Australian AI receptionist plans that publish a price start at A$99/month (Hey Jodie Basic) and run to $1,299/month (Valory AI Enterprise), checked 2 September 2026. Only Hey Jodie and Dental Reception state Australian dollars; Valory AI and Sophiie publish a bare “$”. Just one of the four Australia-facing services we opened says anything about simultaneous calls. Setup fees on those pages range from none to “from $990”, and none of the eight pages publishes a cost per booked appointment.
That last sentence is why this page exists. Published numbers for an AI phone agent in Australia disagree because they measure different things — minutes, calls, seats, platform access or an annual commitment — and because the headline figure is rarely the amount that lands on your card.
Every figure below comes from a named vendor’s own pricing page — Hey Jodie, Valory AI, Sophiie, Dental Reception, Retell AI, Vapi, Bland AI and Synthflow — plus Twilio’s Australian carrier rates and the ACCC’s price display rules, each opened on 2 September 2026 and linked. No listicles, no review sites, no comparison pages. Where a vendor does not publish something, we say “not published”.
Currency matters as much as the number. Only Hey Jodie and Dental Reception state Australian dollars on their pricing pages. Valory AI and Sophiie publish an unqualified “$” with no currency code attached. And none of the four developer platforms — Bland AI, Retell AI, Vapi and Synthflow — quotes Australian dollars anywhere on its pricing page. Read every bare “$” below as unconverted, and ask which currency a quote is in before you budget against it.
The bands circulating in Australian buyer guides
Three ranges recur in Australian AI receptionist guides: roughly $99–$699/month, $149–$1,299/month, and $2,400–$8,400/year, usually set against a fully-loaded human receptionist at $73,000–$95,000 a year.
Treat all four as unverified. We could not trace the human-receptionist band to any primary source — no Fair Work instrument, no Australian Bureau of Statistics release, no named survey. And the $149–$1,299 band is not a market range: it is the exact top and bottom of Valory AI’s own four published plans. A range is only a market range if you can name the vendors at both ends.
Five pricing models, and why they do not compare
Work out which of these you are looking at before comparing dollars. Two vendors can quote the same monthly number and bill amounts that differ by a multiple.
| Model | How it is quoted | What the headline hides | Cheapest when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly, unlimited minutes | One monthly figure per tier | Tax treatment, concurrency, what counts as a “call”, and which features sit behind the next tier | Your average handle time is long and your volume is high |
| Monthly plus included minutes | Headline monthly price, allowance in fine print | The overage rate — often the largest single line on a busy month — plus setup | Volume is stable and sits comfortably inside the allowance |
| Per-call quota | “Calls received per month” | Call length is irrelevant to the quota, so short calls burn allowance at the same rate as long ones; overage may not be published at all | You take many short, simple calls |
| Per-minute plus platform fee | A cents-per-minute rate | Model, speech-to-text and text-to-speech provider costs, telephony transport, number rental, concurrency add-ons, and your own build and maintenance time | You have engineering capacity and enough volume to amortise it |
| Annual enterprise contract | A floor: “from $X annually” | Everything, until scoping. The floor is a qualification threshold, not a price | Volume is large and predictable enough to commit a year ahead |
What Australian and platform vendors actually publish
Checked 2 September 2026, each against the vendor’s own page.
| Vendor (own pricing page) | Published entry price | Allowance measured in | Overage rate | Setup fee | Concurrency limit | Currency / GST stated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hey Jodie | A$99/month (Basic), to A$399 (Premium), Enterprise from A$1,000/month | “Unlimited Minutes” on all listed plans | None — page states no overage charges | No setup fees | Not published | A$ shown; “Prices exclude applicable taxes.” |
| Valory AI | $149/month (Intro), $299 Core, $499 Premium, Enterprise from $1,299 | Voice minutes (100 / 250 / 700 / 3,000) and SMS | $0.90/min (Intro) down to $0.30/min (Enterprise); SMS $0.10/msg | “Setup fee from $990 (varies with scope and complexity).” | Not published | Bare “$”; no currency code, no GST statement |
| Sophiie | $0 Free, $99/mo Starter, $299 Pro, $819 Max | Calls received per month (30 / 500 / 2,500) plus SMS and AI Actions | Not published | Not published | Not published | Bare “$”; no currency code, no GST statement |
| Dental Reception (dental practices only) | A$169/month Starter, A$329 Professional, A$599 Premium | Both calls and minutes (200/200, 700/700, unlimited calls but 1,800 minutes) | “A$0.15 per minute over your allocation” | “No setup fees” | No per-tier figure; a comparison table elsewhere on the page describes parallel calls during peaks as unlimited | A$ shown; “all prices include 10% GST” |
| Bland AI (developer platform) | $0.14/min with $0 platform fee (Start); $0.12/min with “$299/month platform fee” (Build); $0.11/min with $499/month (Scale) | Talk minutes, plus daily and hourly call caps | Not applicable — usage is metered | Not published | Published: 10 / 50 / 100 concurrent calls by tier | Not published |
| Retell AI (developer platform) | “$0.07-$0.31 / min” pay-as-you-go; Enterprise custom | Minutes, itemised into voice infrastructure, LLM, TTS and telephony | Not applicable — usage is metered | Not published | Published: 20 concurrent calls free, then “$8.00/Concurrency/month” | Not published |
| Vapi (developer platform) | Hosting “$0.05 / min”, model provider costs “At cost ($0 if you bring your own API key)” | Minutes, excluding model provider costs | Not applicable — usage is metered | Not published | Published: “10 included + $10 / line / mo” | Not published |
| Synthflow | “Enterprise contracts start at $30,000 annually.” | Not published — scoped per contract | Not published | Not published (page names “launch support” as a scoping factor) | Not published (named as a scoping factor) | Not published |
Two patterns fall out of that table. The developer platforms publish a concurrency figure against every tier; among the Australia-facing managed services only Dental Reception addresses simultaneous calls at all, and it does so as an unlimited-parallel-calls claim inside a comparison against a human receptionist, not as a per-tier specification. And the Australian pages disagree on tax: Dental Reception states “all prices include 10% GST”, Hey Jodie states “Prices exclude applicable taxes.”, and the other two say nothing either way. On a GST-inclusive A$599 plan the tax component is A$54.45 a month, before you compare a single feature.
Concurrency is the hidden price driver
Most buyers size a plan on monthly volume. The tier you actually need is usually set by peak simultaneous calls — the Monday 9am block, the burst after a radio spot, the morning after a storm if you are in trades.
Retell publishes 20 concurrent calls included and “$8.00/Concurrency/month” beyond that. Vapi publishes “10 included + $10 / line / mo”. Bland ties concurrency to the tier: 10 concurrent calls on Start, 50 on Build at “$299/month platform fee”, 100 on Scale. If your peak needs 60 lines, your minimum commitment on Bland is set by that peak, not by your minutes. None of those three rates is published in Australian dollars.
The Australia-facing managed services publish no per-tier concurrency figure, so ask: how many calls will you answer at once, and what happens to the eleventh caller. An unlimited-parallel-calls claim in a marketing comparison is not a plan specification. Get it in writing. Our inbound phone line readiness guide covers what has to be true on the carrier side first.
The line items missing from the headline
- Setup and onboarding. From published-and-zero to Valory’s “Setup fee from $990 (varies with scope and complexity).” A one-off fee moves year-one economics materially at the small end.
- Overage. Valory’s Intro overage is $0.90/min against $149 included for 100 minutes; Dental Reception’s is “A$0.15 per minute over your allocation”. Same line item, six-fold difference in rate.
- Telephony passed through. Separate on a build-your-own stack. Twilio’s Australia voice pricing publishes $0.0100/min to receive on an Australian local number, $0.0252/min to an Australian landline, $0.0750/min to a mobile, and $3.00/month for the number (twilio.com, checked 2 September 2026 — the page carries no currency code, so confirm the billing currency before you model it). Vapi states transport is “Charged by provider, not Vapi”.
- Model costs. Vapi’s $0.05/min hosting figure “Excludes Model Provider Costs”. Retell itemises LLM separately from its $0.055/minute voice infrastructure. A per-minute quote is not a total unless the page says the model is inside it.
- Number rental and verification. Retell publishes $2.00/month per phone number and $10.00/month for a verified number.
- Integrations and outbound. Valory publishes a plug-in count per tier (1 / 3 / 5 / unlimited) and lists outbound calling as “Add-on ($99/mo)” on its two lower tiers. If your booking system is the fourth plug-in, the tier is chosen for you.
Work out your cost per booked appointment
Cost per answered call is easy and nearly useless — an agent that answers everything and books nothing is expensive at any rate. Cost per booked appointment is the number that matters, and no vendor on this page publishes it, because it depends on your calls rather than their software.
Four inputs you already have: monthly answered calls, average handle time, peak concurrency and your booked rate. Below: 600 inbound calls a month at 2.5 minutes average handle time (1,500 billable minutes), peak of four simultaneous calls. The 20% booked rate is a placeholder for your own measured number, not a benchmark.
| Option (published rates) | Monthly total at 1,500 min / 600 calls | Year-one monthly incl. amortised setup | Cost per answered call (year-one basis) | Cost per booked appointment (120, year-one basis) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hey Jodie Professional, A$199, unlimited minutes, no setup | A$199 | A$199 | A$0.33 | A$1.66 (before applicable taxes) |
| Bland AI Build, $299/month platform fee + $0.12/min | $479 | $479 plus your build time and number | $0.80 | $3.99 (excludes build and maintenance labour) |
| Dental Reception Premium, A$599, 1,800 min included, no setup | A$599 (no overage — 1,500 is inside allowance) | A$599 | A$1.00 | A$4.99 (GST included; dental practices only) |
| Sophiie Max, $819, 2,500 calls included | $819 — Pro at $299 covers only 500 calls, and no overage rate is published | $819 | $1.37 | $6.83 |
| Valory AI Premium, $499, 700 min included, $0.50/min overage | $899 ($499 + 800 min × $0.50) | $981.50 (setup from $990 over 12 months) | $1.64 | $8.18 |
Read that as a method, not a league table. A managed Australian service, a vertical dental system and a developer platform you assemble yourself are different purchases with different failure modes, and three of the five rows are priced in a dollar the vendor never states is Australian. The Sophiie row shows the quota cliff: at 600 calls you are not choosing between $299 and $819, a single call over the line chooses for you.
Then apply the correction most vendor calculators skip. A booked appointment is not revenue until someone turns up — see the booked-meeting show rate gap. Divide by your show rate before you compare anything to a salary.
Making the human comparison honest
The human-versus-AI table on most vendor pricing pages is unfair in both directions at once.
It is unfair to the human because it loads the employee with superannuation, leave, recruitment and training, then compares that to a software price quoted without GST, without setup, without telephony and without the hours someone spends maintaining the call flow. It is unfair to the software because it credits the human with only the calls, ignoring walk-ins, escalation and judgement on an unusual request.
Three fixes make it honest:
- Use a primary wage source. The ABS put full-time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings at $2,083.70 for the May 2026 reference period, released 13 August 2026, across all occupations — not a receptionist figure. For a receptionist rate use the applicable modern award from the Fair Work Ombudsman, not a vendor’s comparison table.
- Add on-costs from the rule, not an estimate. The super guarantee is 12% of qualifying earnings, per the Fair Work Ombudsman.
- Cost only the hours you need answered. Comparing a 25-hour-a-week hire against 24/7 coverage is only fair if you want calls answered at 3am. If you do not, price against the hours you are buying.
If a part-time hire covers your volume and you have no after-hours demand, that is the answer. Settle one more thing before pricing anything: whether you want a receptionist that answers or an agent that pursues. Different products, different economics — see AI receptionist vs autonomous sales agent.
Questions to send a vendor before you sign
- Is the quoted price in AUD, and does it include GST?
- How many calls can the agent handle simultaneously on this tier, and what happens to callers beyond that?
- Is the allowance measured in minutes or in calls, and how is a partial minute billed?
- What is the overage rate, and is there a cap or an automatic tier upgrade?
- Is telephony, number rental and inbound carriage inside the monthly figure or billed through?
- Are model and speech costs included in the per-minute rate?
- What is the setup fee for our scope, and what is included in it?
- Which integrations count against the plug-in limit?
- Is outbound calling included or an add-on?
- Can we see per-call minutes and booking outcomes in a report we can export?
Question ten decides whether you can ever compute cost per booked appointment. If the platform cannot export outcomes per call, your effective cost stays unmeasurable for the life of the contract.
Where Zian sits
Zian AI publishes no price. The platform is in waitlist and partner-application beta, and there is no Zian dollar figure anywhere in this article — no comparison, no relative claim, no implied figure. When there is a published price it will sit on a page like the ones above, and it should be read with the same checklist.
What is on the record: Zian has been running outbound acquisition since 2017, its learning engine tracks around 420,000 data points across more than 10,000 leads a day, and the company reports 50,769+ qualified sales appointments set. The plans are named Intel + Widgets (Free Forever), More Leads & More Intel, and GodMode Max Profits.
Apply For Partnership to see the platform during beta.
Frequently asked questions
What does an AI receptionist cost in Australia?
On vendors’ own pricing pages checked 2 September 2026: Hey Jodie publishes A$99–A$399/month with Enterprise from A$1,000; Valory AI publishes $149–$499 with Enterprise from $1,299 plus setup from $990; Sophiie publishes $99–$819; Dental Reception publishes A$169–A$599 for dental practices. Developer platforms are metered instead: Bland AI publishes $0.11–$0.14 per minute, Retell AI publishes “$0.07-$0.31 / min”, and Synthflow publishes “Enterprise contracts start at $30,000 annually.” Only the Hey Jodie and Dental Reception figures are published in Australian dollars; the rest carry no currency code.
Why do published Australian price ranges disagree so much?
Because they measure different units — minutes, calls received, platform seats, or an annual commitment — and because some circulating “market ranges” are one vendor’s own plan range repeated. The $149–$1,299 band that appears in several Australian guides is exactly the bottom and top of Valory AI’s four published plans.
Do vendors have to publish the full price including GST?
Under the Australian Consumer Law the ACCC states that “Businesses must display the total price of a product or service as a single figure”, being the minimum total cost including taxes, duties and unavoidable or pre-selected extra fees. The same ACCC guidance notes that a business displaying prices only to other businesses does not need to include GST in the total price, which is why B2B software pages legitimately differ — see the ACCC’s price displays guidance. Ask which basis a quote is on.
How do I compare an AI phone agent to hiring a receptionist?
That depends on your hours and volume, and no honest general answer exists. Build the comparison from primary sources: the ABS reported full-time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings of $2,083.70 in May 2026 across all occupations, and the Fair Work Ombudsman states the super guarantee is 12% of qualifying earnings. Then cost only the hours you actually need answered. The $73,000–$95,000 “fully loaded receptionist” figure circulating in Australian vendor guides has no primary source we could find.
What is a reasonable cost per booked appointment?
No vendor on this page publishes one, because it depends on your call mix and booked rate rather than their software. Compute it yourself: total monthly cost including overage and amortised setup, divided by appointments booked, then divided again by your show rate. On the worked example above the same 600-call month produces figures from A$1.66 to $8.18 per booking depending on the plan and pricing model chosen.
Does Zian AI publish pricing?
No. Zian AI is in waitlist and partner-application beta and does not publish a price. There is no Zian figure, comparison or implied cost anywhere in this article.