Disclosure Before The List
We publish this roundup and we also operate one of the entries on it — Agent+. We have tried to describe ourselves the same way we describe everyone else: what we are good at, what we are not, and what a buyer should verify before signing. If you would rather skip our entry and read the seven others first, they are all here.
Pricing figures quoted below are the published base rates we could verify on each vendor's public pricing page or in a dated third-party review. All pricing changes; treat the numbers as directional and re-check before you budget. Anything a vendor does not publish (overage math, per-location multipliers, contract terms) we say so rather than guess.
How We Evaluated
We shortlisted any service that a small-business owner searching "AI answering service" or "best answering service for small business" would actually encounter in 2026. That gave us eight: four pure-AI (Agent+, Goodcall, Numa, Sameday), one AI-first hybrid (Smith.ai), one platform-native AI (ServiceTitan's Virtual Agent), and two live-human reference points (Ruby, AnswerConnect) that most buyers evaluate as the "known incumbent" before they compare AI options.
For each entry we looked at:
- What actually answers the call — a real voice agent, a human, or a handoff.
- Published base price and how it scales with call volume.
- Whether it books jobs into a CRM or just takes messages.
- Whether it handles emergencies with configurable triage rules.
- CRM portability — one ecosystem or many.
- Language coverage beyond English.
The Comparison Table
| Service | Type | Published base price | Books into CRM? | Emergency triage? | Multi-CRM? | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agent+ (Otherworlds AI) | AI voice | $297–$997/mo flat + one-time setup | Yes — ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro, FieldEdge, custom API | Yes, with your rules | Yes | Trades with predictable monthly cost |
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist | AI voice | $150/mo for 75 calls (~$2.00/call, volume tier $1.67, overage $2.50) | Yes — Calendly, Google Calendar, HubSpot, dozens via Zapier | Yes, scripted | Yes | Mixed inbound: sales + service + admin |
| Goodcall | AI voice | $59–$249/mo across Starter/Growth/Scale tiers | Yes — Google Business, calendars, Zapier, some CRMs | Limited | Yes | Very small operators testing AI answering |
| Numa | AI voice | Not published; sales-quote only | Yes — DMS systems for auto, plus home-services CRMs | Home-services focused | Vertical-specific | Auto dealerships and quick-lube |
| Sameday.ai | AI voice | Not published; sales-quote only | Yes — ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, TradeGeist | Yes, home-services | Home-services focused | Home-services shops already on those CRMs |
| ServiceTitan AI Virtual Agent | AI voice | Bundled / add-on; not published flat | Yes — native ServiceTitan dispatch write | Yes, configurable | No — ServiceTitan only | Shops already paying for ServiceTitan |
| Ruby | Live human | No — takes messages | No — message script | Agnostic | Firms that want a human on every call | |
| AnswerConnect | Live human | Base ~$1.75/min, 200-min tier | No — takes messages | No — message script | Agnostic | Multi-brand professional services |
Prices reflect each vendor's public page as of this post's date. Verify before budgeting.
1. Agent+ (Otherworlds AI)
Agent+ is our product. Flat monthly pricing at $297 / $497 / $997 with a one-time setup fee of $299 / $599 / $899 and unlimited inbound calls on every tier — no per-minute metering, no overage charges. The voice agent writes real appointments into ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro, FieldEdge, Calendly, Google Calendar, or a custom API, and includes configurable emergency triage with domain-specific safety scripts (HVAC gas, plumbing shut-off, dental after-hours).
Honest weakness: it is not the cheapest option on this list. A very small shop doing ten calls a month will pay more per call than Goodcall or Smith.ai's free tier would cost. Where the flat rate wins is when the phone rings often — during a January cold snap, a heat wave, a burst-pipe weekend — the bill does not move.
Best for: contractors and home-services operators who want predictable pricing and CRM portability. Full pricing at /pricing.
2. Smith.ai AI Receptionist
Smith.ai has been the incumbent in this category for a decade. Their AI Receptionist tier runs $150/month for 75 calls, drops to a $1.67 per-call rate at higher volume tiers, and charges $2.50 per call for overage. The AI tier is a genuine voice agent — not just a chatbot or an IVR — and it hands off to Smith's live receptionist pool when the AI cannot complete the task.
Honest weakness: per-call metering is fine at 75 calls a month and becomes expensive at 300. Smith's own published example puts 180 calls at $2,018+ on the human plans, which is the number to compare against flat-rate AI before you assume "AI = expensive." Their Spanish-language support and booking integrations are also add-on-priced, not baked into the base.
Best for: professional-services practices (law, accounting, consulting) where call volume is moderate and every caller benefits from a human escalation path.
3. Goodcall
Goodcall has the lowest published entry price on this list — $59/month for Starter — with Growth and Scale tiers at $149 and $249. Higher tiers include unlimited minutes, which is unusual at this price point. Integrations cover Google Business Profile, calendars, and Zapier for the long tail of CRMs.
Honest weakness: Goodcall is intentionally generic. It answers, captures, routes, and hands off, but the depth of industry-specific scripts (a plumbing shut-off safety flow, an HVAC emergency gas-leak escalation) is not their pitch. It is a good entry price if you are trying AI answering for the first time. It is not a good choice if your callers expect domain triage.
Best for: solo operators and micro-practices testing AI for the first time.
4. Numa
Numa is an AI-first answering service built for automotive service businesses — dealerships, quick-lube, independent repair shops. It reads from the DMS (dealer management system) so callers get real answers about service status, parts availability, and appointment slots without a human being paged. Pricing is sales-quoted; Numa does not publish rates.
Honest weakness: outside automotive, Numa's integration depth does not transfer. If you are an HVAC shop looking at Numa because a dealership told you it works well, the integration model you care about (ServiceTitan write-back, Jobber booking) is not Numa's center of gravity.
Best for: automotive service operations, particularly dealerships looking at the after-hours answering problem described in 62% of Dealership Calls Go Unanswered After 6 PM.
AI Phone Answering System Buyer's Guide: The 12 Questions to Ask Every Vendor Before You Sign
5. Sameday.ai
Sameday is a home-services-specific AI answering product. Their public marketing emphasizes ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, and Jobber integrations, and they market an "AI + live human backup" hybrid. Pricing is not published; you book a demo to get a quote.
Honest weakness: without published pricing you cannot budget Sameday against flat-rate competitors without a sales call. That is a real friction for small operators who want to compare three quotes side by side. Their home-services focus is a genuine strength; the pricing opacity is not.
Best for: shops that specifically want a home-services vertical specialist and are comfortable with a sales conversation before pricing is known.
6. ServiceTitan AI Virtual Agent
ServiceTitan's built-in AI Virtual Agent is not a third-party vendor you integrate with — it is a feature of the platform you are already paying for. Four ServiceTitan customer stories published in April 2026 report 72–90% booking completion with zero human intervention on after-hours lines; the operators are Bill Joplin's (Karen), Northwinds (Lucy), Superior Plumbing (Piper), and Air One (Jenny). Full breakdown in ServiceTitan AI Voice Agent for Emergency Dispatch.
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Honest weakness: it only exists inside ServiceTitan. English and Spanish only, fixed model stack, per-agent pricing tied to your plan tier, no white-label voice. If you ever migrate CRMs, you lose the phone layer with them.
Best for: shops already committed to ServiceTitan long-term who want the fastest activation with no integration project.
7. Ruby (Live Reference Point)
Ruby is a live, human, North-America-based receptionist service. Their cheapest published tier is around $245/month for 50 minutes of receptionist time, which works out to roughly $4.90 per minute of call time. It is not an AI answering service. It is on this list because buyers comparing AI options almost always pull Ruby's pricing page next to them, and the comparison is instructive.
Honest weakness at the AI comparison level: Ruby takes messages, does not book jobs directly, and the per-minute cost model means the bill rises during exactly the busy week when you want coverage most. What Ruby does better than AI is nuance — an angry or elderly caller, a complex legal matter, a negotiation. For those calls, a trained human is worth $4.90/minute.
Best for: firms where the conversation quality matters more than cost predictability.
8. AnswerConnect (Live Reference Point)
AnswerConnect is another live-human answering service, historically priced from ~$1.75/minute with 200-minute base tiers. They have an AI-assisted tier ("AnswerConnect AI") layered on top of their live pool. Their blog is a common source of general "answering service cost" benchmarks.
Honest weakness: same structural issue as Ruby — per-minute metering, message-relay workflow, and the base plan does not include real CRM write-back.
Best for: multi-brand professional-services practices that want one vendor handling several numbers.
Which One You Should Pick
Not marketing — decision logic:
- You are a plumbing, HVAC, or electrical contractor doing 15+ after-hours calls a week → flat-rate AI with your CRM: Agent+, Sameday, or ServiceTitan native if you are already on ST. Per-minute metering (Ruby, AnswerConnect) will cost more in January than it will in June.
- You are a law firm, accounting practice, or consulting shop → Smith.ai. Their AI + human hybrid, English + Spanish, and legal-vertical integrations are what that buyer actually needs.
- You are a dealership or auto service → Numa, or the ServiceTitan AI Virtual Agent if you are on ServiceTitan Auto.
- You are a solo operator trying AI for the first time → Goodcall's $59 tier. If the experiment sticks, graduate to a service with real triage depth.
- You already pay for ServiceTitan and are not evaluating a CRM switch → the native agent is the fastest deployment. See our honest breakdown in ServiceTitan AI Voice Agent for Emergency Dispatch.
- You need every call to touch a human → Ruby or AnswerConnect. Do not buy AI and try to configure it to hand off every call; that is what a live service is for.
What Most Buyers Get Wrong
Two patterns we see when trades and professional-services owners compare these tools:
Comparing headline price without modeling a busy month. A $59 AI plan that overage-charges $0.75 per call after 60 is not cheaper than a $297 flat plan if you are doing 400 calls in January. Do the arithmetic on your peak month, not your average month. This is the exact trap our HVAC After-Hours Calls: The Revenue Math and Plumbing Answering Service posts walk through.
Assuming "AI" means the same thing across vendors. Goodcall's AI, Smith's AI Receptionist, ServiceTitan's Virtual Agent, and Agent+ all mean "voice agent that talks to your caller." Ruby's "AI-assisted" tier means "a human uses AI note-taking during the call." AnswerConnect's AI tier is closer to the second model than the first. Read the demo, not the landing page.
FAQ
"What is an AI answering service?" An AI answering service is a voice agent that picks up your business calls 24/7 and handles them end to end: it answers in your brand voice, understands the caller's need, triages emergencies, books the appointment into your calendar or CRM, and sends you a transcript and summary. Unlike legacy services that write down messages, an AI answering service closes the loop before the caller hangs up.
"How much does an AI answering service cost?" Agent+ plans are $297, $497 or $997 per month plus a one-time setup fee of $299, $599 or $899. That is a flat subscription with unlimited inbound calls (fair use) — no per-minute billing and no monthly-minute minimums, which is how most legacy answering services price and why their bills grow exactly when your business does.
"Can it handle after-hours calls and busy-season overflow?" Yes — those are the two classic deployment modes. Forward only your unanswered and after-hours calls and keep answering normally, or route 100% of calls to the AI during peak season so every ring is answered at once. You can switch modes any time without changing your plan price.
"Does an AI answering service book appointments or just take messages?" Ours books. The AI writes real appointments directly into Calendly, Google Calendar, ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro or a custom API — including emergency priority dispatch flags. Message-taking only is the legacy model, and it is why calls still die on a relay list.
"Is there a free AI answering service?" Free trials exist, but a phone number that forwards to an untested demo doesn't answer your real callers. Instead we publish flat prices and make a performance guarantee: if we don't book at least 5 qualified appointments in your first 60 days, we refund your entire setup fee and keep working until we hit it.
Related Reading
- How Much Does an AI Receptionist Cost in 2026? Real Numbers, Not Ranges — the cost deep-dive behind the pricing column in this table.
- Google Voice Alternative for Business Calls — the "free phone system" that most small businesses try before buying any of the eight above.
- ServiceTitan AI Voice Agent for Emergency Dispatch — the full ServiceTitan native-agent evaluation, with all four published customer deployment numbers.
- The Best Answering Service for Plumbers in 2026 — vertical-specific version of this comparison.
- HVAC After-Hours Calls: The Revenue Math — before comparing prices, quantify what your operation actually loses to voicemail.
- HVAC Answering Service Costs, Vendors, and AI Comparison — the HVAC-vertical version of this list.
- AI Answering Service — the money page this post feeds.
- AI Receptionist — a related product for professional-services buyers.
- Pricing — $297 / $497 / $997 flat-rate tiers.
- AI Phone Answering hub — all our phone-answering analysis.
