Best restaurant answering service and AI receptionist for restaurants with 17 options compared at 300 and 800 calls

The best restaurant answering service depends on one question: does the phone order have to land in your POS on its own? If it does, Maple Pro ($350 a month, or $220 billed yearly), Kea ($450 a month with unlimited calls) and Loman (quote only) are the AI tools that write orders into Toast, Square and Clover. If your problem is simply that calls ring out during service, a flat AI receptionist at $129 to $199 a month answers every call, takes the reservation and the to-go order, and captures catering leads. Live operators cost $938 to $2,100 at 300 calls a month.

Those figures come from each provider's own pricing page, checked on October 9, 2026, for a single restaurant taking 300 calls in a normal month and 800 in a busy one (December, Mother's Day, Valentine's week). Below is every service we could price, ranked by the situation it fits, including the cases where our own product is the wrong choice.

Best restaurant answering service, ranked by situation

• Best when phone orders must go straight into the POS: Maple Pro or Kea. Maple Pro is $350 a month on monthly billing or $220 a month billed yearly, takes orders into Toast, Square, Clover and Shift4, and books into OpenTable. Kea lists one plan at $450 a month with unlimited calls and orders sent to the POS and kitchen display. Loman covers the most POS systems (Toast, SpotOn, Clover, Shift4, Square, Aloha, Olo) but publishes no price.
• Best when reservations live in OpenTable, Resy or SevenRooms: Slang.ai. It names OpenTable, SevenRooms, Resy and Yelp, starting at $399 per location on Core and $599 on Premium. It sends ordering links by text rather than taking the order itself.
• Best for an independent restaurant whose real problem is unanswered calls: PhoneAgent.ai Professional at $199 a month flat for about 500 calls. It answers during the rush, books tables when your book runs on Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly or Acuity, takes to-go orders with a full read back, captures catering leads, answers in English or Spanish, and transfers to the host stand when your rules say so.
• Best cheapest AI answering if you only need hours, directions and a transfer: Maple Voice at $150 a month, or $85 billed yearly. It covers answering, FAQs and transfer, not orders or reservations.
• Best low cost general AI: Goodcall at $129 a month for 500 unique callers, or Rosie at $149 for 1,000 minutes. Neither publishes restaurant integrations; Rosie lists Zapier only.
• Best for chains and drive thru volume: ConverseNow and VOICEplug, both built for multi unit brands and POS systems like NCR Aloha, PAR and Brink. Both are quote only.

What 300 and 800 restaurant calls a month cost at each service

The model is one location taking 300 calls in a normal month and 800 in a busy one, at a two minute average (600 and 1,600 minutes), since restaurant calls are short. Those counts are our assumption, so rerun the math with your own phone bill. For Goodcall, unique callers are assumed equal to calls, which is its worst case.

Notes on the rows. Maple says it charges no per minute fees but does not publish how many calls each plan covers. Kea's live pricing page blocks automated access, so its $450 figure comes from the archived copy of that page from March 2026; confirm it on a demo. Slang shows "starting at" prices per location without the minutes included. Popmenu sells AI phone answering only as an add-on to plans that start at $179 a month and does not publish the add-on price, and Owner.com does not sell phone AI yet. Numa, which older lists still recommend for restaurants, now sells only to car dealerships.

What is the best answering service for restaurants?

For most independent restaurants, the best answering service is an AI receptionist that answers every call during service, takes reservations and to-go orders, and costs a flat monthly fee. Live operators bill every minute, which makes a busy Friday expensive, and voicemail loses the caller. The real choice is whether you need POS integration, which roughly doubles the price.

A typical full service restaurant gets three kinds of calls: someone who wants a table, someone who wants food to go, and someone with a question (hours, parking, a gluten free menu, whether the patio is open). A smaller fourth group, catering and private dining, is worth more per call than all the others. A good restaurant answering service handles all four without pulling the host off the floor at 7pm. The restaurant answering service page shows how PhoneAgent.ai handles each of them, and catering leads get their own setup on the catering answering service page.

Can AI take phone orders for a restaurant?

Yes. AI phone ordering is now reliable enough for takeout and delivery: it takes the items and modifiers, reads the order back, quotes the pickup time and sends the ticket on. The difference between tools is where the ticket goes. Maple Pro, Kea, Loman and Bitebuddy push it straight into the POS. PhoneAgent.ai sends it to the kitchen or manager by text and email, so someone rings it in.

That difference matters most to a restaurant doing real phone volume. If you take 40 phone orders on a Friday night, keying each one by hand is a job for a person, and a POS integrated tool earns its higher price. If you take eight, a read back ticket on the kitchen tablet is fine and the flat tool costs less than half as much. Whichever you pick, test it on a demo call with a messy order: two pizzas, one half and half, no onions on one side, extra ranch, a substitution. Read back accuracy is the whole game.

Does an AI receptionist work with OpenTable?

Some do. Slang.ai lists OpenTable, SevenRooms, Resy and Yelp, and Maple Pro lists OpenTable. PhoneAgent.ai does not write into OpenTable, Resy, SevenRooms or Tock: it captures the party size, time and note, then texts the guest your own booking link or passes the request to the host, and tells the caller that is what is happening.

If your book is in one of those systems and most of your calls are reservations, pay for the integration. The Slang AI pricing breakdown shows what that costs per location, and the Slang.ai alternative page is honest about when Slang is the better buy. If your book is a Google Calendar or a paper book at the host stand, a general AI receptionist books the table directly and the integration fee buys you nothing.

Is an AI phone answering service worth it for a restaurant?

Usually, yes, because the math only needs one or two saved orders a day. At $199 a month, the fee is covered in revenue by about seven saved $30 takeout orders a month, fewer than two a week. Industry phone studies report that restaurants miss roughly a third of their calls during peak hours, and those are the calls most likely to be orders or bookings.

The cheaper alternative is a person. Hiring a part time phone host covers the shifts they work and not the ones they do not, and every restaurant owner knows how often the phone host ends up running food. If you decide to staff the phone anyway, it can help to screen host candidates with an AI recruiter so the hiring itself does not eat a week of evenings. For most single location restaurants, though, the phone is the one job software now does better than a busy human: it answers several calls at once, never puts a caller on hold to seat a table, and gives the same correct answer about the gluten free menu every time.

When is a live restaurant answering service worth the price?

Rarely, for an ordinary restaurant. At 300 calls a month PATLive comes to about $938 and Smith.ai's live receptionists to $2,100, and neither writes into your POS or your reservation book. Live operators make sense for a high end venue that sells private events by phone, where a single call can be worth thousands and the caller expects a person. For everyone else, AI covers the volume and the person on your team handles the calls that need judgment, by transfer.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a restaurant answering service cost?

At 300 calls a month, published October 2026 pricing puts AI services at $129 to $500 and live services at about $938 to $2,100. AI tools that write orders into the POS sit at $350 to $450. PhoneAgent.ai is $199 a month flat on Professional and $399 on Practice for busier restaurants.

Which AI phone ordering systems integrate with Toast?

Maple Pro, Kea, Loman and Bitebuddy all name Toast, and most also name Square and Clover. VOICEplug claims more than 80 POS systems. PhoneAgent.ai does not integrate with Toast or any POS; it sends each order to your team as a ticket by text and email.

Can an answering service handle restaurant reservations?

Yes. It takes the party size, date, time and any note, and either books the table directly or hands the request to your host. PhoneAgent.ai books directly into Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly or Acuity and texts the guest a confirmation. For OpenTable, Resy or SevenRooms it sends your booking link instead.

Does it answer in Spanish?

PhoneAgent.ai answers in English or Spanish on every plan at no extra cost, which matters for restaurants with Spanish speaking regulars or kitchen staff taking calls. See the bilingual answering service page for how it switches languages.

What happens to callers who hang up before anyone answers?

PhoneAgent.ai texts them back from your number within a minute, so the caller who gave up on hold during the rush does not go to the place down the street. That is covered on the missed call text back page.

The short version

If your phone orders must land in Toast or Square by themselves, buy a restaurant specific AI with POS integration, Maple Pro or Kea, and expect $220 to $450 a month. If your reservations live in OpenTable or SevenRooms and that is most of your calls, Slang.ai is built for it. If the problem is simply that the phone rings out while everyone is working the floor, an AI answering service for restaurants at a flat $199 answers every call, takes the order and the reservation, and costs the same in December as in January. For a fixed bill across the whole category, flat rate answering service compares which plans really are flat.