What an AI receptionist costs per month in Canada

An AI receptionist is billed mostly by the minute. The phone number costs a little each month, but the bill is driven by how many minutes callers spend talking to it, and each minute is made of several smaller charges. This guide lists those charges with published prices, works through one illustrative month for a business on a Canadian phone number, and converts the result to Canadian dollars.

Prices below are list prices published by the providers named, read on 21 October 2026. Twilio states that its prices are set in US dollars, and Vapi's billing documentation says its credits are US dollars. Retell shows a dollar sign without naming a currency in its billing documentation, so its figures are read here as US dollars on that assumption. Confirm the billing currency on your own account. Prices change, and a platform or agency that resells them sets its own rates. The monthly example shows provider usage cost only: it is illustrative, not a quote, not a typical customer bill and not what a managed service would invoice.

For the wider picture, including setup, software subscriptions and support, see what an AI automation project actually costs. This guide covers only the running cost of the receptionist itself.

What you pay for each month

Retell publishes its total as a range of $0.07 to $0.31 a minute on its pay-as-you-go plan, depending on the voice and model. Its calculator adds the platform, voice and model lines together and shows telephony as a separate line, at no charge when you bring your own number; Twilio then bills the phone minutes itself. Count each line once. Other platforms bundle the same parts into one per-minute rate or into a monthly plan with included minutes. The structure is the same; only the packaging differs.

Minutes, not calls, drive the bill

Two businesses with the same number of calls can have very different bills. A caller who books a routine appointment may need two minutes. A caller with a complicated question, a long address or a change of mind may need eight. To estimate your own minutes, take a recent month from your phone records and multiply the calls you would want the receptionist to answer by their average length. If your phone system shows only total talk time, use that.

Decide which calls it answers. Answering every call costs more than answering only after hours or only when nobody picks up within a few rings. Those rules belong in your setup, and they are a bigger lever on cost than any price list.

A worked month (illustrative)

Assume 200 answered calls a month at an average of three minutes, so 600 minutes, and one follow-up text per call that fits in one segment and goes to a Rogers or Fido customer. The "lean" setup uses a standard voice and a small model; the "richer" setup uses a premium voice and a larger model. These volumes and choices are assumptions for illustration.

The model line in the richer setup is Retell's listed rate for Claude 5.5 Sonnet. The telephony line assumes your own Twilio number connected to Retell by Elastic SIP Trunking, the method Retell recommends when the provider supports it. Retell lists no charge for custom telephony, so Twilio's inbound minutes are the only telephony charge. If Twilio Programmable Voice receives the call and dials it on to Retell instead, Twilio lists $0.0085 a minute to receive it plus $0.0040 a minute for the SIP leg, which adds $4.80 to this month. Count one route, not both.

How the total moves with volume

Converting to Canadian dollars

The example uses the Bank of Canada's daily average rate for 21 October 2026, 1.4057 Canadian dollars per US dollar. The Canadian-dollar figures are a conversion of US-dollar list prices, not a price any provider quotes in Canadian dollars. Your bank or card issuer converts at its own rate and may add a fee, and the rate moves every day, so a bill in US dollars changes in Canadian dollars even when your usage does not. Ask whether a provider can bill in Canadian dollars, and confirm the currency on every line of a quote.

GST/HST

The figures above are before tax. The Canada Revenue Agency's digital-economy measures can require non-resident vendors of digital services to charge GST/HST to Canadian buyers who are not registered under the normal GST/HST regime. Whether GST/HST appears on a given invoice, and whether you can claim it back, depends on the vendor and on your own registration. Check with your accountant; this guide is not tax advice.

What this example leaves out

• Setup: writing the call rules, connecting your calendar and CRM, and testing before launch.
• Transfers to a person. Forwarding a call to a mobile is a second, outgoing call on top of the inbound minutes. Twilio lists outgoing calls to Canada from $0.0053 a minute over Elastic SIP Trunking, and $0.0140 a minute to US and Canadian numbers through Programmable Voice.
• Optional telephony features priced separately, such as Twilio's trunk call recording or emergency calling.
• Longer texts: a message that needs more than one segment is billed per segment.
• Any all-in-one platform subscription, and any agency or support fee for running and changing the setup.
• Optional add-ons some platforms charge per minute, such as noise reduction or removing personal information from transcripts.
• Minimum spends, prepaid credits or annual commitments on some plans.

Questions to ask before you sign

• Is the price per minute of connected call, and are partial minutes rounded up?
• Which parts are included in the per-minute rate: telephony, voice, model, transcription?
• Which currency is each line billed in, and is GST/HST added?
• Can I cap spending or get an alert at a monthly limit?
• Which calls will it answer: all, after hours only, or only when nobody picks up?
• What does a transfer to a person cost, and who pays for the forwarded minutes?
• Who owns the phone number if I leave, and can it be moved?

Price is only part of the decision. A missed-call text-back costs far less to run and suits some businesses better; see AI receptionist vs missed-call text-back. Whichever you choose, test it on real call scenarios before customers reach it (how to test an AI agent). The comparison guide also covers the Canadian guidance on telling callers a call is recorded.

Limits

• Prices are the providers' published list prices on one date. Check them again before relying on them.
• Twilio and Vapi document US-dollar billing. Retell's billing documentation names no currency, so reading its prices as US dollars is an assumption, and so is every Canadian-dollar figure that depends on them.
• These are provider usage costs. A managed service or reseller bills its own rates, which may bundle, mark up or add to these lines.
• Call volumes, call lengths and setup choices in the example are assumptions. Use your own phone records.
• The example uses one provider's component prices to show the structure; it is not a recommendation of that provider.
• Tax, payment fees and your bank's conversion rate are not included.
• This guide describes running costs only. It is not a quote, and Manyhats prices are set per project after scoping.