Smith.ai pricing in 2026 starts at $300 a month for 30 live-answered calls and rises to $810 for 90 and $2,100 for 300. Every call above the plan costs $8.50 to $11.50, and the features most small businesses actually want, appointment booking, Spanish, intake questions, are per-call add-ons. A 60-call month on the Starter plan lands near $780 before the add-ons are counted.
Smith.ai is one of the most recommended answering services in the category, and its Trustpilot score sits at 4.3 out of 5 across more than 330 reviews. The praise is for the agents. The complaints, when they come, are almost always about the bill. This is a full breakdown of Smith.ai pricing: the published plans, what the add-ons do to a real month, how the AI-only tier changes the math, and when a managed AI receptionist is the better buy.
If you are new to the category, start with the complete guide to AI receptionists, then come back here for the numbers. For how the whole market prices phone answering this year, see AI receptionist pricing: DIY, bundled or managed.
What are Smith.ai's plans in 2026?
Smith.ai publishes its prices, which is more than most competitors do. The live virtual receptionist plans on smith.ai/pricing as of September 2026:
| Plan | Calls per month | Monthly price | Price per included call | Overage per call |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 30 | $300 | $10.00 | $11.50 |
| Basic | 90 | $810 | $9.00 | $10.50 |
| Pro | 300 | $2,100 | $7.00 | $8.50 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Every plan includes 24/7 live staffing, lead screening and intake, a dedicated phone number, one free CRM integration and a dashboard. Spam calls and wrong numbers are not counted. There is no setup fee and no contract; a 12-month commitment earns a 10% discount, and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee capped at $1,000.
The unit in Smith.ai pricing is the call, not the minute. A two-minute call and a twelve-minute call cost the same, which favors businesses with long, complex calls and punishes businesses with lots of short ones. A dental office fielding forty "are you open on Saturday" calls pays the same per call as a law firm doing twenty-minute intakes.
What does the Smith.ai AI receptionist tier cost?
Alongside the live plans, Smith.ai sells an AI-only receptionist. Independent reviews put it at roughly $95 a month for about 60 calls, $270 for 150 and $800 for 450, with per-call overage around $2.40. Escalating an AI call to a live agent is billed as an extra transfer, and reviewers note that those escalations sometimes happen in ways the customer did not expect.
That tier is where Smith.ai competes with the DIY software crowd (Goodcall, Rosie, Dialzara) rather than with human answering services. The AI is capable, but you are configuring and maintaining it yourself, the same trade-off every self-serve tool carries: script writing, calendar connection, testing the edge cases, and going through support for every change.
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Download FreeWhat hidden fees do small businesses run into with Smith.ai?
The plan price is the floor. The features a service business needs are billed per call on top of it:
- Appointment booking: $1.50 per call
- Complex call routing: $1.50 per call
- Extended intake questions: $1.50 per call
- Spanish line: $1.00 per call
- Payment acceptance: $1.00 per call
- SMS or Slack notification: $0.50 per call
- Text and email follow-up: $0.50 per call
- Call recording and transcription: $0.25 per call
- Additional transfer destinations: $15 per month each
- Business caller ID for outbound: $10 per month
- Tracking numbers: $5 per month each
None of these is unreasonable on its own. Stacked, they change Smith.ai pricing by 20 to 40 percent, which is exactly what reviewers mean when they say the invoice was higher than the quote. Budgeting 25 to 30 percent above the plan is the realistic rule.
What does a real month cost on Smith.ai?
Take a plumbing company that gets 60 answered calls a month, wants appointments booked, needs a text notification for every call and records calls for training.
On Smith.ai Starter (30 calls): $300 base, plus 30 overage calls at $11.50 ($345), plus booking on 60 calls ($90), notifications ($30) and recording ($15). Total: about $780.
On Basic (90 calls): $810 base, plus the same add-ons ($135). Total: about $945, with 30 unused calls you paid for anyway.
Either way, the Smith.ai sticker of "from $300 a month" became $780 to $945 for a fairly ordinary small business. That is not a hidden fee; it is how per-call Smith.ai pricing is designed, and reviewers on G2 and Trustpilot describe the same arithmetic.
How does Smith.ai pricing compare to Ruby and to AI receptionists?
Smith.ai is not the most expensive live answering service. Ruby, its closest rival, bills per minute at $3.45 to $5.00 and lands a similar 40-call month at roughly $665 to $720; the breakdown is in our Ruby receptionist pricing post. Per call versus per minute is the real choice between the two: long calls favor Smith.ai, short calls favor Ruby, and neither gets cheap at small-business volumes.
AI receptionists price differently. DIY software runs $29 to $199 a month with generous or unlimited call allowances, and a managed service replaces per-call fees with a flat monthly amount that includes the setup and the ongoing work. The comparison in Rosie vs Dialzara vs Astucia shows what that looks like for contractors.
Where Smith.ai is worth it
Smith.ai is a strong choice when the caller needs a human. Law firms with sensitive intake, practices where the first impression is a person, businesses whose calls are long and unpredictable: the per-call model is fair for them and the agents are good. The hybrid option, AI first with live backup, is also one of the few in the market, and the month-to-month terms mean you can leave if the bill surprises you.
Where a managed AI receptionist is the better buy
Most small businesses that look at Smith.ai pricing do not need a human on every call. They need every call answered, the appointment booked, the details captured, and an emergency routed to the owner. That is what an AI receptionist does well in 2026, and the cost structure is different: no per-call overage, no per-feature fees, 24-hour coverage that does not get more expensive on a busy week.
The catch with AI receptionist software is the setup. Someone has to write the scripts, connect the calendar, test the edge cases and keep tuning it. A managed AI receptionist removes that: Astucia does the onboarding call, trains the AI on your services and FAQs, integrates your tools, forwards your line, and reviews transcripts every month. Most businesses are live within 48 hours.
Against the $780 to $945 a month above, that is the comparison worth running before signing anything.
Keep Reading
- AI Receptionist Pricing (2026): DIY, Bundled, or Managed?
- Ruby Receptionist Pricing (2026)
- AI Receptionist vs Answering Service: Which Is Better?
- Astucia vs Smith.ai
Key takeaway
Smith.ai pricing is transparent, per call, and honest about its add-ons, which is why it keeps appearing on "best answering service" lists. It is also why a 60-call month costs two to three times the headline number. If your calls need a human, pay for the human. If your calls need to be answered, booked and captured, book a free 20-minute call and hear a managed AI receptionist handle your own FAQs live before you decide.
