Best AI receptionist UK (2026): 11 compared

Last checked 10 October 2026. Every competitor price on this page was read on that provider’s own website on that date (Sayora, added later, on 12 October, and BT Business, which launched on 1 October, on 15 October), and each entry names the page we read, with the date, under it.

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. If you only want the short version of what Ringmere does and costs, it is on our AI receptionist UK page.

The UK AI receptionist price index carries every published entry price, re-read monthly with a change log and a CSV, and covers six providers not compared here.

How we compared

Ringmere is our own product and we ranked this list ourselves, so read the order as ours, not as an independent verdict. What we can make checkable is the evidence. For every provider we looked at four things, and only on its own website:

• Published prices. The entry price, what it includes (calls or minutes) and the rate once you go over. Where a price is not published, we say so rather than guess.
• UK numbers. Whether a UK number comes with it or you keep your own by forwarding, and whether you are billed in pounds.
• What it does on a call. Takes a message, puts the call through, or books into a calendar during the call, and on which plan.
• Contract and trial terms. Monthly or longer, and how you can try it before you pay.

We did not score voice quality out of ten, because a demo tells you little about how a product handles your own callers. That test is yours to run, and almost every product here offers a trial, a free plan or a test line.

The short version

*Entry prices as shown on each provider’s own UK site on 10 October 2026. Ringmere, Hey Jodie, IONOS, Fasthosts and Answer.co.uk say their prices exclude VAT or tax; Sayora says it is not VAT-registered, so its price is the whole bill; Cyberstaff, ARROW and RingCentral do not say on the pages we read, so ask. Always confirm current pricing on the provider’s own site before you buy.

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. Reschedules, cancellations, text reminders and missed-call text-back are on every plan, and Growth and Pro add two-way WhatsApp and SMS chat. After the call, every plan can send the owner’s alerts to WhatsApp (missed calls, urgent calls, new bookings and a daily summary), remind you of quotes still waiting, list each week the questions callers asked that it could not answer, so you can answer them once, and text each customer once after an appointment asking for an honest Google review. A public REST API and signed webhooks connect it to your own systems on every plan too. A free UK local number is included, or you keep your own and forward it. Its customer records are held in a London database; live call audio is processed in the United States by Twilio and OpenAI under UK GDPR transfer safeguards, and every sub-processor is 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, diaries that must live inside practice or salon software it does not connect to, taking payments, 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 threshold in its terms of 1,000 call events per 30-day period, which suits a business whose phone rings all day. Its comparison table lists appointment bookings, call transfers and team members from the £99 Professional plan, and Zapier integrations and priority support from the £199 Premium plan; Enterprise starts from £500. Notifications come by email and through its iOS and Android apps. 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.

Sources (checked 10 October 2026): heyjodie.com/en-gb/pricing, heyjodie.com/en-gb/terms

Sayora, from £49/month

A newer UK entrant with one plan: £49 a month on early-access pricing, with unlimited minutes under a fair-use policy its pricing page does not put a number on. Sayora says it is not VAT-registered, so £49 is the whole bill. A UK landline number is included, it offers your real availability and books into Google Calendar or Cal.com during the call, and every lead comes to you as a summary by text or email. Its home page says plainly that there is no live call transfer. You can build and test a demo without a card; the seven-day trial starts, with a card, when you claim your receptionist, and there is no contract. Its data page says data is handled under UK GDPR but does not say where it is processed, and the full sub-processor list is not published, so ask. We have not compared it in detail yet.

Sources (checked 12 October 2026): sayora.ai/pricing, sayora.ai, sayora.ai/data

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, all excluding VAT. Appointment scheduling starts on the £69 tier; IONOS names Google Calendar, Outlook, Cal.com and Calendly. Both offer a month’s free trial and can be cancelled at any time, and both point to European infrastructure: IONOS cites European infrastructure, and Fasthosts says call data is hosted in its EU-based data centres. 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.

Sources (checked 10 October 2026): ionos.co.uk/momentum/ai-receptionist, fasthosts.co.uk/spark/ai-receptionist

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 (then £0.25) and £120 for 600 (then £0.20), with bookings and calendar integration, SMS follow-ups and call transfers on every tier, and Google Calendar, Outlook and Calendly among its integrations. Its site cites ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials and offers a seven-day trial with no card and no contract. Its privacy policy and data processing addendum do not name the countries where call data is processed, which is the first question to ask. We have not compared it in detail yet.

Sources (checked 10 October 2026): cyberstaff.com/pricing, cyberstaff.com/privacy, cyberstaff.com/dpa

ARROW, from £99/month

A managed service aimed at UK trades: ARROW trains the receptionist for you, says it is live within about seven days, and charges £99 a month for 150 minutes with no contract. The convenience is the product. Its pricing page does not publish an overage rate (it moves you to a higher-usage plan instead) or say whether it books into a calendar, so ask for those, and where call data is held, in writing before you sign.

Sources (checked 10 October 2026): aiphonecalls.co.uk/pricing, aiphonecalls.co.uk

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 020 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 turns expensive the moment the phone gets busy, which is exactly when an answering service starts to matter.

Source (checked 10 October 2026): answer.co.uk/ai-virtual-receptionist-service

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

One of the best-known names in UK telephone answering, with human receptionists at its heart and an AI receptionist alongside, which it says is built on the 180 million real calls it has handled for clients. 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 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.

Source (checked 10 October 2026): moneypenny.com/uk/ai-receptionist

RingCentral AIR, from £32/month

RingCentral’s AI receptionist answers, routes calls by name, location and keyword, handles texts and escalates to your team with a call summary. Its UK pricing page lists £32 per account a month with 100 minutes included and £0.40 a minute after that, and lists appointment scheduling with Google and Outlook calendars as coming soon. In the UK it is sold as an add-on, so 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.

Sources (checked 10 October 2026): ringcentral.com/gb/en/pricing/ai-receptionist.html, ringcentral.com/gb/en/ai-receptionist.html

BT Business AI Receptionist, price on application

Launched on 1 October 2026 as the first product in “AI from BT”, with a national advertising campaign behind it. It answers 24/7 or in business hours, handles several calls at once, answers questions from your website or documents, captures leads, schedules appointments into Outlook or Google Calendar with confirmations, transcribes calls and routes callers to a person. BT says it works on any UK fixed or mobile network and that you keep your number. It is sold in bundles of 100 minutes a month on a monthly rolling contract, with no price on the page as we read it; overage is off by default and the service stops at 100% of the bundle until you buy more. An optional onboarding session is £150. The product page is titled “AI Receptionist from RingCentral”. Our Ringmere vs BT Business comparison has the detail.

Sources (checked 15 October 2026): business.bt.com/calling-messaging-tools/contact-centres/ai-receptionist, newsroom.bt.com/ai-from-bt-launched-to-help-uk-firms-adopt-ai-with-confidence-targeting-37-billion-lost-through-missed-calls

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

Three products UK buyers will meet in most lists, all priced in US dollars. Smith.ai’s AI receptionist has a free plan with 25 calls a month (then $3 a call) and a Pro plan from $150 a month for 75 calls, and complex calls can be passed to its live North America-based receptionists, a real safety net for legal and professional services. Dialzara starts at $29 a month for 60 minutes (then $0.48 a minute) and Rosie at $49 a month for 250 minutes, both with seven-day trials. For all three, weigh dollar billing, UK number provision and how deep the calendar booking really goes before committing.

Sources (checked 10 October 2026): smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist, dialzara.com/pricing, heyrosie.com/pricing

AI receptionist vs virtual receptionist in the UK

Many people searching for a virtual receptionist mean a person: a UK answering service whose staff pick up in your business’s name. That is a different product, and for some calls the better one. Here is what four established services publish:

Read on each provider’s own site on 10 October 2026. Answer.co.uk and Connect Communications state their prices exclude VAT; CSnotepad does not say.

Sources (checked 10 October 2026): moneypenny.com/uk/ai-receptionist, answer.co.uk/pay-as-you-go-call-answering-service, connect-communications.co.uk/pricing/classic, csnotepad.co.uk/telephone-answering-prices

• Pick a person when calls need judgement on the line: a distressed caller, a complex legal or financial enquiry, a complaint that needs a human voice. A human service also suits a business whose callers simply expect to speak to someone.
• Pick an AI receptionist when most calls are routine bookings and questions. It answers 24/7 on a flat plan, checks your live diary and books the appointment during the call, where a typical answering service takes a message for you to act on unless you pay for diary management.
• Or combine them. Several AI products hand complex calls to people: Answer.co.uk can route to its human answering service and Smith.ai to its North American receptionists. Ringmere puts them through to your own team, or passes them on by email.

The full trade-off is in AI receptionist vs answering service.

The best pick by business type

Where Ringmere fits, we link to the page that shows how; where something else fits better, we say so.

• Hair salons, barbers and nail salons: Ringmere. It books the right service from your live diary while you work (more than one stylist or barber on Growth and Pro). See salons, barbers and nail salons.
• Dental, physio and private clinics: Ringmere for routine bookings into Google Calendar, Outlook or its own diary; it escalates anything urgent and never gives clinical advice. It does not connect to dental or clinic practice software, so if your diary must live there, ask every provider, us included, whether it can write to it. If you want a person handling patient calls, Moneypenny lists private healthcare among its sectors. See dental practices, physiotherapists and clinics.
• Vets: Ringmere books routine appointments with the pet’s details and escalates emergencies to a person. See vets.
• Garages and MOT centres: Ringmere books MOTs and services into your diary while the workshop is busy. Moneypenny’s automotive AI demo handles MOT bookings too, on a quote. See garages.
• Plumbers, electricians and heating engineers: Ringmere if you want the job, address and access details taken and the visit booked. ARROW is aimed squarely at trades if you would rather it was set up for you, and Hey Jodie’s unlimited minutes suit a line that rings all day when you mainly want the details sent over. See plumbers, electricians and heating engineers.
• Restaurants and takeaways: Ringmere books tables against live availability and takes orders priced from your real menu; payment stays with you. See restaurants and takeaways.
• Hotels, B&Bs and guesthouses: Ringmere checks live availability and books rooms, with Beds24 and Cloudbeds sync on Growth and Pro. See hotels.
• Solicitors, accountants and other professional firms: Moneypenny is the stronger fit if you want people answering, with a Solutions Architect for ongoing support. Ringmere suits a firm that wants new enquiries taken in detail and consultations booked, and it never gives legal or tax advice. See solicitors and accountants.
• A handful of calls a month, messages only: Answer.co.uk’s AI at £10 a month plus 85p a call, or IONOS and Fasthosts at £39 for 30 calls, will cost you less than we do.
• Already on RingCentral, or you need desk extensions and call queues: RingCentral AIR on your existing phone system, or a cloud phone system first.

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