Ruby pricing, explained
Ruby's pricing page tells you most of what you need and stays silent on one thing. You get four receptionist plans: $250 for 50 minutes, $395 for 100, $720 for 200 and $1,725 for 500. Live chat is priced separately from $143 for 10 chats, and you can bundle the two at a stated 20 percent discount.
They also tell you, unusually directly, that you'll pay no additional or hidden fees for activation, onboarding, setup, customization or coverage. In a market where AnswerConnect charges you $49.99 on two of its three plans, that's worth crediting.
What they don't tell you is what a minute costs once you pass your allowance. If your volume moves at all, that's the number that decides your bad month, and you'd have to ask for it.
Ruby published plans
| Plan | Monthly | Minutes | Effective cost per minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $250 | 50 | $5.00 |
| Professional | $395 | 100 | $3.95 |
| Business | $720 | 200 | $3.60 |
| Enterprise | $1,725 | 500 | $3.45 |
Read on ruby.com, September 2026. No per-minute overage rate is published on the page.
Ruby chat, priced separately
| Plan | Monthly | Chats | Bundled with receptionist |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chat Starter | $143 | 10 | $115 bundled, 20% off |
| Chat Professional | $335 | 30 | $268 bundled |
| Chat Business | $520 | 50 | $416 bundled |
Read on ruby.com, September 2026. Bundle prices are the chat component when taken alongside a receptionist plan.
What decides a Ruby bill
- Their minute bundles are small. Fifty minutes at $250 gives you roughly seventeen three-minute conversations, which many businesses clear inside a week.
- Your effective rate barely improves with scale: $5.00 a minute at the bottom and $3.45 at the top. You're buying trained people's time and it stays priced like it.
- The unpublished overage, which leaves you unable to price any month past your allowance in advance.
- Chat as a separate subscription, which roughly doubles what you commit to if you want both.
- No setup or activation fee, which their page promises you explicitly and which genuinely saves you money against several competitors.
Worked example
An accountancy practice takes 100 calls a month. In January it's 260, all of them about self-assessment. Calls average three minutes.
Normal month, 300 minutes
Ruby's $1,725 Enterprise plan covers 500. $1,725. Their $720 plan covers 200, leaving 100 minutes at an unpublished rate.
January, 780 minutes
past the 500-minute top tier by 280 minutes, at a rate that isn't published anywhere.
PATLive for comparison, 780 minutes
the $1,499 plan covers 1,000. $1,499, known in advance.
GreetKeeper
100 answered calls in a normal month is $49; January's 260 is $49 + 60 × $0.45 = $76.
Their problem isn't Ruby's price, it's that they can't budget January. Every other vendor here tells them enough to forecast their own busiest month. If your year has a January in it, that's the question to put to Ruby before the rate.
Where our own price sits
$49 for 200 answered calls, $149 for 750, $349 for 2,000, with $0.45, $0.35 and $0.25 printed for anything past the allowance. No setup fee, same as Ruby.
The two lines never cross and we won't imply they might. Ruby prices trained labor, we price software. Our argument is narrower than a price comparison: whatever you end up paying, you should be able to find out what your busy month costs before it arrives.
| 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 |
Before you act on any of this
Every competitor figure on this page was read on that vendor's own pricing page in September 2026. Prices change. Check before you buy.
Questions people ask
Does Ruby publish an overage rate?
No. You get the four plan prices and their included minutes, and no rate for anything past your allowance. Ruby is in the majority here: Rosie, Abby Connect and Slang.ai leave it off too.
Does Ruby charge a setup fee?
Their page promises you no additional or hidden fees for activation, onboarding, setup, customization or coverage. That's more explicit than most of this market manages, and worth crediting.
What does a Ruby minute actually cost?
Within the bundles, $5.00 on the $250 plan falling to $3.45 on the $1,725 one. That's what a trained receptionist's time costs you, and setting it against a software rate compares two different purchases.
Is Ruby worth it against an AI service?
If your calls need judgment, plausibly yes. Ruby's receptionists handle your odd, emotional or complicated callers in a way software doesn't. If most of yours are bookings and opening-hours questions, you're paying receptionist rates for a switchboard.
Ask Ruby for the rate past your allowance
It's the one number their page leaves out, and it's the one that prices your busiest month.