The short answer
An AI receptionist costs between $25 and $300 a month for most small businesses, and it answers your phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Compare that to a full-time receptionist, who costs $3,000 to $5,500 a month once you add up everything, and only covers about 40 hours a week.
That gap is the whole story. But if you're trying to decide what's actually right for your business, the monthly price tag is only the starting point. Below is the honest breakdown of what each option really costs — and, just as important, what you get for the money.
What a full-time receptionist actually costs
The number on the job posting is not the number you pay. A receptionist's salary averages around $38,000 a year in the US, which looks like roughly $3,200 a month. But salary is where the cost begins, not where it ends.
Once you add it all up, a full-time receptionist runs $3,000 to $5,500 a month, because you're also paying for:
- Payroll taxes — Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment add roughly 8–10% on top of wages.
- Benefits — health insurance, PTO, and other benefits can add close to 30% of total compensation.
- Hiring and training — the average cost to hire is in the thousands, plus weeks of reduced productivity while they learn your business.
- Turnover — receptionist roles have some of the highest turnover of any job. Roughly one in three leaves within a year, and every replacement means recruiting and retraining all over again.
And here's the part that stings the most: a full-time receptionist covers about 40 hours out of the 168 hours in a week. That means for roughly 76% of the week — nights, weekends, holidays, lunch breaks, sick days — your phone is going to voicemail anyway.
What a human answering service costs
A live answering service — where a remote team answers your calls — is the traditional middle ground. It runs $200 to $2,000 a month depending on how many minutes or calls you need and whether you get a dedicated agent or a shared pool.
The upside: real humans, and you're not paying for a full salary. The downside: the agents aren't part of your business. They're often juggling calls for many companies at once, they may not know your services or pricing, and the good ones with extended hours and dedicated staff climb toward the top of that range fast.
What an AI receptionist costs
An AI receptionist answers your calls with a natural-sounding voice, books appointments, and texts confirmations — around the clock. Pricing typically breaks into three tiers:
- Entry plans cover a few hundred minutes or calls a month and handle the basics.
- Mid-tier plans add things like calendar booking, CRM connections, and SMS follow-up.
- Higher plans cover heavier call volume for busier businesses.
Across the board, that lands at roughly $25 to $300 a month, and — this is the key difference — it runs 24/7 with no extra charge for nights, weekends, or holidays. A missed call at 9pm on a Saturday gets answered the same as one at 2pm on a Tuesday.
Talvio starts at $99/month for its Starter plan, with Pro at $249/month and Business at $599/month for higher call volumes. Every plan answers every call, books jobs, and sends text confirmations 24/7.
The real cost isn't the receptionist — it's the missed calls
Here's the math most business owners never run.
Say your business gets 200 calls a month, and 40% go unanswered — which is on the low end of what research shows for trades businesses. That's 80 missed calls a month. If even 15% of those callers would have booked a job worth $300 on average, that's $3,600 in lost revenue every month — over $43,000 a year — walking out the door because nobody picked up.
A missed call in the trades is rarely a missed message. Most people don't leave a voicemail. They just hang up and call the next name on the list.
So the real question isn't "what does a receptionist cost?" It's "what are my missed calls costing me?" When you frame it that way, an AI receptionist at $99 a month that catches those calls doesn't look like an expense. It looks like the cheapest lead source you have.
So which one is right for you?
There's no single right answer — it depends on your business:
- Hire full-time if you have enough front-desk work to fill 40 hours a week beyond just the phone, and you can absorb the $3,000+ monthly cost plus turnover.
- Use a human answering service if you value live human agents and mostly need coverage during business hours, and the per-month cost pencils out against your call volume.
- Use an AI receptionist if your main problem is missed calls — especially after hours — and you want 24/7 coverage that books jobs and confirms appointments for a fraction of a salary.
For most plumbers, HVAC companies, electricians, and handymen we talk to, the pain isn't the front desk. It's the jobs lost to a ringing phone while they're under a sink or up on a roof. That's exactly the problem an AI receptionist is built to solve.
Want to hear one answer your phone?
Talvio answers every call to your business 24/7, sorts the emergencies from the routine, books the job, and texts your customer a confirmation — starting at $99/month. You can even call the demo line and hear it for yourself before you sign up for anything.