AI receptionists in 2026 cost anywhere from $19 to $899 per month, and the spread has almost nothing to do with voice quality - it comes down to how each vendor meters you (minutes, agents, locations, or "unlimited"), what the service can actually do on a call, and the fees that never appear on the pricing page. This guide prints every published number we could verify in July 2026, shows the math for a typical 200-minute business, and flags the questions that expose hidden costs before you sign.
The four pricing models (and why the headline number lies)
Every AI receptionist bill is built on one of four meters:
- Included minutes - a flat monthly price covering a bucket of live call minutes ($19 to $249 range). The honest question: what happens at minute 61? Some services stop answering, some bill overage of $0.30 to $0.48 per minute, some auto-upgrade the plan.
- Per agent - a flat price per AI "agent" or line, sometimes with usage caps hidden in the fine print.
- Per location - restaurant-industry pricing ($299 to $599 per location per month). Fine for groups, punishing for independents.
- Unlimited - a high flat rate ($249 to $899) that removes minute anxiety but usually prices in far more usage than a small business has.
The vendors clustered at the top of the range are not selling better answering - they are selling reservation-platform integrations, POS injection, or human-backed hybrid service. If you do not need those, you are paying for someone else's feature list.
Published prices, July 2026
Every number below comes from the vendor's public pricing page as of July 2026; the linked sources are the proof. Where a vendor hides pricing, we say so.
| Service | Entry price | What it includes | Model |
|---|---|---|---|
| AskSiya | $19/mo | 60 min, every feature: orders, hotel bookings, 100+ languages | Minutes |
| Dialzara | $29/mo | Generic receptionist, English + Spanish; overage $0.35 to $0.48/min | Minutes |
| Zinng | $49/mo | Up to 300 min, scheduling and lead capture; no food orders | Minutes |
| Goodcall | $79/mo | Unlimited minutes per agent; $0.50 per extra unique customer | Per agent |
| Loman AI | Not published | Third-party sources report about $199/mo plus $149 setup; POS injection | Gated |
| RestoHost | $299/mo | Restaurant answering with reservation integrations | Per location |
| Slang.ai | $399/mo | Reservations focus (OpenTable, SevenRooms); does not complete orders | Per location |
| Kea | $450/mo | Unlimited restaurant answering, POS integrations | Unlimited |
Two patterns worth noticing. First, the sub-$100 tier is dominated by generalists that answer and take messages but cannot complete a food order or book a room. Second, the restaurant specialists that can are priced at $199 to $599 - with one exception at $19, which is the gap AskSiya deliberately occupies.
Worked example: a 200-minute month, four ways
Take a restaurant whose phone produces about 200 minutes of answered calls a month (roughly 7 to 10 calls a day at 1 to 2 minutes each). Here is the real bill across models:
| Option | Sticker | The 200-minute bill | First-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Human answering service at $1.50/min | "from $1/min" | $300/mo | $3,600 |
| Per-location restaurant AI | $399/mo | $399/mo | $4,788 |
| Gated-pricing vendor (reported) | about $199/mo | $199 + $149 setup | $2,537 |
| AskSiya Growth | $79/mo | $79/mo flat | $948 |
The spread on identical call volume is $948 to $4,788 per year. That is not a rounding error - it is the difference between "the phone pays for itself on the first missed order it catches" and "we need to close four extra covers a night to justify this."
The five hidden costs to ask about
- Setup fees. One-time charges around $149 appear at exactly the vendors that do not publish pricing. Ask for the all-in first-year total in writing.
- Overage rates. $0.35 to $0.48 per minute is common. A busy month on a small plan can double the bill. (AskSiya auto-upgrades the plan instead, and bills overage only on its largest tier, at $0.30.)
- Per-agent and per-location multipliers. A second line or second location can double a "cheap" plan.
- Language add-ons. Bilingual support runs up to $99 per month extra at some vendors. If your customers speak Spanish, Mandarin, Punjabi, or anything else, ask whether languages are included - with AskSiya, 100+ languages are standard on every plan.
- The features you cannot use yet. POS injection is genuinely valuable - and worth paying for only if the vendor supports YOUR POS today. Ask for the integration list in writing, not the roadmap.
When a human service is worth the premium
Honesty matters here: AI is not the right answer for every line. Human answering services at $1 to $2 per minute remain the better choice for medical and legal intake, complex billing disputes, and emotionally difficult calls where empathy is the product. If your calls are orders, bookings, hours, and "can I talk to someone" - the categories that make up most restaurant and hotel phone traffic - the AI math wins by a factor of three to five.
What AskSiya costs, exactly
Since this is our guide, here is our own ladder with nothing hidden: $19 per month for 60 minutes, $79 for 200, $199 for 600, annual billing takes two months off, and there is a 7-day free trial with no card. Every feature ships on every plan - order-taking, hotel bookings with changes and cancellations, 100+ languages, repeat-caller memory, spam screening, the website call widget, and a monthly receipt showing exactly what the calls were worth. When usage outgrows a plan, it upgrades automatically so no caller ever hits a dead line. Run your own numbers in the missed-call calculator, or just talk to Siya - the demo is the product.
Prices verified against vendor pricing pages in July 2026 and linked above; gated pricing reported from third-party sources. Found something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it the same day.