Guide · AI Receptionists
Four AI receptionist vendors will actually sign a BAA — the rest leave the box blank
If you run a medical or dental practice, the compliance filter shrinks this market to four names before price matters: Phonely, Vapi, Bland, and Retell AI publicly confirm both HIPAA and a signed BAA.
For a medical or dental front desk, the question is not “which AI receptionist is best” — it is “which one will sign a Business Associate Agreement,” because without that signature you cannot legally route a patient’s voice through it. On that single filter, this market collapses fast. Of the 24 vendors we track, exactly four publicly state both HIPAA support and an available signed BAA: Phonely, Vapi, Bland, and Retell AI. One more — Trillet — lists HIPAA as available but publishes no BAA detail. Everyone else, including well-known names like Goodcall, Rosie, Smith.ai, and Dialzara, leaves both fields blank on their public pages.
The four that will sign
These are the only vendors whose public pricing or trust pages confirm HIPAA and a BAA. They split cleanly into one managed flat plan and three developer per-minute platforms.
| Vendor | HIPAA | BAA | Entry economics | What the BAA costs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phonely | yes | yes | Pro $150/mo, 750 min included | Available on Enterprise |
| Bland | yes | yes | Start $0.14/min all-in | Signed BAA on Enterprise |
| Retell AI | yes | yes | PAYG $0.07/min floor ($0.07–$0.31) | Available, Enterprise |
| Vapi | yes | yes | Build PAYG, $0.05/min platform fee | $2,000/mo add-on |
The headline numbers hide the real cost of compliance. Vapi looks cheapest at $0.05/min — $30 for a 600-minute month — but its HIPAA/BAA capability is an explicit $2,000/mo add-on, which instantly makes it the most expensive of the four for a small practice. Bland’s $0.14/min Start rate is genuinely all-in (model, speech, telephony), landing at roughly $84 for the same 600 minutes, but its signed BAA sits on the Enterprise tier (Build is $299/mo, Scale $499/mo). Retell’s $0.07/min is the published floor of a $0.07–$0.31/min range, so a 600-minute month runs $42 at best and meaningfully more once you pick a real model.
That leaves Phonely as the only vendor here pairing a flat, predictable managed plan with BAA-eligible HIPAA. Its Pro tier is $150/mo for 750 included minutes (Starter is $50/mo for 250 min; there’s even a Free tier with 100 min). For a clinic that wants one line item and a signature — not a model stack and a metered bill — Phonely is the most straightforward compliant pick. The BAA itself lives on Enterprise, so confirm terms before signing, but it is the cleanest entry point of the four.
The “HIPAA, sort of” tier
Trillet is the honest edge case. Its page lists HIPAA as available, but says nothing about a BAA — and a HIPAA mention without a BAA is not a compliance guarantee, it’s a feature bullet. Pricing is flat: Studio at $99/mo for 100 included minutes, Agency at $299/mo for 300 minutes, with $0.12/min overage above the allowance. If you’re drawn to Trillet’s white-label structure, the BAA question has to be answered in writing by their sales team before any patient data touches it; the public page does not settle it.
Everyone else publishes nothing
This is the part healthcare buyers underestimate. The mainstream consumer-facing receptionists — the ones that rank for “AI receptionist” searches — are silent on compliance. Goodcall (Starter $79/mo, unlimited minutes), Rosie (Scale $149/mo, 1,000 minutes), Smith.ai (Starter $95/mo, 30 calls), and Dialzara (Business Pro $99/mo, 220 minutes) all carry null HIPAA and null BAA in our dataset. A few others gesture at it without committing: Synthflow calls out HIPAA for its Enterprise tier only with no BAA published, and Thoughtly does the same. None of those is a “no” — but in healthcare procurement, “not published” has to be treated as “not available until proven otherwise in a signed agreement.”
How to read this
If you run a practice, the buying order inverts the usual one. Filter first, price second. The compliant shortlist is four names — Phonely, Vapi, Bland, Retell AI — and within it the economics diverge wildly: Phonely’s $150/mo flat plan, Bland’s ~$84 all-in per-minute month, Retell’s $42 floor, and Vapi’s $30 metered rate plus a $2,000/mo BAA add-on that dwarfs everything else. Trillet is a maybe pending a written BAA answer. And the dozen vendors with the loudest marketing are, for a HIPAA workload, simply not on the list yet. Every figure here comes from the vendor’s own public page; before you sign, get the BAA terms in writing, because a flag in a pricing table is a starting point, not a contract.