---
title: "How AI answering services bill: minutes vs calls | Rivet App"
description: "Minutes, calls, unique customers, conversations or credits: what each AI answering billing unit means for your bill, with one month worked at published rates."
url: https://therivetapp.com/guides/how-ai-answering-services-bill
date_modified: 2026-10-22
site: "Rivet App (therivetapp.com)"
format: markdown twin of the HTML page at url; generated from the same source
---

Guide · rates read October 22, 2026

# How AI answering services bill, and what one month costs on each unit

Two AI receptionists can both say “from $49 a month” and send you bills that differ by double, because one counts minutes and the other counts calls. This guide names the five billing units the category uses, says who uses which, explains what each one does to a trades shop's bill, and then prices one assumed month on every unit, step by step, at each vendor's own published rate. Rivet's numbers are in it on the same terms, overage and cap included.

[Nine receptionists, priced](https://therivetapp.com/best-ai-receptionists-for-contractors)[Rivet pricing](https://therivetapp.com/pricing)

## Why can't you compare AI answering prices straight across?

Because the plan card tells you the price but not the unit, and the unit is what your month gets multiplied by. Among the vendors that publish prices, four meter minutes, two meter calls, one meters unique customers, one meters conversations, one meters credits, and one meters nothing and relies on a fair-usage policy. A shop whose calls are short does better on a per-minute meter; a shop whose calls run long does better per call; a shop whose regulars ring back does better per customer. The same 40 calls can cost $29.99 or $158 depending on nothing but the unit, and that spread is worked below. So the first question for any vendor is not “how much” but “per what”, and the second is “and then what, when I go over”.

The sourced table of what each vendor publishes, with the live human services beside the AI ones, is at [what answering services publish as their prices](https://therivetapp.com/vs/answering-service/prices); the buyer’s shortlist is [nine AI receptionists for contractors, priced](https://therivetapp.com/best-ai-receptionists-for-contractors). This page is the arithmetic that sits between the two.

## What are the five billing units, and who uses each?

Per minute (Rosie, AgentZap, Dialzara, and Rivet with a cap), per call (Smith.ai's AI line, OnCrew), per unique customer (Goodcall), per conversation (Jobber's Receptionist) and credits (ServiceAgent, which converts a voice minute to 15 credits). SkipCalls sits outside the five with a flat price and a fair-usage policy. Each vendor's unit and entry figure below is its own, read October 22, 2026.

Five ways to count the same phone call. Entry figures are each vendor’s own, read October 22, 2026 (Rosie, Dialzara, AgentZap, OnCrew, Smith.ai, Goodcall, Jobber, ServiceAgent); Rivet from our pricing page.
| Unit | Who bills this way | What gets counted | Entry plan |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Per minute | Rosie, AgentZap, Dialzara, Rivet | Time the AI spends on the line, summed across the month | Rosie $49 for 250; AgentZap $109 for 150; Dialzara $29 for 60; Rivet $79 for 60 |
| Per call | Smith.ai (AI), OnCrew | Each answered call, regardless of length; spam filtered | Smith.ai $0 for 25 then $3.00 each; OnCrew $49 for 100 |
| Per unique customer | Goodcall | Each distinct phone number, once a month | Goodcall $79 for 100 |
| Per conversation | Jobber Receptionist | A call the AI engaged in, or a text thread per 24 hours | Jobber $29 add-on for 30 |
| Credits | ServiceAgent | 15 credits per AI voice minute; texts and other actions draw too | ServiceAgent $49 for 2,000 credits (waitlist) |

Sophiie billed per call when we last read its page, on August 26, 2026; on October 22, 2026 that pricing URL redirected to the homepage, so it is left out of the arithmetic rather than worked on a figure the vendor no longer shows. Sameday meters minutes too, but at “starts at” $449/mo for 500 it is priced for a different shop and is omitted here for that reason.

## What does each unit mean for a shop's bill?

A minute meter charges you for long calls and forgives short ones. A call meter does the reverse. A unique-customer meter forgives repeat callers entirely. A conversation meter behaves like a call meter but also counts text threads. A credit meter is a minute meter in disguise, with the exchange rate on the vendor's page. The right unit is the one that forgives the kind of call your trade actually gets.

### Per minute

Rosie, AgentZap and Dialzara count the time the AI is on the line, and so does Rivet. What makes or breaks a per-minute bill is the rate past the allowance and whether anybody publishes it. Dialzara prints $0.48/min on its $29/mo plan, AgentZap prints $0.85/min on its $109/mo plan, Rivet prints $1.25/min with a cap, and Rosie prints nothing for minutes past 250 on its $49/mo plan, which means your 251st minute is priced in a conversation with sales. Per-minute also raises the question none of the plan cards answer: what is a minute? Ring time, hold time, the voicemail the robocaller leaves, the rounding rule. Rivet’s answer is written down: AI answering minutes are the time the AI spends on answered calls, summed across the billing period and rounded up to a whole minute once, not per call.

### Per call

OnCrew counts every call it answers, at $49/mo for 100 and $0.99 each after; Smith.ai’s AI line counts real calls, 25 free and then $3.00 each, or 75 on Pro at $150/mo. A per-call meter is kind to the plumber whose emergency intake runs twelve minutes and unkind to the painter whose calls are two-minute “are you free Thursday” checks. Both vendors say spam is filtered before it counts, which matters more on this unit than any other, because on a per-call meter a robocall and a customer are the same price unless somebody subtracts it.

### Per unique customer

Goodcall charges by distinct phone number: Goodcall covers 100 a month for $79/mo and then $0.79 for each new number, with minutes and calls uncounted. If the same homeowner calls four times about one job, that is one customer. For a service shop with a maintenance book and regulars, this is the unit that most resembles a flat price; for a shop whose calls are mostly first- time callers from a Google listing, it behaves like a per-call meter with a generous allowance.

### Per conversation

Jobber’s Receptionist counts a conversation as a call the AI actually engaged in, or a text thread, with messages inside 24 hours folded into one. The add-on is $29/mo for 30 conversations and then $0.79 each, and it is included on the Jobber Plus plan at $499/mo. The unit is close to per call with texts added, and the thing to remember is that it sits on top of a Jobber subscription, so the add-on price is never the whole bill.

### Credits

ServiceAgent sells credits that the whole platform draws on: an AI voice minute is 15 credits, a text segment is 2, a review reply is 1. ServiceAgent Core is $49/mo (or $39/mo billed yearly) for 2,000 credits, and top-ups are listed at $0.02 to $0.04 a credit. A credit meter is a minute meter with a conversion step, and the step is where to look: if texts and other actions draw from the same pool, a busy month on the phone also eats the month’s texting. Its page says it launches soon, so this is the published plan rather than a product you can buy today.

### Flat, with a fair-usage policy

SkipCalls publishes $29.99/mo with no minute number and a fair-usage policy. That is a real price and a real ceiling; the ceiling just has no figure printed on it. Read the policy before your busiest month rather than after.

## What would one illustrative month cost on each unit?

Take an assumed month of 40 answered calls averaging 3 minutes, 120 AI answering minutes in all, each from a different number, with spam already filtered. That is an assumption chosen to make the arithmetic visible, not a statistic about any shop. At published entry rates it costs $29.99 at SkipCalls, $36.90 for Jobber's add-on before the Jobber plan, $45 on Smith.ai's free tier, $49 at Rosie, OnCrew and ServiceAgent, $57.80 at Dialzara, $79 at Goodcall, $109 at AgentZap plus its one-time setup, and $154 on Rivet Starter or $199 on Rivet Growth. Rivet is near the top of that list, and the working below shows why.

The assumed month, 40 answered calls × 3 minutes = 120 AI answering minutes, priced at each vendor’s published entry rate. Our arithmetic on their numbers; the two Rivet rows are ours and marked.
| Vendor (plan) | Unit | Working | Month total |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Rosie (Professional) | minute | 120 min ≤ 250 included → inside the allowance | $49 |
| Dialzara (Business Lite) | minute | $29 + (120 − 60) × $0.48 = $29 + $28.80 | $57.80 |
| AgentZap (Starter) | minute | 120 min ≤ 150 included; first month adds the $499 setup | $109 ($608 first month) |
| Rivet Starter | minute, capped | $79/mo + (120 − 60) × $1.25 = $79 + $75 (under the $79 cap) | $154 |
| Rivet Growth | minute, capped | 120 min ≤ 200 included → inside the allowance | $199 |
| Smith.ai (free tier) | call | $0 + (40 − 25) × $3.00 = $45; Pro at $150 would cover all 40 | $45 |
| OnCrew (Starter) | call | 40 calls ≤ 100 included → inside the allowance | $49 |
| Goodcall (Starter) | unique customer | 40 numbers ≤ 100 included → inside the allowance | $79 |
| Jobber Receptionist | conversation | $29 + (40 − 30) × $0.79 = $36.90, plus Core at $49 underneath | $36.90 for the add-on ($85.90 with Core) |
| ServiceAgent (Core) | credits | 120 min × 15 = 1,800 credits ≤ 2,000 included | $49 (waitlist) |
| SkipCalls | none (flat) | fair-usage policy, no number published | $29.99 |

Read the Rivet rows honestly: on this month, with these assumptions, six vendors bill less than Rivet does, because RivetStarter bundles 60 minutes against the 150 to 250 that the per-minute vendors include at entry, and charges $1.25 for each minute after. What the $79/mo buys that the others in this table do not is what happens after the call: the booking proposed against your calendar, the quote, the invoice and the follow-up drafted for your approval. Whether that is worth the difference is your call, which is why the table is here and not a ranking. Change the assumption and the order changes: at 20 calls averaging one minute, every per-minute vendor including Rivet Starter stays inside its allowance, while OnCrew’s and Goodcall’s bills do not move at all.

## How does overage work, and what is Rivet's?

Overage is the rate for units past the included bundle, and it is published by Dialzara ($0.48/min), AgentZap ($0.85/min), OnCrew ($0.99/call), Smith.ai ($2.50/call on Pro), Goodcall ($0.79 per customer) and Jobber ($0.79 per conversation), and not published by Rosie. Rivet's is $1.25 per AI answering minute past the bundle, 60 minutes on Starter at $79/mo and 200 on Growth at $199/mo, capped at one plan price per month. So the worst month on Starter is $79 + $79 = $158 and the worst month on Growth is $199 + $199 = $398, however many minutes run.

Two things about that cap worth saying plainly. First, it is a meter: Rivet does charge for minutes past the bundle, and the rate is higher than the per-minute rates Dialzara and AgentZap print. Second, the cap changes the shape of the worst case rather than the average. At 300 minutes in a month, Dialzara Lite = $29 + 240 × $0.48 = $144.20, AgentZap Starter = $109 + 150 × $0.85 = $236.50, and Rivet Starter = $79 + $79 = $158 with the cap doing the work; Rosie Professional = $49 plus 50 minutes at a rate its page does not state. A shop that wants to know the most it can possibly pay before the month starts has the answer on [Rivet’s pricing page](https://therivetapp.com/pricing); a shop whose months are steady and short may never need it.

## How should a shop pick a unit for its own call pattern?

Pull last month's call log and write down three numbers: answered calls, total minutes, and how many of those calls came from numbers you already had. Long calls and few of them point to a per-call meter. Short calls and many of them point to per minute. Lots of repeat numbers point to per customer. Then price that real month at each vendor's published rate the way the table above does, and look at the overage line before the headline, because the month you are buying coverage for is the busy one.

If you run Jobber, start with its add-on; the unit is secondary when the booking lands where your work already lives. If the phone is only part of what you need handled, the comparison is a different one, and it is on [AI answering service for contractors](https://therivetapp.com/ai-answering-service-for-contractors). The value of the calls you miss today, in your own numbers, is the other half of this ledger and lives in the [missed-call cost calculator](https://therivetapp.com/tools/missed-call-cost).

## Common questions

### Is per-minute or per-call billing cheaper for a contractor?

It depends on your average call length. OnCrew's overage is $0.99 per call and Dialzara's is $0.48 per minute, so a call shorter than about two minutes costs less on Dialzara's meter and a call longer than that costs less on OnCrew's; the included allowances shift the break-even for any given month. Price your own log on both before deciding.

### What counts as a billable minute?

Most pricing pages do not say, and it is the question to ask: ring time, hold time, spam calls, and the rounding rule all move the bill. Rivet counts AI answering minutes as the time the AI spends on answered calls, summed across the billing period and rounded up to a whole minute once, not per call.

### What exactly is Rivet's overage?

$1.25 per AI answering minute past the included bundle, which is 60 minutes on Starter ($79/mo) and 200 on Growth ($199/mo), capped at one plan price per month. The most a Starter month can cost is $158; the most a Growth month can cost is $398. The cap is the default and the owner can raise it.

### Do free trials change the arithmetic?

Only for the first month. As published on 2026-10-22: Rosie, Dialzara and SkipCalls list 7-day trials, OnCrew lists 14 days with no card required, Smith.ai's AI line has a standing free tier of 25 calls, Goodcall lets you build and test an agent before connecting a number, and AgentZap lists no trial but a 30-day money-back guarantee alongside its $499 setup fee.

### Where do these numbers come from?

Every third-party rate is the vendor's own, read from its pricing page and stored with the URL and date; the full sourced table is at /vs/answering-service/prices and most rows were re-read on 2026-10-22. Rivet's figures come from the same file that renders /pricing. The 40-call month is an assumption we chose to make the arithmetic checkable, not a measurement of anyone's shop.

Reviewed October 22, 2026 · vendor rates read 2026-10-22 · [how we check](https://therivetapp.com/editorial-standards)

## A meter that stops at one plan price

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[Start free trial](https://therivetapp.com/signup)[Book a demo](https://therivetapp.com/demo)

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