Smith.ai pricing: every plan and fee, checked Sept 2026

It's Tuesday morning and you're up on a roof or sitting in a consult. The phone rings four times before lunch and you catch one of them. Somebody tells you a virtual receptionist would fix this, so you look up Smith.ai pricing. You find two pricing pages, a long list of add-ons, and plans that count calls instead of minutes, and twenty minutes later you still don't know what the bill would be.

I read Smith.ai's own pricing pages on September 29, 2026 and wrote down what they say. Everything below comes from smith.ai/pricing and smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist. Nothing here comes from review sites. Prices change, so check both pages again before you sign.

Smith.ai pricing at a glance

Smith.ai sells two things. One is live receptionists: people answer your calls, starting at $300 a month for 30 calls. The other is an automated receptionist that answers with software, starting at a free plan with 25 calls a month. Both bill per call rather than per minute.

The automated Pro and Enterprise plans also come in bigger call tiers. The page shows Pro at 150 calls for 10% off and 300 calls for 17% off, and Enterprise at 500 calls for 4% off, with 1,000 and up handled as custom. The base tiers work out to $2.00 a call on Pro and $1.67 a call on Enterprise, per the page.

What the live receptionist plans include

The live plans are the ones most people mean when they search for Smith.ai. According to the pricing page, every plan includes lead screening, qualification and intake, agents staffed around the clock, and a dashboard. The page also says there are no setup fees, no overseas agents and no long-term contracts, since billing is month to month. There's a 10% discount if you commit to 12 months.

Transfer destinations are where the plans differ. Starter includes 1 free transfer destination, Basic includes 2, Pro includes 10, and each extra one is $15 a month.

Spam doesn't count. The page says that as long as the lines you forward pass caller ID, you won't be charged for spam or unsolicited sales calls.

The page advertises a 30-day money-back guarantee. The FAQ on the same page describes it as a refund of your first plan if you decide in the first two weeks that the service isn't for you. Ask which window applies before you start.

The add-ons are where the bill grows

The plan price covers a call being answered and the intake taken. Much of what an owner actually wants from a receptionist is sold per call on top of that. These are from the pricing page:

Here's how that adds up on Starter. Thirty calls cost $300. If you want each one booked on your calendar and a text sent to you about it, that's $1.50 plus $0.50, so another $60, for $360 in total. A month with 45 calls puts 15 calls in overage at $11.50, plus the same $2 of add-ons on all 45, which comes to $562.50. So the bill climbs in exactly the months you have the least time to return calls.

What the automated receptionist plans include

The automated plans answer with software instead of a person. The page lists round-the-clock answering, recording, transcription, lead qualification, scheduling, integrations and analytics on the free plan. Pro adds dedicated onboarding, live support and custom SMS branding. Enterprise adds full-service setup, custom prompting, unlimited custom integrations, multi-location support and a success manager.

If you want a person available as a fallback, read the plan list closely. The only automated plan where the page says calls can be transferred to a live North America-based receptionist is Enterprise, at $500 a month. The Free and Pro listings don't mention it.

The automated plans are also month to month. The page says known spam numbers are filtered out before they're answered, and that you can remove up to 10% of your calls from each bill as spam you picked out yourself.

How Smith.ai compares with a missed-call text back

A receptionist, live or automated, answers the call. A missed-call text back works on the calls you don't answer. Within a minute, the caller gets a text from your business number asking what they need and where they are. Their answers come in writing, anything you've flagged as urgent pings your phone, and everything else goes onto one list for your callback.

You don't have to pick one. You can send nights and weekends to a live service, where a human voice helps a panicked caller, and let the text back catch the calls you miss during the workday. I put per-minute services like Ruby and PATLive next to Smith.ai in answering service cost, and I go through the tradeoff in more detail in answering service vs missed-call text back.

How to tell whether Smith.ai is worth it for you

Start with last month's call log. Count the calls you missed, not the total, and split them into new callers and people you already know. Then price your busiest month on Starter or Basic with the add-ons you'd actually turn on, not the plan price alone. If most missed callers are new customers who'd happily text you their address and problem, you'd be paying per call for a receptionist to write down what those callers would have typed into a text thread themselves. If your callers are older, upset, or calling from landlines, a live person is worth the per-call rate.

What stays human

With a receptionist or a text back, the judgment calls stay with you. Neither one will price the job or decide who gets squeezed in tomorrow at 7 a.m. You write the intake questions and decide what's urgent enough to interrupt dinner. And when a regular replies "just call me," you're the one who calls.

Get a second look before you sign

The free 20 minute process audit starts with where your missed calls go today. Bring a month of your call log, and if you have a Smith.ai quote, bring that too. I'll tell you plainly whether a receptionist, a text back, or both fits the way your phone actually rings. Book the audit here.