Hire a Receptionist or Use AI?Start With the Real Cost.

Hire a person if you have a front desk with walk-ins or work that needs hands and judgment; use an AI receptionist if the job is mostly answering the phone and booking. A hire costs far more than the wage and covers set hours. An AI receptionist answers 24/7 for a monthly fee but can’t greet anyone in person. You don’t have to choose: you can keep a person at the front desk and let AI answer the calls you send to it: lunch, nights and weekends.

The median U.S. receptionist earns $38,010 a year ($18.27 an hour), as of May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s only the wage. For private-industry office and administrative support workers, benefits make up 31.3% of what employers pay, per the BLS (June 2026). Applying that ratio to the median wage gives about $55,357 a year all-in, our own estimate, before recruiting and training time.

Benefits and employer costs add about 46 cents for every dollar of wages for office and administrative support workers, according to the BLS. Per hour worked in June 2026, private employers paid $25.22 in wages and $11.51 in benefits for these workers: paid leave $2.77, supplemental pay $1.06, insurance $4.05, retirement $1.05, and legally required benefits like payroll taxes $2.58. Then add your own time to post the job, interview, and train. The BLS says most receptionists get on-the-job training lasting a few days up to a month.

A full-time receptionist covers about 40 of the 168 hours in a week, roughly 24%. The other 128 hours, nights, weekends and holidays, go to voicemail unless you add staff or a service. Lunch breaks, sick days and vacations leave gaps inside business hours too. The BLS notes most receptionists work full time.

A person can greet walk-ins, handle paper and packages, read a room, and build relationships with regular customers. The BLS lists greeting visitors, checking them in and escorting them, and handling correspondence and documents among a receptionist’s duties. An AI receptionist can’t do any in-person work. A person also handles unusual situations with judgment, and some callers simply want a human.

An AI receptionist answers 24/7, including nights, weekends, holidays and the lunch hour, for a monthly fee instead of a salary. There’s no hiring, no schedule to cover, and no gap when someone is out sick. The trade-off: it’s an AI, it can’t do in-person work, and it handles fewer unusual situations than an experienced person. Lexi takes a message rather than guessing when a question is outside what she knows.

Yes. One hybrid that works is a person at the front desk during business hours and an AI receptionist answering the calls you send to it: lunch, nights and weekends. The person handles walk-ins and judgment calls; the AI answers the calls you forward to it, at lunch or after close. With Lexi, an urgent call can reach you right away: she can text, email, or call you and flags it in your Lexi portal, and she can transfer a caller live once transfer is set up on your account.

Yes, by a wide margin in our own example: Lexi’s first year costs about $4,516 against about $55,357 for a full-time hire. The Lexi figure is our own example, not a vendor figure: $299 a month, 400 call minutes and 300 text segments a month, plus the $100 setup fee. More calls mean more usage. The hire figure is the BLS median wage plus benefits at the BLS ratio. Cheaper AI apps exist too; see our AI receptionist cost guide for vendor prices.

Lexi costs $299 per month at founder pricing, locked for life, plus a one-time $100 setup fee. Usage is billed separately: calls $0.15 per minute, texts 3 cents per segment (about 160 characters), and email $0.002 per email. Texting registration and a GoHighLevel CRM are included. The public price is $997 per month. No contract, and Lexi is available to U.S. businesses only.

Yes. Lexi tells callers she’s an AI and that the call may be recorded. If a caller needs a person, she can transfer the call live once transfer is set up on your account, or take a detailed message. If every caller must reach a human, a hired receptionist or a live answering service is the better fit.