What is the cheapest call answering service for a small business?
- The short answer
- The cheapest call answering service for a small business is the one with the lowest bill at your real call volume, not the lowest sticker. GreetKeeper costs $49 a month for 200 answered calls, with appointment booking included and $0.45 for each call past that. Sticker prices under $49 usually cover a small bundle of minutes that a busy month uses up.
The longer answer
Entry prices in this market start very low. Smith.ai has a free tier for 25 calls and charges $3.00 a call after that. Dialzara's Business Lite plan is $29 a month for 60 minutes. PATLive's $49 pay-as-you-go plan includes no minutes and bills $2.99 a minute. All three were read on the vendors' own pricing pages in September 2026.
Each of those can be the right price for a phone that barely rings. Once you take a few calls a day, the unit takes over. Sixty minutes is about twenty three-minute calls, and a free tier of 25 calls is less than one call a day.
Human services start higher because a person is on every call. Ruby's entry plan is $250 for 50 minutes. You're paying for receptionist time, so the bill climbs with every long conversation.
Watch what the entry plan leaves out, too. Rosie's $49 plan holds 250 minutes, and appointment booking sits on its $149 plan. A plan that can't book leaves every appointment for you to arrange on a callback.
How to find the cheapest plan for your phone
Count last month's inbound calls from your carrier's log, and strike out the numbers you know are spam. That's your real volume.
Guess an average length. Three minutes is a fair starting point for bookings and quotes, and service calls often run longer.
Price each plan both ways. For a per-minute plan, multiply calls by length. For a per-call plan, compare calls against the allowance and add the overage rate for the rest.
Then add what you'd pay to add booking, a second number or a setup fee. Those extras decide more small-business bills than the headline does.
How GreetKeeper handles it
GreetKeeper bills per answered call, so call length never moves your bill. Starter is $49 for 200 calls, Professional is $149 for 750 and Scale is $349 for 2,000, with $0.45, $0.35 and $0.25 for each call past the allowance.
Booking into Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook comes on every plan. There's no setup fee, and robocalls and spam calls are screened out before the greeting and never count toward your plan.
Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial with every feature on and no card needed. Forward your line for two weeks and you'll see your own call count before you pay a cent.
Low-cost answering service questions
Is there a free answering service for small business?
Some vendors offer a free tier with a small call cap, such as Smith.ai's 25 calls before $3.00 a call, as of September 2026. GreetKeeper starts every plan with a 14-day free trial of the full product, with no card needed.
Is a per-minute or per-call answering service cheaper?
Per-call billing is cheaper once your average call runs past a minute or two. A per-minute plan charges more for the long calls that book real work. GreetKeeper charges the same for a one-minute call and a twelve-minute one.
How much should a small business pay for an answering service?
For 100 to 200 calls a month, an AI answering service with booking included starts at $49 on GreetKeeper. Human services start around $165 to $250 a month for 50 minutes, as of September 2026.
Hear it take one of your calls
Two minutes, your own scenario, no card.