Pricing pages in this market rarely give you a number. Most ask you to request a quote, which makes comparing options genuinely difficult.
This article gives the actual ranges, explains why the same service can cost two businesses very different amounts, and shows how to work out what you should be paying based on your own call pattern.
All figures are UK market ranges based on published rate cards at the time of writing, and should be treated as a starting point for negotiation rather than a fixed tariff.
What are the four pricing models?
Almost every provider uses one of four structures, or a hybrid of two of them.
Per minute. You pay for connected talk time, typically 75p to £1.50 a minute, often with a minimum billable duration of 30 or 60 seconds. Simple to understand and unpredictable in practice, because a chatty caller costs the same as three quick ones.
Per call. A flat charge for each answered call, usually £1 to £3, sometimes with a fair use cap on length. Predictable per unit, but you pay the same for a 20 second wrong number as for a five minute booking.
Monthly bundle. A fixed fee covering an allowance of calls or minutes, commonly £50 to £300 a month for small business tiers, with an overage rate beyond the allowance. Cheapest per unit if you use the allowance and expensive if you do not.
Pay as you go. Credit you buy up front and draw down, at a higher unit rate in exchange for no commitment. Sensible for overflow and seasonal cover, poor value at steady volume.
What are typical UK price ranges in 2026?
| Model | Typical UK range | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per minute | 75p to £1.50 per minute | Short, transactional calls | Minimum billable duration, rounding up to the next minute |
| Per call | £1 to £3 per call | Predictable message taking | Paying full price for spam and wrong numbers |
| Monthly bundle | £50 to £300 per month | Steady, forecastable volume | Overage rates, unused allowance not rolling over |
| Pay as you go | 20% to 50% above standard unit rates | Overflow and seasonal peaks | Credit expiry dates |
| In-house receptionist | ~£28,500 per year all in | Businesses needing a physical front desk | Covers about 21% of the week, before holiday |
| AI receptionist | Flat monthly fee, no per-call charge | Routine, repetitive, high-volume calls | Handover quality on complex or distressed calls |
Two provider-side factors move these ranges. Overnight and weekend cover generally attracts a surcharge of 20% to 50%, and any requirement for specialist knowledge, such as legal or medical intake, is priced above general message taking.
What hidden costs should you check before you sign?
The quoted rate is rarely the whole cost. Six line items account for most of the difference between the quote and the first invoice.
- Set-up fee. Commonly £25 to £150. Ask whether it includes writing the call script or just configuring the number.
- Minimum term. Twelve months is common. A 30 day rolling contract is worth paying slightly more for while you find out whether the service works.
- Minimum billable duration. A 60 second minimum on per-minute billing means every 15 second call costs a full minute. With 40 nuisance calls a month that is a real number.
- Overage rate. Check what a call costs once you exceed your bundle, because overage is often priced well above the effective in-bundle rate.
- Out-of-hours surcharge. Confirm exactly when the standard rate ends. Some providers treat 6pm as out of hours, others 8pm.
- Script and change fees. Some providers charge for script amendments beyond a set number per year. If your prices or opening hours change often, this matters.
Ask this on the sales call. “For 200 calls a month averaging 90 seconds, half of them after 6pm, what is my total invoice including every fee?” A provider who cannot answer that in one number is not a provider you can budget for.
What does an AI receptionist cost by comparison?
AI receptionists are priced differently, which is the whole point of the comparison. Rather than paying per call or per minute, you pay a flat monthly fee for the service, sometimes with a usage band rather than a hard cap.
That changes the shape of the cost curve. A human service costs more in a busy month, exactly when cash is tightest to predict. A flat fee costs the same whether you take 50 calls or 500, so your cost per call falls as you grow.
The economics also change on concurrency. Ten simultaneous calls to a human service means a queue or an overflow charge, while an AI receptionist answers all ten at once at no additional cost.
Two honest caveats. Setup takes real effort, because the system needs your FAQs, booking rules and escalation criteria before it is useful. And there is a class of call, such as distressed callers and complex complaints, where a human is simply the right answer and should be reachable.
How do you work out what you should be paying?
Take one business taking 200 calls a month, averaging 90 seconds each, which is 300 minutes of talk time.
| Model | Calculation | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Per minute at £1.10 | 300 minutes × £1.10 | £330 |
| Per call at £1.80 | 200 calls × £1.80 | £360 |
| Bundle: 200 calls for £220 | Fixed, within allowance | £220 |
| Pay as you go at £2.40 per call | 200 calls × £2.40 | £480 |
| AI receptionist, flat fee | No per-call charge | Fixed, regardless of volume |
Run the same exercise with your own numbers before you talk to anyone. You need three figures: calls per month, average call length in seconds, and the proportion arriving outside your standard hours.
Then apply the two adjustments that catch people out. Add your expected spam and wrong-number volume, because most models bill for those. And model a bad month at 150% of normal volume, because that is when a per-unit tariff hurts.
Is it cheaper than hiring a receptionist?
Almost always, once you cost the role honestly. Take a receptionist on £25,000, which sits in the normal band for the role across most of the UK according to the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.
| Cost line | Basis | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Salary | Base | £25,000 |
| Employer National Insurance | 15% above the £5,000 secondary threshold | £3,000 |
| Employer pension | 3% of qualifying earnings above £6,240 | £563 |
| Subtotal | £28,563 | |
| Recruitment, equipment, training | One-off and recurring, varies widely | Additional |
| Holiday cover | 5.6 weeks statutory entitlement | Additional |
The employer National Insurance figure comes from the current gov.uk rates, and the pension minimum from gov.uk workplace pension guidance. Statutory holiday of 5.6 weeks means roughly 1,740 actually worked hours a year, so that £28,563 works out at about £16.40 for each hour of cover.
Now the part that gets missed. A single full-time receptionist covers around 37.5 of the 168 hours in a week, which is roughly a fifth. The other four fifths are uncovered unless you pay for something else as well.
None of this means an in-house receptionist is a bad decision. It means the comparison is not £28,563 against a £220 monthly invoice, it is £28,563 for partial cover against a smaller number for continuous cover.
What does a missed call actually cost?
This is the figure that decides the question, and it is the one almost nobody calculates.
Work it out from your own data. Take your enquiry-to-customer conversion rate, multiply by your average customer value, and that is what one missed enquiry is worth in expectation.
Worked example. A business converting one in three enquiries, with an average job value of £280, loses about £93 of expected revenue every time an enquiry does not reach it. Missing ten enquiries a month is roughly £930 a month, which is more than any option on this page.
That is the correct frame for the whole decision. The question is not whether £220 a month is a lot of money. It is whether £220 a month recovers more than £220 of otherwise lost work.
What to do next
Pull your call log, count the calls outside opening hours, and calculate your own missed-enquiry figure. If it is smaller than the cheapest option here, do nothing, and that is a legitimate answer.
If it is larger, get quotes on a like-for-like basis using the single question in the box above, and compare them against a flat-fee option at your real volume. We are happy to run those numbers with you on a call, including the case where the answer is that you do not need us.