How much does an AI receptionist cost in Canada?

AI receptionist cost per month: the short answer

An AI receptionist costs $29 to $500 USD a month on published small-business plans (about $41 to $713 CAD), before GST/HST. For 300 calls a month, the AI plans we priced cost $129 to $500 USD. Free tiers exist (25 calls on Smith.ai, 15 minutes on ElevenLabs), but they’re too small for a business line.

We build the third kind, so we have a stake in it. When a plan or add-on does the job, we say so. Our own builds are quoted after a free 30-minute call.

AI receptionist pricing: published plans from 8 services (October 2026)

Every figure below is from the vendor’s own pricing page on October 14, 2026. Jobber and Dialzara state USD. The others show a dollar sign on a US page, so treat them as USD until the vendor confirms otherwise. None include GST/HST.

Jobber’s add-on needs a Jobber plan (Core starts at $29 USD a month billed annually, for one user) and a Jobber dedicated phone number, which is available in Canada. RingCentral’s Canadian pricing page doesn’t list AI Receptionist prices, so these are its US prices. Prices change often, so check the vendor’s page before you sign.

Per minute, per call or per caller: which costs less for your calls

Vendors count usage four ways. Which is cheapest depends on how long your calls run and how often the same people call back. Some sell the same product as an AI answering service, so compare the meter, not the name.

Per minute RingCentral, Dialzara, Ruby, ElevenLabs

Cheap when calls are short bookings, expensive when a caller spends eight minutes describing a leak.

Per call Smith.ai

A long call costs the same as a short one, so troubleshooting calls are good value and 40-second “are you open Saturday?” calls are not.

Per conversation Jobber

A call, or a text thread within 24 hours, counts once. Spam and “no conversation” calls don’t count.

Per unique caller Goodcall

A customer who calls three times about the same job counts once.

Price your own month of calls

The table starts at 300 calls a month averaging 3 minutes, from 250 different callers. Change the numbers to match your call log. CAD uses the Bank of Canada rate of 1.4263 for October 14, 2026.

RingCentral’s figure is the pay-as-you-go worst case: it also sells extra-minute bundles but doesn’t publish their prices. Smith.ai’s 150- and 500-call bundles use its published per-call rates. Texts would add to Jobber’s count.

For the same 300 calls, the cheapest AI plan costs $129 and the most expensive $500. Change the call length and the order changes. At 8 minutes a call (2,400 minutes), RingCentral’s pay-as-you-go line becomes $49 plus 2,300 minutes at $0.50, or $1,199, while Smith.ai stays at $500 because it charges per call.

The cheapest line isn’t automatically the right one. Goodcall caps how many tools you can connect per tier, Jobber only books into Jobber, and none of these numbers say how well the agent handles your callers. Shortlist on billing fit, then test on real calls.

Overage traps to check

• RingCentral rounds call time up to the next 30 seconds, so a 61-second call bills as 90 seconds.
• Smith.ai lets you remove up to 10% of calls flagged as spam each billing cycle, and Jobber doesn’t count spam. Ask every other vendor how robocalls are billed.
• On Jobber’s add-on you choose what happens at 30 conversations: pay $0.79 each or pause. A paused Receptionist only takes messages. It can’t book or reschedule until your next billing cycle.
• Busy months are predictable. A furnace company knows January and a lawn-care company knows May, so price the next tier against the overage rate before the season starts.
• Ask how many calls the agent takes at once. ElevenLabs allows 10 concurrent calls on Creator and 20 on Pro. Past that, burst calls cost double ($0.16 a minute), up to three times your limit.

What a custom voice agent costs to run

A custom agent is assembled from parts you pay for directly. Our Lane dispatch system works this way: an ElevenLabs voice agent behind a business phone line, writing each job into a CRM and alerting the owner on Telegram. Here is the same 300-call month (900 minutes) priced from published rates.

Twilio bills in US dollars, and CAD isn’t one of its billing currencies. A bigger ElevenLabs tier doesn’t lower the minute price. It raises how many calls the agent takes at once. Outbound calls ($0.014 a minute) and Twilio’s own transcription ($0.05 a minute) cost extra if you use them.

At this volume the minutes cost under $100 USD a month. The money goes into the build (agent design, knowledge writing, integrations and testing) and into keeping the agent’s answers current as your prices and services change. If a plan already books into your calendar, a custom agent won’t pay back. A custom agent pays off when each call has to become a job in a specific CRM or dispatch board, the way Lane’s calls do. That’s the work behind our AI receptionist service and wider business process automation.

Costs that don’t show on the pricing page

The biggest one is your own time. The rest are small on their own and add up.

Is an AI receptionist worth it? Work it out with your own numbers

Ignore vendor ROI claims. What matters is whether the calls you miss today are worth more than the plan plus your time. The example figures below are ours. Replace them with yours.

With the example inputs, 6 extra jobs bring in $960 a month, which leaves $451 after the plan and your time. With 5 missed calls a month, the same plan returns about $120 and doesn’t pay on missed calls alone. Be conservative with the close rate, since some callers hang up on any automated voice.

For how a plumbing, HVAC or electrical shop wires this into dispatch and follow-up, see our guide to AI for home service businesses.

AI receptionist vs a human receptionist or answering service: cost

Job Bank puts the median receptionist wage in the Toronto Region at $20.00 an hour (updated November 19, 2025, from 2023-24 survey data). Full time, that’s about $41,600 a year, or $3,467 a month in wages, before CPP, EI and vacation pay. Covering all 168 hours of a week would take about 4.2 full-time people.

A front-desk hire also greets walk-ins and calms upset clients in person, and no phone agent replaces that. Smith.ai’s human plans work out to about $8.50 to $11.50 per booked call. The setup we recommend most often is AI first, with urgent or sensitive calls transferred to a person. Our comparison of AI receptionists, answering services and voicemail covers how each one handles a call.

Questions to ask any vendor before you sign

Ask these in writing and keep the answers with the contract.

1. Where are recordings and transcripts stored and processed, and will you put that in the contract?
2. Can recording be switched off, what is the default retention, and will you delete a recording on request?
3. Can a caller who doesn’t want to be recorded still book, for example by continuing unrecorded or getting an online booking link?
4. Does the greeting say the caller is talking to an AI and that the call is recorded, and can we edit it?
5. Does it handle French and the other languages our callers use?
6. How does it transfer to a person, and what happens when nobody picks up?
7. Which calendar, CRM or field-service tool does it book into directly, and on which plan?
8. What’s the minimum term and notice period, and is there an annual prepay?
9. What’s the overage rate, and are spam, hang-ups and test calls billed?
10. How many calls can it take at once, and what happens to the next caller?
11. Who owns the phone number, and can we port it out if we leave?
12. Can we export call logs, recordings and transcripts in bulk?
13. Do you bill in USD or CAD, and are you registered for GST/HST under the simplified or the normal regime?

Two of these carry legal weight. Under PIPEDA you stay accountable for personal information a vendor processes for you, so get the storage answer in writing. The Privacy Commissioner also says customers must be given a choice about whether their voice is recorded, with an alternative when recording isn’t integral to the service. Most AI receptionists keep a recording or transcript of every call, so settle this before launch.

Quebec adds duties on automated decisions and French service, covered in our guide to Canadian rules for AI receptionists. If the agent will also place calls, check the CRTC’s rules first: a business can use an automatic dialing-announcing device (a robocall) for a sales call only with the person’s prior express consent, and the CRTC opened a review of those rules in June 2026.

AI receptionist cost FAQ