Why do some AI receptionist vendors hide their pricing?

Usually because their pricing scales aggressively with call volume or because they price every practice differently based on what the sales rep thinks they can charge. Hidden pricing is a yellow flag. Ask for a written quote with the full price structure before you commit to a demo. A vendor that will not quote you a starting price is telling you something about how they will price you later.

What's the ROI on a dental AI receptionist?

A practice missing 15 new-patient calls a week, at roughly $5,000 in first-year value per missed new patient, is leaving close to $3.9M on the table per year, and the real number climbs higher once you count referrals and multi-year recall value. An AI receptionist that recovers even a third of those calls pays for itself many times over. The missed-call revenue calculator on enamly.ai walks through the math for your specific inputs.

Are there hidden fees with AI receptionist services?

Watch for three. First, an overage rate that is not published on plans that advertise included minutes. Second, per-location surcharges that aren't disclosed until you ask about multi-location. Third, integration fees beyond the initial setup that appear when you add a new PMS or a new location. Enamly states its included talk time up front, so none of the three can surprise you.

How does AI receptionist pricing compare to human answering services?

Human services like Smith.ai, Ruby, and PATLive are typically priced per minute or per call with tiered minimums. For a practice receiving 200 calls a week, the monthly bill can exceed $1,500 at moderate average call lengths. Most AI receptionists price on a monthly plan with included minutes, which makes them cheaper above a few hundred calls per month. Below that, human services are sometimes competitive.

How Much Does an AI Dental Receptionist Actually Cost? (Honest Breakdown)

Q: How much does an AI dental receptionist actually cost per month?

Real AI receptionists that book live into your PMS typically cost between $300 and $1,500 per month depending on practice size, call volume, and number of locations. Enamly starts at $399 per month, with 600 minutes of talk time included, plus a one-time setup fee. Pure per-minute or per-call pricing models exist in the category but tend to cost more for any practice with meaningful call volume.

One of the most common questions we get during a demo is some version of "okay, what is this actually going to cost me?" And one of the most frustrating things about this category is how hard it is to get a straight answer from anyone before you sit through an hour-long sales call.

So here is the straight answer, in one post. No demo required.

What a real AI dental receptionist costs

A real AI receptionist, meaning one that answers patient calls 24/7 in your practice's voice, reads your live schedule, and books appointments directly into your PMS, falls into three pricing buckets.

Entry-level, $300 to $500 per month. Solo practice, one location, one PMS. Usually includes a monthly talk-time allowance with a per-minute rate above it, so ask for both numbers. Typical target: a solo dentist handling 150 to 400 inbound calls per week.

Growth, $500 to $999 per month. Multi-provider practice, one or two locations. Higher call volume, typically 400 to 1,200 calls per week. Same core product, expanded to handle the volume and the scheduling complexity of multiple providers with specialty-specific rules.

DSO and multi-location, $1,000+ per month. 3+ locations, custom routing, deep recall and recare integration, provider-specific escalation rules. Pricing gets quoted per location and per volume tier, with the talk-time allowance scaled to match.

Enamly starts at $399 per month, with 600 minutes of talk time included. It goes up from there for larger setups. You will always get a specific number in writing before any commitment.

The setup fee

On top of monthly, expect a one-time setup fee in the low four figures. Here is what that covers when the vendor is doing it right.

PMS integration configuration. Authorizing the middleware or API, mapping your appointment types, durations, and providers.
Conversation-flow tuning. The AI's script is customized to your practice name, your brand voice, your preferred appointment types, and your specific intake questions. This is not a generic template.
Voice selection and tuning. You choose the voice and hear test calls before going live.
Test calls. We run multiple test calls against your practice setup before we switch your main phone number over.
BAA execution and compliance review.

When vendors waive the setup fee, it is almost always because they are using a generic template and skipping the tuning work. The first time a patient calls and gets routed to the wrong provider or offered a 30-minute slot for a 60-minute appointment, you will understand why the setup fee exists.

What "per-minute" pricing actually costs

Human answering services and a few AI vendors price per minute. On the surface this looks cheaper because the headline number is lower. In practice, the math almost never works for a dental practice with real call volume.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation. Assume:

200 inbound calls per week
Average call length of 3 minutes
Per-minute rate of $1.50 (roughly market for human services)

That is 600 minutes per week, or roughly 2,600 per month. At $1.50 per minute, the monthly bill is about $3,900. A monthly-plan AI at $399 to $999 is dramatically cheaper at that volume, even after any overage above its included minutes.

Per-minute billing only wins for very low-volume practices, typically under 50 calls per week. And those practices usually do not need AI in the first place.

What you should never pay for

Avoid these.

Per-call charges on top of monthly. The whole point of a subscription is predictability.
Per-patient-record charges. Storing a new patient record in your PMS is not a line-item event.
"Priority support" as a premium add-on. A vendor that charges extra for support is telling you the support is bad otherwise.
Cancellation fees beyond a reasonable notice period. One month's notice is standard. Six months is punitive.
Per-PMS-change charges when you migrate from one PMS to another. A modern vendor can move you without a second setup fee.

The ROI math

The value of an AI receptionist comes down to one question: how much missed-call revenue is it recovering for you?

Here is the math for a typical general dental practice.

200 inbound calls per week
25 percent missed-call rate (an assumption; use your own phone system's report)
That is 50 missed calls per week
Assume 30 percent of those are new patients calling for the first time. That is 15 new-patient calls lost per week.
At roughly $5,000 in first-year value per missed new patient, that is $75,000 per week in lost first-year revenue, or close to $3.9M per year. Referrals and multi-year recall value push the real number higher still.

An AI receptionist that recovers even one third of those missed calls recovers well over $1M per year in first-year value alone. At a monthly cost of $399 to $999, the ROI is not close.

Plug your own numbers into the missed-call revenue calculator to see the math for your specific practice, and the full missed-call revenue math breakdown for how the inputs are derived. Most practices are surprised by the annual figure.

What competitors charge (what we can verify)

We can't publish other vendors' actual pricing because most of them don't either. But here is the general pattern we see from practice owners who have compared.

Arini. Arini does not publish pricing; its site directs practices to book a demo. See our full Arini comparison for the rest of the differences.
Dentina.ai. Dentina publishes its inbound plans: Standard starts at $299 per month and Premium at $399 per month billed annually, or $374 and $499 billed monthly, per location for up to 3 providers. Outbound campaigns are priced on a demo. See our full Dentina comparison.
Smith.ai. Prices per call, not per minute. AI Receptionist plans run from Free (25 calls a month, then $3.00 per call) to Pro from $150 a month. Live receptionist plans start at $300 a month for 30 calls, with extra calls at $11.50 each.
PATLive. Bills per minute of live receptionist time, from pay-as-you-go at $49 a month plus $2.99 per minute to bundles such as 50 minutes for $99 and 1,000 minutes for $1,499.
Ruby Receptionists. Plans are sized by receptionist minutes, starting at $250 a month for 50 minutes, with extra minutes billed at the plan's per-minute rate.

The cleanest way to compare is to calculate your expected monthly bill under each vendor at your actual call volume, not the headline number. A $249 headline price with a steep per-minute overage costs more than a $799 plan with generous included minutes if you have any real call volume.

The decision framework

If you are trying to decide whether an AI receptionist is worth it for your practice, the framework is four questions.

How many patient calls a week do you miss today? Count them. Run a call log report from your phone system for a week. Every voicemail is a candidate.
What is a new patient worth to your practice in the first year? Check your own production reports if you track this. If you don't, $5,000 in first-year value is a reasonable industry default, and referrals plus multi-year recall push the real number higher.
How much are those missed calls costing you a year? Multiply.
Does the monthly AI receptionist cost clear that bar by 5x or more? At most price points and call volumes, it will. If it doesn't, AI is probably not right for your practice yet.

For a practice missing $200,000 a year in new-patient revenue, a $500 per month AI receptionist is not a cost. It is a 40x ROI line item. For a practice missing $30,000 a year, the math is tighter and you should look harder at whether the AI is actually the bottleneck.

What Enamly specifically costs

Starting at $399 per month, for a solo practice, plus a one-time setup fee. Every plan includes 600 minutes of talk time per month, roughly 260 calls, sized for a typical practice, and most practices never come close to it. No per-call surcharge. Multi-location, DSO, and specialty pricing quoted per practice and always in writing before you sign.

Book a demo and I will walk you through the exact pricing for your practice. You will get a written quote on the call, not 48 hours later after four follow-up emails.

Dr. Bethel Ozumba, known as Dr. B-Bay, is the Founder and CEO of Enamly. He's a practicing dentist who scaled his own private practice to $1.3M in its first year before selling it in April 2025 to build Enamly full time. He writes about dental AI, pricing transparency, and the economics of missed calls at enamly.ai/blog.