What Does a Dental AI Receptionist Cost?

The Short Answer

There is no single figure for the category, and the reason is not coyness. Most AI receptionists do not charge a monthly fee at all. They charge for usage — per minute, per call or per booking — and the monthly cost is whatever your call volume turns that into.

Ours is $399 a month, flat, with a one-off $500 setup fee. That number does not move with call volume, with how many appointments get booked, or with which practice management system you run.

We publish it because the question deserves an answer rather than a form. What follows is the arithmetic for your own first year, and the reason two quotes for what sounds like the same service can be difficult to put side by side.

Why Nobody Wants to Give You a Number

Ask what an AI receptionist costs per month and you will usually get a question back: how many calls do you take?

That is not evasion in every case. On a usage-priced product the vendor genuinely cannot answer, because the monthly cost is an output of your call volume rather than a price they set. But it does mean the number you are eventually quoted is a forecast of your behaviour, not a price, and forecasts of call volume are reliably wrong in one direction. Practices underestimate.

It also means the quote is only valid while the assumption holds. A good marketing month, a competitor closing nearby, a school holiday — the things you want to happen are the things that raise the bill.

Your First-Year Arithmetic

Work it out for your own practice rather than accepting a monthly figure. Four lines:

1. The recurring fee. Whatever the vendor charges every month regardless of usage. On a flat plan this is the whole story. On a usage plan it is often a small platform fee with the real cost sitting in line 2.

2. The usage cost. Per-minute, per-call or per-booking, multiplied by your actual volume. Use your real number, which means counting the calls you currently miss rather than estimating. If you have not measured, do that before signing rather than after, because this line is the whole bill on a usage plan.

3. Setup. A one-off, and worth isolating because it distorts year-one comparisons. A $500 setup on a $399 plan adds about $42 a month across the first year, which is real but not what most people picture when they hear “setup fee”.

4. The things that are not in the headline. Integration charges, per-user seats, SMS or telephony pass-through, charges for additional locations, support tiers, and minimum commitments. Any of these can exceed the headline fee.

Add lines 1 through 4, divide by twelve, and you have a monthly number that can be compared across vendors. Almost nobody does this, which is why the headline fee gets to do so much work.

For the mechanics of how the different models behave against each other on the same practice, we have set that out separately in how AI receptionist pricing actually works.

What Should Be Included

Before comparing two numbers, confirm they are buying the same thing. At minimum, ask whether the quoted figure includes:

• Booking directly into your practice management system, not just capturing a message for your team to action. This is the single largest capability difference in the category, and it is covered in does your answering service actually book.
• After-hours and weekend coverage, rather than business hours with an out-of-hours surcharge.
• Every language your patients actually speak, rather than English with a multilingual add-on.
• Setup, configuration and staff training, or a clear statement of what those cost separately.
• A signed business associate agreement, which is not optional and should not be a line item.
• Support, and specifically whether the support tier you need is the one in the quote.

A cheaper plan missing three of these is not cheaper.

The Comparison That Actually Matters

The useful question is not which vendor is cheapest. It is what the alternative costs.

A part-time front-desk hire to cover the phones, at any realistic wage, costs multiples of any AI plan on this page before employer taxes, holiday cover and training. A traditional answering service is usually cheaper per month than a salary and does not book into your system, so the callback work stays with your team.

And the option most practices are actually running — voicemail — has a cost that never appears on any invoice, which is the appointments that were never made. That is why measuring your own missed calls first matters more than shortlisting vendors. Our ROI method sets out how to put a number on it using your own production figures rather than an industry average.

Where We Sit, Plainly

$399 a month. $500 once, at setup. No per-minute charge, no per-call charge, no per-booking charge, no charge for additional languages, and no change in price for running Dentrix rather than Open Dental.

Included at that price, and worth listing because this is where flat pricing does the most work:

• Inbound calling, answered around the clock
• Outbound calling
• A web chatbot for your site
• SMS follow-ups
• Booking written directly into the practice management system, with integrations maintained for 16 of them
• Guided setup and staff training, and a signed BAA with protected health information encrypted in transit and at rest

That is four patient-contact channels on one flat fee rather than four line items. Most practices are taking live calls within five to seven days of kickoff.

The reason we price flat is the incentive problem. On a usage model the vendor earns more when your call volume rises, which is a strange thing to align a front-desk system around. On a flat model a busy month costs us more and costs you nothing, which is the right way round.

We would rather you ran your own four-line arithmetic against that number than took our word for where it lands.

Key Takeaways

• There is no single category figure, because most plans price on usage and the monthly cost is an output of your call volume
• Ours is $399 flat per month plus a one-off $500 setup, published rather than quoted, covering inbound and outbound calling, web chat and SMS follow-ups
• Build your own number from four lines: recurring fee, usage, setup amortised, and the extras
• A quote on a usage model is a forecast of your call volume, and practices reliably forecast low
• Confirm that direct PMS booking, after-hours cover, languages, training and a BAA are all inside the number before comparing
• The real comparison is against a part-time hire, an answering service, and the appointments voicemail loses

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a free trial? We do not run one. Setup involves configuring your scheduling rules and connecting to your practice management system, which is real work on both sides and not something a trial period does well. What we will do is walk you through exactly what the setup covers before you commit.

Why is there a setup fee at all? Because the configuration is genuinely bespoke: your appointment types, durations, provider hours, block-outs, emergency routing and escalation rules all have to be captured and tested. Vendors without a setup fee either fold it into a higher monthly rate or configure less. What to hand over before go-live shows the scope of that work.

Does the price change as we grow? Not with call volume. If you add locations, talk to us — but the per-month figure does not move because you had a busy quarter.

Is AI cheaper than a human receptionist? On the phones specifically, yes, by a wide margin at any realistic wage. It is not a replacement for a front-desk team, and we would not pitch it as one. The detailed comparison is in receptionist vs AI cost comparison.

What is the cheapest way to cover after-hours calls? Voicemail, on the invoice. It is usually the most expensive option once you count the appointments that never got booked, which is the calculation in our ROI guide.

Where to Start

Run the four lines against your own practice. You need one figure you probably do not have yet — your real monthly call volume, including the calls nobody answered — and that is a week of looking at your phone log.

With that number, any quote in this category becomes comparable, including ours.

If you want the arithmetic done alongside your own figures, get in touch, or see the full breakdown on our pricing page.