Smith.ai pricing: what Smith.ai costs per month and per call, for the human receptionist and AI receptionist plans

Smith.ai pricing is $300 a month for 30 calls, $810 for 90 and $2,100 for 300 on its human receptionist plans, with overage at $11.50, $10.50 and $8.50 a call. Its AI receptionist plans run from $0 for 25 calls to $800 for 500, at $1.60 to $2.00 a call. There is no setup fee, no contract, and 10 percent off for paying annually. Figures read from Smith.ai's own pricing pages in September 2026.

Those headline numbers are accurate and they are not the bill. Smith.ai unbundles almost everything a buyer assumes is included, so booking an appointment, recording a call and sending you a text about it are each charged per call on top of the plan. And the plan ladder has crossovers that are easy to miss: the entry plan on each side stops being the cheapest option well before you use up the next plan's allowance. Both are worked through below with the arithmetic shown.

How much does Smith.ai cost?

Smith.ai sells two products on one pricing page, switched by a toggle marked Human-first and AI-first. The human product is the one Smith.ai built its name on: US-based receptionists answering your line 24/7 and billing per call rather than per minute. Here are the published plans, normalized to a per-call rate.

Per-call billing has one behavior you should understand before signing. A fifteen minute new-client intake and a forty second wrong number cost exactly the same. If your calls are long and infrequent, that makes Smith.ai one of the better deals among the live services, because per-minute competitors charge you for every one of those fifteen minutes. If most of your inbound is short (hours, directions, is my order ready), you are paying $9 or $10 for calls a recording could have handled. Smith.ai does say it does not charge for spam calls, which helps.

How much does the Smith.ai AI receptionist cost?

The AI-first plans are priced very differently. Here is the full ladder as Smith.ai publishes it.

Smith.ai also offers a 6-month AI plan with rollover calls and a lower per-call rate, priced on request. The feature split matters more than it first appears. On the AI side, custom prompting and full-service setup only arrive at the $500 tier. Below that you are configuring the AI yourself, with support.

What do Smith.ai add-ons cost?

This is the part of Smith.ai pricing that decides the invoice on the human plans. CRM integration, lead qualification, new-client intake, a dedicated number and 24/7 staffing are included. Most of the rest is metered per call.

Nobody else in the category prices this granularly. The upside is that a business needing none of it pays for none of it. The downside is that the quoted plan price is rarely the bill. The per-CRM charge is a good example: copying each call into a second system costs $0.50, which is $150 a month on the Pro plan's 300 calls. If you need call records in several tools, it is usually cheaper to send them to one place and sync that data across your other apps than to pay per call for every destination.

What does Smith.ai really cost per month?

Take a realistic month on the human Basic plan: 90 calls, 40 of them booked into your calendar, every call recorded, and a text to you after each one. That is $810 for the plan, $60 for bookings, $22.50 for recording and $45 for notifications, so $937.50, or $10.42 a call, against a headline of $9.00. The gap widens for law firms adding conflict checks and extended intake, and for anyone needing a Spanish line.

The crossovers are the other thing to model, because they are further down the ladder than the plan names suggest.

Before add-ons, on published rates. Three things fall out of it:

• Starter stops being cheapest at 74 calls. From 75 calls a month, Basic's $810 beats Starter plus overage at $11.50 a call.
• Basic stays cheaper than Pro up to 212 calls. From 213 calls, Pro's $2,100 wins, even though Basic's allowance ran out at 90.
• On the AI side, Free matches Pro 75 at exactly 75 calls. Below that, the $0 plan plus $3.00 overage costs less than Pro. Move to the 150-call tier from 123 calls, and to the 300-call tier from 250.

Is Smith.ai worth the price?

For the right caller, yes. The human plans are expensive because they buy a trained person who can hear distress, handle a confused caller and qualify a lead with judgment. For a personal injury firm, where one signed case pays for years of service, $10 a call is cheap. Smith.ai also removes most of the buying risk: there is no setup fee, no long-term contract, and a 30-day money-back guarantee on the plan and add-on charges up to $1,000 (overage is excluded).

For routine, booking-shaped calls it is harder to justify. A dental office, a salon or an HVAC company taking 150 calls a month, most of them about hours, availability and rescheduling, would pay $1,440 on Basic before booking fees. The AI plans close most of that gap, which is presumably why Smith.ai launched them.

If you are weighing Smith.ai against the other live services on per-minute billing, Ruby vs Smith.ai works out where per-call pricing beats per-minute pricing. If the decision is between Smith.ai's people and a software platform, Smith.ai vs My AI Front Desk runs that comparison at 100 calls a month.

How does Smith.ai pricing compare to alternatives?

Per-call and per-minute services are hard to compare directly, so the table converts everything to the cost of one three minute call, using each vendor's published rates.

The whole field, with every published plan and how each vendor meters, is in the virtual receptionist pricing comparison, and the AI-only vendors are broken out on AI receptionist pricing.

What does PhoneAgent.ai cost against Smith.ai?

PhoneAgent.ai is an AI receptionist on a flat fee: $89 a month for about 150 calls, $199 for about 500 and $399 for about 1,500. Appointment booking, call routing, warm transfer and text-back are part of the plan rather than per-call add-ons, and there is no per-minute meter. At 150 calls a month that is $89 against $270 on Smith.ai's AI Pro plan or $1,440 on its human Basic plan, before any booking fees.

The honest caveat is the same one that applies to Smith.ai's own AI plans. Software handles the routine call completely and hands the unusual one to a person. If most of your calls need human judgment from the first sentence, Smith.ai's human plans are the better purchase and the price is fair for what they are. If most of your calls are booking, rescheduling and questions with fixed answers, you are paying receptionist rates for work that no longer needs one. The full side-by-side, including where Smith.ai wins, is on our Smith.ai alternative page, and the underlying billing models are compared on answering service cost.

Frequently asked questions

Does Smith.ai have a free plan?

Yes, on the AI side only. The Free AI plan includes 25 real calls a month and charges $3.00 for each call after that, with no onboarding or live support. The human receptionist plans have no free tier and start at $300 a month for 30 calls.

Does Smith.ai charge a setup fee?

No. Smith.ai lists no setup fees on its human plans and none on its AI plans. Full-service setup of the AI is included from the $500 AI tier. Below that, you configure the AI yourself with onboarding support on the Pro plans.

Does Smith.ai require a contract?

No. Plans are month to month, with a 10 percent discount for paying for 12 months up front. A 30-day money-back guarantee covers plan and add-on charges up to $1,000, but not overage. On the AI plans, Smith.ai asks for 30 days' notice when you cancel, so budget one more month's fee when you switch.

Is Smith.ai AI or human?

Both, sold as separate plans. The human-first plans at $300 to $2,100 a month put US-based receptionists on every call. The AI-first plans at $0 to $800 a month answer with software. You choose on the pricing page, and the two ladders have very different per-call rates.

The short version

Smith.ai costs $300, $810 or $2,100 a month for 30, 90 or 300 calls answered by people, and $0 to $800 for its AI plans. Budget 10 to 20 percent above the plan price for add-ons if you want booking, recording and notifications, because each is billed per call. Move from Starter to Basic at 75 calls, not 90, and from Basic to Pro at 213 calls, not 300. It is a fair price for human judgment on high-value calls and an expensive one for routine calls.