How much does an AI receptionist cost?

Most vendors in this category land between roughly $300 and $2,000 a month for a single practice, and many quote only on a call. Echo is one flat monthly fee starting at $499 with unlimited AI calls. The fee is sized by providers and locations and quoted in writing before you sign, so it is one number you can budget for the year, with no per-call rate, no meter, and no overage.

Usually, but the comparison worth making is coverage rather than headline price. A front-desk hire at $35 an hour fully loaded costs about $5,600 a month for 160 hours, and covers one line at a time during those hours. Echo answers every line at once, around the clock, for one flat fee from $499 you can put in the budget. The honest caveat: an AI receptionist does not replace the person at the window who greets patients and collects payment.

The flat fee covers unlimited AI calls, inbound and outbound, booked straight into your EHR under your own rules, plus recall and reminders by phone, recordings and transcripts, monitoring, support, and HIPAA with a signed BAA. Two-way texting, email, and insurance verification are flat add-ons on the same bill. Nothing is metered, and online scheduling is unlimited.

It depends on the vendor, and it is the first thing to establish. Per-minute billing means a patient who talks for six minutes costs six times one who talks for one, which penalises exactly the thorough conversations you want. Echo has no per-minute meter and no per-call rate either: calls are unlimited inside one flat monthly fee.

Three to ask about specifically: a one-time setup or integration fee, per-minute overage once a bundle is exhausted, and carrier passthrough charges for A2P 10DLC registration and MMS. Echo charges a one-time onboarding fee that covers EHR integration and a pilot in your own system, has no overage because calls are unlimited, and passes carrier fees through at cost. PrognoCIS also carries that vendor's own per-practice fees.

Some vendors offer a sandbox trial on a test number, which tells you what the voice sounds like and nothing about whether it works with your schedule. Echo does not. Onboarding ends with you calling Echo on your own line and watching it book into your real EHR before it goes live. That is the trial that matters, and a signed BAA is in place before the first patient call.

With Echo, nothing. Calls are unlimited inside the flat fee, so your busiest month costs what you budgeted. Ask any vendor that sells call bundles or per-minute plans what the overage rate is and whether it is a penalty rate; that is where surprise bills come from.

Locations are one of the two things that size Echo's flat fee, alongside providers, so a second location is a step up you agree to when you open it, not a second subscription. It is still one number on one bill. For multi-site groups and DSOs the fee, the master service agreement, and the integration scope are quoted together.

Traditional answering services usually bill per minute or per call and only cover the hours you are closed, so a busy month costs more precisely when you can least absorb it. The larger difference is what you get: an answering service takes a message your staff re-key the next morning, whereas an AI receptionist books the appointment into your schedule during the call.