AI Receptionist or Answering Service: What's the UK Cost?

Ask five trade owners what a missed call costs them and you’ll get five different answers - a bathroom refit, a boiler breakdown, a job that went to whoever picked up first. The fix is either a human answering service or an AI receptionist, and the pricing across both is a genuine mix of per-minute bundles, per-call pay-as-you-go and flat monthly fees. Here’s what UK providers are actually charging, and what’s included at each price point.

Human answering services vs AI receptionists

A human answering service puts a real person on the line, usually working from a script, who takes a message or transfers the call. An AI receptionist replaces that person with a voice bot that answers, asks qualifying questions and can log the enquiry or book it straight into a calendar - some vendors, such as Answer, sell both a human line and an AI product side by side [4][5]. Neither model is inherently cheaper; the pricing structure is what actually drives the bill, and providers currently use three different ones.

Per-minute plans

AnswerConnect’s UK plans are billed on minutes used, in fixed monthly bands. The Entry plan gives 150 minutes for £205 a month plus a one-off £49.99 setup fee, Growth gives 250 minutes for £245 with no setup fee, and Standard gives 350 minutes for £395 plus the same £49.99 setup charge [1]. Every plan bills additional minutes at £1.75 each, and AnswerConnect doesn’t charge for the first 30 sub-30-second calls in a billing cycle [1]. Smaller bands exist too - 25 minutes for £45 a month, 50 minutes for £89, or 75 minutes for £125 - useful where call volume is genuinely low, though the effective cost per minute is far higher on these entry tiers than on the 150-plus-minute plans [1].

Per-call plans

Answer prices its live human answering line by the call rather than the minute: £2.20 plus VAT per call for new customers, or £1.75 plus VAT for anyone who signed up before June 2025, with no monthly subscription or setup fee and volume discounts of up to 20% on bulk call-credit bundles [5]. Its AI receptionist product uses similar per-call logic but wrapped in monthly tiers: a Lite plan at £10 a month plus £0.85 per call with no calls included, a Growth plan at £30 a month for 50 included calls, a Plus plan at £120 a month for 200 calls, and an Advanced plan at £300 a month for 500 calls - every tier charges £0.85 for each call beyond its included allowance [4].

Credit-based and flat-fee AI receptionists

Some AI receptionists price in call-time credits rather than pounds-per-minute or pounds-per-call outright. Reception Genie sells a Basic plan at £7.99 a month for 2,400 credits (roughly 20 minutes of calls, at 120 credits per minute), a Pro plan at £14.99 a month for 6,000 credits (about 50 minutes), and an Enterprise plan at £24.99 a month for 13,200 credits (about 110 minutes), with no setup fee on any tier [2]. Others skip metering altogether: Down to Earth AI charges a flat £45 a month for phone answering and website live chat, regardless of call volume, plus a £299 one-off setup fee, with extra channels such as missed-call text-back, SMS, WhatsApp or Google Business Profile management priced at £23 a month each [3]. It’s sold with no minimum contract term and a 30-day money-back guarantee that covers the setup fee too [3].

Which model actually suits a trade business

A tradesperson taking a handful of calls a week is likely to pay less on a per-call plan than on a banded per-minute contract sized for volume they don’t have - Answer’s Lite AI tier or its £2.20-a-call human line both avoid paying for unused minutes [4][5]. A business fielding dozens of calls a day, or one where every missed enquiry is worth chasing, tends to do better on a flat monthly fee like Down to Earth AI’s £45, where the bill doesn’t move whether the phone rings twice or twenty times [3]. Credit-based plans such as Reception Genie’s sit in between: cheap at low volume, but worth checking the effective per-minute rate against a banded per-minute plan once call time climbs past an hour or so a month [2].

Whichever model is on the table, the same questions apply before signing: what happens to a call beyond the included minutes or calls, is there a setup fee that isn’t refunded if it doesn’t work out, and whether the plan covers evenings and weekends or only the working day.

What to do next

If missed calls are costing you jobs, work out roughly how many calls a month you’re actually handling before comparing plans - that number decides whether a per-call, per-minute or flat-fee provider comes out cheaper for your business. Loomwork Ai’s paid audit covers phone handling as part of a wider look at how enquiries are converting.