AI receptionists for dental practices, compared honestly
For a single practice the decision comes down to whether booking sits on the plan you can afford. Ours does, at $49, and the assistant can speak an AI disclosure at call start, which the Utah rule makes a product requirement. Rosie's $49 tier books nothing. That is why we lead this page.
Where we fall short is the anxious patient in pain. Smith.ai keeps a human team behind the assistant at $150 a month, which is a real clinical and reputational difference in a practice. We employ no receptionists, so a call we cannot handle goes to your front desk.
Before any of that, read the compliance question. If you are licensed in Utah, the AI Policy Act requires a prominent verbal disclosure at the start of the interaction for regulated occupations, and dentistry is one. That is a product requirement, not a legal footnote, and you should ask every vendor here whether their assistant can announce itself at call start.
The claim to distrust is HIPAA. No vendor on this page should be telling you they are HIPAA compliant, including us. HIPAA compliance is contractual rather than a product certification, and it needs a business associate agreement with every layer that touches patient information.
How this was put together
Compared in September 2026 on the things that decide a dental deployment, by the team behind one of the entries.
What we compared
- Whether appointment booking is included at the entry price or sold as an upgrade.
- What happens when a caller is in pain and wants a person now.
- Whether the assistant can announce that it is an AI at the start of the call.
- The published price and the overage rate, since a busy new-patient month is when this costs money.
What we could not test
- How each handles clinical vocabulary spoken by a distressed caller, which is the hardest part of this job and the part no demo shows.
- Practice-management integration depth. We publish our own matrix; several vendors describe theirs with one word, which is not comparable.
- Any vendor's actual HIPAA posture, which would need their subprocessor list and their agreements rather than their marketing.
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 |
| Smith.ai | per call | Free tier at $0 for 25 calls, then $3.00 a call | Published, and the per-call rate falls as the tier rises |
| Rosie | per minute | Professional $49/mo for 250 minutes | Not published |
| Ruby | per minute | $250/mo for 50 minutes | Not published on their pricing page |
| Dialzara | per minute | Business Lite $29/mo for 60 minutes | Published on every tier, from $0.48 a minute down to $0.35 |
| Abby Connect | per minute (half-rate AI) | Starter $165/mo for 50 Abby Minutes | Not published; one Abby Minute buys two minutes of AI handling |
Read from each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026.
GreetKeeper
New-patient calls booked into the real calendar at $49, with a spoken AI disclosure for the Utah rule.
Worth it for: A practice that wants the new-patient call turned into an appointment at the entry price, with the assistant announcing itself at the start because dentistry is a licensed occupation.
Not for: Any practice that needs a signed business associate agreement or a vendor with references, because we have neither. We make no HIPAA claim at all, publish no uptime figure, answer in English only, and there is no practice anywhere you can ring to ask how it went.
Charges per answered call. Entry plan $49/mo for 200 answered calls. After the allowance: $0.45 a call on Starter, published.
Smith.ai
The human fallback matters more in a practice than almost anywhere else.
Worth it for: A practice whose worst call is a patient in pain who needs reassurance from a person, where a trained team behind the assistant is worth the monthly cost.
Not for: Small practices watching every line item. Pro is $150 a month, and the legal-heavy tooling they are known for does nothing for a dental list.
Charges per call. Entry plan Free tier at $0 for 25 calls, then $3.00 a call. After the allowance: Published, and the per-call rate falls as the tier rises.
Rosie
Cheap to start, but the booking gate lands badly for a practice.
Worth it for: A practice that mainly needs messages taken accurately out of hours and will ring patients back itself.
Not for: A practice buying this to fill the book, since appointment booking and live transfer start at the $149 tier rather than the $49 one.
Charges per minute. Entry plan Professional $49/mo for 250 minutes. After the allowance: Not published.
Ruby
People answering every call, at a price only some practices can justify.
Worth it for: A high-value specialist practice where a small number of calls each carry a large treatment plan and a human voice is part of the brand.
Not for: General practice volume. $250 for 50 minutes goes quickly when every new-patient call runs four or five minutes, 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.
Dialzara
The cheapest way in, with Spanish handling included.
Worth it for: A practice with a large Spanish-speaking patient base, or one testing whether this works at all before committing.
Not for: A busy practice. Sixty minutes on the entry plan is a handful of new-patient conversations, and dental calls are not short.
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.
Abby Connect
Move calls between AI and humans without changing plan.
Worth it for: A practice that wants the assistant on overflow and humans on the main line, with one pool of minutes covering both.
Not for: Budget-led practices, at $165 for 50 Abby Minutes, with no published overage rate.
Charges per minute (half-rate AI). Entry plan Starter $165/mo for 50 Abby Minutes. After the allowance: Not published; one Abby Minute buys two minutes of AI handling.
When an AI receptionist is the wrong answer for a practice
If your front desk is losing calls because it is understaffed rather than because it is closed, fixing the rota may beat buying software. An assistant covers the hours nobody is there and the calls that arrive while your coordinator is on another line. It does not know the patient who has been coming for nine years.
If you need treatment detail discussed on the phone, keep that with your team and your practice system. Every page on this site scopes the assistant to inquiries and scheduling for a reason: clinical conversation is not what this is for, and no vendor here should tell you otherwise.
And if a vendor tells you their AI receptionist is HIPAA compliant, ask which layers they hold agreements with: the carrier, the speech-to-text service, the language model and the voice synthesis. The answer is the useful part of that conversation.
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
Is any AI receptionist HIPAA compliant?
HIPAA compliance is not a product certification. It is contractual, and it requires agreements with every layer that touches patient information. We make no HIPAA claim. If another vendor does, ask them to name the layers they have signed agreements with.
Does Utah law affect my practice?
If you are licensed in Utah, the AI Policy Act requires state-licensed occupations to disclose prominently and verbally at the start of the interaction. Dentistry is a licensed occupation. Ask any vendor whether their assistant can announce itself at call start.
Can it book a genuine emergency into the right slot?
That depends on your rules rather than on the technology. Most practices define which appointment types count as urgent and how long each runs, so a chipped tooth and a six-month check-up go into different slots.
Why is GreetKeeper first on a list it wrote?
Because booking a new patient is the job, and we are the cheapest published plan that does it while announcing itself at call start. That is checkable. What we cannot show you is a practice that has run on it, because we have no customers and no reviews. In a clinical setting that absence counts for more than usual.
Hear one of these handle your own call
Your scenario, your greeting, a couple of minutes.