Ruby receptionist pricing: every 2026 plan, the overage, and how it compares

Ruby receptionist pricing starts at 250 dollars a month for 50 receptionist minutes, as of October 2026. The largest plan is 7,875 dollars for 2,500 minutes, and the most popular is 720 dollars for 200. Overage runs 3.30 to 5.40 dollars a minute. Every call is rounded up to the next full minute, and hold time counts.

Ruby receptionist pricing: every plan, October 2026

Ruby's virtual receptionist plans are minute bundles. You pay a fixed monthly fee for a pool of receptionist minutes, plus overage for anything past it. The features are the same on every tier; only the minutes change. The pricing page shows four plans. Ruby's help center lists all ten, with the overage rate for each and the usage range Ruby recommends.

Ruby is a virtual receptionist in the original sense of the term: a remote person answering as your office. Ruby Receptionists, Inc. is based in Portland, Oregon. Its homepage says it serves more than 15,000 businesses and handles more than 1.1 million conversations a month.

One warning about the numbers you will find elsewhere. Third-party guides often quote older or different figures. A December 2025 guide from Vida, for example, lists 245 dollars for 50 minutes and 705 dollars for 200. Ruby's own pages showed the prices above when we read them in October 2026. Check the live page on the day you buy.

Which tier fits depends on calls, not business size. At Ruby's two-minute average, Call Ruby 50 covers about 25 calls a month: a part-time agent or a single rental. Call Ruby 100 covers about 50, a busy solo agent. Call Ruby 200 covers about 100, a small team or leasing office. Call Ruby 500 covers about 250, which is where a property manager with a few hundred doors usually sits.

Ruby also sells website chat, staffed by people. Add chat to a receptionist plan and the chat part is 20 percent off.

What every Ruby plan includes

Every Ruby plan includes the same service; only the minutes change. Ruby's Virtual receptionist pricing 101 guide lists what it treats as part of the plan. None of these carry an extra fee:

• 24/7 answering, with call transfers to several destinations and complex call routing
• Bilingual service, scheduling with conflict checks, and lead capture and intake
• Local and toll-free numbers, voicemail, and porting numbers in or out
• CRM integrations, the Ruby mobile app, and caller ID selection for calls and texts

The same guide names what costs extra: overage minutes and optional features such as custom hold music and additional phone lines. Its argument is that cheaper answering services add fees for transfers, message-taking and holidays, and Ruby does not. That is a fair point against some low-priced services. It matters less against an AI receptionist, which also includes booking and texting in one price.

The pricing page adds an AI layer, included on every plan. It covers call and voicemail transcripts, caller sentiment analysis and robocall filtering. There is also an assistant that helps the receptionist find your business details mid-call. Phone service hosting is listed too, which Ruby says can replace your phone bill.

What counts as a minute on Ruby's bill

Ruby bills receptionist time, not call length. The clock starts when a receptionist receives the call and includes any time the caller spends on hold. Each call is then rounded up to the next full minute. So a call with 1 minute 12 seconds of receptionist time bills as 2 minutes.

That is all stated in Ruby's billing basics and its FAQ. Ruby's own pricing guide uses the same 1:12 example and adds one helpful detail. The clock stops when the receptionist transfers the call to you or to your voicemail, or when the call ends.

How long is a typical call? Ruby's help center puts an average inbound call at roughly two receptionist minutes. On that figure, the 200-minute plan covers about 100 calls a month. A real estate call that ends in a booked showing usually runs longer, so plan on fewer.

The rounding has a price of its own. If receptionist time lands anywhere within a minute at random, rounding up adds about 30 seconds to the average call. That is our estimate, not a Ruby figure. On 100 calls a month, it is roughly 50 minutes more than per-second billing would charge. At the 200-minute plan's 3.60 effective rate, that is about 180 dollars. Services that bill by the second, or in 6-second steps after the first minute, lose far less to rounding.

Here is the effect on one month of short calls. Take 100 calls with 1 minute 12 seconds of receptionist time each, priced in October 2026:

• Ruby bills 2 minutes a call, so 200 minutes. Call Ruby 200 covers it at 720 dollars.
• PATLive bills 1.2 minutes a call, so 120 minutes. Its 100-minute plan plus 20 minutes at 2.09 dollars is 230.80 dollars.
• Smith.ai bills per call regardless of length. 100 calls on Basic is 915 dollars.

Ruby's rounding turns 120 minutes of work into 200 billed minutes. On short calls, that matters more than the headline rate.

Some calls cost nothing. Calls that reach your after-hours voicemail are not billed, according to Ruby's cost-saving tips. Ruby's AI page lists free robocall filtering that screens out spam before a person picks up.

The complaints have not vanished entirely. On Trustpilot, the critical reviews mostly concern billing. Reviewers mention robocalls and hang-ups that used up minutes, and nudges to move up a plan. In its replies, Ruby points customers to the free robocall blocking feature.

Ruby overage: what happens when you go over

When you use more minutes than your plan includes, Ruby bills each extra minute at your plan's overage rate. That runs 5.40 dollars on Call Ruby 50 down to 3.30 dollars on Call Ruby 2,500. The plan fee is due in advance each month; overage is billed after the month ends.

The overage rate is not on the main pricing page, which is why many guides call it unpublished. It is in the help center billing plans article, plan by plan. Ruby alerts you in its app when you reach 85 percent and 100 percent of your minutes.

Say you list three homes in April and your line runs 250 minutes on Call Ruby 200. The bill is 720 dollars plus 50 minutes at 4.40 dollars, so 940 dollars. Moving up to Call Ruby 350 would cost 1,210 dollars, so paying the overage is cheaper. Ruby's own suggested ranges reflect this: the 200-minute plan makes sense up to 311 minutes.

The rules on changing plans matter more than the rate. Per Ruby's billing basics:

• Upgrades can be requested any time and apply to the current billing cycle.
• Downgrades are allowed only after three consecutive billing periods on the same plan.
• New customers get a three-billing-cycle window to find the right plan.
• Unused minutes do not roll over to the next month.

For a seasonal business, that downgrade rule is the expensive one. Move up to Call Ruby 350 for a busy spring and a quiet month at 200 minutes still costs 1,210 dollars. That is 490 dollars more than the plan you would have chosen for that month. And you wait three billing periods to step back down.

Spikes hit the same rule. Past the first three months, an investor drops a mailer and the line runs 300 minutes instead of the usual 100. Left on Call Ruby 100, the month costs 395 dollars plus 200 minutes at 4.50, so 1,295 dollars. Upgrading to Call Ruby 200 that month brings it to 1,160 dollars. But the downgrade back waits three billing periods, so two quiet months that follow cost 720 each instead of 395. The spike ends up costing about 650 dollars more than the month itself shows.

How to pick a Ruby plan and keep the bill down

Pick the plan from your real call log, not from your business size. Count a month of inbound calls and multiply by two to two and a half minutes. Then match the total to Ruby's suggested range. Then use Ruby's own levers to keep the minutes in check.

1. 1

   Count a normal month of calls

   Pull inbound call counts from your phone provider or your call log. Skip your busiest month and your quietest. Count the hours the calls arrive, too.
2. 2

   Turn calls into billed minutes

   Ruby says the average call is about two receptionist minutes. Calls that end in a transfer or a booking run longer, so 2.5 minutes is a safer planning figure. At that rate, 100 calls is about 250 billed minutes.
3. 3

   Match the total to Ruby's suggested range

   Ruby's ranges already price in overage. 250 minutes fits Call Ruby 200 at 940 dollars with overage, not Call Ruby 350 at 1,210.
4. 4

   Watch the first three months

   New customers get three billing cycles to change plans freely. After that, a downgrade waits three billing periods, so settle on the right tier early.

Ruby's help center suggests four ways to spend fewer minutes. Use delayed forwarding, so your office phone rings about twice before Ruby picks up. Turn forwarding off when you near the minutes you want to spend. Let callers leave detailed messages in voicemail rather than with a receptionist. And shorten your live answering hours, since calls to after-hours voicemail are not billed.

Every one of those tips saves money by answering fewer calls live. That works for a business whose calls can wait. On a listing line at night, the call sent to voicemail is often the one that books a showing somewhere else.

Ruby setup fees, contracts and the fine print

Ruby charges no setup fee and asks for no long-term contract. Service is month to month, and cancelling takes effect at the end of the current billing period. There is no free trial on the pricing page. First-time customers get a money-back guarantee instead.

Two details are worth asking about before you sign. Ruby's FAQsays Spanish service is available 24/7. Another answer on the same page limits bilingual service and outbound call assists to weekdays, 5am to 6pm Pacific. Ask which applies to your line. And Ruby's cancellation policy mentions a discounted Platform Only plan with no published price.

Additional lines matter for brokerages and multi-office managers. Ruby's help center prices each additional line at 100 dollars a month, and all lines share one minute pool. Two offices on Call Ruby 200 cost 820 dollars a month before overage, and both offices draw on the same 200 minutes.

The money-back guarantee is worth planning around. It ends at 21 days or 500 receptionist minutes, whichever comes first. An office using 200 minutes a month will reach day 21 long before 500 minutes. An office using 1,000 minutes a month will hit the minute cap in about two weeks. Either way, measure your real usage inside that window.

Payments by phone are an option. Ruby's FAQ describes a PCI-compliant service where the receptionist enters a caller's card into your own payment system. Appointment scheduling and client intake are listed as optional features. Ruby publishes no separate price for any of them.

What a typical small office pays for Ruby

Most small offices land on Call Ruby 200, at 720 dollars a month or 8,640 dollars a year. Ruby labels it the most popular plan. On Ruby's two-minute average, it covers about 100 calls a month. Pay by credit card and the 3 percent fee brings it to 741.60 dollars.

Here is how that plays out on two real estate lines, using Ruby's own two-minute average.

• A solo agent with 40 calls a monthuses about 80 minutes. That falls in Call Ruby 100's suggested range: 395 dollars a month.
• A small property management office with 150 calls uses about 300 minutes. On Call Ruby 200 that is 720 dollars plus 100 overage minutes at 4.40 dollars, so 1,160 dollars a month.

Against a staff hire, those are modest numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median receptionist wage at 38,010 dollars a year as of May 2025. Its employer cost survey puts benefits at 31.3 percent of total pay for office and administrative staff. That comes to about 55,300 dollars a year, so Call Ruby 200 is roughly 16 percent of one median hire. The full comparison is in the AI vs human receptionist post.

Over a year, the gaps between the options get easier to see. Here is the same 200-minute month, about 100 calls, priced for twelve months.

Ruby's own customers make the same comparison. One Trustpilot reviewer set a Ruby bill of about 6,000 dollars a year against the 110,000 dollar salary of an in-house hire. Measured against a person on payroll, Ruby is cheap. Measured against software, it is not.

How Ruby's pricing compares to other virtual receptionist services

On the same minutes, Ruby is the most expensive of the per-minute human services here and far above an AI receptionist. At 200 minutes, Ruby costs 720 dollars, PATLive 349, and callflo.ai Starter 117.40 on annual billing. Smith.ai bills by the call, and the same 100 calls cost about 915 dollars there.

The arithmetic behind each cell:

• Ruby: each volume matches a plan exactly. The price is the plan: Call Ruby 100, 200 and 500.
• PATLive: the same, on its 100, 200 and 500-minute plans at 189, 349 and 759 dollars.
• Smith.ai: 50 calls is Starter at 300 dollars plus 20 calls at 11.50, so 530. 100 calls is Basic at 810 plus 10 calls at 10.50, so 915. 250 calls fits Pro at 2,100.
• callflo.ai Starter: 39 dollars covers 120 minutes. At 200 minutes, add 80 minutes at 98 cents, which is 78.40, for 117.40. At 500 minutes, add 380 minutes, which is 372.40, for 411.40.

One honest caveat on that last row. An AI call that answers questions, books a showing and takes a deposit can run longer than two minutes. If your calls average four minutes on callflo.ai, 100 calls is 400 minutes. That is 39 dollars plus 280 minutes at 98 cents, so 313.40 dollars. It is still well under Ruby's 720.

Per call, the same table looks like this. Divide each monthly cost by the calls it covers at two minutes a call.

Notice the callflo.ai figure rises with volume while the others fall. Starter includes 120 minutes and meters the rest at 98 cents. Past about 790 minutes a month, VIP at 697 dollars becomes the cheaper callflo.ai plan.

Smith.ai also sells an AI receptionist next to its staffed plans. Its AI pricing page lists a free tier with 25 calls, as of October 2026. Its Pro plan starts at 150 dollars a month for 75 calls. The full breakdown is in the Smith.ai pricing post. For Ruby next to six more human services, see the outsource receptionist guide.

If the price gap decides it, the next step is to hear the cheaper option on a real call. Every callflo.ai plan is on the pricing page. Starter is 39 dollars a month on annual billing. Booking, follow-up texts and card payments are included. You can call the agent and test it before you pay anything.

What the money buys on each call

Price per minute only means something next to what the minute buys. Ruby includes most features in the plan price. Smith.ai charges per call for many of them. callflo.ai includes them but has no person on the line.

A Ruby minute on a real estate line

Saturday, 7:40pm. A buyer calls about the three-bedroom you listed on Thursday. She wants to see it tomorrow and asks whether the seller takes a VA loan. You are at your daughter's recital with the phone face down.

Say the call goes to Ruby. A receptionist answers in your name. She checks your calendar and puts the buyer on hold for 35 seconds to confirm a time. The loan question becomes a message. Receptionist time is 2 minutes 20 seconds. Ruby bills 3 minutes: 10.80 dollars at the 200-minute plan's effective rate, or 13.20 dollars once you are into overage. That is a fair price for a warm human voice on a Saturday night.

Here is the same call answered by an AI receptionist. It is a sample, not a recording.

Property managers get the night shift too. A tenant calls at 2am about water under the sink. A Ruby receptionist can take the details and reach your on-call tech, at the same rate as a daytime call. Say the call runs four minutes with a hold while she tries the tech. That is about 14 dollars at the plan rate. An AI can log it, decide whether it is an emergency from your rules, and text the summary.

Back to the Saturday buyer. On callflo.ai, that call is a little over 2 minutes. Inside Starter's 120 included minutes it costs nothing extra. Past them, even counted as a full 3 minutes, it is 2.94 dollars. The difference on one call is small. Across 100 calls a month, it is the gap between 720 dollars and a bill near 120.

It helps to price the outcome, not the minute. Say one call in five books a showing; that ratio is an illustration, not a benchmark. At 100 calls a month, that is 20 showings. On Call Ruby 200, each booked showing costs about 36 dollars in answering. On callflo.ai Starter at 117.40 dollars, it is under 6 dollars.

Answering at all matters more than the price on a call like this. Only 42 percent of 1,000 US consumers in a 2025 CallRail survey said they leave a voicemail when nobody answers. Both Ruby and an AI solve that problem. They just charge very differently for it.

Where Ruby is worth the price

Ruby wins when a person on every call is the requirement, not a nice extra. Its receptionists are US-based, per its FAQ. On Trustpilot, Ruby holds 4.5 stars from 853 reviews as of October 2026, and 84 percent of them are five stars. The most common praise is for the receptionists themselves, often by name: professional, patient, flexible when instructions change.

• Judgment calls. A seller deciding whether to list, a tenant in a dispute, a closing that is falling apart. A skilled person reads tone and improvises in ways no script covers.
• An all-in plan price. Transfers, scheduling, intake and 24/7 coverage come in the plan, with no holiday premiums. That is simpler than a list of per-call add-ons.
• Spanish at no extra cost. Bilingual service is included, though the hours are worth confirming.
• Chat in the same account. If you want people on your website chat too, the bundle saves 20 percent.
• Your own front desk, by sound. Done well, a Ruby receptionist sounds like someone who works in your office.

Ruby does use AI, but behind the person. Its AI page lists transcripts, sentiment analysis, robocall filtering and a lookup tool for its receptionists, all included in every plan. Ruby says plainly that an AI does not answer your calls. If you want AI on the line itself, Ruby does not sell it.

Ruby receptionist alternatives, by what you need

The right alternative depends on why Ruby does not fit. If it is only the price, a cheaper human service may be enough. If the volume or the hours are the problem, an AI receptionist changes the math entirely.

• People, at a lower rate per minute: PATLive charges 349 dollars for 200 minutes, about half of Ruby. Its FAQ says every receptionist is in the United States, and it offers a 14-day free trial.
• People, billed per call: Smith.ai charges 300 dollars for 30 calls, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Booking, texts and payments are per-call add-ons. Per-call billing suits long calls and punishes high volume.
• AI on every call: callflo.ai Starter is 39 dollars a month on annual billing with 120 minutes. VIP is 697 dollars a month on annual billing with 1,000 minutes and a team that sets it up and runs it.
• Both:keep a person for the calls that need one and let AI take the rest. Ruby's own cost tips suggest delayed forwarding and shorter live hours. An AI on the nights and overflow means those calls get answered instead of sent to voicemail.

The AI receptionist vs answering service cost post prices 100 calls at every major service, per minute and per call. Whichever way you lean, get three answers in writing. How is a minute counted? What does overage cost? How soon can you step down a plan?

Is Ruby worth the price?

Ruby is worth it when a person on every call matters more than the cost per call. For most real estate lines with real volume, it is the expensive way to get the phone answered.

• Choose Ruby if your calls are few, high-stakes and need judgment. It also fits if you want Spanish handled by a person and 720 dollars for about 100 calls fits the budget.
• Choose PATLiveif you want US-based people at about half Ruby's per-minute rate.
• Choose callflo.ai if most calls are the same questions or arrive at night and on weekends. It also fits when a call needs a booking or a deposit on the spot. Starter is 39 dollars a month on annual billing, with no setup fee and no contract.
• Choose both if some callers need a person and the rest need an answer. Route by hours or by caller, and pay human rates only where they earn it.

FAQ