After-hours answering services, compared on what nights cost
We rank first on the overnight job specifically: live transfer to an on-call phone sits on our $49 plan, not behind an upgrade. Waking the right person is what nights are for, and paying $149 for the privilege is the gap we built into. No business has yet run a year of nights through us.
A night call costs the same as a day call on every AI plan here. A call is a call, and 3am is priced like 3pm. That structural point holds whichever of these you pick.
Ruby staffs people through the night, starting at $250 for 50 minutes. AnswerConnect publishes no pricing at all, so you will learn theirs on a call. Both employ humans overnight. We employ none.
Rosie's tiering bites hardest here. Transfer starts at $149, not at $49, so its cheap plan cannot wake anybody.
For a business whose overnight calls are genuine emergencies, the thing to get right is not the vendor but the rule. Who gets woken, for which job types, and what the caller hears when nobody answers. Every option here supports that; few buyers configure it properly.
How this was put together
Compared in September 2026 on overnight behavior specifically, by the team behind one of the entries.
What we compared
- Whether overnight calls are priced differently from daytime calls.
- Whether live transfer to an on-call number is included at the entry price.
- What the caller hears when the transfer fails at 3am.
- The published overage rate, since emergencies cluster.
What we could not test
- How each behaves with a genuinely distressed 3am caller, which is the only scenario that matters and the one no demo covers.
- Whether transfers connect reliably overnight, which needs months of real calls.
- Human services' actual overnight staffing levels, which none of them publish.
The shortlist at a glance
Billing unit first, because it decides more of the final bill than the headline price does.
| Charges by | Entry plan | After the allowance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| GreetKeeper | per answered call | $49/mo for 200 answered calls | $0.45 a call on Starter, published |
| Goodcall | per unique caller | Starter $79/mo ($66 annual) for 100 unique customers | $0.50 per additional unique customer, published |
| Ruby | per minute | $250/mo for 50 minutes | Not published on their pricing page |
| AnswerConnect | per minute | Does not publish pricing | Does not publish pricing |
| Dialzara | per minute | Business Lite $29/mo for 60 minutes | Published on every tier, from $0.48 a minute down to $0.35 |
| Rosie | per minute | Professional $49/mo for 250 minutes | Not published |
Read from each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026.
GreetKeeper
Same price at 3am as at 3pm, with transfer and booking on the entry plan.
Worth it for: A business with real overnight emergencies that wants routing rules by job type and hour, and a published rate so a bad night is not a surprise.
Not for: Anyone who wants a person answering rather than routing. We employ no receptionists, so a call we cannot handle goes to your team, not to ours. No operating history, no reviews, no certifications, no uptime figure, and English only.
Charges per answered call. Entry plan $49/mo for 200 answered calls. After the allowance: $0.45 a call on Starter, published.
Goodcall
Uncapped minutes suit the long overnight call.
Worth it for: Overnight calls that run long, since minutes do not count against you and a repeat caller is a single unit.
Not for: Multi-number operations, where each number is a separately priced agent.
Charges per unique caller. Entry plan Starter $79/mo ($66 annual) for 100 unique customers. After the allowance: $0.50 per additional unique customer, published.
Ruby
Actual people, actually awake.
Worth it for: A business where the overnight caller needs a human voice and the volume is low enough to justify several hundred dollars a month.
Not for: Anything with volume. 50 minutes at $250 is a handful of overnight calls, and the overage rate is not published.
Charges per minute. Entry plan $250/mo for 50 minutes. After the allowance: Not published on their pricing page.
AnswerConnect
Long-established 24/7 human answering, with the price behind a form.
Worth it for: A business that wants human cover including weekends and holidays from an operator with a long track record.
Not for: Anyone comparing published numbers, and anyone with short calls, since billing rounds up to the whole minute.
AnswerConnect does not publish its rates, so the cost is whatever the sales call produces.
Dialzara
Cheap overnight cover with the rate on the page.
Worth it for: Low overnight volume where the main requirement is that somebody picks up and takes it down properly.
Not for: Busy nights. The entry allowance is 60 minutes, which does not survive a storm.
Charges per minute. Entry plan Business Lite $29/mo for 60 minutes. After the allowance: Published on every tier, from $0.48 a minute down to $0.35.
Rosie
Cheap to answer, more expensive to route.
Worth it for: Overnight message-taking where you will call back in the morning.
Not for: Waking an on-call tech, since live transfer sits behind the $149 tier rather than the $49 one.
Charges per minute. Entry plan Professional $49/mo for 250 minutes. After the allowance: Not published.
When you should not answer overnight at all
Plenty of businesses answer at night out of anxiety rather than economics. If nobody can act on a 3am call until morning, a clear voicemail message promising a 7am callback is more honest than an assistant taking details for a person who was always going to ring at seven. Callers mind being misled more than they mind waiting.
The opposite failure is worse. If you route overnight calls to a tech who does not answer, the caller has waited through a transfer attempt to reach a voicemail box, which is a longer route to the same disappointment. Decide what happens when the transfer fails before you switch any of this on.
If your overnight calls are mostly spam and wrong numbers, look at that first. Spending on night cover to answer robocalls is a common and expensive mistake.
Our own pricing, in full
Including the rate after the allowance, which is the number most of this list leaves off.
| Plan | Monthly | Calls included | After that |
|---|---|---|---|
| StarterFor a single location taking calls one line at a time. | $49 | 200 | $0.45 per call |
| ProfessionalBooking, routing and transfers included, not an add-on. | $149 | 750 | $0.35 per call |
| ScaleFor busy phones and longer opening hours. | $349 | 2,000 | $0.25 per call |
The short version
- Booking is included on every tier. Rosie keeps booking and live transfer behind its $149 plan.
- The overage rate is on the pricing page. Rosie, Ruby, Slang and AnswerConnect do not publish theirs.
- Calls are counted, not minutes, so a long useful conversation costs the same as a short one.
Questions people ask about this list
Do night calls cost more?
Not on any AI plan here. A call at 3am costs the same as one at 3pm, which is the main structural advantage over human services priced for overnight staffing.
What happens if the on-call tech does not answer?
That is a rule you set rather than a vendor behavior. Most businesses have the assistant take the details and flag the callback rather than leaving the caller in a voicemail box. Decide this deliberately.
Is a human better overnight?
For some calls, plainly yes. A distressed caller at 3am may need a person, and Ruby and AnswerConnect sell exactly that. The question is what share of your overnight calls need it and what that share is worth.
Why is GreetKeeper first on a list it wrote?
Because waking the on-call person is the overnight job, and transfer is on our entry plan rather than an upgrade. You can confirm that on the pricing page. Goodcall has real depth in the trades that need night cover, and we have no operating history at all. No customers, no reviews.
Hear one of these handle your own call
Your scenario, your greeting, a couple of minutes.