An AI receptionist costs a cleaning business between $29 and $349 a month on published plans, depending on how many minutes or calls are included. Live answering services cost $250 to $2,100 a month. The real number depends on your call volume, the pricing model (minutes, calls, or unlimited), and what add-ons you need to actually book the job.
What do AI receptionists cost in 2026?
These are published US list prices for the services cleaning companies most often compare, as of September 2026. All figures are USD per month.
| Service | Type | Entry plan | Top published plan | What the meter counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dialzara | AI | $29 (60 min) | $349 (1,000 min) | Minutes; overage $0.35–$0.48/min |
| Rosie | AI | $49 (250 min) | $299 (2,000 min) | Minutes |
| Goodcall | AI | $79 per agent | $249 per agent | Unique customers (100/250/500), unlimited minutes |
| My AI Front Desk | AI | $99 (200 min); $79 annual | Custom | Minutes; overage $0.25/min |
| Jobber AI Receptionist | AI | $29 add-on; free on Plus ($280) | Same | Bundled with Jobber |
| MeetZela | AI (cleaning only) | Custom by call volume | Custom | Calls; set after a free demo |
| Ruby | Live | $250 (50 min) | $1,725 (500 min) | Minutes; ≈ $3.45–$5.00/min |
| Smith.ai | Live | $300 (30 calls) | $2,100 (300 calls) | Calls; overage $8.50–$11.50/call |
So the honest headline range is $29 to $349 a month for AI on published plans, and $250 to $2,100 for live. Where you land inside those ranges is mostly about volume.
What drives the cost of an AI receptionist?
Minutes vs calls vs unlimited
Three pricing models exist, and they behave very differently for a cleaning company.
- Per minute (Dialzara, Rosie, My AI Front Desk, Ruby). Cheap for short calls, expensive for long ones. A real cleaning inquiry, where the caller wants a price and a time, runs 4 to 6 minutes. At 100 calls a month you need 400 to 600 minutes, which is the $199 Dialzara tier, the $149 Rosie tier, or overage on My AI Front Desk.
- Per call (Smith.ai, MeetZela). The length of the call does not change the price. Good for quote-heavy businesses; watch the included call count and the overage rate.
- Unlimited minutes with a customer cap (Goodcall). Predictable, as long as your unique-caller count stays under the plan cap.
The right question is not "what is the monthly price?" but "what will I pay in a busy month?" Spring cleaning season, a Google Ads test, or a good review can double your calls for a few weeks.
Overage traps
Overage is where the advertised price and the real bill diverge.
- Dialzara's $29 plan includes 60 minutes. At 4 minutes a call, that is 15 calls. Call 16 onward is $0.48 a minute, so a 100-call month on the Lite plan would be about $29 plus 340 minutes × $0.48 = $192. You would have been better off on the $99 Pro plan (220 minutes) or the $199 Plus plan (500 minutes).
- Smith.ai's per-call overage is $8.50 to $11.50. Ten calls over your plan is roughly $100.
- Goodcall charges $0.50 per unique customer over the cap. Cheap, but it is per person, not per call, so repeat callers do not cost extra.
- Ruby does not publish an overage rate. Ask before signing.
Add-ons you need to actually book the job
For a cleaning business, answering the phone is table stakes. What you are paying for is a booked clean. Check whether these are included or extra:
- Appointment booking. Smith.ai charges $1.50 per booked call. Rosie only offers direct calendar booking on its $149 plan and up. Most AI plans include it.
- SMS confirmations and reminders. Smith.ai charges $0.50 per call for SMS notifications. My AI Front Desk includes 400 texts a month.
- Spanish. Included on Dialzara and Rosie. $1.00 per call on Smith.ai.
- Scheduling integration. Smith.ai's first CRM integration is free; extras are $0.50 per call. Jobber's receptionist only writes into Jobber.
- Quoting from your price list. This is the one most generalist tools do not do. They read back a pricing FAQ. A cleaning-specific receptionist applies your rate card (bedrooms, bathrooms, frequency, add-ons, per-turnover) and gives a number.
What does a missed call cost a cleaning business?
The cost side of the ledger only makes sense next to the revenue side, and the revenue side is missed calls.
Invoca's 2024 analysis of home-services call data found that 27 percent of calls to home-services businesses go unanswered, and that fewer than 3 percent of callers pushed to voicemail leave a message. Housecall Pro, summarising the same Invoca research, puts the average value of a missed home-services sales call at about $1,200.
That $1,200 figure is a cross-trade average that includes HVAC and plumbing tickets, so do not apply it to house cleaning directly. Use your own numbers. The two Invoca percentages, though, are the ones that matter: roughly one in four callers gets no answer, and almost none of them leave a voicemail. They call the next company on the list.
Worked ROI example for a cleaning company
Take a residential cleaning company in a mid-sized US metro. Every number below is an assumption you should replace with your own; the point is the method.
Assumptions
- 120 inbound calls a month
- 60 of those are new-customer inquiries (the rest are existing customers rescheduling, cancelling, or asking questions)
- 27 percent go unanswered (Invoca), so 16 new-customer inquiries a month are missed
- Fewer than 3 percent leave a voicemail, so effectively all 16 are lost
- When the phone is answered and the caller gets a quote and a slot, 40 percent book
- Average first clean: $180
- One in three first-time customers becomes a recurring biweekly client at $150 a visit, staying about 10 months (roughly 20 visits, $3,000)
Revenue lost each month to unanswered calls
- 16 missed inquiries × 40 percent close rate = about 6 lost first cleans
- 6 × $180 = $1,080 in first-clean revenue
- 6 × one-third = 2 recurring clients not won, worth about $6,000 over their lifetime
Cost of covering those calls
- A mid-tier AI receptionist on published pricing: $149 to $249 a month
- A live service covering 480 minutes a month: $1,725 (Ruby Enterprise) or $810 plus add-ons (Smith.ai Basic, 90 calls, so you would exceed it)
Break-even
At $200 a month, an AI receptionist pays for itself with about one recovered first clean. In this example it recovers about six, worth $1,080 in immediate revenue and around $6,000 in recurring value, every month. Even if your close rate is half what we assumed, it is still recovering three first cleans against a $200 cost.
A live service at $1,725 needs roughly ten recovered first cleans to break even on first-clean revenue alone, which is more than this business is losing. The recurring value changes that picture, but the margin is much thinner, and the live receptionist is typically taking a message rather than booking.
Two more things the simple math ignores. First, an answered call that gets a quote and a slot converts at a higher rate than a callback the next day; speed-to-lead is real in home services. Second, the owner's time. If you are cleaning and returning calls at 6pm, the receptionist is buying back that hour too.
How is MeetZela priced?
MeetZela is priced by call volume, and the number is set after a free demo rather than published as a fixed plan. That is because a solo operator taking 40 calls a month and a company with three crews taking 400 have very different needs, and a per-minute meter punishes the quote calls that a cleaning business most wants answered. Zela answers every call in under a second, quotes from your own price list, books into your live schedule, sends confirmation and reminder texts, reactivates lapsed customers, and warm-transfers anything that needs a human. If you want a number for your volume, book a demo. To see how it works for your kind of cleaning company, start at the AI receptionist hub, the house cleaning page, or the commercial cleaning page. MeetZela serves the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand; see locations.
FAQ
What is the cheapest AI receptionist for a cleaning business?
On published pricing, Dialzara's $29 plan (60 minutes) and Jobber's $29 AI Receptionist add-on are the lowest entry points. Dialzara's 60 minutes covers about 15 quote-length calls before overage; Jobber's only works if your business runs on Jobber.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than hiring a receptionist?
Yes, by a wide margin. A part-time receptionist at $18 an hour for 20 hours a week costs about $1,560 a month before payroll taxes, and covers only those 20 hours. Published AI plans run $29 to $349 a month and answer 24/7, including the after-hours and weekend calls a part-timer would miss.
Why don't all AI receptionist vendors publish prices?
Some price per business rather than per plan, usually because usage varies a lot between customers. MeetZela prices by call volume after a demo. Ruby publishes plans but not overage. Smith.ai and Dialzara publish both. Always ask for the price at your expected volume, plus the busy-month price, before you sign.
Sources
- Invoca, "See How Much Missed Sales Calls Cost Home Services Businesses" (May 2024): https://www.invoca.com/blog/how-much-missed-sales-calls-cost-home-services-businesses
- Housecall Pro, "The Hidden Costs of Missed Calls for Home Service Business Owners" (cites Invoca's $1,200 average): https://www.housecallpro.com/resources/missed-calls/
- Dialzara pricing: https://dialzara.com/pricing
- Rosie pricing: https://heyrosie.com/pricing
- Goodcall pricing: https://www.goodcall.com/pricing
- My AI Front Desk pricing: https://www.myaifrontdesk.com/pricing
- Jobber AI Receptionist: https://www.getjobber.com/features/ai-receptionist/
- Jobber pricing: https://www.getjobber.com/pricing/
- Ruby pricing: https://www.ruby.com/pricing/
- Smith.ai pricing: https://smith.ai/pricing