AI receptionist or a human answering service for a small property: what each costs in 2026

An AI receptionist for a small property costs $49 to $149 a month for 100 to 400 minutes of calls, on Rosie's and Goodcall's price lists. A human answering service costs $395 to $2,000 for the same calls. A part-time receptionist on 20 hours a week costs about £1,100 a month in the UK or $1,580 in the US.

Below: prices checked on 26 September 2026, a worked cost for one property at 50 and 200 calls a month, a table of what software handles and what still needs a person, and a two-week test to find out how many calls you are actually losing.

What are your options for answering the phone?

There are three ways to answer when you cannot: software, an outside team of people, or your own staff. Most hosts with one to five units use a fourth option, their own mobile, which costs nothing but your evenings.

What does an AI receptionist cost?

The cheapest published plan is $49 a month for 250 minutes. Two vendors publish full price lists; many others ask you to book a demo.

Two models hide in that table. Rosie sells minutes. Goodcall sells unique callers, meaning distinct phone numbers in a month, so a guest who calls three times counts once. For a rental, where the same guest rings about parking, then the key, then late checkout, Goodcall's model is friendlier.

Rosie offers a 7-day trial, and its page was published on 21 September 2026. Smith.ai also sells an AI receptionist, but its pricing page shows only the human plans, so we could not price it.

What does a human answering service or a part-time receptionist cost?

A human answering service starts at $250 to $300 a month for a small allowance and climbs fast; your own part-time person costs more but is yours.

Ruby sells receptionist minutes with 24/7 live answering, including nights, weekends and holidays: Starter $250 for 50 minutes, Standard $395 for 100, Popular $720 for 200, Premium $1,725 for 500. No setup fee. The overage rate is not on the pricing page.

Smith.ai sells calls: Starter $300 for 30 calls, then $11.50 per call; Basic $810 for 90, then $10.50; Pro $2,100 for 300, then $8.50.

In Europe the model looks similar. In Poland, Nocna Recepcja runs a remote human night desk from 22:00 to 6:00 for 1,490 zł a month (about €350), plus a one-off 2,490 zł onboarding fee. It includes remote check-in with ID checks, which no AI agent does.

Your own staff. The UK National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over from April 2026, up from £12.21. In the US, the federal minimum is still $7.25 an hour, unchanged since July 2009, but the median receptionist earned $18.27 an hour in May 2025 (BLS). Twenty hours a week is about 87 hours a month.

Worked example: one property at 50 and 200 calls a month

Assume a guest call lasts two minutes on average: "is there parking", "what time is check-in", "are you free on Saturday". Fifty calls is 100 minutes; 200 calls is 400 minutes.

Three things stand out. At both volumes the cheapest human option costs eight to thirteen times the cheapest AI plan. A person costs the same at 50 and 200 calls, so at 50 calls a part-time receptionist costs about £22 per call answered. And no human option covers the whole night for less than the price of a salary.

What should an AI handle and what still needs a person?

Software handles questions whose answer sits in a knowledge base or a calendar. A person is needed when something must be done in the physical world or judged on the spot.

Even the vendors say so. Smart Asystenci, a Polish AI receptionist company, lists four downsides of its own product in a July 2026 post: it sticks to its script and knowledge base, it needs setup work (documents, booking rules, reviewing transcripts), some callers prefer a person, and minutes beyond the plan cost extra.

Our view: for one to five units, an AI agent plus your own phone for the few calls it cannot settle is the only option that fits the margin. A human night desk starts to make sense at a dozen rooms or more, when one night shift of your own would cost more.

How many calls are you actually missing?

You do not know until you count. The only figure we found comes from a vendor: Smart Asystenci cites PATLive and Aircall for the claim that 85 percent of callers who do not get through the first time never try again. We could not open the original studies, so treat it as a sales number.

Run this test for two weeks instead:

1. Every evening, open your phone's call log and note missed calls from numbers you do not know.
2. Remove those who called back or messaged you within an hour.
3. Multiply what is left by the share of calls that usually turn into a booking; if you do not know, use one in two.
4. Multiply by your average booking value, then by two for a monthly figure.

If the result is below $50 a month, keep answering yourself. If it is above $150, even the larger AI plans pay for themselves. Booking.com also stopped passing guest phone numbers to connected systems on 28 September 2026, which moves some of those conversations into its message thread; see what changed.

Where Supalobby fits

Supalobby is an AI agent for short-term rentals. Its Voice add-on costs 129 zł a month per property (about €29) and gives the agent a Polish landline number. The agent answers calls from the property's knowledge base and can create a booking when Beddesk or HotRes is connected. Thirty minutes are included, then 2.99 zł (about €0.70) a minute. Each call is saved with a full transcript in the app's Calls view. It does not place outbound calls, check IDs or call a plumber; when unsure, it hands the matter to you. The number is Polish, so it suits properties in Poland; for a UK or US line, use one of the vendors above.