceed it |
|---|---|---|
| Rosie | Minutes of talk time per month | No overage rate published, you move up a tier |
| Dialzara | Minutes of talk time per month | $0.35–$0.48/min, cheaper on higher tiers |
| Goodcall | Unique customers per month (minutes unlimited) | $0.50 per additional unique customer |
| Smith.ai | Answered calls per month | $1.67–$3.00 per call, cheaper on higher tiers |
| Frontdesk (My AI Front Desk) | Voice minutes, bundled with chat/SMS/CRM | Not published on the pricing page |
A minute-metered plan punishes long calls. A call-metered plan punishes high volume regardless of length. A customer-metered plan is generous if the same people call you repeatedly and expensive if every caller is new. Which model suits you is a fact about your business, not about the vendor.
Published pricing, verified August 30, 2026
Entry tiers as listed on each vendor's own pricing page. Annual prices in brackets where the vendor publishes a discount.
| Provider | Entry plan | Included | Next tier up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rosie | $49/mo (Professional) | 250 minutes, 2 message scenarios | $149 Scale (1,000 min) · $299 Growth (2,000 min) |
| Dialzara | $29/mo | 60 minutes, $0.48/min overage | $99 (220 min) · $199 (500 min) · $349 (1,000 min) |
| Goodcall | $79/mo per agent ($66 annual) | Unlimited minutes, 100 unique customers | $129 Growth (250) · $249 Scale (500) |
| Smith.ai | $0/mo (Free) | 25 calls, then $3.00/call | $150 Pro (75 calls) · $270 (150) · $500 (300) |
| Frontdesk | $99/mo ($79 annual) | 200 voice minutes + chat, SMS, CRM | Basic $20/mo does not answer calls |
Normalised: what 100 answered calls a month actually costs
Here is the arithmetic the vendor lists do not show. Assume 100 answered calls a month at a 3-minute average: 300 minutes. Substitute your own numbers; the method matters more than our assumption.
| Provider | Headline price | Cost at 100 calls / 300 min | How it gets there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goodcall | $79 | $79 | Minutes unlimited; 100 unique customers included |
| Dialzara | $29 | ~$135 | $99 tier (220 min) + 80 min × $0.45 |
| Rosie | $49 | $149 | 250 min is short of 300, so the $149 Scale tier |
| Smith.ai | $0 | $200–$270 | $150 Pro covers 75 calls; +25 at $2.00, or the $270 tier |
| Frontdesk | $99 | $99+ | 200 min included; overage rate not published |
Three traps to check before you sign up
1. The entry plan that does not answer the phone
Frontdesk lists a $20/month Basic plan, and it appears in third-party listicles as if it were a $20 AI receptionist. Its own pricing page describes it as a way to get hands-on with the platform; the plan that answers phone calls is $99/month. Always confirm the cheap tier includes inbound call answering.
2. "Free" and "unlimited" both have a unit attached
Smith.ai's free tier is real, but it is 25 calls, roughly one call a day, and the 26th costs $3.00. Goodcall's unlimited minutes are genuinely unlimited, but the plan caps unique customers at 100 and bills $0.50 for each one after. Neither is a trick; both are units you have to read.
3. Overage rates that are not on the pricing page
Rosie publishes minute buckets but no overage rate, so exceeding 250 minutes means a tier change rather than a small surcharge, a jump from $49 to $149. Frontdesk does not publish a voice overage rate at all. Ask for the overage rate in writing before you commit, because it is the number that decides your bill in a busy month.
Which one fits which business
- Under ~60 calls a month, mostly repeat customers: Goodcall's $79 Starter is hard to beat, because unlimited minutes remove the length risk entirely.
- Very low volume, want to test with no commitment: Smith.ai's free 25 calls is the only genuinely free on-ramp of the five.
- Short, predictable calls (booking and message-taking): Dialzara's minute tiers are efficient while your average call stays near two minutes.
- You want texting and appointment links included: Rosie bundles those at $49, though the texting add-on is a further $50/month.
- You need one system for calls, SMS and chat: Frontdesk's $99 tier bundles them rather than charging separately.
Every figure above is worthless without your own call volume. If you do not know how many calls you miss, start there, our missed-call calculator estimates the revenue leaking out of unanswered calls, and the AI cost calculator turns a volume figure into a monthly budget. A provider that is perfect at 40 calls a month is often the wrong choice at 400.
When a subscription is the wrong answer
All five products above are self-serve: you write the prompts, set the triage rules, connect the calendar and tune it when it gets something wrong. That is genuinely fine for a lot of businesses, and if you have the time it is much cheaper than the alternative.
It stops being fine when the call itself is complicated, emergency triage, multi-technician dispatch, insurance intake, anything where a wrong answer costs a customer. That is the work we do at PxlPeak: a custom voice agent built around your actual call flows and integrated with your systems, rather than a subscription you configure yourself. It costs considerably more than $79 a month, and for a business taking forty simple booking calls it would be a waste of money. We would rather tell you that here than after a sales call.
If you run HVAC or plumbing specifically, the vertical breakdown is in our AI receptionist comparison for HVAC companies, which prices the field-service integrations this page does not cover. For a wider view of what voice AI costs to run, see the AI voice agent pricing guide.
Rather hear one than read about one?
Pick the closest business type, each one runs a different agent with its own script, so the call you get is the one that vertical actually receives.
How to check this yourself in ten minutes
- Pull last month's call log and count calls that went unanswered or to voicemail. That is your volume.
- Multiply by your average call length. Your phone system reports this; two to four minutes is typical for booking calls.
- Open each vendor's pricing page, linked in the table above, and find the tier that covers that number, not the entry tier.
- Write down the overage rate. If it is not published, email and ask before you buy.
- Compare the tier prices, not the headline prices. That is the whole exercise.
This page covers the AI side. If you want live-human services on the same axis, and the volume where one stops being cheaper than the other, the best answering service for small business prices fifteen of both kinds and ranks them by cost per answered call.
Pricing in this category moves. Everything above was read from the vendors' own pages on August 30, 2026; if you are reading this months later, treat the numbers as a method rather than a quote, and re-check the linked pages before you decide.