Every "cheapest AI answering service" list makes the same mistake: it ranks the invoice and ignores the bill. An answering service has two costs. One arrives monthly and you can read it on a pricing page. The other arrives as callers who hung up, bookings that were taken down wrong, and people who were told to leave a message and never called back — and it is almost always the larger of the two.
This list ranks by both. Prices below were read from each provider's own pages during research in August 2026, with one exception flagged in its own entry. Confirm the current figure before you budget on it.
The arithmetic that decides which one is actually cheapest
A missed restaurant reservation is worth roughly €65–140 in lost revenue, depending on the size of the party and your average spend. The real cost of a missed call works through where that number comes from.
Hold that against a monthly subscription and the comparison stops being close:
- One missed booking a month wipes out the entire monthly fee of every entry on this list.
- Two or three a month and the difference between a €59 plan and a €108 plan has become irrelevant — you are losing several times the gap between them.
- One a week and you are paying for the service twice over in revenue you never see, on top of the invoice.
Which means the €50 you save on the subscription is not a saving at all if the cheaper system mishears a name, stalls mid-sentence, cannot handle someone talking over it, or drops the call when the question gets specific. A system that answers well is cheap in the only sense that survives contact with a real month of trading. A system that answers badly is expensive at any price, including free.
This is not an argument for spending more. It is an argument for asking a second question after the price: how many calls does this thing actually get right? Test that on your own callers, in your own languages, before the price decides for you — every provider here offers a trial or a demo for exactly that reason.
The add-on trap: why $39/month isn't always $39/month
RingCentral AI Receptionist advertises $39/month as an add-on to an existing RingEX phone plan, or $49/month standalone. On its own that looks like the cheapest option here by a wide margin. But a business starting from nothing needs the underlying RingEX phone plan too — independently priced at roughly $20–45 per user per month — and the realistic all-in cost has been estimated around $99–114/month or more for one user once the phone plan is counted.
That is worth understanding before trusting any "cheapest" list on headline price alone, this one included. Full detail is in the Bubo vs. RingCentral comparison.
The cheapest options, ranked by real cost
1. Bubo — lowest published flat price, with the booking page included
Bubo's Starter plan is €59/month for 150 minutes — roughly 75 to 100 calls — plus a one-time €149 setup fee, with two languages of your choice included and unused minutes rolling over for up to two months. That is the lowest published flat monthly entry price in this comparison, and the lowest setup fee of any provider here that charges one.
The part that changes the arithmetic, though, is what comes with it rather than what it costs. Every plan includes your own online booking page and QR code — your link, your hours, phone numbers verified by text before a table is held — feeding the same diary Bubo books into over the phone. A booking widget is normally a separate subscription with its own monthly fee; here it is part of booking management, free for your first six months and €49/month after that. For a small business that would otherwise pay for a booking system and an answering service separately, that is the whole second invoice.
On the calls themselves: Bubo answers in natural speech rather than a menu tree, handles being interrupted and talked over, and works in 70+ languages without a fixed shortlist — which is the difference between a caller finishing their booking and a caller giving up. See what happens on a real call, start to finish.
- Real cost: €59/month plus €149 once. Overage is €0.29/minute and Bubo keeps answering rather than cutting off.
- The catch: two languages are included and further ones are €29/month each, so a business serving four languages should price that in. There is no usage-based floor, so at genuinely tiny volume a no-minimum model can be cheaper on the invoice.
- Setup: handled by the Bubo team around your menu, hours and integrations. 7-day free trial.
2. Assistent.ai — cheapest on the invoice at genuinely light call volume
Assistent.ai bills purely on usage — SMS and call volume — with no stated monthly minimum, plus a one-time €99 setup fee, according to its own pricing page. A restaurant with genuinely light call volume could pay less than any flat-rate plan here, since there is no base fee to cover regardless of usage.
- Real cost for light use: the lowest possible invoice on this list, because it scales down to almost nothing when the phone is quiet.
- The catch: it scales up with volume too, so a busier business can end up above a flat plan. It is restaurant-only, and a usage-based model prices the calls it takes — not the ones it fails to finish.
- Setup: one-time €99 fee. Full detail in the Bubo vs. Assistent.ai comparison.
3. Goodcall — predictable flat tiers with unlimited minutes included
Goodcall prices by unique callers per month rather than by minutes, with unlimited minutes included on every tier: reported as $79/month Starter for 100 unique callers, scaling to $129 and $249/month on higher tiers, plus $0.50 per unique caller over the cap.
- Real cost: predictable at $79/month for a business under 100 unique callers a month, since minutes are not metered.
- The catch: a business with many one-time or high-volume unique callers can see this scale up faster than a per-minute model would. And this is the one entry here not read from the company's own pages — the figures come from several independent pricing analyses that agree with each other, so confirm them with Goodcall before budgeting.
- Setup: self-service, described as no-code.
4. HeyLuna — a low monthly figure with a high one-time one
HeyLuna's Starter tier is €108/month for 250 minutes and 50 WhatsApp messages, with 2 languages included, plus a one-time €499 setup fee on every tier, according to its own pricing page.
- Real cost: €108/month plus that setup fee — worth calculating the effective first-year cost rather than the monthly figure alone. At €499 up front, the first year lands closer to €150/month in practice.
- The catch: the setup fee applies regardless of tier, and two languages is a real ceiling if your callers are mixed. Full detail in the Bubo vs. HeyLuna comparison.
- Setup: handled by HeyLuna's own team, live within about three working days.
5. Voicelabs — cheapest when the self-service tier fits your comfort level
Voicelabs offers a lower-cost self-service dashboard alongside its fully managed "Robin Compleet" tier at €299/month, according to its own site — the self-service option is positioned as the cheaper path for a business willing to configure it itself.
- Real cost: below €299/month via self-service, though the exact figure was not published on the pages reviewed.
- The catch: self-service means the configuration work falls on you, and configuration is exactly what decides whether the thing answers well. That is a real cost even when it is not on the invoice. Full detail in the Bubo vs. Voicelabs comparison.
- Setup: self-service dashboard, or managed by Voicelabs' team on the higher tier.
A quick cost comparison
| Provider | Entry price | Setup fee | Real-cost note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bubo | €59/mo (150 min) | €149 once | Lowest flat entry; booking page included |
| Assistent.ai | Usage-based, no minimum | €99 once | Lowest invoice at light volume, scales up with use |
| Goodcall | $79/mo, 100 unique callers (reported) | Not stated | Predictable, unlimited minutes included |
| HeyLuna | €108/mo | €499 once | First year lands nearer €150/mo |
| Voicelabs | Below €299/mo (self-service) | Not published | Cheaper if you configure it yourself |
| RingCentral AI Receptionist | $39/mo add-on (looks cheapest, isn't) | Not stated | Real all-in ~$99–114/mo+ — see the trap above |
Frequently asked questions
How much does an AI receptionist cost overall?
It ranges from usage-based plans with no minimum to flat monthly plans of a few hundred euros. How much an AI receptionist costs breaks down the four pricing models and what actually drives the number, and the real cost of a missed call is the other half of the sum. For a broader list of options beyond the cheapest, see the best AI receptionist for small business.
Is the cheapest option actually worth it?
It depends entirely on how well it answers. At these prices the gap between the cheapest and the dearest plan here is around €50 a month, and a single missed booking is worth more than that. So a cheap service that finishes every call is excellent value, and a cheap service that loses one caller a week is the most expensive thing on the list. Judge it on the calls, not the invoice.
What's the catch with usage-based pricing?
It scales in both directions — genuinely cheap at low volume, potentially more expensive than a flat plan at high volume. Model your actual expected call volume against both structures before assuming usage-based is automatically cheaper.
Does a cheap plan mean fewer features?
Sometimes, and the two that catch people out are languages and online booking. Most entry tiers include two languages, so check what a third costs if your callers are mixed. And a booking page for your own website is usually sold as a separate product with its own monthly fee — worth adding to the comparison, since it is the same money either way.
Can I get an AI answering service for free?
Not on an ongoing basis in this list, though several providers offer free trials of 7 to 14 days to test before paying. Some broader AI customer-service platforms outside the phone-specific category, like Watermelon, do offer a genuine free tier — but for phone answering specifically, a trial rather than a permanent free plan is the norm.
Which is cheapest for very low call volume specifically?
Assistent.ai's usage-based, no-minimum model gives the lowest possible invoice for a business with genuinely light call volume, since there is no base fee to cover regardless of usage. That advantage disappears as volume rises — and it only holds if the calls it does take are handled properly.
How was this list put together?
Every entry is based on that company's own published pricing, ordered by realistic all-in cost rather than headline price — which is why the RingCentral add-on structure is flagged rather than letting its $39 headline stand unchallenged. Goodcall is the one exception, sourced from independent pricing analyses rather than its own pages, and its entry says so. Bubo is our own product and is listed first on published price and included booking page, both of which you can check on the pricing page. This is not a paid or sponsored ranking.
Bonnie, Fonio, Synthflow, Bookline and Slang.ai are covered elsewhere on this blog but are not here, because none published a pricing floor competitive with these entries — Bonnie starts at €125/month with no usage-based option, and the rest are quote-based, agency-oriented, or priced well above what this list is about.
The only test that settles it is your own callers. Book a free demo, listen to how it handles them, and use the 7-day trial before any money changes hands.