Smith.ai alternatives
You're probably here because the Smith.ai invoice grew faster than your caseload did. At $3.00 a call on the free tier and roughly $2.00 once you're on the $150 Pro plan, a busy intake week reprices your whole month. That's the arithmetic people come to check.
| Service | Bills by | Entry price | Overage published? |
|---|---|---|---|
| GreetKeeper | Answered call | $49 for 200 calls | Yes, $0.45 a call |
| Ruby | Per minute | $250/mo for 50 minutes | No |
| Rosie | Per minute | Professional $49/mo for 250 minutes | No |
| Goodcall | Per unique caller | Starter $79/mo ($66 annual) for 100 unique customers | Yes |
| AnswerConnect | Per minute | Around $350/mo for 200 minutes, plus a setup fee of about $49.99 | Not on their site |
| Smith.ai | Per call | Free tier at $0 for 25 calls, then $3.00 a call | Yes |
Read from each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026, except vendors who gate pricing behind a form. We are one of the options listed and you should read this knowing that.
What Smith.ai does that we do not
Switching costs time, so weigh these capabilities against it before you move.
- A human receptionist team behind the AI, so a call the assistant cannot handle reaches a person who works for them rather than voicemail.
- Deep legal tooling: native Clio and MyCase integration, and a client base reported to be heavily law firms.
- They have been running for years and carry the reviews and case studies that come with that. We have none.
Why people leave Smith.ai
Not a general complaint about the category. The specific wall this vendor puts in front of you.
Almost nobody leaves Smith.ai over the product. They leave over the per-call rate at volume: at about $2.00 a call on Pro, 300 intake calls costs more than a part-time hire, and a single ad campaign that lands in your phone queue can double the bill without anyone approving it. The second reason is narrower. If you're not a law firm, you're paying for a Clio-shaped bench you never send a call to.
What the bill does as you grow
The entry price is the cheapest month you will ever have. This is the shape of the rest.
Smith.ai is the rare vendor whose unit price falls as you grow: $3.00 a call at the free tier, $2.00 to $2.17 on the $150 Pro plan, and $1.60 to $1.67 on the $500 Enterprise plan. That's honest and it's published. It's still a per-call rate that never drops below about a dollar sixty. Our Scale plan works out at roughly $0.17 per included call, and $0.25 for anything past 2,000. Below about 60 calls a month their free tier beats both of those, which is worth saying out loud.
What moving off Smith.ai actually involves
Forwarding takes five minutes. Here is the part that takes an afternoon.
Smith.ai answers on a forwarding number, so the port itself is a five-minute change at your carrier. The real work is your intake script. Firms usually have a long conflict-check question list, a set of practice areas that route to different attorneys, and a rule about which matters get booked versus which get a callback. Rewrite that once for us, run both on split forwarding for two weeks, and read the transcripts side by side before you cancel anything.
Where we fall short
Common questions
Is anything cheaper than Smith.ai if I still want per-call billing?
We do, at $49 for 200 answered calls and $0.45 after that. Smith.ai's free tier is cheaper than anything if your volume is genuinely under 25 calls a month. Between those two points the math is simple enough to do on your last invoice.
Will a per-minute service be cheaper than Smith.ai for a law firm?
Rarely. Intake calls run long, and per-minute meters like Rosie or Dialzara charge for every minute of the conversation you actually wanted. Smith.ai bills per call, so length never enters it. So does GreetKeeper, at a different rate.
Can I keep Smith.ai for intake and send my overflow elsewhere?
Yes, and it's the cheapest way to test. Point your main line at Smith.ai and your overflow or after-hours number somewhere else, then compare the transcripts after a month of real callers.
Price it against your last Smith.ai invoice
Count the calls on it, then read our rate card against them. The math takes you a minute.