AI receptionists for restaurants, where short calls change the math
Read the caveat in our row before anything else on this page. Restaurant calls are short, and our meter charges the same for a ten-second hours question as for a four-minute booking. We rank first here for one kind of venue only: the one whose phone brings private dining, large parties and event inquiries, where a long call costs us nothing extra.
If your inbound is mostly hours, directions and quick reservation changes, per-minute pricing stretches further than ours does. Rosie's $49 buys 250 minutes, which is a lot of thirty-second calls. That is a real point against us and it depends entirely on your call mix.
Slang.ai builds reservation handling for restaurants rather than adapting it, from $399 a month per location. They publish no call or minute allowance at any tier, so there is nothing to compare consumption against.
For a small independent where the phone rings through service and nobody can pick it up, the cheapest plans do the job. The specific thing to configure is the hours question, because it is most of the volume.
How this was put together
Compared in September 2026 on a call pattern unlike the rest of this site, by the team behind one of the entries.
What we compared
- How each bills very short calls, which dominate restaurant inbound.
- Whether reservation handling is native or a general booking feature.
- Published price, allowance and overage.
- Whether the vendor publishes any volume allowance at all.
What we could not test
- How each handles a noisy dining room in the background, which is a real condition for these calls.
- Reservation-platform integration depth, which varies and which most vendors describe loosely.
- Slang.ai's actual consumption limits, since they publish none.
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 |
| Slang.ai | per location | Core from $399/mo per location | No call or minute volumes published at any tier |
| Rosie | per minute | Professional $49/mo for 250 minutes | Not published |
| Dialzara | per minute | Business Lite $29/mo for 60 minutes | Published on every tier, from $0.48 a minute down to $0.35 |
| Goodcall | per unique caller | Starter $79/mo ($66 annual) for 100 unique customers | $0.50 per additional unique customer, published |
Read from each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026.
GreetKeeper
Per-call billing, which suits long inquiries and punishes short ones.
Worth it for: A venue whose phone brings private dining, large-party and event inquiries. Those calls run long, and a four-minute conversation costs us the same as a ten-second one.
Not for: A venue whose phone is mostly ten-second hours questions, where per-minute pricing is simply better value. We have no restaurant-specific features, no customers, no reviews, no certifications and no uptime figure.
Charges per answered call. Entry plan $49/mo for 200 answered calls. After the allowance: $0.45 a call on Starter, published.
Slang.ai
The only entry built for restaurants specifically, at eight times the entry price of the cheapest option.
Worth it for: A restaurant or small group that wants reservation handling designed for the trade and finds per-location pricing simple to reason about.
Not for: Anyone who needs to know what they are buying in units. No call or minute volume is published at any tier, so consumption cannot be compared with anything.
Charges per location. Entry plan Core from $399/mo per location. After the allowance: No call or minute volumes published at any tier.
Rosie
Per-minute pricing is the right meter for a phone full of thirty-second calls.
Worth it for: An independent restaurant whose inbound is mostly hours, directions and quick reservation questions, where 250 minutes goes a very long way.
Not for: Anywhere needing live transfer or calendar booking at the entry price, both of which start at $149. The overage rate is unpublished.
Charges per minute. Entry plan Professional $49/mo for 250 minutes. After the allowance: Not published.
Dialzara
The cheapest way to stop the phone ringing out during service.
Worth it for: A small venue with modest call volume, or one whose callers speak Spanish as well as English.
Not for: A busy restaurant. Sixty minutes on the $29 plan is one busy Friday evening.
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.
Goodcall
Unique-caller billing suits regulars who ring often.
Worth it for: A venue with repeat customers who call frequently, since the same person ringing weekly is not a fresh charge each time.
Not for: A venue whose callers are mostly first-timers, and anyone running several numbers.
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.
When a restaurant should fix something else first
If most of your calls are asking your opening hours, the cheapest fix is free: get the hours right on your Google Business Profile, your website and the delivery platforms. A meaningful share of restaurant phone volume is people looking for information that should have been findable.
If your reservations run through a booking platform, check what it already does with phone traffic before adding a vendor on top. Some of this problem is already solved and paid for.
And during service the phone is competing with the room. Some venues are better served by taking the phone off the main line entirely at peak and routing everything to an assistant, rather than trying to do both badly.
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 Slang.ai worth $399 a month?
For a venue with real reservation volume, quite possibly. It is built for this trade rather than adapted to it. The thing to press them on is what the $399 includes, because no volume is published at any tier.
Why is GreetKeeper first on a list it wrote?
Because for long inquiries, private dining and large parties, per-call billing is the cheaper meter and booking is included at $49. For a phone full of ten-second hours questions it is the wrong meter, and we say so in our own row above. We have no customers, no reviews and nothing restaurant-specific.
Can it take a reservation?
It books into a calendar. Whether that is the right thing for your reservation system depends on your setup, and a restaurant-specific product is likely to handle table logic better than a general one.
What about noise in the background?
Ask every vendor to demo with the call placed from a busy room rather than a quiet office. It is the most realistic test you can run cheaply and almost nobody does it.
Hear one of these handle your own call
Your scenario, your greeting, a couple of minutes.