What does an AI receptionist actually cost in the UK?

That's the number most people came for. The rest of this is why the range is so wide, what the price lists leave out, and what four real kinds of business would actually pay. At Apex AI we build AI receptionists for clinics, physios, MOT centres, trades and care homes, so I price this for a living, and I've watched plenty of owners get caught by a headline rate that tripled by the end of the month.

Why the range is so wide

Nobody agrees on what to charge for, so three completely different pricing models sit side by side in the same search results.

Per-minute platform fees. This is how the developer platforms price: Vapi, Retell, Bland, ElevenLabs Agents. You pay a small platform fee per minute of call, then separately for the speech recognition, the language model, the synthetic voice and the phone line. Vapi's headline is $0.05 a minute, but reviewers put the all-in figure at $0.30 to $0.33 once you add the rest of the stack.¹ Retell charges around $0.07 a minute with no base subscription; ElevenLabs Agents run $0.08 to $0.10 depending on plan.² These numbers look tiny until you multiply them by a month of calls, and they assume you have someone technical to build and maintain the agent. We've written up the BYOK vs all-inclusive maths separately.

Flat monthly SMB plans. This is the "AI receptionist" advertised to salons, garages, clinics and trades. A phone number, a pre-built agent, a dashboard and a bundle of minutes for a fixed monthly price. UK reviewers put the basic band at £25 to £80 a month,³ rising to a few hundred for higher volumes and calendar booking. Managed services, where someone builds the agent around your business, integrates it with your booking system and keeps tuning it, sit above that. Ours starts at £696 a month, flat per location, with build and integration included.

Enterprise minimums. Once you're talking to PolyAI, Parloa, Sierra or Genesys, the conversation starts with an annual contract. Synthflow is a useful marker of where the market's moved: it retired its old $29 to $899 self-serve tiers this year and now shows only an Enterprise plan, with contracts from around $30,000 a year for roughly 10,000 minutes a month.⁴ Genesys prices its agentic virtual agent at 1.2 "AI tokens" per interaction inside its consumption billing, charged as soon as a call flow visits the block, whether or not it runs.⁵ If you're a five-person clinic, none of this is for you.

What to take from this: a per-minute price and a monthly price are not comparable until you've worked out your minutes. A 20p-a-minute platform and a £150-a-month package can cost the same for one business and differ fourfold for another.

What the price lists leave out

Every AI receptionist has a headline price and a real price. The gap is the bits below.

Telephony. The phone number and the minutes on the line are usually billed on top of the AI. On developer platforms this is explicit (Twilio or Telnyx rates plus a monthly number fee). On packaged products it's sometimes bundled, sometimes not. Ask: is a UK number included, is porting my existing number included, and do inbound minutes count against my allowance?

Compliance extras. In the US, HIPAA is often a paid tier; Vapi lists it as a $2,000-a-month add-on.¹ UK businesses don't need HIPAA, but you do need a UK GDPR data-processing agreement and a straight answer on where recordings and transcripts are stored. Some vendors treat UK/EU data handling as an enterprise feature. If a vendor can't tell you where your patients' voice recordings sit, that's a cost you'll pay later in a different currency.

Overage. Monthly plans include a number of minutes or calls; go over and you pay per extra unit, often at a worse rate. Trades and MOT centres are seasonal (January boiler breakdowns, March and September MOT peaks), so a plan sized for an average month will overrun in a busy one. This is the strongest argument for flat per-location pricing and it's why we price that way.

Integrations. Booking straight into Cliniko, Dentally, PracticeHub or your MOT booking system is what turns an answering machine into a receptionist. It's also where vendors upsell. Calendar sync might be included; a two-way sync with practice management software usually isn't on the cheapest tier.

Setup and changes. Some products charge onboarding. More importantly, who makes changes when your hours change or you add a service? If the answer is "raise a ticket," ask the turnaround.

After-hours volume. This one cuts both ways. Roughly 47% of customer calls arrive outside business hours,⁶ and an AI answers all of them, which is the point. It also means your minute count will be higher than your daytime call log suggests. Budget for the calls you currently miss, not the ones you currently answer.

What four UK businesses would actually pay

Worked examples, not quotes. Assumptions are stated so you can swap in your own numbers. The 20p-a-minute all-in rate is a middle figure for a build-it-yourself stack.

Assumptions: average answered call lasts 3 minutes; the business is open 5.5 days a week; "managed" means a flat-fee AI receptionist with booking integration, built and monitored for you.

Physio clinic, ~200 inbound calls a week

Two hundred calls a week is a busy front desk. The per-minute route only makes sense if you already employ someone who can build and look after the agent, and even then the gap is small once you count their hours.

MOT centre, ~60 calls a day in peak months, ~25 in quiet ones

MOT centres are the clearest case for asking about overage. A plan that's cheap in June and punitive in September is not a cheap plan.

Care home, ~40 calls a day, many from relatives

For care homes the money question is usually secondary to two others: can it route a distressed relative to a person immediately, and where are the recordings stored. Price those in. Our care-home builds route anything urgent, clinical or safeguarding-related straight to staff and never handle it with AI.

Three-person plumbing and heating firm, ~15 calls a day

This is the business the cheap plans are built for, and if all you need is messages taken, a cheap plan is fine. The cost isn't the interesting number here. The interesting number is what a missed evening call is worth, which is the next section.

Cost against the alternatives

Against a human receptionist. UK reviewers put a receptionist's salary at £22,000 to £28,000.³ Add employer National Insurance, pension, holiday and sickness cover and the real figure is higher. Divide £25,000 by 12 and you get about £2,080 a month for roughly 37.5 hours a week. An AI receptionist covers 168 hours a week. The honest comparison isn't "AI replaces the receptionist". For most clinics it doesn't and shouldn't. It's "AI answers the calls she can't": lunchtime, after 5pm, Saturdays, and the third line ringing while she's on the first two.

Against missed calls. This is the number people skip and it's the one that decides whether any of this is worth it. When Physio and Health Matters put our receptionist on their line during an NHS referral surge, it answered 400 calls in a month, missed none, and booked 101 appointments, a quarter of every call.⁷ Take your own first-appointment or job value, multiply by the calls you miss in a week, and compare it to any monthly fee on this page. Most businesses have never measured the second number. Your phone provider can usually tell you. We covered the wider figures in the missed call problem, in numbers.

The cost-per-answered-call table

The simplest way to compare offers is to reduce everything to cost per answered call.

Two things fall out of this table every time. The per-call cost of AI drops as volume rises, which is the opposite of a human. And a capped plan is only cheap if you stay under the cap, so size it for your busy months and check the overage rate.

Questions to ask before you sign

These are the questions that change the price.

• What's included: number, porting, inbound minutes, booking integration?
• What's the overage rate, and will I be told before I hit it?
• Where are recordings and transcripts stored, and for how long?
• Who makes changes to the agent, and how fast?
• What happens to a call the AI can't handle: transfer, message, voicemail?
• Is there a minimum term?

Price it on your own minutes. Demand the all-in rate. Check what's hidden. And if a quote sounds too cheap to be true, ask what's not in it, because something always isn't.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an AI receptionist cost per month in the UK?

Basic plans run £25 to £80 a month; managed services with booking integration start around £696; developer platforms cost 10p to 30p a minute all-in; enterprise contracts start around £25,000 a year. The figure that matters is the all-in monthly cost for your call volume, not the headline per-minute rate.

Is per-minute or flat-fee pricing better?

Per-minute can be cheaper for low, steady volume. Flat-fee per location is better if you want a predictable bill that doesn't spike in a busy month. Most appointment-driven businesses prefer predictability.

Why is the per-minute rate I was quoted so low?

Because it's usually just the platform fee. The voice, the language model and the telephony are charged separately. Always ask for the all-in rate.

Is an AI receptionist cheaper than hiring a receptionist?

For most clinics, garages and trades, yes. A full-time receptionist is £22,000 to £28,000 in salary before on-costs, and isn't there evenings, weekends or during sickness.

What hidden costs should I watch for?

Telephony, compliance add-ons, overage, integration fees, setup fees, and higher minute usage once the AI starts answering the after-hours calls you currently miss.

Apex AI builds and runs AI receptionists for clinics, physios, MOT centres, trades, care homes and call centres, priced flat per location from £696 a month with nothing hidden underneath. Want your real number? Test our agent and tell us your monthly call volume.

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