What an AI receptionist really costs a property manager

AI phone agents are priced in confusing ways: per minute, per call, per unit, per "resolution", or a monthly plan with a bucket of minutes. When you compare AI voice agents for property managers, turn every price into one number: what a month costs at your actual call volume. Here's how to work it out.

Start with your call volume

You need two numbers:

1. Calls per month to the line the AI would answer. Your phone provider's call log has this. If you only want after-hours coverage, count only those calls.
2. Average minutes per call. Your call log usually shows this too. If it doesn't, start with 4 minutes, which is what our own price calculator assumes. Leasing calls with questions and a booking run longer. Quick "is it still available?" calls run shorter.

Multiply them and you have minutes per month. Every per-minute price starts from that number.

The math for per-minute pricing

Utter has two plans with the same features. Only the rate is different.

• Pay As You Go: $0.25 a minute, no monthly fee. You top up credit when you need it.
• Monthly Pro: $199 a month, loaded as credit, and every minute costs $0.20 instead of $0.25.

Here's a full month at 4 minutes a call. It counts the AI, incoming calls ($0.005 a minute) and one phone number ($10 a month).

Calls a month	Minutes	Pay As You Go	Monthly Pro
50	200	$61	$209
100	400	$112	$209
200	800	$214	$209
500	2,000	$520	$420
1,000	4,000	$1,030	$830

Below about 780 minutes a month, Pay As You Go is cheaper. Above that, Monthly Pro wins, and the gap grows with every minute. You get free credit when you sign up, so you can find your real number on real calls before you pick a plan.

What else is on the bill

The AI rate is most of the bill, but not all of it. Here's the rest of ours:

• Telephony: in the US and Canada, $0.005 a minute for incoming calls and $0.013 a minute for outgoing ones. Other countries vary.
• Phone numbers: $10 a month for each number.
• Texts: about $0.01 for each SMS sent, such as a tour confirmation. You pay only for texts that go out.

That's the whole bill. Credit lasts 6 months, so on Pay As You Go, top up for what you'll use in that time.

Comparing with people

The honest comparison isn't "AI vs. a full-time hire". It's AI vs. the hours your team spends on calls that didn't need them, plus the calls nobody answers at all.

Here are round numbers to start from. They're the same ones our price calculator uses, so swap in your own:

• Admin staff: about $4,000 a month, and only 9 to 5.
• A virtual assistant: about $2,000 a month.
• A call center or answering service: about $1,500 a month or more, usually with a minimum commitment. Its agents also answer for other companies, so they don't know your properties.
• Your own team's time: if a leasing agent spends 90 minutes a day on routine calls, that's around 30 hours a month not spent on tours and applications.
• Missed calls: an unanswered leasing call is often a renter who books a tour somewhere else.

Questions to ask any vendor about price

• Is it priced per minute, per call, per unit or per "resolution"? What counts as a resolution?
• Is there a monthly minimum, a setup fee or a long contract?
• What does a minute over the plan cost? Is it published?
• Are texts, phone numbers and carrier charges extra, and what do they cost?
• Can you start without a sales call and stop without a penalty?

Our answers: per minute, month to month, cancel anytime, and every price is in our pricing section. You sign up with your website, and there's no onboarding call.