In 2026 the AI receptionist plans we checked cost $99 to $399 a month for tools you set up yourself, and $297 to $497 a month plus a $497 setup fee for one a vendor sets up for you. The real comparison is not the subscription. It is the revenue lost to the calls you currently miss.
What an AI receptionist does
An AI receptionist answers your phone when you cannot. It picks up in seconds, day or night, has a natural conversation, takes the enquiry, books the job or the call-back, and sends you a transcript. The good ones also score the caller's intent and push the details straight into your customer records, so the enquiry enters your pipeline instead of a voicemail nobody checks.
For a trade or service business the use case is blunt: you are on the tools, the phone rings, and the caller is ringing your competitor four minutes later. The AI exists to make sure that second call never needs to happen.
What it costs in Australia
Prices fall into four options. Each row below comes from the vendor's own public pricing page, in Australian dollars:
| Option | Published price | What you get | Watch for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI receptionist you set up yourself | $99–$399 / month | An app you configure yourself; no setup fee. | Setup, scripts and integrations are on you. Most stall here. | Jodie; Leva Relay |
| AI receptionist set up for you | $297–$497 / month + $497 setup | The vendor sets up the call flow, greeting and booking rules. | Minute allowances: busy months can need a usage pack. | TradeMate |
| Human answering service | $33–$185 / month + per call | Australian receptionists take messages and transfer calls. | Each call over the plan is charged, so the bill grows with volume. | Virtual HQ; OfficeHQ |
| Hiring a receptionist | $48,000–$61,000 / year | A person at the desk. | Holidays, sick days, and the phone still rings at 9pm. | SEEK |
Sources, each checked 8 Oct 2026: Jodie pricing (A$99, A$199 and A$399 a month, excluding tax, no setup fee); Leva Relay ($199 a month, no setup fee); TradeMate pricing ($297 or $497 a month plus a $497 one-off setup); Virtual HQ pricing ($33 a month plus $3.89 a call, up to $185 a month for 50 calls, plus GST); OfficeHQ pricing (from $33 a month, plus GST); SEEK receptionist salaries (average advertised salary by industry, about $48,000 to $61,000 a year). Prices change; check the vendor's page before you buy.
What drives the price
Four things move you up or down those ranges. Call volume, since most tools price per minute. Integration depth: an AI that only takes messages is cheap, one that books jobs into your calendar and writes clean records into your CRM is not. After-hours coverage, which is where most of the missed revenue lives. And who maintains it: scripts drift, services change, and an unmaintained receptionist quietly gets worse.
The number that matters more
The subscription is the small number. The big one is what an unanswered phone already costs you. If your average job is worth $4,000 and you miss four winnable calls a month, that is a $16,000 monthly leak, an order of magnitude larger than any tool's price.
That is why we treat the receptionist as plumbing, not as the product. The point is not having an AI answer the phone. The point is that every enquiry, from every channel, gets a response in minutes and lands in one system that tracks it to the dollar it becomes.
Is an AI receptionist worth it, and when is it not?
An AI receptionist is worth it when you are losing real revenue to unanswered calls, and it is not worth it when you already answer nearly everything. The honest test is your own leak, not the subscription. If your average job is worth $4,000 and you miss four winnable calls a month, a tool at a few hundred dollars a month pays for itself many times over. If you answer almost every call already, or your average job is small, the same tool buys you very little.
It is also not worth it if the enquiry has nowhere to land after it is answered. An AI that picks up the phone but drops the details into an inbox nobody checks has just moved the leak, not closed it. The receptionist earns its price only when the enquiry it captures flows into a system that tracks it through to a booked, paid job. That is the difference between a tool and a result Margin installs end to end.
How does an AI receptionist compare to a human answering service?
The AI receptionist plans we checked run $99 to $497 a month, with unlimited minutes or a set allowance, and the higher plans answer day and night. A human answering service starts lower, at $33 a month, but charges for every call, about $3.89 each on Virtual HQ's pay-as-you-go plan, so a busy month costs more. The human option takes messages and transfers calls, and some plans add appointment booking at a per-minute rate. Hiring your own receptionist is a person at the desk, at an average advertised salary of about $48,000 to $61,000 a year on SEEK, with holidays and sick days on top.
We do not sell an AI receptionist on its own. We build the system around the phone: in our operations work every enquiry is caught, quoted and billed, with nothing typed twice, and in our marketing work each one keeps the channel that brought it, so you can see which enquiries became revenue.
We build that as part of the whole system. The first conversation and onboarding are free. Once we start building, you pay a monthly fee, plus a share of the revenue the system can measure, or one flat monthly fee if you prefer.
Not sure what your own numbers look like? Use the missed-call ROI calculator to enter your weekly missed calls and job value and see the monthly dollar figure in full.
What does an AI receptionist do?
It answers your phone when you can't — picking up in seconds day or night, having a natural conversation, taking the enquiry, booking the job or call-back, and sending you a transcript. The better ones score the caller's intent and push the details straight into your customer records.
How much does an AI receptionist cost in Australia in 2026?
On the vendors' own pricing pages (checked 8 Oct 2026), AI receptionist tools you set up yourself cost $99 to $399 a month, and one a vendor sets up for you costs $297 to $497 a month plus a $497 setup fee. A human answering service starts at $33 a month plus a charge per call. SEEK lists average receptionist salaries of about $48,000 to $61,000 a year, depending on the industry.
What drives the price of an AI receptionist?
Four things: call volume (most tools price per minute), integration depth (message-taking is cheap, booking into your calendar and CRM is not), after-hours coverage, and who maintains it over time.
Is an AI receptionist worth it for a small business?
The subscription is the small number; the bigger one is the revenue lost to the calls you currently miss. If your average job is worth $4,000 and you miss four winnable calls a month, that leak is far larger than any tool's monthly price.
When is an AI receptionist not worth it?
When you already answer nearly every call, when your average job is low value, or when the enquiry that comes in has nowhere to land afterwards. If you miss almost no calls, the monthly fee buys you little. The tool only pays for itself when there is real missed revenue for it to catch.
How much does it cost to set up an AI receptionist in Australia?
Self-serve tools have little or no setup fee, since you configure them yourself: Jodie and Leva Relay both list no setup fee. A vendor that sets it up for you charges for that work; TradeMate lists a $497 one-off setup on top of the monthly plan. The scripting and integration is the part that makes it actually book work rather than just take messages.