Answers every call and books the appointment for the lowest per-call entry price in this job
Best first AI receptionist for most solo founders, with the catch that busy phones make per-call billing add up.
Pay-as-you-go voice agent platform to build your own receptionist for cents per minute
Cheapest to run for a technical founder who will build it, with the catch that your time is the real subscription cost.
Setup: Multi-day · Control: Acts autonomously
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Retell is not a receptionist you hire; it is the platform you build one on. You design the conversation in a prompt or a visual flow, choose the brain, voice and phone connection from a menu of priced components, connect a number or your own carrier, teach it your booking rules, and wire its actions into your calendar and customer systems through its tools and integrations. In return you get the lowest realistic per-minute running costs in this job, no platform subscription on pay-as-you-go, and control that a managed receptionist will never give you, including testing, analytics and the ability to rebuild the agent whenever your offer changes. Calendar booking is entirely possible and commonly built, but it is your build: Retell supplies the voice, reasoning and function-calling plumbing, not a finished front desk. That is why it sits in this job with a Technical label rather than competing head-on with the no-code services. A solo founder without a developer, or without the time to prompt, test edge cases, handle consent and recording rules, and maintain the thing, will spend more in hours than a managed service costs in dollars. A technical founder, or one who can pay a builder once, gets a receptionist they own, can move between model providers as prices fall, and can extend to outbound calls, texting and chat later. Start with the free credit, build the simplest booking flow that works, and only add premium voices and models once callers prove they stay on the line.
Pay as you go per minute with no platform fee. The published $0.07-$0.31/min range is a sum of components: $0.055/min voice infrastructure plus your chosen voice, language model and telephony.
| Plan | Published price |
|---|---|
| Pay as you go | $0.07-$0.31 per minute |
| Enterprise | Custom |
Integrations we verified: Twilio, Telnyx, HubSpot, Salesforce, GoHighLevel, Zapier, Make, Google Calendar
Answers every call and books the appointment for the lowest per-call entry price in this job
Best first AI receptionist for most solo founders, with the catch that busy phones make per-call billing add up.
Answers and books without ever metering minutes, billing only for each different customer helped
Excellent for a solo shop with repeat callers and long calls, with the catch that extra locations mean extra agent fees.
Cheap minute bundles for 24/7 answering, with real calendar booking once you step up a tier
Great value if your calls are short, with the catch that true booking starts at $149, not the $49 headline.
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