AI Receptionist Cost Calculator

Monthly cost of a human receptionist against an AI voice receptionist for your call volume

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Your calls

Human receptionist

AI receptionist

Result

Human per month
$4,699
AI per month
$245
Difference per month
$4,453
Call minutes where AI costs the same
57,442

3,000 call minutes a month. The human cost is for 173 paid hours a month whether or not the phone rings; the AI cost grows with minutes. One person answers one call at a time, while a voice agent can take several at once up to the vendor's concurrency limit.

The formulas

Human per month = coverage hours per week x 52 / 12 x hourly wage x (1 + benefits %)
AI per month    = calls x average minutes x cost per minute + any monthly platform fee
Break-even      = (human per month - platform fee) / AI cost per minute
What this number does not include. For the human: payroll taxes beyond the BLS benefits average, recruiting, training, cover for sick days and turnover. For the AI: phone number rental, setup and build, transfers to a person, and the time to keep scripts and knowledge current. A receptionist also does work besides answering calls.

How this works

A human receptionist is paid for hours on shift, whether or not calls come in. The calculator takes the hours the phone is covered each week, turns them into hours a month with the BLS 52-week, 2,080-hour year, and multiplies by the wage plus benefits. The default wage is the BLS mean for receptionists and information clerks, $18.97 an hour (OEWS, May 2025). Benefits default to 42.9%, the BLS private-industry average for June 2026 ($14.07 of benefits per $32.82 of wages).

An AI receptionist is paid by the minute. The per-minute prices are the same ones the AI voice agent cost calculator uses, read from Twilio, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Vapi, Retell and Bland's pricing pages on November 11, 2026, for inbound US calls.

Worked example with the defaults: 40 hours x 52 / 12 = 173.3 hours x $18.97 x 1.429 = $4,698.74 a month for the human. 1,000 calls x 3 minutes x $0.0818 on Vapi = $245.40 for the AI. The AI costs the same as the human at $4,698.74 / $0.0818 = 57,442 call minutes a month.

Sources (read November 11, 2026)

Want an AI receptionist that books, routes and hands off to your team? See AI customer support agent development.

Frequently Asked Questions

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