AI phone answering, outsourced reception or hiring: the real prices compared (2026)

"Do I take someone on part time for the phone, or put in an AI thing?" I get asked that roughly once a month, and whoever's asking has almost always already read three comparisons. They all said the same thing: AI costs €300 a month, a receptionist €2,800, so the maths is quickly done. It is quickly done, and it's wrong: it compares the price of two things that don't do the same job, and it's written by someone selling one of the three options.

I sell one of the three options too. So I'm going to do the opposite: lay out the public prices of all three, checked this week on their published price lists, including mine, including where mine is the most expensive in the table. I won't name any provider: what matters to you is each family's billing mechanism, not the brand.

How much does an outsourced phone answering service cost in 2026?

Far less than people imagine. It's the first figure that surprises the business owners I see: entry-level plans start around €20 a month, and the per-call price runs between €0.60 and €1.50.

Two billing models coexist, and the gap between them matters more than the brand. The flat rate first: published price lists at €19 a month for 24 calls, €39 for 50, €59 for 78, €79 for 106 and €99 for 138, so from €0.60 a call, Monday to Saturday from 8am to 8pm, with no commitment. The subscription plus usage next: around €38.50 a month, then €0.98 per incoming call, €0.85 per outgoing call, €0.16 per text message, with options billed separately (€5 for the mobile app, €10 for 24/7 online booking, €15 for an extra diary). For 80 calls a month, this second model puts you at around €117.

Above that, market benchmarks widen: between €50 and €300 excl. VAT a month depending on volume and hours covered, €0.95 to €1.50 a call, setup fees of €150 to €350. And in healthcare, where the receptionist genuinely books the appointment in Doctolib instead of taking a message, a full-time practitioner's bill climbs to €350 or €850 excl. VAT a month for 150 to 400 calls.

Remember the mechanism, it's what decides everything in the end: an outsourced phone answering service costs you in proportion to what you're taking in. A quiet month is a cheap month, a scorching one stings.

Sources: public price lists from two outsourced phone answering providers (one flat rate, one subscription plus usage) and two sector pricing guides, one of them healthcare specific. Prices checked on 16 July 2026 from publicly published pricing pages. Providers aren't named: it's the billing models that decide, not the brands.

How much does an AI answering service cost?

From €49 to €800 a month, and the gap isn't explained by voice quality. It's explained by what's connected behind it, and by who did the connecting.

At the bottom of the range, self-service offers list from €49 a month with no commitment, with setup fees around €879 excl. VAT, often free as a promotion. In the middle, you'll find published plans at €299 a month for one agent and one number, €499 for three agents with CRM integrations, and €0.29 for each extra minute. Sector benchmarks put AI answering services between €300 and €800 a month, with setup from €1,000 to €5,000 depending on customisation.

My own offer sits in there, and I place it alongside the others: €1,900 excl. VAT in setup, then €190 a month, tool included, live within one to two weeks. Spread over twelve months, the first year works out at €348 a month, then €190. It's the most expensive line in the table at low volume, by some distance. Keep that figure, it matters for the verdict.

Sources: public price lists from two AI phone answering vendors (one self-service offer, one plan-based offer) and two sector guides comparing AI answering with outsourced reception. Prices checked on 16 July 2026. My own figures are on my AI phone answering page, displayed like everyone else's.

What does hiring for reception really cost?

Less than AI vendors claim, for a reason they systematically forget to mention: reductions in employer contributions. At minimum wage, employer contributions drop to around 3.5% of gross pay, not 42%.

The figures as I write. Minimum wage (SMIC) was uprated on 1 June 2026: €12.31 gross an hour, or €1,867.02 gross a month for 35 hours. The general reduction, renamed the single degressive general reduction in 2026, brings employer contributions down to a residual rate of around 3.55% of gross pay at minimum wage level: a calculation published on the basis of January's SMIC (€1,823.03) gives €64.72 in contributions and €1,887.75 in monthly employer cost. Applied to June's SMIC, you land around €1,930 a month, close to €23,200 a year. Budget for a bit more at market level: the median for a switchboard secretary is €1,943 gross, and since the reduction is degressive, every euro above minimum wage costs proportionally more in contributions.

A 2026 detail nobody points out, and it works against you: the SMIC used to calculate the reduction was frozen at €12.02 an hour for the whole year by decree of 12 June, while the one you actually pay rose to €12.31 on 1 June. Two minimum wages coexist on your payslip, and the gap isn't in your favour.

But the real figure in this section isn't a euro amount.

What cuts both ways, and it's where AI vendors cheat, is that nobody hires someone purely to pick up the phone. The person at reception chases unpaid invoices, prepares quotes, deals with suppliers, calms down an unhappy customer and knows that Tuesday's job has run two days late. Comparing their cost to a voice agent's is comparing the price of a car to a bicycle. Both get you there.

Sources: Service-Public, minimum wage amount (€12.31/h and €1,867.02 gross monthly, order of 22 May 2026 applicable from 1 June) · economie.gouv.fr, the single degressive general reduction · Amarris / expert-comptable-tpe, employer cost of minimum wage 2026 (€64.72 in contributions, €1,887.75 monthly cost based on January's SMIC) · MaPaye, freeze of the reference SMIC for the reduction at €12.02/h (decree of 12 June 2026) · Journal du Net, secretaries' salaries (median switchboard secretary €1,943 gross monthly). The employer cost at June's SMIC is my own estimate from the published residual rate: your accountant will give you the exact figure for your collective agreement.

The table, at equal volume

For the comparison to mean anything, the volume needs fixing. I took 80 calls a month, around four per working day: that's what I see with a tradesperson doing well or an SME with a few staff. Change the volume and the ranking changes, that's the whole point.

Now the column other comparisons never write, the one that should decide instead of the price. What each line really costs you:

• Budget outsourced answering: a message gets taken, not an appointment in your diary. The person on the other end of the line doesn't know your trade and changes often.
• Standard outsourced answering: the bill follows the volume, so your best month is also your most expensive. Options billed separately, extra cost for evenings and weekends.
• Self-service AI: you're the one writing the scripts, connecting the diary and fixing it when it answers off the mark. Without that work, the agent stays an answering machine that speaks well.
• Installed AI, mine: the most expensive in the table at low volume, by far. Only justified if the agent needs to know your trade and write into your tools.
• Hiring: the phone rings into thin air for 133 hours a week. But the person does ten things neither AI nor an outsourced service will ever do.

So, what would I choose?

It depends on three things: your call volume, what happens when you miss a call, and whether reception needs to do anything besides picking up. Here's what I answer case by case, and there are cases where the answer isn't me.

Sole trader, 20 to 40 calls a month

Take an outsourced answering service, or an entry-level online AI solution. At €39 a month with one or €49 with the other, you solve the bulk of the problem for the price of a tank of diesel. My €1,900 setup will never pay for itself at this volume, and I'll tell you so at the scoping call rather than afterwards. The only reason to switch to AI at this stage: your customers call in the evening and at weekends when they're back home, and a message taken at 9pm is worth a job. That's the 24/7 cover you're buying, not the intelligence.

Small business with 3 to 15 staff, 80 to 250 calls a month

This is the zone where installed AI holds its own, and it's honestly mine. At 200 calls, a standard outsourced service crosses the €200 to €250 a month mark and keeps climbing with your activity, while the AI subscription doesn't move. Above all, at this volume, the difference is no longer about price: it's about whether the agent genuinely writes the appointment into your diary with the right length, knows your service areas and can say that a leak on a Sunday isn't you. Someone has to do that work. You, or me.

SME with 15 to 50 staff

Hiring becomes rational again, on one condition: that the person does more than just answer. If your reception only picks up 250 times a month, you're paying €23,000 a year for work that €190 a month would cover better, including Saturdays. But if she chases your unpaid invoices, keeps three salespeople's diaries and knows your clients by their first names, don't touch a thing: put AI behind her, for the hours she's not there and the overflow when all three lines ring at once. It's the setup I install most often in SMEs, and nobody's ever left it.

What doesn't this table say?

Three things, and they matter as much as the euros.

The first: the price shown is almost never the price paid, in all three columns. The outsourced service bills texts, options and evenings. Self-service AI bills minutes beyond the plan and sometimes the telephony itself. Hiring costs recruitment, cover for leave and a workstation. Ask each of them, me included, for a real invoice from a busy month. Whoever refuses has answered.

The second: what a reception brings in doesn't show up in any column. I've told elsewhere the story of a garage owner missing one call in three, hands in an engine, and what it produced after a month of AI phone answering, including the day the agent answered off the mark. For the detail on that trade, my page on AI for garage owners covers the workshop's figures.

The third, and it's the only one that should decide: nobody has a phone-answering problem. They have a problem of customers calling elsewhere. If your missed calls aren't turning into lost revenue, keep your money, none of the three rows in this table will help you. If you don't know, count first. It's free, and it might just save you from calling me.

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