AI Receptionist vs Answering Service vs Hiring: Cost
By Frontly
There are three ways to make sure your business phone gets answered: hire a receptionist, pay a human answering service, or use an AI receptionist. They are billed in completely different ways, so comparing them on the sticker price alone gets the answer wrong. This guide puts all three on the same footing: what you pay for, what you get for it, and how to work out the monthly cost from your own call volume.
The short answer
| In-house receptionist | Human answering service | AI receptionist | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it is billed | Salary plus benefits | Per minute or per call, usually in monthly bundles | Per minute, per call, or a flat monthly rate with an allowance |
| Hours covered | The shifts you staff, typically 40 hours a week | Whatever hours you buy | Usually 24 hours a day, 7 days a week |
| Calls at the same time | One per person | Depends on the service's staffing | Depends on the platform; Frontly answers every caller at once |
| After hours and holidays | Overtime, a second hire, or voicemail | Depends on the plan you buy | Usually covered; the calls count toward your plan |
| What you manage | Hiring, training, cover for sick days and leave | A script and a message routine | A call flow you set up once and adjust |
The right choice depends on how many calls you get, how long they run, and when they come in. The rest of this guide shows how to work that out.
Option 1: Hiring a receptionist
A hire is the only one of the three with a fixed, public benchmark, because the US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes it.
- Median pay: $38,010 a year, or $18.27 an hour (May 2025).
- Benefits on top: for office and administrative support workers in private industry, benefits make up 31.3% of what the employer pays in total (June 2026). Wages are the other 68.7%.
- Fully loaded cost: $38,010 ÷ 0.687 comes to roughly $55,300 a year for a receptionist on the median wage, before recruiting, training, equipment and desk space.
That buys about 40 hours a week. A week has 168 hours, so one full-time receptionist covers under a quarter of them. Evenings, weekends, lunch breaks, sick days and vacations still need a plan, and a receptionist on one call cannot answer the next one ringing in.
Recruiting, training, turnover, equipment and desk space push the real figure higher (payroll taxes are already inside the benefits share); Frontly vs a human receptionist breaks a loaded seat down line by line.
A hire is the right answer when the role is more than the phone: greeting visitors, handling paperwork, running the office. If the phone is most of the job, the other two options are worth pricing.
Option 2: A human answering service
An answering service puts a team of remote receptionists on your line. They answer with your business name, follow a script, take messages and, depending on the service, book appointments or transfer calls.
How it is billed:
- Per minute: you buy a monthly bundle of receptionist minutes, and minutes beyond the bundle cost extra. Ask exactly which time counts toward the bundle.
- Per call: a monthly bundle of calls, with a rate for each call beyond it.
To turn a quote into a monthly cost:
- Calls per day × average minutes per call × days per month = minutes per month. For example, 10 calls a day × 3 minutes × 22 working days = 660 minutes. If you get weekend calls, use 30 days, not 22.
- Find the bundle that covers those minutes, and add the overage rate for any month you run over.
- Ask whether hold time, transfers, after-hours calls and spam calls count toward the bundle.
The arithmetic matters most for businesses with long calls. A per-minute plan prices a 6-minute intake call at twice a 3-minute one.
Option 3: An AI receptionist
An AI receptionist answers the call itself. Depending on the platform, it can hold a natural conversation, answer questions from your own information, book appointments and hand the caller to a person when needed. Platforms typically bill in one of three ways:
- Per minute of conversation.
- Per call, whatever its length.
- A flat monthly rate with an allowance of call minutes, and a published rate for minutes beyond it.
Use the same worksheet as for an answering service: work out your minutes (or calls) per month, then apply the quote. How much an AI receptionist costs goes through the billing models in detail, with six questions to ask any vendor.
What each option actually covers
Price only means something next to what it buys. These are the questions that separate the three options in practice.
- Does every call get answered? A receptionist answers one call at a time and is off the phone at lunch. Frontly answers every inbound call, 24 hours a day, every day of the year including holidays, with no limit on how many callers it handles at once. No queue, no hold music.
- Can it actually help the caller? Frontly answers from your own knowledge base, books appointments during the call, and remembers returning callers across calls, so a customer calling back does not start from scratch.
- What happens when a person is needed? Frontly transfers the call to your team with a spoken briefing, so the caller never has to repeat themselves.
- What about callers who do not speak English? Frontly holds full conversations in more than 50 languages on the same number, matched to each caller or set to one language. Coverage varies by language.
- What do you get afterwards? Every booking, lead, transcript and outcome lands as a record in your Frontly dashboard, not as a pile of voicemails.
A worked example
Take a business that gets 10 calls a day, averaging 3 minutes each, about 22 working days a month. That is 660 minutes a month. Say a third of those calls arrive outside 9 to 5.
- Hire: around $55,300 a year (about $4,600 a month) on the median wage, covering business hours only. The after-hours third still goes to voicemail.
- Answering service: 660 minutes a month at the per-minute rate you are quoted, plus any after-hours premium.
- AI receptionist: 660 minutes against the plan's allowance, with calls answered whenever they arrive on a 24/7 platform.
Plug in your own numbers. Your call volume and call length drive every one of these options, and the ROI calculator shows what the calls you miss today are worth.
How to choose
- Hire when the job is the whole front office, not just the phone.
- Use an answering service when you want a person on every call and your calls are short and predictable.
- Use an AI receptionist when you need every call answered around the clock, including when several callers ring at once (check each platform's limit), with bookings and transfers handled on the call.
Setting one up is a phone question rather than a software one: how to forward business calls to an AI receptionist covers using a new number, porting, forwarding and SIP.
You can also combine them: an AI receptionist answers the calls and books what it can, and transfers the calls that need a person to the team you already have. It works for dental offices, law firms, home service trades and real estate alike, because the call flow is built around the calls each one gets.
Where Frontly fits
Frontly is a flat monthly rate sized by call minutes. The extra-minute rate for each plan is published on the pricing page, with no hidden fees and no feature paywalls, and a usage alert at 90% of your included minutes (or any level you choose) tells you before you run over. You pick a size, book a setup call, and the Frontly team builds your call flow with you. A standard setup is live in about an hour.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to hire a receptionist in the US?
The median receptionist earns $38,010 a year (BLS, May 2025). Benefits add about 31% of total employer cost for office and administrative support workers, which puts the fully loaded figure near $55,300 a year before recruiting, training and office costs.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than an answering service?
It depends on your call volume and call length. Work out your minutes per month (calls per day × average minutes × the days you take calls) and apply each quote to the same number. Long calls favor per-call pricing, and frequent short calls can favor per-minute pricing. A flat monthly rate makes the bill predictable as long as your minutes stay within the allowance.
Can an AI receptionist answer more than one call at a time?
Some can. Frontly answers every inbound caller at once, with no queue and no hold.
What happens when a caller needs a real person?
Frontly transfers the call to your team and gives them a spoken briefing first, so the caller does not repeat themselves.
Does an AI receptionist work after hours?
Usually. Frontly answers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including holidays, so the calls that arrive outside business hours are answered rather than sent to voicemail.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Receptionists (median pay, May 2025): bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/receptionists.htm
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026, Table 4 (office and administrative support, private industry): bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t04.htm
Checked on October 1, 2026.