Our verdict on each one, in a paragraph

If your phone is supposed to turn a stranger into a booked job, Torklio is built for exactly that: it answers, sorts the caller, checks your real calendar before promising a time, and hands the important calls to your own people. You give up an outsourced human backup and, for now, text messaging. For a trade or local service business that mostly needs bookings, that trade is usually worth making.

Starting price: $99/mo

The publisher of this website has a financial interest in Torklio.

Smith.ai is the option to look at when some of your callers simply will not talk to a machine, because it pairs AI answering with live human receptionists. Expect to pay more for that human layer, and expect the after-call workflow to be more general than tools built for trades. Its AI-first plans start at $300 a month for 30 calls, so budget about $10 a call before add-ons.

Starting price: $300/mo

Goodcall is for the owner who wants the phone covered this week, not after a project. It answers, captures who called and why, handles the common questions and routes the rest. There is no human backup and the booking side runs through integrations, so if your business lives and dies by the calendar, weigh that carefully. Plans start at $79 a month per agent with unlimited minutes; the catch is that Goodcall counts unique customers, not minutes, and the Starter plan keeps call details for only a week.

Starting price: $79/mo

Rosie is the least-fuss option on this site: forward your number, let it answer, read the message. For a solo operator who misses calls because both hands are busy, that may be all you need. It has no human backup, and Rosie's $49 plan takes messages but can't transfer a call to you or book onto your calendar; that starts at $149.

Starting price: $49/mo

Dialzara sells itself on being affordable and quick to set up, and for a very small business with a handful of calls a week that may be exactly the right size of tool. We checked its pricing page on September 7, 2026: plans start at $29 a month for 60 minutes, so 'budget' is fair, as long as you watch the per-minute overage. Expect a modest feature set and a shorter track record than the bigger names.

Starting price: $29/mo

Frontdesk bundles phone answering, texting and website chat into a $99-a-month plan with 200 voice minutes, and its pricing page at myaifrontdesk.com (checked September 7, 2026) lists appointment scheduling, call transfers, a built-in CRM, a 7-day trial and no contracts. The prices and what the page says is included are confirmed. We have not placed a test call or checked the deeper feature claims, so read this as a fact sheet with a few open questions, not a recommendation.

Starting price: $99/mo

Synthflow is a kit, not an appliance: it gives you a visual editor to design your own phone agent without writing code, and nothing works until you design it. That is powerful if your call flow is unusual and you have someone willing to build and maintain it. For a typical owner who wants the phone covered this week, it is more project than product, and there is a bigger issue: as of September 7, 2026, Synthflow only sells enterprise contracts starting at $30,000 a year, with no monthly plan or trial, so it isn't for a typical owner.

Starting price: Pricing verification needed

Retell AI is the engine and the phone wiring for a voice agent; the receptionist behavior has to be built by developers. It is a strong choice for a software company or agency making a product, and the wrong purchase for an owner who just wants the phone answered. It is pay-as-you-go, from about $0.07 to $0.31 a minute all-in depending on the components you choose, with $10 in free credits to start.

Starting price: $0/mo

Vapi gives developers control over every piece of a voice agent, from the speech model to the phone carrier, and that depth is exactly why it is not for a typical business owner. You would be paying engineers to build and maintain something a packaged receptionist already does. Its published price is a $0.05-a-minute platform fee; the speech, language model, voice and phone costs are passed through on top, so the real rate depends on what you choose.

Starting price: $0/mo

Slang AI is built for restaurants and nothing else, and that is a compliment: its whole design is tuned to the way a dining room's phone actually rings at 6 p.m. If you run a restaurant, café or bar, it belongs on your shortlist. If you run a plumbing company, it does not. Plans start at $399 per location per month (checked September 7, 2026), and it connects to OpenTable, SevenRooms, Yelp and Fishbowl.

Starting price: $399/mo