A starting price does not tell you what an AI receptionist will cost. You need the allowance, the excess rate and the cheapest plan that can complete the job. Appointment booking alone can change which tier you need.
At 100 calls a month, IONOS's 30-call plan calculates to £73.30 excluding VAT. Its 100-call plan is £69 excluding VAT. The cheaper headline produces the larger bill. The calculations below show where that happens and where a flat plan makes sense.
Published UK AI receptionist prices
| Provider | Monthly price | What is metered | Decision to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moneypenny AI | From £49 | Full allowance and excess rates need a quote | Price the human fallback you need |
| IONOS | £39 / £69 / £99 | 30 calls / 100 calls / unlimited calls | Calendar booking starts on the £69 plan |
| Answer.co.uk AI | £10 / £30 / £120 / £300 | Every call at 85p on Lite; 50, 200 or 500 calls included, then 85p a call | Transfers start on Growth, at extra cost; booking starts on Plus |
| Sayora | £49 | Unlimited minutes, no per-minute charges | Inbound AI; no live call transfer |
| Jodie | £49 / £99 / £199 | Unlimited minutes across these tiers | Booking and transfers start at £99; Zapier at £199 |
| ARROW | From £99 | 150 minutes included | Obtain higher-usage pricing before comparing a busy month |
| BookedSolid | £109 for four practitioners | Price scales with practitioner count | Healthcare workflows; unlimited inbound calls and messages |
| Voco | £49 / £99, or pay as you go | 136 or 300 minutes, then 36p or 33p a minute; 39p a minute on pay as you go | Billed by the second; a spend cap that starts at £20 or £50 limits overage |
IONOS, BookedSolid and Voco exclude VAT. Jodie excludes applicable taxes. Answer.co.uk's price table lists its £10 AI plan excluding VAT, but its AI plans page doesn't say for the larger plans. Sayora isn't VAT-registered, so there's no VAT to add to its plan. The Moneypenny and ARROW pages don't say whether VAT is included, so ask about VAT and the complete rate. If your business can't reclaim VAT, add it to the ex-VAT prices before you compare.
These are selected published plans, not the whole market. A lower starting price may exist elsewhere. For the workflow differences, use the UK AI receptionist comparison.
What you pay at different call volumes
These recurring subscription and call-usage totals exclude VAT (Sayora has none to add), phone-provider diversion charges and any separately charged extras. They ignore introductory discounts and assume every call counts towards the allowance. The rows compare billing models, not equivalent features.
| Answered calls | IONOS: 30-call plan | IONOS: 100-call plan | IONOS: unlimited plan | Sayora |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | £39.00 | £69.00 | £99.00 | £49.00 |
| 50 | £48.80 | £69.00 | £99.00 | £49.00 |
| 100 | £73.30 | £69.00 | £99.00 | £49.00 |
| 250 | £146.80 | £127.50 | £99.00 | £49.00 |
The calculation is subscription + excess calls × excess rate. For IONOS's lower tiers, the excess rates are £0.49 and £0.39 respectively. Included calls are subtracted first; unused allowance never creates a credit.
For example, at 100 calls: £39 + (100 − 30) × £0.49 = £73.30.
At 50 calls, and before VAT, the 30-call plan is still slightly below Sayora's subscription. If your business can't reclaim VAT, the 30-call plan costs more once VAT is added. At 250 calls, the unlimited IONOS plan costs less than either of its lower tiers. That comparison changes if a lower plan cannot do the work: IONOS's £39 plan does not include the calendar booking shown on its £69 and £99 plans.
Answer.co.uk's AI is priced by the call. Lite is £10 a month plus 85p a call, and a £25 deposit opens the account. From 24 calls, Lite costs more than the £30 Growth plan, which includes 50 calls: £10 + 24 × £0.85 = £30.40.
On its cheapest plan each time, Answer.co.uk comes to £30 at 25 or 50 calls and £72.50 at 100 (£30 + 50 × £0.85). At 250 calls its £120 Plus plan is cheaper, at £162.50 (£120 + 50 × £0.85).
You sign up for Lite online, but Growth and the larger plans are by enquiry, and Answer.co.uk doesn't say whether they include VAT, so ask before you compare. Booking starts on Plus, so a line that needs bookings pays at least £120.
When duration changes the answer
For a minute-based plan, count duration as well as calls. ARROW's 150-minute allowance covers 50 calls lasting exactly three minutes each, or 150 calls lasting exactly one minute. Those are illustrative patterns, before any provider-specific rounding.
At 100 three-minute calls, you need 300 minutes. ARROW does not publish the higher-usage rate on the page checked, so an exact bill cannot be calculated from that page. Request it; do not extend the entry price as though the next 150 minutes were free.
Voco publishes its per-minute rates, so you can work the bill out. Starter is £49 a month for 136 minutes, then 36p a minute, billed by the second, and it starts with a £20 spend cap. At 100 three-minute calls you'd use 300 minutes, so the overage would pass the cap and the bill stops at £69 before VAT, unless you raise or remove the cap. Its pay-as-you-go plan has no monthly fee and charges 39p a minute against credit you load in advance, from £19.98. New calls stop soon after the credit runs out unless you switch on auto top-up.
For a flat plan, check what “unlimited” covers. It need not include multiple businesses, extra numbers, outbound calls, human answering or every integration. See Sayora's current AI receptionist capabilities and limits before treating the £49 plan as a substitute for a different service.
Send every supplier the same quote brief
Copy this into your enquiry, using one ordinary month and one credible peak month from your own call logs:
- Calls to answer: ___ ordinary / ___ peak.
- Total connected minutes: ___ ordinary / ___ peak.
- Typical and longest call: ___ / ___.
- Cover: overflow, after hours or all calls.
- Required actions: message, confirmed booking, transfer or another task.
- Calendars, numbers and locations: ___.
- Cost wanted: first month, normal recurring month and peak month.
Ask the supplier to state the included allowance, rounding, excess rate, setup, required upgrades, tax, minimum term and cancellation notice. Include the cost your existing phone provider charges for diverting calls.
This prevents a common comparison error: pricing simple message-taking at one supplier against appointment booking and human fallback at another.
Add the cost of unfinished work
A useful enquiry contains enough information for someone to act. A booking must appear in the intended calendar, at an allowed time, with the caller told whether it is confirmed. A request your team still needs to approve belongs in a different column.
During a trial, record:
- enquiries the team could act on without repairing the message;
- appointments correctly confirmed in the calendar;
- questions left for a person, with usable callback details;
- staff time spent correcting errors and following up.
Use the same trial checklist for the two services you shortlist. A low subscription can be poor value if every message needs another call just to establish what happened.
First month, recurring month and first year
Keep three totals. The first month includes one-off setup and any temporary discount. The recurring month uses the normal subscription and usage. The first year adds the months you expect to buy, one-off charges and paid extras, taking any minimum commitment into account.
Do not multiply an introductory price by twelve unless it lasts twelve months. Do not price a new customer using a legacy rate.
Internal time belongs alongside the invoice, too. Use your own staff cost and actual time spent configuring, checking and correcting the service. There is no reliable market-wide saving to insert in place of your records.
Choose the model that completes your calls
A small allowance can work well for low, predictable use. Flat pricing is attractive when volume or duration varies. A specialist integration or a human fallback can justify a higher bill when it performs work your team would otherwise have to do.
If the caller needs a person immediately, compare human and hybrid answering costs. If a clear enquiry and a prompt callback are enough, test a flat AI plan against the same calls and compare the result as well as the invoice.
The answering-service cost calculator compares selected published human plans with Sayora using your own call count and duration.