The best AI receptionists for UK businesses (2026)

Search for the best AI receptionist and you will find a dozen lists, most of them written by a vendor, and most of them awarding themselves a 9.8 out of 10. We build Ringmere, so we are not pretending to be neutral. What we can be is straight with you: the published prices, the real differences between these products, and who each one genuinely suits, including the cases where the right answer is a competitor. The stakes are set out in our UK Missed Call Report 2026: for most UK service businesses the phone line carries four figures a month.

The short version

*Entry prices as read on each provider’s own UK site on 26 September 2026, excluding VAT. RingCentral’s UK price is on request; the £32 is from its 2025 launch announcement. Always confirm current pricing on the provider’s own site.

Ringmere, from £49/month

Ours, so judge this entry with that in mind. Ringmere is built for one job: UK appointment businesses that lose bookings to missed calls. It answers your calls 24/7 in a natural voice, quotes only the services and prices you approve, checks live availability and books straight into your Google Calendar, Outlook or built-in diary during the call, then texts a confirmation. Growth and Pro plans add two-way WhatsApp and SMS. Data is stored in the UK and GDPR-ready, with every sub-processor named in our privacy policy. The AI and recording disclosure is switched on by default. Pricing is a published flat fee with included minutes and a safety ceiling, so a busy month cannot blow up the bill: at the ceiling a call is forwarded to your team if you have given Ringmere a number to ring, and otherwise the caller is asked to try again later.

Calls for different teams are covered too: on Growth and Pro the receptionist puts callers through to departments such as Bookings or Accounts from what they say, or when they press a key. Where it is not the right fit: a full office phone system with desk extensions and call queues, businesses that want human agents on the line, and anything outside the UK for now. Plans and pricing are public, and every plan starts with a 7-day free trial.

Hey Jodie, from £49/month

The closest match on price, with a different idea of what £49 should buy. Every Hey Jodie plan includes unlimited minutes under a fair-use policy of 1,000 call events a month, which suits a trade whose phone rings all day. Appointment bookings, call transfers and team members are listed from the £99 Professional plan; Zapier integrations and priority support from the £199 Premium plan. The trial is seven days with no card, billing is month to month, and its terms say call data is processed in Ireland and the United States. We compare the two in detail in Ringmere vs Hey Jodie.

IONOS and Fasthosts, from £39/month

Two brands from the same group selling the same three tiers: £39 for 30 calls a month (then £0.49 a call), £69 for 100 calls (then £0.39), and £99 for unlimited calls. Calendar booking starts on the £69 tier, into Google Calendar, Outlook, Cal.com or Calendly. Both offer a month’s free trial and cite European infrastructure. The meter is the thing to understand: a ten-second wrong number and a ten-minute enquiry each count as one call. Whether that beats a per-minute plan depends entirely on your call log. Details in Ringmere vs IONOS and Ringmere vs Fasthosts.

Cyberstaff, from £30/month

The cheapest UK plan we found that includes calendar booking: £30 a month for 100 minutes (then £0.30 a minute), £75 for 300 and £120 for 600, with bookings into Google Calendar, Outlook or Calendly, SMS follow-ups and transfers on every tier. Its site cites ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials and offers a seven-day trial with no card. It does not state where call data is processed, which is the first question to ask. We have not compared it in detail yet.

ARROW, from £99/month

A managed service aimed at UK trades: ARROW sets the receptionist up for you, says it is done in under seven days, and charges £99 a month for 150 minutes with no contract. The convenience is the product. Its pages do not publish an overage rate, trial terms, whether it books into a calendar, or where data is held, so ask for those in writing before you sign.

Answer.co.uk, from £10/month plus £0.85 a call

A long-established UK answering bureau with an AI product priced per call: Lite is £10 a month plus £0.85 a call, Growth £30 with 50 calls included, Plus £120 with 200 and Advanced £300 with 500, all plus £0.85 for extra calls. Appointment scheduling is on the Plus and Advanced plans, transfer to a live agent costs extra, and a London number is included. There is no free trial as such: a free test call, then a £25 deposit to activate. Per-call pricing is excellent at very low volumes and flips expensive the moment the phone gets busy, which is exactly when an answering service starts to matter.

Moneypenny, AI from £25/month, human answering quote-led

The UK’s best-known name in telephone answering, with two decades of human-receptionist heritage and an AI receptionist added alongside. Its AI receptionist page says it starts from £25 a month and that pricing is built around what you need, so the next step is a call; the human answering service is quote-led. If you want real people answering under your brand, with an account manager and the scale to handle complex or regulated calls, Moneypenny is the safest pair of hands on this list. The trade-off is process: a quote and managed onboarding rather than a same-day self-serve setup. See Ringmere vs Moneypenny, or the Moneypenny alternative page if you already know you want a published price.

RingCentral AIR, on request

RingCentral’s AI receptionist answers, routes by name and keyword, books into Google Calendar and Outlook, sends texts and escalates to your team with a call summary. Its UK pages do not publish a price; the 2025 launch announcement said from £32 a month with 100-minute bundles. It is the natural pick if you already run RingCentral phones and the wrong shape if you do not. Details in Ringmere vs RingCentral AIR.

US-built options: Smith.ai, Dialzara and Rosie

Three products UK buyers will meet in most lists. Smith.ai pairs AI with North American human receptionists, a real safety net for legal and professional services, billed in dollars (reported from about $95 a month in July 2026). Dialzara (reported from about £24 a month) and Rosie (reported from about $49 a month) are simple self-serve AI answering products. For all three, weigh dollar billing, UK number provision and how deep the calendar booking really goes before committing; we have not re-verified their prices since July.

How to actually choose

Ignore the scores out of ten, including ours. Ask every provider the same eight questions: flat fee or usage-priced, does it complete the booking or just take a message, where is caller data hosted, what happens on an emergency, can it invent an answer, can you keep your number, does it cover WhatsApp and SMS, and how fast can you go live. The full list is here: how to choose an AI receptionist, 8 questions to ask any provider.

And the only test that matters is on your own line: start a free 7-day Ringmere trial → (cancel anytime), ring your own number, and judge what you hear.

Frequently asked questions