The costs that aren't on the pricing page
Figures checked August 19, 2026
The monthly price is the part vendors want you to compare. These are the lines that change your actual bill, pulled from each vendor's own fine print.
| Vendor | Overage | Setup fee | Billing increment | Contract |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bland AI | — | none stated | Call Time: "Prorated to the exact second. Only active call time is counted." Outbound Minimum: "$0.015 / call" minimum charge per outbound call attempt using Bland's telephony; failed calls carry the same $0.015/call minimum. | not stated |
| Rosie | $1 per additional conversation | none stated | In all cases, Services Minutes are calculated and billed in 60-second increments and calls are rounded up to the next 60-second mark. Services Minutes are calculated starting from the time the Caller's call connects with the AI Receptionist and ends when the call disconnects. | month-to-month |
| Smith.ai | 25 calls/mo ($3.00/call after that) | No setup fees | Billed per call, not per minute. Smith.ai: "Billing per client call saves you money, and there's no mystery accounting involved." No per-minute rounding or billing increment is published. The Virtual Receptionist "Extended intake" add-on is described as "Up to one minute of additional questions." | month-to-month |
| Dialzara | Overage: $0.48/min | No setup fees. | Only live talk time while connected to a caller. Usage tracked to the second - partial minutes are not rounded up. | month-to-month |
| Goodcall | *$0.50/customer after 100 | none stated | Not applicable — Goodcall does not meter minutes: "We DO NOT charge any fees for number of calls call minutes, or tokens consumed by your AI in the course of conversing with your customer." Billing is per "unique customer": "any caller with a unique phone number that calls and interacts (i.e actually says something to agent and does not quickly hang up) with your Goodcall agent in any given month." | month-to-month |
| Simple Phones | If you cancel your plan, or you exceed the number of calls per month for your tier, your phone numbers will be released. | none stated | not stated | month-to-month |
| My AI Front Desk | Voice (per minute) 25 credits; SMS (per message) 4 credits; Chatbot (per conversation) 5 credits; Form Submission (per lead) 4 credits; Web Voicebot (per minute) 25 credits. 1 credit = $0.01. Auto-reload: $10 for 1,000 credits. Never expire. | none stated | not stated | month-to-month |
| PATLive | $2.60/min | none stated | All receptionist minutes are billed in six-second increments, with a one-minute minimum. FAQ wording: "We bill the first minute in full, and then each 10th of a minute thereafter (in 6 second increments)." Billing runs from the moment the receptionist answers until the receptionist disconnects, and hold time while the receptionist looks something up or attempts a transfer is billable. | month-to-month |
| Ruby | — | There are no additional or hidden fees for activation, onboarding, setup, customization, or coverage during certain periods. | Ruby publishes two different increments. ruby.com FAQ: "Receptionist minutes are billed in 60-second increments, and calls are rounded up to the nearest 60-second mark." Ruby's own billing FAQ PDF: "We bill receptionist minutes in 30-second increments and calls are rounded up to the next 30-second mark." Both state that receptionist time starts when the receptionist receives the call, includes hold time, and stops once the call is transferred to you or voicemail. | month-to-month |
| Abby Connect | Overage is billed at your plan's Abby Minute rate. You can move up a plan at any time. | No Setup Fee | not stated | month-to-month |
| AnswerConnect | $2.50 per additional minute | All plans include a one-time setup fee of $49.99. | All interactions are rounded up to the nearest minute and billed in 1 minute increments. There is no charge for the first 30 interactions under 30 seconds per billing cycle. | month-to-month |
| Slang AI | — | none stated | not stated | not stated |
| Sameday AI | — | none stated | not stated | not stated |
| Synthflow AI | — | none stated | "Phone calls are measured per second, starting when the human and the AI agent connect and ending when the call terminates. Partial seconds are rounded up to the nearest second." Rather than rounding each call, Synthflow aggregates seconds across calls and reports each whole accumulated minute as a billing event, carrying the remainder forward. Calls with a no-answer or hangup_on_voicemail status are recorded as a flat 5 seconds of usage; failed and user-canceled calls are not billed. If a transfer completes, billable AI usage stops at the point of transfer. Chat is converted at "every 5 AI-generated messages count as 1 usage minute". | annual |
| Nexa | If you go over the minute allowance for any given billing cycle, every additional minute will be charged at your base rate. | A one-time Set Up Fee as outlined on the Services Plan, which Set Up Fee will be non-refundable. | all time (including overage measured in time) will be billed in whole minute increments and that any partial minutes will be rounded up to the nearest whole minute. Billable time runs from the time a receptionist receives or initiates the call and ends when the call is transferred through to someone, or to voicemail, or otherwise disconnects, and includes time when callers are on hold waiting to be transferred and outbound ringing time. | month-to-month |
| Numa | — | none stated | not stated | month-to-month |
| Retell AI | — | none stated | "Each call is tracked to the nearest second" with "No rounding up per call"; you are "Only charged for connected calls". Billing covers the entire duration of the call, including silence or hold time, because the speech-to-text engine remains active. Once a call is transferred the AI voice agent fee stops and only the telephony fee continues. Voicemail is charged only for the duration the AI agent is active on the line. | month-to-month |
| Vapi | — | none stated | not stated | month-to-month |
Four traps worth naming
- Annual-only pricing. The headline number is often the annual-billing rate. Month-to-month can be 20-25% more.
- Minute rounding. Per-minute billing with a 30-second minimum turns a lot of 20-second hangups into paid minutes.
- Spam calls count. Ask whether robocalls burn your included allowance. Some vendors filter them for free; some bill them like any other call.
- Per-minute platforms exclude the stack. Developer platforms quote a platform rate, then add telephony, speech and model costs on top.
Every figure on this page is computed from the vendor dataset, so it can't drift out of sync with the individual vendor pages. How we check →