Enter your call volume and the hours you need covered. The calculator prices a hired receptionist, live answering services, AI answering services, a voice agent you build yourself, and Chleb, side by side. Every rate comes from a published source read on September 28, 2026, every formula is written out in your numbers, and every result is an estimate you can check.
The calculator starts from your calls, not ours. You enter how many calls your business number receives in a month, how long an average call lasts, what share arrives outside business hours, and whether you want calls answered only during business hours or around the clock. From that it works out the calls and minutes each option would have to handle, then prices each option from its own published rates.
Every result is an estimate. Each vendor price was read from the vendor's own pricing page on September 28, 2026, and each one is linked beside the result it produced. Where a vendor publishes no price for your volume, the calculator says so instead of filling a number in. Prices change, and a quote for your business may differ from any published plan.
The in-house figure is hours times wage times a benefits factor. Covered hours are the business hours a week you enter, or 168 hours a week if you want the phone staffed around the clock, converted to a month at 52 weeks divided by 12. Staffing every hour of the week takes several people working shifts, which the figure does not separate out.
For the wage you can pick the Bureau of Labor Statistics mean hourly wage for receptionists and information clerks in the Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater area, $18.15 in May 2025, the national median hourly wage for receptionists, $18.27 in May 2025, or your own figure. The two BLS numbers measure different things, a local mean and a national median, so they are offered side by side rather than blended.
Wages are not the whole cost of an employee. In the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release for June 2026, wages and salaries were 70.0 percent of private employers' compensation cost and benefits were the other 30.0 percent. The calculator divides wages by 0.70 to add benefits. That step is a Chleb estimate combining two BLS series, and the benefits share is an average across private industry, not a figure for receptionists alone. Recruiting, training, cover for breaks and time off, overtime, equipment and management time are all left out.
Ruby and AnswerConnect put live receptionists on your calls and bill by the minute. The calculator multiplies your answered calls by your average call length and picks the cheapest published plan for that many minutes.
Ruby publishes four plans, from $250 a month for 50 minutes to $1,725 a month for 500 minutes. Its page publishes no rate for minutes beyond a plan, so the calculator only prices plans that cover all of your minutes. Above 500 minutes a month it shows no figure, because Ruby asks larger businesses to talk to them.
AnswerConnect's published pricing guide lists an Entry plan at $350 a month for 200 minutes with $2.50 for each additional minute, a Growth plan at $395 for 300 minutes and a Standard plan at $575 for 400 minutes, both at $1.85 for each additional minute, and larger plans after that. The guide says every interaction is rounded up to the nearest minute, so the calculator rounds your average call up to a whole minute before pricing. Its footnote puts a one-time $49.99 setup fee on all plans while the Growth card says no setup fee, and the first-year column follows the cards.
Smith.ai's AI Receptionist bills per call. Its free plan includes 25 calls a month at $3.00 for each call after that, and its Pro plan starts at $150 a month for 75 calls with $2.50 for each extra call. Larger tiers lower the rate, down to $2.10 for each extra call on the 500-call Enterprise tier. The calculator prices every published tier at your volume and shows the cheapest. The free plan is self-service, Pro adds dedicated onboarding and live support for a setup you do yourself, and the Enterprise tiers, from $500 a month, are described as built and run for you.
Smith.ai's Virtual Receptionists are live people billed per call. Starter is $300 a month for 30 calls, Basic $810 for 90 calls and Pro $2,100 for 300 calls, with extra calls from $11.50 down to $8.50 each. Appointment booking is an add-on listed at $1.50 per call, which the estimate does not include.
Goodcall bills per agent by unique customers, counting each caller's number once a month however often they call. Starter is $79 a month for 100 unique customers, Growth $129 for 250 and Scale $249 for 500, with $0.50 for each additional unique customer. Because repeat callers cost nothing extra, the calculator asks what share of your calls come from people who already called that month. It assumes none unless you say otherwise, which keeps Goodcall's estimate on the high side rather than the low.
A stack you build yourself trades a vendor's price for your own work. The calculator prices a Twilio local number at $1.15 a month plus $0.0085 for each inbound minute, and a Retell AI voice agent at its published pay as you go range of $0.07 to $0.31 a minute, which depends on the language model and voice you choose. The result is a low and a high figure.
The rest of the cost is your time: building and testing the agent once, then keeping it running every month. Nobody can publish that number for you, so the calculator asks for your own estimate of the hours and what an hour of your time is worth, and leaves time out until you enter it. Booking, handoff to your team and any connection to your calendar or CRM would be yours to build and test.
Chleb's AI Receptionist + Chatbot plan is $899 a month. Call minutes and emails are billed separately at carrier cost with no Chleb markup. Chleb does not publish a per-minute figure for that usage, so the calculator shows the subscription plus usage and adds no guess. The CRM is $297 a month on its own, and the Front Office Bundle with both is $997 a month.
Chleb answers with AI, around the clock. Calls it should not handle, such as emergencies or anything outside the configured playbook, go to your own team with the full transcript. Chleb does not supply live receptionists, and it does not publish a setup fee or a launch timeline. The team builds the call flow and runs test calls before your number goes live.
The lowest figure in the table is not automatically the right choice. Three differences matter as much as the price.
Call quality is the one thing no price list shows, so try each option with calls like your own before you decide. Chleb's live voice demo answers at (813) 694-8671.
It depends on your volume and on what you need, which is why the calculator shows every option instead of naming one. At low volumes the per-call and per-caller AI plans come out below Chleb's $899 subscription, and a self-built stack can cost less still in fees before you count your own time. Weigh the price against whether callers need a person, who does the setup and how much of your own time it takes.
Chleb bills call minutes and emails at carrier cost with no markup, but it does not publish a per-minute rate, so any figure here would be a guess. The calculator shows the $899 subscription and says plus usage. Ask for an estimate at your call volume before you buy.
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the Tampa area mean hourly wage for receptionists and information clerks, $18.15 in May 2025, the national median hourly wage for receptionists, $18.27 in May 2025, and the benefits share of private employers' compensation cost, 30.0 percent in June 2026. Combining them into one cost is Chleb's estimate, not a BLS figure.
No. The calculator runs in your browser. Only if you fill in the optional form at the end and press Send does a summary of your inputs and results reach Chleb. The form shows the summary it sends and names the other details that go with it, such as the page you came from and your browser type.