Most comparison articles in this market are written by suppliers ranking themselves first. This one is published by Penelope, which sells an AI receptionist, so treat our own entry with the scepticism it deserves and check the rest against the suppliers' own pricing pages.
We have set out what each service charges, what it counts, who it suits and what it does badly. Three of them are wrong for most firms reading this, and we have said which.
All pricing was checked in August 2026.
What actually separates them
Four things, none of which is the headline price.
What they count. Calls, minutes, unique callers or locations. This changes your bill more than the advertised figure does.
Who configures it. Some hand you a dashboard. Some build it with you. For a professional services firm with specific intake requirements, that difference is substantial.
What they connect to. A service that cannot write to your diary is taking messages, not handling calls.
Who they were built for. Two of these are developer platforms. One serves only restaurants. Buying across category lines causes more disappointment than buying badly within one.
Smith.ai
From $0 for 25 answered calls, then $150 a month for 75. Human-answered service separate, from $300 a month.
The most legally literate option in the market. Smith.ai has built its product and content around law firm intake, with integrations for Clio, Lawmatics, Filevine and MyCase. If you run a law firm, it deserves a look.
Watch the structure: the AI and human services are two products, priced and sold separately, so moving a call from software to a person is not a feature of one subscription. Add-ons on the human service are billed per event, at $1.50 per appointment booked and $0.50 per notification.
Penelope
From £49 a month for 25 answered calls, £179 for 100, £399 for 250. Billed per call, guided setup included, no setup fee.
Our own entry, so read it with that in mind. What distinguishes it is that setup is done with you rather than handed to you: we learn your call types, language and routing logic, then build and test before it answers a live call. It is built for law, accountancy and consultancy rather than for everyone, and it introduces itself as an AI in the first sentence.
Against that: it is AI only. There is no Penelope-staffed team standing by to take difficult calls, as there would be with a traditional answering service. It transfers to your own people instead. There is also a three-month minimum term, where several competitors run month to month. If you want the cheapest per-call rate available, or a supplier's humans as backup, we are not it.
Goodcall
From $79 a month per agent, unlimited minutes, 100 unique callers.
The only service here that bills by unique caller. If the same client rings four times about one matter, that is one billable caller, which suits firms with repeat contact on live matters. Unlimited minutes removes any anxiety about long calls.
The caller cap bites quickly for a busy practice, and pricing is per agent, so multiple simultaneous lines multiply. No human fallback at any price.
Rosie
From $49 a month for 250 minutes.
Straightforward and sensibly priced for a small business, with English and Spanish on all plans. It also publishes direct comparisons against its competitors rather than pretending they do not exist, which is a good sign.
Overage rates are not published, which matters on a minutes-based plan. Ask before signing.
Dialzara
From $29 a month for 60 minutes, then $0.48 a minute.
The lowest entry price here, with no setup fee.
Sixty minutes is roughly 24 calls. A firm taking 300 minutes a month pays $144, not $29, so price your real volume before the entry figure draws you in.
Frontdesk
Voice starts at $99 a month for 200 minutes.
The most common error in comparison articles about this market: Frontdesk's $20 tier includes no voice minutes at all, only chatbot conversations, SMS and email drafts. The cheapest plan that answers a telephone call is $99. Competent for a very small business once you are on the right plan.
Phonely
Free for 100 minutes, then $50 a month.
Built for volume, and unusually open about response speed, publishing timing benchmarks rather than adjectives. Strong per-minute economics at scale.
Its pricing page contradicts itself on both minute allowances and overage rates. Get the numbers in writing.
Slang.ai
From $399 a month per location.
Committed entirely to hospitality: reservation management, OpenTable and SevenRooms integrations, VIP handling. A specialist tool if you run restaurants, and the wrong product at four to eight times the price if you do not.
Bland
$0.14 a minute, no platform fee on the entry tier.
A voice platform you build on rather than a service you buy. The per-minute rate covers the language model, speech recognition and voice synthesis; telephony is billed separately. Rosie is built on Bland, which tells you the intended relationship.
Avoid unless someone in your firm writes code.
Synthflow
From $30,000 a year. Self-serve pricing has been withdrawn entirely.
Enterprise contracts scoped on call volume, concurrency and security. The capability is real, but any article quoting Synthflow at $29 to $450 a month is out of date, and it is not available to smaller firms.
What the comparison tells you
Entry prices are not comparable. Dialzara's $29 buys 60 minutes. Goodcall's $79 buys unlimited minutes and 100 callers. Slang.ai's $399 buys one restaurant. Price your own volume against each model or the exercise means nothing.
Human fallback is the sharpest dividing line. Most of these services are software only, and transfer to your team when they reach their limit. Smith.ai sells human answering as a separate, much more expensive product. If you want a supplier's trained staff picking up the difficult calls, that is a traditional answering service, and it costs four to six times as much per interaction.
Choosing
Law firm or accountancy practice wanting a system built around your intake: Penelope or Smith.ai. Local service business with repeat callers: Goodcall. Small business wanting simple pricing: Rosie. Cheapest starting point at light volume: Dialzara. High call volume: Phonely. Restaurant: Slang.ai. Building your own: Bland. Large enterprise: Synthflow.
Whatever the shortlist, ring the service before you sign. Ask it something outside its script, with two conditions attached. How a service handles the call it was not built for is the only test that separates these products once the pricing tables are set aside.