AI Receptionist Price Tracker: Every Price Change Since 2024

AI receptionist and answering-service prices don't stay put. Between January 2024 and October 2026, the seven US providers we track changed their published prices 23 times: 11 price rises, 11 plan redesigns and 1 cut. Every change below is dated from archived copies of each provider's own pricing page in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, with a link to the page before and after it.

Today's prices, and what they add up to for your call volume, are in our AI receptionist cost guide. This page is the history behind them, plus what UK providers charge in pounds. Both data sets are free to download.

Disclosure: we sell an AI receptionist ourselves, so we've left our own prices out of the tracker.

How often do AI receptionist prices change?

Often, and the AI apps change most. These are the providers we track, with the changes we can prove from their archived pricing pages:

A "plan redesign" is a change you can't compare like for like: new plan names, a different billing unit, or an allowance and a price that both moved. We count a change that keeps the price but includes less, like Rosie capping its "unlimited" minutes, as a rise.

Did answering services get more expensive?

Yes, every human service we track raised its prices at least twice. On plans that kept the same allowance:

• Ruby raised every plan in December 2024 and again in December 2025: +5% to +6% in total (50 minutes went from $235 to $250, 500 minutes from $1,640 to $1,725).
• Smith.ai receptionists raised every plan between September 2024 and January 2025, and again between December 2025 and January 2026: +5% to +8% (300 calls went from $1,950 to $2,100), and the price of an extra call went up by $1 on each plan.
• PATLive raised prices in December 2024 and again between November 2025 and February 2026: +22% to +42% by July 2026 (200 minutes went from $360 to $460), with extra minutes up from $1.82 to $2.35 on its smallest plan. In September 2026 it replaced its four plans with minute bundles: 200 minutes now costs $349, with extra minutes at $1.99.

Ruby raised prices in late November or early December in both years, and Smith.ai's latest rise landed in early January. If you're on one of their plans, check your rate each winter.

How have AI receptionist apps changed their prices?

More often, and in bigger steps. The cheapest way in got more expensive at two of the four apps:

Three patterns stand out:

1. "Unlimited" doesn't last. Goodcall's $59 unlimited-minutes plan was replaced by tiers billed per unique caller in late 2024. Rosie moved every plan to unlimited minutes in October 2025, then capped them at 250, 1,000 and 2,000 minutes in March 2026 at the same prices.
2. Overage rates rise quietly. My AI Front Desk's extra minutes went from about $0.12 to $0.25 between October 2025 and March 2026. Smith.ai AI kept its plan prices in summer 2026 but raised the extra-call rate on each plan by 50c to 60c.
3. Plans get redesigned every year or so. My AI Front Desk went from one plan, to two, to four, to a single plan with credits in 30 months. Smith.ai AI restructured twice in 2026.

The one cut came from Smith.ai AI in September 2025, which lowered the cost of an extra call from $4.25 to $2.40 on its smallest plan and included more calls in every plan.

Every price change, with sources

Dates are windows: the last archived capture showing the old price, and the first showing the new one. Each link opens the archived pricing page.

What do UK providers charge?

UK providers publish prices in pounds, and most quote them before VAT. These are the ones that publish plan prices, read from their own pricing pages on 29 October 2026:

AnswerConnect UK is the one UK provider with an archived price history in the Wayback Machine for this period. In August 2024 its Entry, Growth and Standard plans were £195, £225 and £375, so each has risen by £10 to £20.

What does this mean if you're choosing one?

• Price the plan on your own call volume, then add a rise. Human services have gone up most years. Budgeting a few percent more for next year is realistic for the services we track. Our calculator prices your volume on today's published plans.
• Read the overage rate, not just the plan price. Several of the changes above left the headline price alone and raised the price of each extra minute, call or caller.
• Don't plan around "unlimited". Both unlimited plans we tracked were replaced or capped, one within five months.
• Ask whether your price is protected. Some providers keep existing customers on their old rate: Answer.co.uk says customers of its human pay-as-you-go service who joined before 23 June 2025 stay on £1.75 a call plus VAT, against £2.20 for new customers.
• Check what you're billed by. Minutes, calls, unique callers and flat fees behave very differently as your volume grows. Our guide explains how each one works out.

How we build this tracker

• Providers: the seven US providers in our cost guide. AnswerConnect is also in that guide, but answerconnect.com is excluded from the Wayback Machine, so it has no US history here.
• Captures: for each pricing page we listed every archived capture from January 2024 to October 2026 and read roughly one a month, more than 130 in all. A price only counts if it's in the archived page itself. Where a page loads its prices with JavaScript that the archive didn't keep, we leave it out: Rosie's overage rate after March 2026 is one.
• Dates: a change is dated as a window between two captures, never a single day, because we can't see what happened between them.
• What's not counted: promotions, annual-billing discounts and add-ons. We compare monthly prices in US dollars, or pounds for UK providers.
• Updates: we recheck every provider each quarter. The next update is due in January 2027.

Download the data

Both files are free to use. If you publish anything from them, please link to this page as the source.

• Every US price change, with archive links (CSV)
• UK prices in pounds, checked 29 October 2026 (CSV)