Answering Service Cost Calculator
Compare the monthly cost and cost per call of an in-house team, a live answering service, and an AI agent, side by side, using your own numbers. Free tool.
Three ways exist to make sure a phone line gets answered: keep it in-house, pay an answering service by the minute, or point it at an AI agent. Each has a real cost structure and a real trade-off, and most comparisons people make are informal — a gut sense that an answering service costs too much, or that in-house is free because the team's already paid — neither of which holds up against actual numbers.
Enter your call volume, average call length, an answering service's per-minute rate, your in-house fully loaded hourly cost, and how much of a paid hour actually goes to calls. It works out monthly cost and cost per call for all three side by side, with the AI agent priced at WireDesk's published rate of $0.20 per started minute. Nothing you enter is stored.
In-house = call minutes ÷ utilization × hourly cost. Service = minutes × rate. AI agent = minutes rounded up × $0.20 per started minute. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.
This ran in your browser on what you typed. The product runs on your actual calls, chats and emails.
Compare your own three numbers — start freeWhat each input means
- 01
Calls per month
Total inbound call volume for the line you're costing out. Your telephony provider's report has this; use the same period for every figure below.
- 02
Average call length (minutes)
How long a call runs on average, start to end. This drives all three cost figures, since an answering service and an AI agent both bill by the minute and in-house cost scales with time on the phone too.
- 03
Answering service rate per minute ($ — 1.00–1.50 is typical)
What a live answering service charges per minute of call time; $1.00 to $1.50 is a common range, though rates vary by contract length and call complexity. Use your actual quote if you have one.
- 04
In-house fully loaded hourly cost ($)
Salary plus taxes, benefits and overhead for whoever answers the line in-house, per hour. Finance usually has this figure, or use the same input as the support cost & ROI calculator if you've run that one.
- 05
In-house utilization (% of paid time actually on calls)
The share of a paid hour actually spent on this line's calls rather than other work, breaks or idle time between calls. Front-desk or shared roles are often well under 50%; a dedicated phone role is higher.
Questions about this tool
For calls that need a person to take a detailed message, handle a scheduling conversation, or represent you with judgment a script can't cover, yes — that's what the rate is buying. It's usually more expensive per call than an AI agent for straightforward, repeatable questions, and less flexible in what it can look up, but it's a real person on every call, which some situations call for.