Answering service costs for contractors: live vs AI, priced at your call volume

Know which billing unit you are buying before you compare prices

The billing unit changes the bill more than the plan name, so find it first. We checked six services contractors commonly shortlist, and they use three different units.

Service	Type	Billing unit	Published entry price
Smith.ai virtual receptionists	Live	Per call	$300/mo for 30 calls
Ruby	Live	Per minute, rounded up	$250/mo for 50 minutes
AnswerConnect	Live	Per minute, rounded up	Not published
Smith.ai AI Receptionist	AI	Per call	$0 for 25 calls, then $3/call
Sameday	AI	Per minute	From $449/mo, 500 minutes
Rosie	AI	Per minute, rounded up	$49/mo for 250 minutes
Goodcall	AI	Per unique caller	$79/mo per agent, 100 callers

Sources: Smith.ai pricing, Smith.ai AI pricing, Ruby pricing, AnswerConnect, Sameday pricing, Rosie pricing, Goodcall pricing.

Rounding matters on short calls. Ruby bills receptionist minutes in 60-second increments, rounded up (Ruby terms). Rosie does the same, counted from connect to disconnect (Rosie terms). AnswerConnect’s terms say partial minutes round up and hold time and time spent patching a call forward are billable (AnswerConnect terms).

Key takeaway: A 20-second “are you open Saturday?” call costs a full minute on Ruby, Rosie and AnswerConnect, one call on Smith.ai, and nothing extra on Goodcall if that number already called this month.

Price three real call volumes before you talk to sales

At 150 calls a month, published live answering costs five to six times what Smith.ai charges for its own AI plan. The table below is illustrative. It uses only list prices from the pages above, picks the cheapest listed plan at each volume, and assumes every call bills as 3 minutes. That 3-minute figure is our assumption, not a vendor number.

Service	60 calls (180 min)	150 calls (450 min)	300 calls (900 min)
Smith.ai live	$645	$1,440	$2,100
Ruby	$720	$1,725	Confirm quote
Smith.ai AI	$105	$270	$500
Sameday	$449	$449	$789
Rosie	$49	$149	$149
Goodcall (all callers unique)	$79	$118.5	$129

How we built it. Smith.ai live plans are 30 calls for $300, 90 for $810 and 300 for $2,100, with overage of $11.50, $10.50 and $8.50 per call (Smith.ai pricing). Smith.ai AI is free for 25 calls then $3 each, or Pro at $150 for 75 calls, $270 for 150 and $500 for 300, with extra calls at $2.50, $2.30 and $2.17 (Smith.ai AI pricing). Ruby lists 50, 100, 200 and 500 minutes at $250, $395, $720 and $1,725 but no overage rate, so we could not price 900 minutes (Ruby pricing).

Sameday’s Launch plan starts at $449 with 500 minutes, and its minute slider shows Scale at $789 for 1,000 minutes (Sameday pricing). Rosie lists 250, 1,000 and 2,000 minutes at $49, $149 and $299 (Rosie pricing). Goodcall lists $79 for 100 unique customers, then $0.79 each; $129 for 500, then $0.26; and $299 for 2,000, then $0.15 (Goodcall pricing). We counted every Goodcall call as a unique caller, which is the worst case.

Watch out: The cheapest AI cell is not always the same product you would buy. Rosie’s $49 Professional plan sends appointment links by text; calendar booking and live transfers start on Scale at $149 (Rosie pricing).

Add the per-call extras that turn a quote into a bill

Base plans rarely include everything a contractor needs, so price the add-ons you will actually use. Smith.ai’s live plans charge per call for extras: $1.50 to book an appointment, $0.50 for an SMS or Slack transfer alert, $1.50 for complex call routing by schedule, $1.00 for a Spanish line and $1.00 to take a payment (Smith.ai pricing). Extra transfer destinations are $15 a month.

Example: At 60 live calls a month on Smith.ai Starter, booking 20 of them adds 20 × $1.50 = $30, taking the illustrative month from $645 to $675.

Ruby takes the opposite approach. Its pricing page says the only difference between plans is minutes, and lists no fees for activation, onboarding, setup, customization or coverage during certain periods (Ruby pricing). On Smith.ai’s AI plans, escalation the AI starts is free, but live-agent involvement you choose for verification or scheduling is a per-call add-on with no price on the page (Smith.ai AI Receptionist).

Budget for the busy month, not the average one

Overage rules decide what a storm week or peak season costs, and two vendors here make that hard to budget. Ruby charges your plan’s per-minute rate for extra minutes and alerts you at 85% and 100% of your minutes, but the rate is not on the pricing page (Ruby FAQs).

Rosie has no per-minute overage at all. If you exceed your minutes, its terms say Rosie will automatically upgrade you to a higher plan, and you stay there until you downgrade (Rosie terms).

Watch out: On Rosie Professional (250 minutes), an illustrative month of 100 calls at 3 minutes is 300 minutes. That moves you to Scale at $149, which is $100 a month more, or $1,200 a year if nobody notices and downgrades.

Contract length is the other trap. Smith.ai’s live service is month to month, billed through the end of the cycle when you cancel (Smith.ai pricing). Its AI plan is also month to month but needs 30 days’ notice (Smith.ai AI pricing). AnswerConnect’s FAQ says you are not locked in, yet its terms set a 90-day minimum (AnswerConnect terms).

Your cost worksheet

1. Pull last month’s inbound calls, total minutes and spam count from your phone report.
2. Write down the billing unit for each vendor: call, minute or unique caller.
3. Find your row in the illustrative table, then recompute with your own average minutes.
4. Add per-call extras you will use: booking, transfer alerts, Spanish, payments.
5. Price double your normal volume using the published overage rate. No published rate means get it in writing.
6. Record the minimum term, cancellation notice and whether overage is excluded from any money-back guarantee.
7. Divide the monthly total by the profit from one extra booked job, using our missed-call calculator.

Smith.ai’s guarantee excludes overage calls from the refund (Smith.ai pricing). Ruby’s money-back window ends at 21 days or 500 minutes, whichever comes first (Ruby FAQs).

Next, decide which calls need a person in AI vs a live answering service, then send vendors the quote request email. If you only need a text back when a call is missed, HighLevel’s missed-call text-back is covered in our HighLevel review. For product-by-product shortlists, see best AI receptionist for contractors.

What we couldn’t verify: AnswerConnect’s prices, Ruby’s overage rate, Sameday’s overage and contract terms, the price of Smith.ai’s live-agent add-on on AI plans, and whether any vendor has setup fees not shown on these pages; we have not tested any of these services ourselves.

Make the quote comparable before ranking it

For each quote, write the billable unit, included allowance, rounding rule, overage and transfer charges in separate columns. Leave an unpublished amount marked quote required, not zero. Ruby’s published minute packages do not establish a 900-minute total without an overage quote; Smith.ai’s optional booking and notification fees are separate from the base call allowance.

The table assumes three billable minutes per call and no paid extras. Goodcall’s rates were rechecked October 19, 2026: its 150-unique-customer Starter total is $79 + 50 × $0.79 = $118.50; at 300 unique customers, Growth is $129. Repeat callers can lower unique-customer usage, but do not assume that saving before counting your own numbers. Use the copyable quote email to get missing amounts in writing.