Smith.ai Pricing (2026): The AI Plan, the Live Plan and What Each Bills

Smith.ai pricing depends on which of its two products you mean. Virtual Receptionists, the live service, costs $300/month for 30 calls up to $2,100/month for 300 calls, while AI Receptionist is free for 25 calls and then $150/month for 75 calls and up.

Both bill per call, and a call costs four to five times more on the live plan. So a quote of "$150" and a quote of "$300" are for different things. NextPhone, our product, is an AI receptionist from $199/month, flat, so against the live plan it is much cheaper, and against the AI plan it is close at moderate volume. This post is plain about both.

Disclosure: NextPhone is our product. Method: we read Smith.ai's two pricing pages, its terms and its help articles on November 4, 2026, and the plan prices here match them. We have not tested either Smith.ai product, placed calls to it or seen a customer's invoice. The bills below are arithmetic on published numbers.

The two Smith.ai products, side by side

Read from smith.ai/pricing/receptionists, smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist and Smith.ai's terms and help center on November 4, 2026.

Smith.ai AI Receptionist plans

Enterprise starts at the same 300-call price and adds full-service setup and custom work. Smith.ai's page lists $1.60 a call at 500 calls with $2.10 past that, and its blog states that plan as $800 a month, both read November 4, 2026. Above 1,000 calls is custom.

Smith.ai Virtual Receptionist plans

12-month terms take 10% off, and are prepaid and non-refundable under Smith.ai's terms.

One naming trap: "Pro" means different things on the two pages. AI Pro starts at $150/month for 75 calls, and live Pro is $2,100/month for 300 calls.

What the live plan really bills

Per-call pricing has a real advantage over per-minute billing: a long new-client call costs the same as a short one, and spam, misdials and callers who leave no message are not counted when caller ID passes. That is worth a lot to a firm with long intake calls.

The price to watch is the add-on list. These were on the pricing page on November 4, 2026, each charged per call:

• Appointment booking: $1.50
• Extended intake: $1.50
• Complex call routing: $1.50
• Payments, Spanish line or third-party intake: $1.00 each
• Text and email follow-up, conflict checks, or SMS and Slack notifications: $0.50 each
• Call recording and transcription: $0.25

Lead qualification, five short intake questions and your first CRM integration are included. Smith.ai's help article explains that add-ons are a blended fee charged on all calls, not only the calls that use them. It does not say whether overage calls carry them too, so we assumed they do. Check that before you budget.

Three bills, with booking and recording switched on ($1.75 a call):

At 120 calls, before add-ons, that is $926 a month more than NextPhone Pro, or $11,112 a year. Against NextPhone Growth at $299, which includes CRM sync, it is $826 a month more.

Booking, recordings and transcripts carry no per-call fee on NextPhone, on any plan.

Other live-plan terms to read:

• Cancelling. The FAQ describes month-to-month service, and the terms say cancellation must come at least 30 days before the cycle ends or the following month is billed. On a monthly cycle, that usually means paying one more month, by our reading.
• Plan changes. The terms ask for a change at least 30 days before the cycle ends, and the pricing page bills a new plan from the following month. A busy month can run at $8.50 to $11.50 a call before a bigger plan starts.
• Long calls. Calls outside Smith.ai's reasonable use policy may incur additional fees, and extended intake cannot average over 120 seconds.
• Your number. A Smith.ai number comes free. After cancelling, the terms say it may be cancelled at once. At Smith.ai's sole discretion, you may be offered the line for $10 a month or 10 days of forwarding. Forwarding your own number to Smith.ai avoids the question.
• Guarantee. New customers can get a refund up to $1,000 within 30 days, overage excluded, although one line of the same page says two weeks.

What the AI plan really bills

Here are the two side by side, using the cheapest published Smith.ai plan for each volume:

Those figures need four adjustments.

The Free plan's limits. Smith.ai's help center says booking and live agent features each cost $3 per call on Free, and both are off by default, on top of $3 per extra call, with a cap of $6 on a single call. Free also excludes live support and dedicated onboarding. So a business that books on the phone will usually compare our $199 with Pro.

CRM sync. Smith.ai AI lists native integrations, including Clio and Zapier, on every plan. On NextPhone, CRM sync starts on the $299 Growth plan, which also includes done-for-you setup. If you need it, compare against $299. Smith.ai AI is cheaper up to about 162 calls a month, and NextPhone Growth is cheaper after that.

The spam allowance. Every answered call counts by default. Smith.ai filters known spam numbers before the AI answers, and you can remove up to 10% of your quota by hand each cycle. That allowance covers spam and test calls together, and marking a call cannot be undone. It moves the $199 crossing from about 95 calls to about 102.

Live agents. Smith.ai's help center lists a live agent on an AI call at a flat $3.00 per call, on top of the plan and any overage. Transfers to your own business are not charged. If 20 of 100 calls reach a live agent, a $212.50 bill becomes $272.50. This is something Smith.ai offers and we do not: NextPhone transfers to your team, not to our staff.

What the bill does in a busy month

Price is close at moderate volume, so the difference to weigh is how the bill behaves.

Say you are on AI Pro at 75 calls and a good month brings 180 calls. The AI page says a plan change bills from the following month, so that month runs on your old plan: 105 extra calls at $2.50 a call adds $262.50, for $412.50. NextPhone Pro stays at $199, and Growth stays at $299.

Per-call pricing is a legitimate model. It moves volume risk onto your budget, and it charges you most in the months your marketing works. A flat fee lets you state next month's bill before it starts. If you pay for leads or your work is seasonal, that may matter more than saving $40 in a quiet month.

Smith.ai also offers a 6-month plan with rollover calls and a lower rate, by quote only. If your calls are steady and high, ask for that number before you compare.

What decides it when the price is close

With AI products at similar prices, call quality decides this, and quality needs proof more than adjectives. We have not compared the two products side by side, and we will not claim a result.

You can run a fair test yourself. NextPhone's 7-day trial and Smith.ai's Free plan both let you try before you pay, though a card is needed at signup on NextPhone. Write down five real calls: your most common question, a new customer, an upset caller, a hard accent or bad line, and something your business does not do. Call both lines and listen to the recordings.

0:00

0:29

A demo call to a sample law firm, showing a warm transfer. Judge the voice and the handoff yourself.

What NextPhone brings to that test: it answers in under 2 seconds, day and night, in up to 3 of its 14 languages per line, handles several calls at once, books into Google or Outlook calendars and sends you a recording, transcript and summary of every call. Every plan includes a free 30-minute onboarding call with our team, and on Pro you can be live in about 5 minutes. NextPhone has answered 2M+ calls for 7,000+ businesses in 45+ states, and is rated 5.0 on G2 and 4.8 on Capterra (reviews).

How to decide

Start with the question that matters most: do you need a person on every call, or do you need every call answered well?

If you are on or quoted Smith.ai's live plan, take your last three invoices and add the plan, the overage and the per-call add-ons. Compare that with NextPhone from $199/month, flat, or $299 with CRM sync. The gap is wide at every volume in this post, so the real question is how your callers respond to AI. Forward your after-hours calls to a trial line first, since those are the lowest-risk calls to test on.

If you are comparing Smith.ai's AI plan, look at your busiest month. Past about 95 calls, NextPhone Pro costs less and the gap keeps growing. Run the five-call test and pick the one that sounds better to you.

Before you cancel Smith.ai, give the 30 days notice early, and set up the new line while the old one still answers. Our guide to switching answering services covers the steps, and the Smith.ai alternatives post compares other options. The AI receptionist pricing guide and our Price Index price the wider market. For live services priced by the minute, see our Ruby pricing and PATLive pricing posts.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Smith.ai cost per month?

Smith.ai sells two products. Virtual Receptionists, the live service, costs $300/month for 30 calls, $810/month for 90 calls or $2,100/month for 300 calls, plus per-call add-ons. AI Receptionist is free for 25 calls, then $150/month for 75 calls, $270/month for 150 calls or $500/month for 300 calls. NextPhone is from $199/month, flat, with unlimited inbound calls.

What is the difference between Smith.ai's AI and live plans?

On Virtual Receptionists, live people answer, at about $7 to $10 a call plus add-ons. On AI Receptionist, AI answers at about $1.60 to $2 a call, and a call can be handed to a live Smith.ai agent for $3 more. They have separate pricing pages and separate plan names, and "Pro" means a different plan on each.

Is Smith.ai free?

Only the AI Receptionist has a free plan: 25 calls a month, then $3.00 a call. It excludes live support and dedicated onboarding. The live receptionist service has no free plan or trial, and offers a money-back guarantee up to $1,000 to new customers instead.

Does Smith.ai charge for spam calls?

On the live plan, spam, misdials and callers who leave no message are not counted as long as your forwarded lines pass caller ID. On the AI plan, known spam numbers are filtered free, every other answered call counts, and you can remove up to 10% of your quota by hand each cycle, test calls included. NextPhone has no per-call charge, so spam never changes the bill.

Does Smith.ai have a contract?

Both products are sold month-to-month, and both ask for 30 days notice to cancel. On the live plan, the terms say that cancelling within 30 days of the end of a cycle means the following month is billed. The optional 12-month term takes 10% off and is prepaid and non-refundable.

What does a live agent cost on Smith.ai's AI plan?

Smith.ai's help center lists a flat $3.00 per call when a live agent is involved, on top of the plan fee and any overage. It is charged once per call. Transfers to your own business and internal AI escalations are not charged.

Is NextPhone cheaper than Smith.ai?

Against the live plan, yes, at every volume: NextPhone is from $199/month, flat, and Smith.ai's live plan starts at $300/month (30 calls). Against the AI plan, NextPhone Pro costs less past about 95 calls a month. With CRM sync, which starts on our $299 Growth plan, that is past about 163 calls.

The bottom line

Smith.ai's published pricing is clear once you know there are two price lists. The live plan is a per-call service with an add-on list to read closely. The AI plan is a fair price at low volume, with a bill that rises with every call.

NextPhone's case is a bill you can state in advance, at $199/month, flat, or $299 with CRM sync, and it gets stronger the more calls you take. See NextPhone's plans, and run your own calls through both before you decide.