AI Receptionists · annual report · published Jun 10, 2026

The State of AI Receptionists 2026

Across 24 tracked ai receptionists vendors in 2026, the median effective cost at 200 calls/mo (600 talk-minutes) is $159.48/mo, with Vapi cheapest at $30/mo. 18 vendors advertise entry prices under $100/mo, but the sticker rarely matches the cost at real volume.

As of Jun 10, 2026 · figures linked to their source in the table below

We track 24 ai receptionists vendors and normalize every billing model to one workload. This is what the market's pricing, capabilities and integrations look like in 2026 — sourced, dated, and reproducible from the underlying dataset.

Vendors tracked: 24
With published pricing: 23
Median cost @ 200/mo: $159.48
Cheapest @ 200/mo: $30

1. Entry prices cluster low — but that is not the real cost

Across the 23 vendors that publish pricing, the lowest advertised monthly price clusters heavily under $200. That distribution flatters the category: the entry price excludes usage. Once you fix a workload — 200 calls a month at 3 minutes each — per-minute and per-call plans climb past flat plans, and the cheapest sticker is rarely the cheapest outcome.

Figure 1 — Vendors by lowest published entry price

n = 23 priced vendors. Quote-only vendors are excluded from this chart. Source: each vendor's public pricing page; see the comparison matrix for per-row provenance.

2. Multiple billing models, one comparison problem

The category has not converged on a pricing shape. None of these models is comparable to another until the workload is held constant — which is the entire reason this index exists.

Figure 2 — Billing model of each vendor's cheapest priced plan

3. Integration coverage is uneven and self-reported

Scheduling, CRM and ad-platform integrations are where these products live or die, yet coverage is thin and inconsistent once you discount umbrella claims like "200+ integrations." Counting only named systems, a handful of platforms show up repeatedly; most named integrations appear on a single vendor.

Figure 3 — Most-named integrations (umbrella claims excluded)

Aggregate claims ("200+ integrations", "REST API") are excluded so the chart reflects specific, checkable systems. A vendor naming a system is a claim, not a verified working integration.

4. Compliance posture is mostly silence

On their public pages, most vendors say nothing about HIPAA or whether they will sign a BAA. We treat that silence as "not published," never as a "no": a vendor may well sign a BAA on request. Regulated buyers cannot resolve compliance from public pages alone and must ask — a gap this index marks rather than papers over.

5. Named measurements

Pricing pages cannot tell you whether a service answers fast or actually books the appointment. For that we run our own named measurements — scripted live test calls scored to a published definition. Each metric below has a dedicated methodology page; a vendor's value is published only once it clears the sample-size gate (n ≥ 10 test calls), and stays "insufficient data" until then.

Percent · named measurement

Booking-Success Score

Share of decisive scripted test calls in which the AI receptionist completed a booking/appointment action.

Insufficient data — awaiting first run (n ≥ 10)

Methodology & vendor values →

Seconds (p50) · named measurement

Voice-Agent Latency Index

Median (p50) time from call connect to the agent's first spoken response across scripted test calls.

Insufficient data — awaiting first run (n ≥ 10)

Methodology & vendor values →

Version Jun 11, 2026. Values download as JSON.

Method & reproducibility

Every figure in this report is derived from the same public dataset that powers the pricing index and comparison matrix, snapshotted on Jun 10, 2026. The charts are computed deterministically from that dataset — no estimates, no rounding of vendor counts. Read the full methodology, or check the corrections log for any post-publication fixes.