Most owners price a receptionist by the hourly wage. That number is the smallest part of the bill. Once you add payroll taxes, benefits, paid time off, training, and the cost of every call that goes unanswered when one person cannot be in two places at once, the real figure is far higher than the offer letter suggests. This is a line by line comparison of what a front desk hire actually costs against what an AI receptionist costs, so you can make the call with the full number in front of you.
What a full-time receptionist really costs
Start with wage. A front desk receptionist in the United States runs roughly 17 to 22 dollars an hour, which lands around 38,000 to 46,000 dollars a year for a single full-time seat. That is the visible cost. The hidden costs stack quickly on top of it.
- Payroll taxes and insurance: employer FICA, unemployment, and workers compensation typically add 10 to 12 percent on top of wage.
- Benefits: health coverage, retirement match, and paid time off commonly add another 20 to 30 percent for a full-time employee.
- Recruiting and onboarding: posting, interviewing, and the first weeks of reduced output before someone is fully trained.
- Turnover: front desk roles turn over often, and each replacement restarts the recruiting and training clock.
Add it up and a 42,000 dollar wage becomes a 55,000 to 60,000 dollar fully loaded cost. And that buys you one person, for roughly 40 hours a week, with lunch breaks, sick days, and vacations during which the phone is covered by someone else or not at all.
The coverage gap nobody prices in
A single receptionist covers about a quarter of the week. Evenings, early mornings, weekends, holidays, and every minute they spend on another call or helping someone in person are uncovered. Those are exactly the hours when a missed call costs the most, because the caller simply dials the next business on their list. We cover the revenue side of this in why you should never miss an after-hours call.
The math that matters
If your average customer is worth a few hundred dollars and you miss even one call a day to voicemail, the lost revenue over a year usually dwarfs the entire cost of answering coverage. The question is not whether you can afford coverage. It is whether you can afford the gap.
What an AI receptionist costs
An AI receptionist is priced as software, not headcount. There is no payroll tax, no benefits load, no turnover, and no recruiting cycle. It answers every call at the same moment, so peak-hour overflow and after-hours calls are covered without a second seat. OmniGreet plans start at 69 dollars a month, and you can see the full lineup on the pricing page.
The trade is real and worth stating plainly. A human handles genuine nuance, reads a room, and builds rapport in ways software does not. An AI receptionist handles the high-volume, repeatable work flawlessly and never sleeps. For most small and medium businesses the right answer is not one or the other. It is letting the AI carry the calls that used to go to voicemail and freeing your people for the work that needs a human.
Side by side
- Coverage: a receptionist covers about 40 hours a week. An AI receptionist covers all 168.
- Concurrency: a receptionist takes one call at a time. An AI receptionist answers every line at once during a rush.
- Ramp: a new hire needs weeks of training. An AI receptionist is configured to your business and live in 24 to 48 hours.
- Cost: a fully loaded front desk seat runs 55,000 dollars and up per year. AI answering starts at 69 dollars a month.
- Consistency: a human has good and bad days. An AI receptionist greets the thousandth caller exactly like the first.
When to hire, and when to automate
If your phone volume already justifies a full-time person and the work is heavily relationship-driven, hire. If you are missing calls during rushes, after hours, or while your team is heads-down on the actual job, an AI receptionist closes that gap for a fraction of a salary. Many businesses run both: a person at the desk during the day and an AI receptionist catching everything that would otherwise ring out. Industries like dental practices and home services see the clearest payback because a single missed call is often a lost patient or a lost job.
Whichever way you lean, price the whole thing. The wage is the start of the conversation, not the end of it. When you put the fully loaded cost of a hire next to the cost of answering coverage that never clocks out, the decision usually makes itself.