Eldris Voice costs from £497/month plus a one-off £497 setup fee — covering a fully managed, domain-trained operator that answers in six languages. UK businesses pay a monthly subscription; there is no per-call billing on standard tiers, and you can change tier monthly after the initial term. According to the Office for National Statistics annual earnings survey, a multilingual senior receptionist in the UK costs £35,000–£50,000 per year in salary alone — before employer National Insurance, holiday, and recruitment.
PRICING PILLAR
AI Receptionist Cost Per Month — UK Pricing Explained
AI receptionist cost in the UK starts from £497/month + setup. Four tiers, six languages standard, fully managed. See the full pricing breakdown.
WHAT DOES AN AI RECEPTIONIST COST IN THE UK?
What does an AI receptionist cost in the UK?
An AI receptionist in the UK costs anywhere from under £100 per month for a basic message-taker to over £1,400 per month for a fully managed, domain-trained operator. The Federation of Small Businesses estimates that small UK businesses miss a significant proportion of inbound calls each week — each of which may represent a lost client. For a business receiving high-value enquiries, the cost of a missed call frequently exceeds the monthly cost of an AI operator.
What an AI receptionist costs in the UK — a complete answer
An AI receptionist in the UK is a phone-answering service run by a trained software agent rather than a human employee. The definition covers a wide range of products: from basic voicemail-transcription tools at under £100/month, through no-code self-configured platforms at £200–£400/month, to fully managed, domain-trained operators such as Eldris Voice, which cost £497–£1,497/month. The cost depends on three things: how many minutes per month you need, how many languages you require, and whether you are buying a tool you configure yourself or a managed service built to your business. Setup fees run from £0 on developer platforms to £497–£997 on managed tiers. Timeline from contract to live calls is typically around 14 days for managed tiers; developer platforms can go live faster if you have engineering resource. For most UK SMBs without a technical team, the total cost of a self-configured platform — including staff time to build and maintain it — exceeds the cost of a managed service within three months.
OUR FOUR TIERS — WHAT YOU ACTUALLY GET
Our four tiers — what you actually get
Eldris Voice runs on four tiers. The right tier depends on your call volume, the number of languages your clients use, and how many service verticals you need the agent to handle.
Starter
£497monthly
- Setup£497
- Minutes/mo500
- Languages1 language pair
- Verticals1 service vertical
- Best forSolo operators / 1–3 person firms
Most popular
Growth
£997monthly
- Setup£997
- Minutes/mo1,500
- LanguagesUp to 3 languages
- Verticals2 verticals
- Best for4–15 person firms
Scale
£1,497monthly
- Setup£997
- Minutes/mo4,000
- LanguagesUnlimited languages (6 standard)
- VerticalsFull RAG knowledge base
- Best for15–50 person firms
Starter covers one language pair and one service vertical. Call volume cap is 500 minutes per month. Lead delivery is by email. The agent answers calls, handles qualifying questions, and routes booked leads. It does not include call transcripts or a monthly tuning session.
Growth increases the language ceiling to three and adds a second service vertical — useful for a firm that handles both, for example, property sales and lettings, or legal advice and document review. Lead routing expands to Slack plus email. You receive full call transcripts and a monthly tuning call with our team.
Scale removes the language ceiling — all six standard languages are included, and additional languages are available on request. The knowledge base moves to a full retrieval-augmented architecture, meaning the agent queries your live data rather than relying solely on its initial training. Call volume rises to 4,000 minutes per month. You receive a Supabase reporting dashboard and weekly gap-fill loop reports showing which questions the agent couldn’t fully answer and how we’ve addressed them.
Enterprise pricing is custom. It adds voice cloning, white-label phone numbers, bespoke CRM integrations, a service-level agreement, and private deployment. Contact Mark directly to discuss requirements.
What breaks tier selection: minutes. If your business receives more than 500 calls per month averaging two minutes each — roughly 25 calls per working day — Starter will cap out. Most firms with 4–15 staff find Growth fits their volume comfortably. Scale is sized for operations running a high-volume inbound line: a London property agent fielding enquiries across UK, Hong Kong, and Mandarin-speaking buyers, for example.
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COST PER MINUTE VS COST PER MONTH — HOW WE PRICE
Cost per minute vs cost per month — how we price
Eldris Voice is priced per month, not per minute. Your subscription includes a defined minute allocation; you are not billed for each individual call. A billable minute is any 60-second period during which the agent is handling an active call — the clock starts when the call connects and stops when it ends.
If you approach your monthly cap, we notify you. You can choose to upgrade your tier for the remainder of the billing period, or we can apply a per-minute overage rate agreed at contract. You will not be cut off mid-call. Tiers can be upgraded or downgraded at the start of any calendar month; there is no penalty for moving down, and no lock-in beyond the initial term.
HOW DOES THIS COMPARE TO HIRING A MULTILINGUAL RECEPTIONIST?
How does this compare to hiring a multilingual receptionist?
A full-time multilingual senior receptionist in the UK earns £35,000–£50,000 per year in salary, according to ONS median pay data for skilled office and administrative roles. Add employer National Insurance contributions of 13.8%, statutory pension contributions, 28 days of statutory leave, sick pay, and the cost of recruitment — typically 15–25% of first-year salary — and the total cost of employment runs to £45,000–£70,000 in year one.
An Eldris Voice operator on the Scale tier costs £1,497/month — roughly £17,964/year at that rate — with no recruitment cost, no sick leave, no employer NI, and coverage across all six languages from day one. The Starter tier at £497/month is available to firms not yet at the scale where a full hire is justified.
The comparison is not simply cost. A human multilingual receptionist covers one person’s working hours. An AI operator is available at all times, answers within three seconds, and switches language in the same call. It cannot replace a human in every context — there are calls that require genuine relationship-building — but for first-line inbound, the maths favour an AI operator at every tier.
HOW DOES THIS COMPARE TO SMITH.AI, RINGCENTRAL, AND RETELL AI?
How does this compare to Smith.ai, RingCentral, and Retell AI?
| Platform | Model | Price | Multilingual | Domain-trained |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eldris Voice Starter | Managed, done-for-you | £497/mo + setup | Yes — 6 languages standard | Yes — trained on your business |
| Eldris Voice Growth | Managed, done-for-you | £997/mo + setup | Yes — up to 3 active | Yes |
| Smith.ai | Hybrid human + AI | USD 300–1,900/mo (approx £240–£1,520) | Limited — additional cost | No — generic scripts |
| RingCentral AI Receptionist | Bolt-on telco feature | Enterprise pricing, not disclosed for SMB | Limited | No |
| Retell AI | Developer platform | USD 0.07/min (~£0.056/min) — no managed service | Configurable, not bundled | Only if you build it |
Smith.ai uses a hybrid human-and-AI model, which means some calls are handled by human agents and some by software. That introduces variability in response time and language capability. It is also priced in USD, making UK cost planning unpredictable against sterling exchange rates.
RingCentral’s AI receptionist is an add-on to an enterprise telephony platform — designed for organisations already running RingCentral’s full product suite, not for an SMB wanting a standalone solution.
Retell AI is a developer platform: you pay per minute at USD 0.07, but you build and maintain the agent yourself. For a 1,500-minute monthly call volume, that is approximately USD 105/month in platform costs before language model, speech-to-text, and voice provider costs — which bring the all-in rate closer to USD 0.15–0.20/minute, or USD 225–300/month — plus ongoing engineering time.
Full detail comparisons are available on our dedicated pages: Eldris Voice vs Smith.ai, Eldris Voice vs RingCentral AI Receptionist, and Eldris Voice vs Retell AI.
SETUP FEES, MINUTE CAPS, OVERAGE — THE HONEST EDGES
Setup fees, minute caps, overage — the honest edges
Setup fee. The setup fee covers discovery, domain training, scenario testing, and the initial go-live configuration. It is a one-off payment, charged at contract. It is not a recurring annual charge.
Minute cap. Each tier has a monthly minute allocation. 500 minutes on Starter equates to roughly 250 two-minute calls per month, or about 12 calls per working day — sufficient for a small practice. Growth at 1,500 minutes covers roughly 750 calls, and Scale at 4,000 minutes handles high-volume inbound operations.
Overage. If you exceed your monthly allocation, we notify you before you reach the cap. Overage is billed at a per-minute rate agreed at contract. There is no automatic throttling or dropped call risk.
Upgrade and downgrade. You can move tiers at the start of any billing month. Upgrading is immediate. Downgrading takes effect at the next renewal date. The initial term is three months; after that, the contract is monthly rolling.
What the setup fee does not cover. Bespoke CRM integrations beyond the standard connectors on Growth and Scale are scoped and quoted separately at Enterprise. White-label phone numbers, voice cloning, and private deployment are Enterprise-only.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Frequently asked questions
How much does an AI receptionist cost per month in the UK?
An AI receptionist cost per month in the UK ranges from under £100 for a basic message-taking tool to £1,497 or more for a fully managed, domain-trained operator. Eldris Voice starts at £497/month plus a one-off £497 setup fee. The price depends on call volume (minutes per month), the number of languages required, and whether you need a done-for-you managed service or a platform you configure yourself.
How much does an AI agent cost per month?
How much an AI agent costs per month depends on the type: developer platforms such as Retell AI charge from USD 0.07 per minute (approximately £0.05), with no platform fee — but you build and maintain the agent. Managed AI agent services in the UK range from £97 to £1,500 per month. Eldris Voice sits at £497–£1,497/month for a fully managed operator, domain-trained on your business, requiring no engineering resource from you.
What is the average cost for an AI answering service?
The average cost for an AI answering service in the UK is broadly £200–£500 per month for a self-configured no-code platform, or £500–£1,500 per month for a managed, domain-trained service. No-code platforms such as Synthflow Pro start at approximately £300/month (USD 375); managed services such as Eldris Voice start at £497/month. The average cost for a pure human-staffed answering service in the UK runs £100–£350/month for basic message-taking, but those services do not handle technical questions or multilingual calls.
What is the cheapest AI phone agent?
The cheapest AI phone agent with any real capability is a developer platform: Retell AI at USD 0.07/min, Vapi at approximately USD 0.05/min base, or Bland AI at USD 0.09/min. These require you to build, host, and maintain your own agent — they are not managed services. For a managed AI phone agent in the UK that works out of the box on your business, Eldris Voice Starter at £497/month is priced at the entry point of the done-for-you tier.
How much to charge for an AI receptionist?
How much to charge for an AI receptionist as a service depends on how much domain training, management, and language capability you include. Resellers using white-label platforms typically charge USD 200–400/month on top of platform costs. Done-for-you managed services with vertical domain training — such as Eldris Voice — charge £497–£1,497/month. Setup fees on managed services reflect the real cost of discovery, training, and configuration: typically £497–£997 as a one-off.
Can I pay per call instead of per month?
Eldris Voice does not offer per-call billing on standard tiers — you pay a monthly subscription that includes a defined minute allocation. This gives you predictable costs and no penalty for high-call weeks. Developer platforms (Retell AI, Vapi) do charge per minute and therefore per call, but they require you to build and maintain the agent. If your call volume is very low — fewer than 50 calls per month — a per-minute platform may be more economical; if your call volume is consistent, a monthly subscription with a capped allocation almost always costs less.
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Or see what the full product covers first: Eldris Voice overview — including how we train the agent on your services, the six languages bundled standard, and how we handle escalation.
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