AI Receptionists for Home Service Contractors: Published Prices, Billing Units, and What Each One Books Into

Buy the one whose billing unit matches how your phone actually behaves, and that writes the job into the software your techs already work out of. Sticker price is the fourth thing to check, because the unit you are billed in moves the invoice more than the plan price does. Below are nine vendors, with published prices read off each vendor's own pricing page on August 4, 2026, plus the four things no vendor puts side by side: the billing unit, whether an overage rate exists in public, whether the pricing page names a field service CRM, and who does the configuration work.

What do these vendors charge, and what are you being billed for?

Each competitor name links to the page the figures came from.

Competitor prices read from each vendor's public pricing page on August 4, 2026.

Two notes on that table. Smith.ai states on the same pricing page that its published plans apply whether calls are handled AI first or human first (smith.ai/pricing, read August 4, 2026), so the per call tiers above are the numbers to plan against. And for the three vendors that keep pricing behind a demo, "does not publish pricing" is the finding. We are not printing a third party estimate as if it were their number.

Why does the billing unit matter more than the plan price?

Take a five truck HVAC company in a July heat wave call surge. Three inputs, and you pull all three off your own phone bill before you shop: 400 inbound calls, a 3 minute average handle time, and 280 distinct phone numbers, because homeowners call back and your own dispatch callbacks come from the same line.

• Per call (Smith.ai). The $2,100 tier covers 300 calls. You are 100 over. 100 x $8.50 = $850. Total $2,950.
• Per minute (Ruby). 400 x 3 = 1,200 minutes. The largest published plan is 500 minutes at $1,725, so 1,200 minutes sits 700 past the top of the published card and there is no published rate to multiply by. The implied rate inside that top tier is $1,725 / 500 = $3.45 per minute, which would put 1,200 minutes at $4,140. That is our arithmetic on their published tier, not a rate Ruby quoted.
• Per minute (Rosie). 1,200 minutes fits inside the 2,000 minute plan. Total $299.
• Per unique customer (Goodcall). 280 numbers, and the 500 plan covers it. Total $249. The 120 unit gap between 400 calls and 280 numbers is not billable here and is billable on a per call plan.
• Per location (Slang.ai). One location plus the bilingual add on: $399 + $99 = $498.
• Per month, flat (Cactus). $999, and the same $999 at 200 calls or at 800 calls.

Same call volume, and the metered outcomes run from $249 to $2,950. The unit did that, not the plan price. Long calls run up minute plans. Repeat callers run up call plans. And on any metered plan, an answered spam call is billable inventory, which we covered in answering service billing and spam calls.

Booking rate and average ticket are yours to supply. Run your own two numbers through the same table before you decide anything, because a plan that looks expensive per month can still win on cost per booked job.

Which vendors publish an overage rate at all?

Two of the five competitors that publish a price also publish an overage rate. Smith.ai publishes $11.50 down to $8.50 per call as the tiers rise. Goodcall publishes $0.50 per additional unique customer. Ruby and Rosie publish tiers with no rate, and neither page states what happens on the unit that puts you past the top of your plan, so we are not going to describe a mechanism we have not seen in writing. Ask it this way and keep the reply in email: "On the call that puts me one unit past my plan, what happens and what does it cost?"

Cactus has no answer to that question because there is no meter. The invoice is $999 per month.

Does it book the job, or just take a message?

Not one competitor pricing page above names Jobber, Housecall Pro, or ServiceTitan. "Integrates with your CRM" can cover three things that cost three different amounts of labor:

1. It creates a booked job on the dispatch board with the address and the problem in the right fields.
2. It creates a lead or a note that a human retypes into a job.
3. It fires a Zapier relay, on a Zapier plan you pay for, that depends on the field mapping staying exactly as it was built.

Make every vendor demo it into your account, not their sandbox, and watch where the record lands. Cactus books natively into Jobber and Housecall Pro, and the AI creates the job during the call rather than handing a message to someone who retypes it. More on what native booking looks like in practice is in booking into Jobber and Housecall Pro.

Who does the configuration work, you or the vendor?

Rosie and Goodcall sell self serve signup on their pricing pages, so the build sits with you. You write the greeting, build the question flow, and decide what counts as an emergency. The demo led vendors do not publish a price, so you cannot weigh their configuration work against a number until you have a quote in hand. Cactus does the configuration.

Whoever builds it, interrogate the triage logic before you sign. Ask what the agent does at 11pm with "I smell gas" versus "my thermostat is blank." That logic decides who gets woken up and what gets scheduled for Monday. See how AI answering triages emergency calls and after hours calls in home service. If you run Local Services Ads, your answer rate also feeds LSA ranking.

Where does Cactus sit in this, honestly?

This is a Cactus page, so read it as our argument and not as a neutral finding.

Cactus is $999 per month. That is not the lowest published price on this page and we will not pretend it is. Rosie publishes $299 for 2,000 minutes. Goodcall publishes $249 for 500 unique customers. If your call volume is low and someone in your office will build and maintain the agent, those are honest options and you should look at them.

What the $999 covers: a flat monthly invoice with no per call and no per minute meter, booking that lands natively in Jobber and Housecall Pro with the job created during the call, and the configuration work done by Cactus instead of by your office manager.

Cactus reports that a plumbing and HVAC company in Utah booked about $150,000 in confirmed revenue in four months, and that about 58 percent of those captured leads came in after hours. Cactus reports that a roofing company in North Carolina collected about $299,000 in ten weeks. Both are single customer figures reported by Cactus. They are not audited results and they are not averages across Cactus customers. Treat them the way you should treat any vendor's numbers, ours included, and ask for a live walk through of the account the figures came from. Roofing owners can read the roofing version of this page.

What should I ask on every demo?

1. What is the billing unit in one word: call, minute, unique caller, location, or month?
2. What is the overage rate in dollars? If there is none, what happens on the call that puts me over?
3. Do spam and robocalls count against my plan, and who decides what counts?
4. Does it create a booked job on my dispatch board, or a note someone retypes?
5. Native integration or Zapier, and who pays for the Zapier plan?
6. On a warm transfer, what number rings, and what happens when nobody answers at 9pm?
7. Who writes the script and the triage rules, and how many hours of my time is that?
8. What does the agent say about call recording in my state? Start with whether AI answering your business phone is legal.
9. If there is a guarantee, what is measured, who measures it, and what is the refund mechanic in writing?

FAQ

What is the lowest published price for an AI receptionist for contractors? Rosie at $49 per month for 250 minutes and Goodcall at $79 for 100 unique customers, per their pricing pages on August 4, 2026. At working volume it is Rosie at $299 for 2,000 minutes and Goodcall at $249 for 500 unique customers.

How much does Cactus cost? $999 per month, billed by the month rather than by the call or the minute, with no overage meter.

Which AI receptionists publish an overage rate? Smith.ai publishes $11.50, $10.50, and $8.50 per call over plan. Goodcall publishes $0.50 per additional unique customer. Ruby and Rosie publish tiers with no rate. Avoca, Nexa, and Podium do not publish pricing at all. Cactus is flat at $999 per month, so there is no overage rate.

Do spam calls count against my plan? It depends on the billing unit and the vendor's definition, and most pricing pages do not say. Goodcall's page defines the billable unit as a unique phone number that interacts with the agent. Per call and per minute plans meter what the system answers, so get the definition in writing. On a flat monthly plan the answer does not move the invoice.

Which one books directly into Jobber or Housecall Pro? Cactus does, natively, and the job is created during the call. No competitor pricing page in this comparison names Jobber, Housecall Pro, or ServiceTitan, so ask each of them whether booking is native or a Zapier relay, then require a live demo into your own account.

Next step

Bring three numbers to the call: last month's call count, your average handle time, and how many distinct phone numbers those calls came from. We will run them against the table above, including the vendors that are not us, and tell you where $999 per month does not make sense for you. Book a demo.