The cost of hiring a receptionist vs an AI receptionist, worked out with your numbers

Before you post a front desk job, it helps to know the full cost of hiring a receptionist, not just the hourly rate on the ad. The wage is the biggest line, but it is not the only one, and a person also leaves gaps: lunch, sick days, vacations, evenings and weekends.

This post is a worksheet. Grab your local wage, your payroll numbers and a calculator, and fill it in as you go. At the end you will have three totals to compare: a person on their own, AI on its own, and AI with a person.

Figures as of October 2026. This is a planning aid, not tax or employment advice; check payroll costs with your accountant or payroll provider.

The cost of hiring a receptionist, line by line

A receptionist costs their wages, plus the employer's share of payroll taxes, plus any benefits you offer, plus the time it takes to hire and train them. The wage is easy to find. The rest is where owners usually underestimate, so work through each line below with your own figures.

Line A: the hourly wage

Start with what you would actually have to pay in your town. As a reference point, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a national median wage for receptionists of $18.27 an hour, or $38,010 a year, in May 2025. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $13.83 an hour and the highest 10 percent more than $24.01.

Wages vary a lot by state and metro area, and your state's minimum wage sets the floor. Check local job ads for the same role, and BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data for your state or metro area.

A = your hourly wage: $____

Line B: annual wages

Multiply the hourly wage by the hours a week and by 52. A full-time schedule of 40 hours a week is 2,080 hours a year.

B = A × hours per week × 52 = $____

At the BLS median, a full-time year is about $38,000. At $20 an hour, it is $41,600.

Line C: employer payroll taxes

As the employer you pay 6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare tax on wages, 7.65% together, on top of what you withhold from the paycheck. You also pay federal and state unemployment tax, and in most states workers' compensation insurance. Those last ones vary by state and business, so ask your payroll provider for your rates.

C = B × 0.0765, plus unemployment and workers' comp = $____

Line D: benefits

Health insurance, retirement contributions and paid time off all count. For scale: BLS's employer cost survey found that across private industry, benefits made up 30.0% of employers' total compensation cost in June 2026. That figure includes legally required benefits like Social Security, so do not add it on top of Line C. A small office may offer much less. Use what you would really offer.

D = what you would pay for benefits each year = $____

Line E: hiring and training

Count the hours you spend writing the ad, interviewing and training, and multiply by what your own hour is worth. Add any job board fees. If the job turns over, you pay this again.

E = (your hours × your hourly value) + fees = $____

Your total

Person total = B + C + D + E = $____ a year

Divide by 12 for a monthly figure you can compare with a subscription.

A worked example

Here is the worksheet filled in for a made-up office, Oak Street Dental, hiring one full-time person at $20 an hour. Swap in your own numbers.

Line	How	Example
A	Hourly wage	$20.00
B	$20 × 40 × 52	$41,600
C	7.65% of B, before unemployment and workers' comp	$3,182
D	Benefits the office offers	Fill in
E	30 hours of the owner's time at $75, plus a $300 job ad	$2,550
Total	Before benefits, unemployment and workers' comp	$47,332 a year, about $3,944 a month

The example deliberately leaves out benefits and the state-specific taxes, because those are the lines that vary most. Even without them, the yearly cost is well above the wage on the job ad.

The hours a person cannot cover

One full-time person covers about 40 of the 168 hours in a week. That is under a quarter of the week, before lunch breaks, sick days and vacation. If your calls come in evenings, early mornings or weekends, a single hire does not answer them, however good they are.

Work out your own coverage gap:

	Hours a week
Hours your phone gets calls (be honest: include evenings and Saturdays)	____
Hours your receptionist is scheduled	____
Minus lunch and breaks	____
Hours the phone is actually covered	____
Gap: calls with nobody to answer	____

There is also the busy-moment gap. A receptionist checking in a patient or a walk-in customer cannot pick up a second line. Your call log shows when calls arrive two or three at a time. Look at a few weeks of it and note the busiest half hours.

If you have never looked closely at your missed calls, read what happens to the calls your business misses first. It shows where those callers usually go.

What AI covers and what it does not

An AI receptionist covers the phone around the clock, takes several calls at once and never takes lunch. It answers from what you teach it, takes the caller's details, books appointments if your plan includes booking, and passes callers to a person when needed. It cannot greet walk-ins, handle paperwork, take payments at the desk or use judgment it was never given.

Here is the split, task by task:

Task	Person at the desk	AI receptionist
Answer calls at 7pm, Sunday or on a holiday	Only if scheduled	Yes
Answer two calls at once	No	Yes
Answer common questions (hours, services, prices you approve)	Yes	Yes
Take name, number and reason for the call	Yes	Yes
Book into your calendar	Yes	Yes, on plans with booking
Greet walk-ins, check people in	Yes	No
Paperwork, payments at the desk, filing	Yes	No
Calm an upset regular who wants a familiar voice	Yes	Hands them to a person
Judgment calls outside your rules	Yes	No: it takes a message

With Vocenya, the AI receptionist can hand a call to a person: your own team, your mobile, or a trained GH Live agent who sees the AI's summary first. GH Live is an add-on priced per call for each business.

Three setups compared: person only, AI only, AI plus a person

There is no one right answer. Most small businesses end up in one of three setups, and the right one depends on how much happens at your front desk versus on the phone. Fill in your own monthly numbers from the worksheet.

Vocenya's prices, for the comparison

Vocenya's plans are listed on the pricing page. As of October 2026:

Plan	Price	AI minutes a month	Extra minutes
Value	$49/month	250	$0.25 each
Starter	$99/month	300	$0.35 each
Growth	$249/month	1,000	$0.30 each
Pro	$499/month	2,500	$0.25 each

Calendar booking and warm transfers start on Growth. Each call is rounded up to the next minute, and calls keep being answered past your included minutes. Our guide to how much an AI receptionist costs explains what each plan includes.

To estimate minutes: calls a month × your average call length. Say you get 300 calls a month that average two and a half minutes: about 750 minutes, which fits in Growth.

The comparison

	Person only	AI only	AI plus a part-time person
Monthly cost	Your worksheet total ÷ 12	Plan price, plus extra minutes if any	Plan price, plus part-timer's wages and taxes
Hours covered	Their schedule	All hours	All hours on the phone, desk during their shift
Busy moments	One call at a time	Several calls at once	AI catches overflow
Walk-ins and paperwork	Yes	No	During their shift
Personal relationships	Strong	Limited	Strong during the shift
Sick days and turnover	Phone goes uncovered	Not affected	AI keeps answering

Person only fits an office where most of the work is at the desk and calls stop when you close.

AI only fits a business where nobody sits at a desk: a contractor on jobs, a solo practitioner, a shop run by the owner.

AI plus a person fits many offices that see walk-ins but also get calls after hours. A part-timer covers the desk during the busiest hours. The AI answers every call, including the ones that come in while the part-timer is with someone, and passes the important ones to them. This is the setup behind a virtual receptionist that pairs AI with people.

For a closer look at human remote receptionists, see AI receptionist vs virtual receptionist.

When hiring a person is the better choice

Hire a person when the job is mostly in the room, not on the phone. If your front desk spends the day checking people in, taking payments, scanning insurance cards, handling forms and keeping a waiting room calm, AI does not replace that. It can only take the calls that come in while they do it.

A person is also the better call when:

• Scheduling is complex. Multi-step appointments, equipment or rooms to coordinate, or rules that change daily are hard to write down. If you cannot explain the rule in a sentence, an AI will not follow it well.
• Callers need judgment. Situations that need weighing up, not a written answer, belong with a person. The AI should hand these off.
• Relationships drive the business. Some clients call because they know Maria at the desk. Keep Maria.
• Calls are few and predictable. If you get a handful of calls a day during hours you are open, you may not need anything new at all.

Be honest with yourself about which description fits. The worksheet tells you the cost. The coverage table tells you what you would be paying for.

Try it on your own calls

If the numbers point to AI, or to AI plus a part-timer, test it before you decide. Enter your website and Vocenya builds a receptionist for your business and calls your phone, so you can hear it answer. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial, and you can compare plans on the pricing page.