How much does an answering service cost?

A live answering service in North America costs roughly $2.75 to $5.00 per minute once you divide the monthly plan by the minutes it includes, and services that bill by the call charge $8.50 to $11.50 USD for each one — a 20-second wrong number included. BotsDontSleep answers your line 24/7 for $0.60 CAD per answered minute, billed by the second, with $0 setup and no monthly minimum. The competitor figures below were read from each company's own pricing page on 13 September 2026; check their sites for current numbers.

What does an answering service cost per month?

Published entry plans start between $165 and $300 USD a month and run past $1,700 for 500 minutes. Abby Connect's Starter plan is $165 USD for 50 minutes. Ruby's Starter is $250 USD for 50 minutes. Smith.ai's Starter is $300 USD for 30 calls. At the other end, Ruby's Professional plan is $1,725 USD for 500 minutes and Abby Connect's Growth plan is $1,380 USD for 500. AnswerConnect does not publish plan prices at all — its pricing page is a form — though its own blog quotes basic live answering at $300 to $500 a month and $1.50 to $1.75 per minute on 200 to 300 minutes.

Those are US-dollar figures. A Canadian buyer pays the conversion on top, often a card foreign-transaction fee as well, so convert both sides into one currency before comparing anything.

How do answering services actually bill you?

Three models, and the one you are on decides your bill more than the headline rate does.

Per minute, with a monthly allowance. You buy a block — 50, 100, 200, 500 minutes — and pay overage when you run past it. Ruby and Abby Connect both work this way. The effective rate falls as the block grows: Ruby's 50-minute plan works out to $5.00 USD a minute, its 500-minute plan to $3.45. You pay for the block whether you use it or not.

Per call. Smith.ai bills this way. Its published overage rates are $11.50 per call on Starter, $10.50 on Basic, and $8.50 on Pro. A call is a call regardless of length, which is generous on a nine-minute intake and punishing on a ten-second hang-up.

Per answered minute, no block. You pay for the seconds someone was actually on the line, with nothing bought in advance. This is what BotsDontSleep does at $0.60 CAD a minute. There is no plan to outgrow and no unused allowance to write off.

Smaller regional operators sometimes quote a fourth arrangement: a base monthly fee plus per-message or per-dispatch charges. Get it in writing — message fees stack fast.

What do the published 2026 rates look like side by side?

Rates read from ruby.com, smith.ai, abby.com and answerconnect.com on 13 September 2026. We are not affiliated with any of them; all names are the property of their owners. Our own numbers sit on the answering service cost page, and the line-by-line version of the Abby comparison is on our Abby Connect comparison.

Why do per-minute rates vary so much between services?

Because you are not buying minutes. You are buying who is on the other end of them.

A staffed service at $3.00 to $5.00 USD a minute is paying a trained receptionist, a supervisor, a floor, and the idle time between calls. That is a real cost structure and it explains the rate honestly. What it also buys is a person who can read a caller's tone, take a complaint without escalating it, and improvise when the script runs out.

The rate also moves with what the plan includes. Bilingual coverage, legal or medical intake scripting, calendar integration, and CRM write-back are line items at some vendors and bundled at others. Two quotes at the same per-minute rate can cover very different work, which is why comparing rate cards without comparing scopes produces the wrong answer about half the time.

At $0.60 CAD a minute there is no floor of receptionists and no idle time to fund, which is where the difference comes from. It is not a better deal on the same product. It is a different product at a different price, and the honest comparison is on what each one does with a call rather than on the rate alone.

Why does the billing increment matter more than the rate?

Because most business calls are short, and short calls are where the models diverge.

Take a wrong number that lasts 20 seconds. On per-second billing at $0.60 CAD a minute, that call costs 20 cents. On a per-call plan at Smith.ai's published $8.50 Pro overage rate, the same 20 seconds costs $8.50 USD. On a per-minute plan that rounds up to the next whole minute — a common term, and one worth reading the contract for — it costs one full minute at $2.76 to $5.00.

Now run it the other way. A twelve-minute new-patient intake costs $7.20 CAD on per-second billing and one call on a per-call plan. Per-call pricing wins on long calls. That is not a rhetorical concession; it is arithmetic, and if your average call runs past roughly ten minutes you should do it with your own numbers before you decide.

The question to ask a vendor is not "what is your rate." It is "what is your smallest billable unit, and do you round up." A service billing in whole minutes on a line averaging 45-second calls charges about a third more than its rate card implies.

What costs are not in the headline price?

Six things that show up on invoices and not on pricing pages:

• Overage rates that differ from your plan rate. Check whether minute 101 costs the same as minute 100.
• Rounding. Per-minute, per-30-seconds, or per-second. Ask.
• Holiday and after-hours surcharges. Some operators charge a premium for the hours you most want covered.
• Setup, onboarding, or scripting fees. Ruby, Smith.ai and Abby Connect all publish $0 setup. Smaller operators often do not.
• Annual commitments. Month-to-month and annual-billed-monthly are different products. Read which one the discount applies to.
• Currency. A US-dollar plan is a Canadian expense that moves with the exchange rate.

None of these are dishonest on their own. They are the reason two services quoting similar rates can bill far apart.

What does the same month cost on each model?

Assume 150 calls in a month averaging two minutes — 300 minutes of talk time. Two minutes is a planning figure, not a measured average; your own call log will say something different.

On a per-minute plan at $3.00 USD, 300 minutes is $900 USD — and you likely bought a 500-minute block to get there. On a per-call plan at $8.50 USD, 150 calls is $1,275 USD. On BotsDontSleep at $0.60 CAD per answered minute, 300 minutes is $180 CAD, billed by the second, nothing bought in advance.

Trades and shops sit at the short end of that distribution — a status check on a repair is 40 seconds, not four minutes — which is why per-second billing matters most for auto service shops and least for legal intake. A shop running an auto repair answering service in Edmonton through a winter no-start rush pays for a lot of very short calls.

How do you work out your own monthly bill?

Four steps, and the only input you need is last month's call log.

1. Pull your inbound call count and total talk time. Every carrier reports both. If duration is missing, count the calls and use a two-minute planning figure, flagged as an estimate rather than a measurement.
2. Subtract the calls you would not pay a service to handle. Robocalls, wrong numbers and hang-ups still cost money on a per-call plan and still cost seconds on a per-minute one. Count them separately so you can see what they are worth.
3. Price the same month on each model. Total minutes times the per-minute rate. Total calls times the per-call rate. Then the block plan you would have to buy to cover the total, including the part you would not use.
4. Add the notice period. A service with 30 days' notice to cancel costs one more month than the sticker price the day you leave. Put that number in the comparison rather than discovering it later.

Do all of it in one currency. Most of the published plans above are in US dollars, and a rate that looks close on paper stops looking close after conversion.

When is an answering service not worth the money?

Three cases, plainly.

If you take fewer than about twenty calls a month and you answer nearly all of them yourself, you do not have a phone problem. The phone in your pocket is already doing the job, and any plan with a monthly minimum will cost you more than the calls are worth.

If every caller needs judgment — a negotiation, a complaint that has already escalated, a price you decide case by case — a staffed human service is the better fit, and a per-call plan with real receptionists is what you should be pricing. BotsDontSleep answers, screens, books, and hands off with a summary. It does not argue with an angry customer on your behalf, and when a question falls outside what it has been trained on it says so rather than inventing an answer.

And if your calls routinely run long, per-call pricing is genuinely cheaper than per-minute. A per-call plan charges the same for a two-minute call and a fifteen-minute one. Run both models against your own average call length in a single currency. If the answer is per-call, buy per-call.

What should you ask before you sign?

Five questions: What is the smallest billable unit, and do you round up? What does overage cost, and is it the plan rate or higher? Are there holiday, after-hours, or per-message surcharges? Is there a setup, onboarding, or scripting fee? What is the notice period to cancel?

Get the answers in writing before the first invoice. Each one is the kind of thing a vendor answers plainly when the answer is fine and vaguely when it is not. To hear how ours handles a call, the demo line is +1 437-494-9110 — a live agent, not a recording. The virtual receptionist in Hamilton page shows what the same setup looks like for one city.