EmpfangoThe short answer
For small and medium businesses, AI phone assistants in 2026 mostly range between roughly €30 and €300 per month. Entry plans with limited call minutes start below €100; plans for teams with multiple assistants and appointment booking sit in the mid three-digit range. Enterprise solutions with custom integrations are usually priced individually.
At Empfango, the Solo plan costs €99 per month with 300 call minutes, the Team plan €299 with 1,000 minutes and three assistants, and Scale starts at €499 with no minute limit. All plans can be cancelled monthly – no setup fee.
The three pricing models on the market
- Monthly flat rate with included minutes: a fixed price and predictable costs – the most common model for small businesses and practices. What happens once the included minutes are used up is the key question.
- Per-minute billing (pay-as-you-go): billed per call minute, from a few cents to around one euro depending on the provider. Flexible with few calls, but hard to budget as volume grows.
- Custom enterprise pricing: for call centres and large companies, with custom integrations, SLAs and volume tiers – prices on request only.
Hidden cost factors to watch out for
- Setup fees: some providers charge one-off three-digit setup costs – others, like Empfango, charge none.
- Exceeded included minutes: are extra minutes billed automatically at a premium, or does the provider inform you and suggest an upgrade? Empfango doesn't bill overage – it informs you.
- Phone number: is a dedicated number included in the price or does it cost extra?
- Minimum terms: annual contracts lock you in – monthly cancellable plans shift the risk to the provider.
- Add-on features: appointment booking, calendar and CRM integrations or WhatsApp forwarding are sometimes only included in higher tiers.
- Compliance costs: a provider without EU data processing and a DPA looks cheaper at first, but shifts privacy risk and audit effort to you.
Is it worth it? The comparison
The relevant comparison isn't the plan price but the alternative. A part-time employee who only answers calls quickly costs more than €1,500 per month including payroll costs – and still isn't reachable around the clock. Traditional answering services with human agents usually charge a base fee plus a price per answered call, which also reaches several hundred euros a month at higher volumes.
The other side of the equation is missed calls: if nobody picks up outside opening hours, during customer meetings or on site, the job goes to the next provider on the list. For most businesses, a single won job per month pays for the assistant.
An AI phone assistant doesn't replace your team – it replaces the unanswered call: it picks up around the clock, clarifies the request, books appointments and hands over structured notes, all at a fixed price.
Conclusion: what really matters about cost
Don't just compare plan prices – compare the whole package: included minutes and what happens after they're used up, setup fees, contract terms, included features such as appointment booking – and the compliance question of where voice and call data are processed. A transparent fixed price with EU data processing often ends up cheaper than the apparent bargain with an open minute meter and open privacy questions.