How Much Does a 24/7 Locksmith Answering Service Cost in 2026?
A price survey of 24/7 phone answering for locksmiths: what PATLive, Posh, Abby, Ruby, Smith.ai, Rosie, Dialzara, Goodcall and TheKeyBot publish as of October 2026, per minute and per call.
A 24/7 answering service for a locksmith shop costs anywhere from $0 to well over $1,000 a month in October 2026, depending on who answers and what the plan counts. Live answering services that publish prices start at $49 a month plus $2.99 a minute, while AI plans start at $0 for a small monthly allowance of calls. This survey lists what each vendor publishes, converts it to a price per minute or per call, and shows the fine print that moves the bill.
Key takeaways
- Live services start low and climb fast. Entry plans run from $49 a month plus $2.99 a minute at PATLive to $300 for 30 calls at Smith.ai, and a 500-minute plan costs $759 at PATLive and $1,725 at Ruby.
- AI plans are priced in smaller units. Published entry points include $0 for 25 calls at Smith.ai, $29 for 60 minutes at Dialzara and $49 for 250 minutes at Rosie.
- Compare per unit, not per plan. By our arithmetic, an included minute costs about $1.50 to $5.00 on the live plans below and about 15 to 48 cents on Rosie's and Dialzara's AI plans, with bundled plans in between.
- 24/7 is standard; the differences hide elsewhere. Check Spanish hours, rounding, hold time, per-call add-ons and whether the overage rate is published at all.
- Staffing the nights yourself is the expensive option. At the BLS median receptionist wage of $18.27 an hour, covering 118 off-hours a week costs about $9,300 a month in wages alone.
What counts as a 24/7 answering service?
For a locksmith, "24/7" means someone or something picks up a lockout call at 2 a.m. on a Sunday and gets the details to you fast enough to keep the job. There are four ways to buy that coverage, and this survey prices all four:
- A live answering service, where staff at a call center answer in your business name and send you a message or transfer the call.
- An AI receptionist, where software answers, collects details and, on some plans, books or quotes.
- A hybrid, where AI answers first and people handle what it can't, or where people answer with AI tools behind them.
- Your own people, either a hire at a desk or an on-call rotation that carries the phone.
Every price below comes from the vendor's own page as we read it in October 2026, before taxes and add-ons. Where a page doesn't publish something, we say "not listed". Prices change, so check the linked page before you sign.
What do live 24/7 answering services charge?
These five services publish their plans. All of them bill by the minute except Smith.ai's receptionists, which bill by the call.
| Service | Entry plan | Larger plans | Extra usage | Spanish | Trial and terms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PATLive | $49 a month, no minutes included, then $2.99 a minute | $99 for 50 minutes, $349 for 200, $759 for 500, $1,499 for 1,000 | $2.29 a minute on the 50-minute plan, down to $1.69 on the 1,000-minute plan | Bilingual service at no extra cost | 14-day free trial; no contracts |
| Posh | $65 a month, no minutes included, then $2.30 a minute | $130 for 50 minutes, $215 for 100, $975 for 500, $1,900 for 1,000 (effective 1/1/26) | $2.20 a minute on the 50-minute plan, down to $1.90 on the 1,000-minute plan | Bilingual English and Spanish receptionists available | Free for 7 days or 250 minutes; month-to-month |
| Abby Connect | $165 a month for 50 Abby Minutes | $329 for 100, $599 for 200, $1,380 for 500 | Billed at your plan's Abby Minute rate; no dollar figure listed | English and Spanish answering | Free trial on every plan; month-to-month; no setup fee |
| Ruby | $250 a month for 50 minutes | $395 for 100, $720 for 200, $1,725 for 500 | Plan overage rate, not listed on the pricing page | Spanish at no extra cost, though one FAQ answer limits bilingual service to weekday hours | Money-back guarantee for first-time customers within 21 days or 500 minutes, whichever comes first |
| Smith.ai receptionists | $300 a month for 30 calls | $810 for 90 calls | $11.50 a call over 30; $10.50 over 90 | Dedicated Spanish line at $1.00 a call | Add-ons per call: $1.50 to book, $1.00 to take a payment |
Two notes on the table. Abby's plans cover both people and AI: its pricing page says one minute of AI answering uses half an Abby Minute, so by our arithmetic the $165 Starter plan stretches to 100 minutes if every call goes to the AI. And PATLive lists its prices plus government taxes and fees, so budget for the line items on a phone bill.
What do AI receptionist plans charge?
Disclosure: TheKeyBot, which publishes this blog, makes an AI receptionist. Our rows use only what our pricing page and feature pages say.
| Plan | Entry price | Larger plans | Extra usage | Languages | Trial and terms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist | $0 for 25 calls a month, then $3.00 a call | Pro from $150 for 75 calls; Enterprise from $500 for 300 calls | Billed per call; every answered call counts toward the quota by default | English and Spanish (product page) | 30 days of notice to cancel |
| Rosie | $49 for 250 minutes | $149 for 1,000; $299 for 2,000 | Going over moves you to a higher plan that stays until you downgrade (terms) | English and Spanish on every call | 7-day free trial |
| Dialzara | $29 for 60 minutes | $99 for 220; $199 for 500; $349 for 1,000 | $0.48 a minute on the entry plan, down to $0.35 | English and Spanish | 7-day free trial; no setup fees |
| Goodcall | $79 for 100 unique callers | $129 for 500; $299 for 2,000 | 79 cents, 26 cents or 15 cents per extra caller | English only (how it works) | A free demo agent instead of a trial (FAQ) |
| TheKeyBot Lite (pricing) | $149 a month with 100 calls | Not applicable | 50 cents a minute after 100 calls | English and Spanish | First 5 answered calls free (up to 7 days) |
| TheKeyBot Core, Pro, Elite (pricing) | $500 a month with 500 minutes | $750 with 1,000; $1,200 with 2,500 | 45, 40 or 35 cents a minute | English and Spanish (features) | 14-day free trial; no setup fees or contracts |
What the AI plans do on the call differs more than the prices do. Lite answers 24/7, takes the message and sends it to your phone, but it does not quote or book, as our Lite page says. Core adds scheduling, GPS dispatch, POS and payments, QuickBooks sync and unlimited users, and our quoting page describes quotes from a price sheet you upload. Among the competitors, Goodcall's how-it-works page describes giving a price range from your price list, and Rosie, Dialzara, Smith.ai and Goodcall all describe calendar booking on some plans.
What does one minute or one call cost on each plan?
Plan prices are hard to compare because the included amounts differ. Dividing each price by what it includes gives a unit price. These are our calculations from the listed prices, before overage, add-ons and taxes.
| Plan | Unit | Price per included unit |
|---|---|---|
| Ruby 50 and 500 minutes | Minute | $5.00 and $3.45 |
| Abby Connect 50 and 500 Abby Minutes | Minute of human answering | $3.30 and $2.76 |
| Posh 50 and 1,000 minutes | Minute | $2.60 and $1.90 |
| PATLive 50 and 1,000 minutes | Minute | $1.98 and $1.50 |
| Smith.ai receptionists 30 and 90 calls | Call | $10.00 and $9.00 |
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist Pro and Enterprise | Call | $2.00 and $1.67 |
| Dialzara 60 and 1,000 minutes | Minute | 48 cents and 35 cents |
| Rosie 250 and 2,000 minutes | Minute | 20 cents and 15 cents |
| Goodcall 100 and 2,000 callers | Unique caller per month | 79 cents and 15 cents |
| TheKeyBot Lite (pricing) | Call | $1.49 |
| TheKeyBot Core and Elite (pricing) | Minute | $1.00 and 48 cents |
Read this table with two cautions. First, a minute, a call and a unique caller are different units. A three-minute lockout call is three minutes on Ruby, one call on Smith.ai and, if the same driver calls back twice, still one caller on Goodcall. Convert to your own average call length before you compare across rows. Second, a lower unit price can buy less. A message taken by a person, an AI booking and a Core minute that sits inside scheduling, dispatch and payments are not the same product.
What does a busy month cost? A labelled example
To show how the units play out, here is one made-up month. Every input is an assumption, so swap in your own.
| Assumption | Value |
|---|---|
| Answered calls a month | 100 |
| Average billed length | 3 minutes, so 300 billed minutes |
| Unique callers (some people call twice) | 80 |
| Add-ons such as booking or payments | None |
| Option | Cheapest published plan that covers it | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| PATLive | The 300-minute plan | $479 |
| Posh | 200 minutes for $420, plus 100 minutes at $2.10 | $630 |
| Abby Connect | Growth at 500 minutes for people; Professional at 200 Abby Minutes if all 300 minutes go to AI | $1,380 or $599 |
| Ruby | The 500-minute plan, since the 200-minute overage rate isn't listed | $1,725 |
| Smith.ai receptionists | 90 calls for $810, plus 10 calls at $10.50 | $915 |
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist | Pro at the 150-call tier, $1.80 a call | $270 |
| Dialzara | 220 minutes for $99, plus 80 minutes at $0.45 | $135 |
| Rosie | Scale, 1,000 minutes | $149 |
| Goodcall | Starter, 100 unique callers | $79 |
| TheKeyBot Lite | 100 calls included | $149 |
| TheKeyBot Core | 500 minutes included | $500 |
The spread runs from $79 to $1,725 for the same 100 calls, and the cheapest rows do the least work. If you want to build this for your own log, with your own call lengths and repeat callers, our cost calculator walkthrough sets it up step by step, and our pricing-model explainer shows when per-minute beats per-call or per-caller billing.
What does it cost to answer the phone yourself overnight?
The two do-it-yourself options are a person at a desk and an on-call rotation.
A hire at a desk. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median receptionist wage at $18.27 an hour in May 2025, or $38,010 a year. That is about $3,170 a month in wages for one full-time person, who covers 40 of the week's 168 hours. If your desk is staffed 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays, the other 118 hours cost about $2,156 a week at that wage, or roughly $9,300 a month, before payroll taxes, benefits and the cost of finding people for night shifts. Our after-hours math guide adds benefits and overtime rules to that number, and our comparison of an AI receptionist and a front-desk hire covers the daytime case.
An on-call rotation. You or a technician carry the phone. It costs no vendor fee, but the person on call can take one call at a time, can't answer while working under a dashboard, and pays in sleep. For a one-truck shop it is often where coverage starts, and the price of the services above is what you would pay to stop doing it.
What isn't in the headline price?
The plan price is a floor. These terms, each published on the vendor's own pages, are what move the bill.
Rounding. Ruby's FAQ is direct about it:
"Receptionist minutes are billed in 60-second increments, and calls are rounded up to the nearest 60-second mark."
Ruby's FAQ also says hold time counts, and Rosie's terms round up to the next 60-second mark the same way. A 61-second call is two billed minutes on both. Posh counts the time a receptionist spends on the phone with your callers and time spent completing an activity for your account.
Overage you can't price. Ruby bills extra minutes at "the overage rate associated with your plan" without listing it on the pricing page, and Abby Connect bills overage at your plan's Abby Minute rate without a dollar figure. Get the rate in writing before a busy weekend finds it for you.
Plans that move on their own. Rosie's terms say going over your minutes upgrades you to a higher plan, which stays until you downgrade, and that payments are non-refundable.
Per-call add-ons. Smith.ai's receptionist plans charge $1.50 per call to book an appointment, $1.00 to take a payment and $1.00 for the Spanish line. On a locksmith call that books and takes a deposit, that is $2.50 on top of the call.
Quotas and notice. On Smith.ai's AI plans, every answered call counts toward your quota by default, and canceling takes 30 days of notice.
What's included at no charge. Some pages say so plainly: PATLive includes 24/7 service in every plan, Abby Connect offers a 24/7 option with no weekend upcharge, and Posh says all plans include all features at no additional cost. Our guide to answering service contract terms lists the clauses to check before you sign.
Do you pay extra for Spanish?
It depends on the vendor, and for a lot of shops it matters. In the Census Bureau's 2018-2022 survey, 78.3% of U.S. residents age 5 and older spoke only English at home, and Spanish made up 61.1% of the rest, which by our arithmetic is about 13% of residents.
- Included: PATLive offers bilingual service at no extra cost, Posh has bilingual English and Spanish receptionists, Abby Connect lists English and Spanish answering, and Rosie, Dialzara, Smith.ai's AI and TheKeyBot publish English and Spanish answering.
- Charged per call: Smith.ai's receptionist plans list a dedicated Spanish line at $1.00 a call.
- Limited hours: Ruby's FAQ says Spanish is included, but another answer limits bilingual service to Monday through Friday, 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific, so ask which applies to overnight calls.
- Not offered: Goodcall says its agent speaks English, today.
Our guide to what Spanish coverage is worth shows how to estimate your own Spanish call share before you pay for it.
Which option fits which locksmith shop?
There's no ranking here. Each option has a shop it suits and a catch to plan for.
| Option | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| On-call rotation | One-truck shops with a few night calls a week | One call at a time, and the cost lands on your sleep |
| Live service billed by the minute (PATLive, Posh, Abby, Ruby) | Shops that want a person on every call | Long intake calls, rounding and hold time add minutes |
| Live service billed by the call (Smith.ai) | Shops with long calls, since length doesn't change the price | Per-call add-ons for booking, payments and Spanish |
| AI with minute or call plans (Rosie, Dialzara, Smith.ai AI) | Low budgets that want answering in English and Spanish | Plan upgrades on overage, quotas and what each plan books |
| AI billed per caller (Goodcall) | English-only shops with repeat callers | No trial, no plan under $79, English only |
| TheKeyBot Lite | Solo operators who want every call answered and the final say on price | It takes messages; you still call back, quote and book |
| TheKeyBot Core and up | Multi-tech shops that want answering, scheduling, dispatch and payments together | Starts at $500 a month, more than most AI-only plans here |
For a full comparison of what each AI option does on a lockout call, see our AI receptionist comparison for locksmiths.
How to price your own month this week
- Export 30 days of call records from your carrier or phone system: date, time, caller number and duration.
- Count three numbers: answered calls, total minutes rounded up per call, and unique callers. You need all three because vendors bill in all three units.
- Split the log into business hours and after hours. If you only want night coverage, price only the night half, and check that the vendor lets you forward by schedule.
- Price two or three plans from the tables above at your numbers, then add per-call extras such as booking, payments and Spanish.
- Ask each finalist four questions in writing: the overage rate, the billing increment, whether hold and transfer time count, and the cancellation notice.
- Call your own number at 2 a.m. during the trial, once in English and once in Spanish, and time how long the result takes to reach you. Our trial test-call script lists the calls to run.
If minutes are the unit that worries you, our guide to how many AI receptionist minutes a locksmith shop needs turns a call log into a monthly minute count.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a 24/7 answering service cost for a locksmith?
As of October 2026, live services that publish prices start at $49 a month plus $2.99 a minute at PATLive and $250 for 50 minutes at Ruby, while AI plans start at $0 for 25 calls at Smith.ai. A 300-minute month ranged from $79 to $1,725 in our example, depending on the vendor and the unit it bills.
What is the cheapest way to get 24/7 phone coverage?
An on-call rotation has no vendor fee, and small AI plans are the cheapest paid option, such as $29 for 60 minutes at Dialzara or $49 for 250 minutes at Rosie. Check what the cheap plan does on the call, because many only take a message.
Do answering services charge more for nights and weekends?
Several say they don't: PATLive includes 24/7 service in every plan and Abby Connect offers a 24/7 option with no weekend upcharge. Ask about Spanish hours separately, since one Ruby FAQ answer limits bilingual service to weekday hours.
How are answering service minutes billed?
Many round up each call to the next full minute: Ruby and Rosie both bill in 60-second increments, and Ruby counts hold time. Others bill per call or per unique caller, so convert every price to your own call length before comparing.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than a live answering service?
Per unit, usually yes: by our arithmetic, Rosie's and Dialzara's AI plans cost about 15 to 48 cents per included minute, against about $1.50 to $5.00 on the live plans surveyed. A person still handles judgment calls better, so price both against what the call has to produce.
How much does TheKeyBot cost?
TheKeyBot Lite is $149 a month with 100 calls included, then 50 cents a minute; it answers 24/7 in English and Spanish and takes messages, but it does not quote or book. Core is $500 a month with 500 minutes, Pro $750 with 1,000 and Elite $1,200 with 2,500, and all three include a 14-day free trial with no setup fees or contracts.
Sources
- PATLive pricing: https://www.patlive.com/pricing/
- Posh pricing: https://www.posh.com/pricing
- Abby Connect pricing: https://www.abby.com/pricing/
- Ruby plans and pricing: https://www.ruby.com/plans-and-pricing/
- Ruby FAQs: https://www.ruby.com/faqs/
- Smith.ai live receptionist pricing: https://smith.ai/pricing/receptionists
- Smith.ai AI Receptionist pricing: https://smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist
- Smith.ai AI Receptionist product page: https://smith.ai/ai-receptionist
- Rosie pricing: https://heyrosie.com/pricing
- Rosie terms of service: https://heyrosie.com/legal/terms
- Dialzara pricing: https://dialzara.com/pricing
- Goodcall pricing: https://www.goodcall.com/pricing
- Goodcall FAQ: https://www.goodcall.com/faq
- Goodcall, how it works: https://www.goodcall.com/how-it-works
- TheKeyBot pricing: https://www.thekeybot.com/pricing
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Receptionists: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/receptionists.htm
- U.S. Census Bureau, language spoken at home, 2018-2022 ACS (December 7, 2023): https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/language-at-home-acs-5-year.html
About the Author
TheKeyBot Team is dedicated to helping locksmiths grow their businesses through AI automation and smart technology. With years of experience in the locksmith industry, our team provides actionable insights and proven strategies.
