Buyer’s guide · August 2026
How much does an AI receptionist cost in the UK?
The short answer: published UK prices mostly sit between about £40 and £350 a month for a self-serve AI phone answering service, with managed and hybrid AI-plus-human services running higher. The longer answer is that the headline price is the least reliable number on any provider’s website, including ours — so this page shows you which numbers actually decide what you pay.
ORLA’s prices, so you are not hunting for them: £69 a month for 150 answered minutes, £129 for 400, £349 for 1,500 managed for you. No VAT added. No setup fee on the first two. No minimum contract. 7-day free trial. The full detail is on the pricing page.
The four ways UK providers charge, and who each one suits
Almost every AI receptionist in the UK uses one of four models. They can produce wildly different bills from the same set of calls, which is why comparing headline prices across models tells you very little.
1. Per minute
You pay for the talk time you use, often somewhere between 20p and 75p a minute. Cheap if you take four calls a week, alarming in a month where a job goes wrong and everyone rings. The risk is not the rate, it is that you cannot forecast the bill.
2. Per call
A fixed amount per answered call, typically £1 to £3. Simple to understand, but it prices a thirty-second wrong number the same as a five-minute booking, and it quietly punishes the businesses whose callers actually talk.
3. Flat fee with included minutes
A monthly price with a bundle of answered minutes attached — the model ORLA uses. The bill is predictable, and the only question worth asking is what happens when you exceed the bundle. Ask that question out loud before you sign anything.
4. Flat fee, “unlimited”
Attractive and increasingly common. Read the fair-use clause, because every minute of AI voice has a real cost to the provider, so unlimited is always bounded somewhere — the only question is whether the boundary is written down where you can see it, or applied later when you are the customer costing them money.
The costs that never appear on a pricing page
The gap between the price you compare and the money that leaves your account is usually made up of these. Every one of them is a fair question to put to any provider, including us.
- VAT. If the provider is VAT registered, add 20%. A £99 headline is £118.80. Ring Orla Ltd is not VAT registered, so the price shown is the total payable — and if that changes, this page changes.
- Setup or onboarding fees. Frequently several hundred pounds, and frequently disclosed only at the checkout. ORLA: nothing on Starter or Pro, £299 on the managed Front Desk plan and nowhere else.
- Number rental. If you are given a new number rather than diverting your own, it usually carries a monthly cost. Diverting the number already on your van costs you nothing extra.
- Your own call-divert charges. These come from your mobile or landline provider, not from the AI provider, and almost nobody mentions them. Check your own tariff before you budget.
- Overage. The single biggest source of a nasty second month. Find out whether going over means an invoice, a throttle, or a conversation.
- Minimum term. A twelve-month contract turns a £99 trial into a £1,188 commitment. ORLA has no minimum contract.
- Integration and per-seat charges. Diary connections, CRM sync and extra users are often priced separately.
What a human receptionist actually costs, worked through
This comparison gets thrown around a lot with no arithmetic attached, so here is the arithmetic. Take a receptionist on a £24,000 salary in the 2026/27 tax year:
- Salary: £24,000.
- Employer’s National Insurance: 15% of earnings above the secondary threshold of £96 a week (£4,992 a year) — 15% × £19,008 = £2,851. Rate and threshold from gov.uk, checked 23 August 2026.
- Workplace pension: the automatic-enrolment employer minimum of 3% of qualifying earnings between £6,240 and £50,270 — 3% × £17,760 = £533.
That is about £27,400 a year, or roughly £2,280 a month, before holiday cover, sick cover, recruitment, training, a desk, a phone system or the fact that one person cannot answer two calls at once. It is a real number and it is why the comparison is made.
But we are not going to pretend it is a like-for-like swap, because it is not. A person exercises judgement, calms an angry customer, and knows when a rule should be broken. An AI receptionist answers the calls that were going to voicemail anyway. Most of our customers are not replacing anybody — they are one or two people who never had a receptionist and were losing calls to a phone in a van. If you have a reception team, the honest pitch is overflow cover for 08:40 and the lunch hour, not redundancies.
The only calculation that actually matters
Forget the market range. The question is whether it pays for you, and that is a three-line sum you can do in your head:
- How many calls do you genuinely miss in a month?
- What share of those would have turned into work — not what you hope, what you would actually bet on?
- What is one of those jobs worth to you?
Multiply the three. If the answer is bigger than the monthly price by a comfortable margin, it pays; if it is close, it does not, because no receptionist converts every call and anyone telling you otherwise is selling. For a trade where a single callout is worth a few hundred pounds, one recovered job a month usually clears a £69 plan several times over. For a business whose average job is £40, the sum is much tighter and you should be sceptical of anybody who says otherwise.
Questions worth asking any provider before you pay
- Can I ring a working line right now and hear it, without giving you my details first?
- Is VAT added to that price?
- What exactly happens when I go over my minutes?
- Is there a minimum term, and what does cancelling involve?
- Does it tell my callers it is an AI?
- What will it refuse to do — and is that written down anywhere public?
- Where are my call recordings stored, for how long, and can I have them deleted?
ORLA’s answers to the last two are on the what ORLA will not do page and the trust and privacy page. If a provider cannot point you at a public page for either, that is the answer.
Common questions
How much does an AI receptionist cost in the UK?
Published UK prices in 2026 mostly sit between about £40 and £350 a month for a self-serve AI phone answering service, with managed and hybrid AI-plus-human services running higher. What moves the number is how you are charged — per minute, per call, a flat fee, or a bundle of included minutes — and how many calls you actually take. ORLA is £69 a month for 150 answered minutes, £129 for 400, and £349 for 1,500 managed.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than a human receptionist?
On cost alone, yes, and by a wide margin: a receptionist on £24,000 costs an employer roughly £27,400 a year once employer National Insurance and the minimum workplace pension are added, which is about £2,280 a month before holiday cover, recruitment or a desk. But it is not a like-for-like swap. A person handles judgement, complaints and the awkward call. An AI receptionist handles the calls nobody was able to reach. We would rather you bought it as overflow cover than as a redundancy plan.
Are there setup fees?
It depends entirely on the provider, and this is where quoted prices and real prices part company. ORLA charges no setup fee on Starter or Pro. The Front Desk plan, which is managed for you, carries a £299 setup fee and that is the only plan it applies to.
Is VAT added on top?
For most providers, yes — a £99 headline is £118.80 out of your account. Ring Orla Ltd is not VAT registered, so the price you see is the total payable. That will change if the company crosses the VAT threshold, and this page will change with it.
What happens if I go over my included minutes?
Ask any provider this before you sign, because the answer varies more than the headline price does. Some meter every minute, some cut you off, some send a surprise invoice. ORLA sets a fair-use position rather than an automatic overage invoice: you are contacted at 125% of your plan's minutes to move you to the right plan, and the hard limit is 200%.
Is there a free trial?
ORLA runs a 7-day free trial, with nothing charged until day eight, and no minimum contract afterwards. Before that, there is a faster and cheaper test: ring the demonstration line on 020 4538 1650 and try to catch it out. That costs nothing and tells you more than a trial signup form.
The cheapest way to evaluate any of this. Ring 020 4538 1650. It is a working line answered by the same system a customer’s callers reach. Describe your business the way an awkward caller would and try to break it. Costs nothing, tells you more than any pricing page.