OpenPhone Sona pricing and Quo AI agent cost per call for the OpenPhone AI receptionist

OpenPhone Sona pricing runs from $0 to $199 a month for the AI agent alone. Every Quo plan (Quo is the new name for OpenPhone) includes 10 Sona-answered calls a month, and five credit tiers take that to 40, 100, 250 or 600 calls for $25, $49, $99 or $199. You also pay for the Quo seats underneath, $15 to $47 per user a month, so a solo operator with 150 AI-answered calls a month spends about $100 in total.

Every figure below comes from Quo's own pricing page and its Sona pricing help article, read on October 6, 2026, in US dollars. Quo sometimes changes its credit tiers, so check the live page before you sign anything with a long commitment.

How much does OpenPhone Sona cost?

Sona is billed in automation credits, and one answered call uses 100 credits. Each workspace gets 1,000 credits a month free, which is 10 calls. Beyond that you pick a monthly tier, and each tier has its own per-call rate for calls past the bundle. Calls shorter than 15 seconds do not count, so a quick hang-up or a wrong number costs nothing.

Three rules in the help article matter more than the table. Credits belong to the workspace, not the user, so a ten person team gets the same 10 free calls as a one person shop. Unused credits expire at the end of each billing period, so a slow month does not bank anything for a busy one. And upgrading applies right away, with Quo re-rating the current month at the new tier, which is useful when a busy week shows you picked too small a bundle.

Is Sona included in OpenPhone plans?

Yes, in a limited way. Sona is listed on all three Quo plans, and every paid workspace gets the 10 free calls. Past that, you are buying a tier. The seat prices underneath are separate and charged per user.

What a small business actually pays for Quo with Sona answering

The cheapest tier is not always the cheapest bill, because the extra-call rate drops as the tiers rise. Working from the published numbers, Tier 2 beats paying $1.00 a call from about 35 calls, Tier 3 beats Tier 2 from about 72, Tier 4 beats Tier 3 from about 177 and Tier 5 beats Tier 4 from about 432. Here is the total with seats, assuming overages are switched on and you sit on the cheaper tier for your volume.

On price alone, that is one of the lowest per-call rates for AI phone answering in the US market. Most AI receptionists we track charge more per call, and a live answering service runs several dollars a call. If you already run your business on Quo, the honest starting point is to switch Sona on and see whether it does the job. The rest of this article is about the cases where it does not.

What happens when Sona runs out of credits?

By default, it stops answering. Quo ships with overages disabled, and the help article says that when credits hit zero, Sona pauses and calls go to the fallback step in your call flow, which for most small businesses is voicemail. Nothing tells the caller they reached a full bucket. They just get the voicemail greeting you set up before you bought an AI agent.

That is the setting to change on day one if you buy a tier. A business whose calls are seasonal is exactly the business that runs out: a roofer after a storm, a mover at the end of June, an HVAC company in the first heat wave. Turning overages on keeps Sona answering and bills each extra call at your tier's rate, and there is no published cap, so watch the usage page in busy months. If a predictable bill matters more to you than the lowest rate, a flat rate answering service removes the trade-off, because there is no bucket to empty.

Can Sona book appointments?

Not straight into a calendar, as far as Quo documents it. Quo's Sona page describes answering questions about your hours, prices and services, taking messages, asking your custom intake questions, transferring calls and sending texts during a call, including a scheduling link. Neither the product page nor the help center describes Sona writing a booking into Google Calendar, Outlook or a scheduling tool while the caller is on the line.

For a business whose calls end in a message, that is fine. For one whose calls should end in an appointment, it is a real gap. A text with a link asks the caller to do one more thing after they hang up, and some share of them will not. Sona also answers inbound calls only, and Quo says it is built to be used inside Quo, so you cannot point a number from another phone system at it.

OpenPhone AI receptionist alternatives with published prices

If you need bookings made during the call, or you are not on Quo, these AI receptionists publish a price you can check today. All of them answer calls forwarded from a Quo number, so you can keep the phone system and change only who picks up.

The full field, with every vendor normalized to a cost per call, is on our AI receptionist pricing page. If you are weighing other phone systems with an AI add-on, the same exercise for Dialpad's AI receptionist and RingCentral's AI receptionist shows a very different shape: quote-only credits there, published tiers here.

Sona or a dedicated AI receptionist, which should you buy?

Stay with Sona if you are on Quo, most of your calls end in a message or a quick answer, and you want the lowest possible cost per call. Turn overages on, pick the tier that matches your busiest month, and you have a very cheap after-hours safety net.

Look at a dedicated AI receptionist if the call is supposed to end with an appointment on the calendar, if your volume swings and you would rather never think about credit tiers, or if your phone system is not Quo. PhoneAgent.ai books the appointment during the call, answers in English or Spanish, texts back callers who hang up before anyone picks up, and costs $89, $199 or $399 a month with no per-call charge. On Professional it warm transfers urgent calls to a person and syncs call records to HubSpot or any system that takes a webhook. You set it up by forwarding your Quo number on no-answer or after hours, so you keep the number your customers already have. See the plans on the pricing page.

And if you have not chosen a phone system yet, it is worth comparing a VoIP service for business on per-seat price and call features before you decide which AI layer goes on top. The phone system is the part you will live with for years; the answering layer is the part you can swap in an afternoon.

Questions people ask about OpenPhone Sona

Does OpenPhone have an AI receptionist?

Yes. OpenPhone, now called Quo, sells Sona, an AI agent that answers inbound calls 24/7, answers common questions, takes messages, asks custom intake questions, transfers calls and texts callers during the call. It speaks English, Spanish and French and works only inside a Quo workspace.

How much is Quo Sona per call?

Between about $0.33 and $1.00 a call, depending on the tier. Each answered call uses 100 credits. Bundles cost $25 for 40 calls, $49 for 100, $99 for 250 and $199 for 600, and extra calls cost $0.75 down to $0.45 if overages are switched on. Calls under 15 seconds are free.

Is Sona free with OpenPhone?

The first 10 calls a month are. Every paid Quo workspace includes 1,000 automation credits a month, enough for about 10 Sona-answered calls, and the allowance is per workspace rather than per user. Anything above that needs a paid tier or overages at $1.00 a call.

Can OpenPhone Sona transfer calls to a person?

Yes. Quo lists call transfer among Sona's skills, so it can hand a caller to a team member or department. Call transfers are listed as a Business plan feature on the Quo pricing page, so check your plan before you rely on it for urgent calls.

What is the best OpenPhone AI receptionist alternative?

For a small business that needs appointments booked on the call, the best alternative is one that writes straight to your calendar and publishes a flat price. PhoneAgent.ai costs $89 a month for about 150 calls, books into Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly or Acuity, and works with a Quo number through call forwarding.