The short version. Jobber and Housecall Pro are the same decision made twice, and both put their AI behind an add-on or a top tier. Rosie answers your phone from $49 for 250 minutes. Goodcall answers it too and bills by unique customers instead of minutes, which suits some businesses much better. Tidio handles the people who message the website instead of ringing.
Every price here came off the vendor’s own pricing page on 15 August 2026.
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Start with the missed call, because that is where the money goes
If you run a trade, a clinic or a salon, the most expensive thing that happens all week is a call you did not answer. The person calling has a problem now, they have three numbers, and they are working down the list. You never find out you lost it.
What has changed is that answering that call no longer needs a person, and four different companies will now sell you that in four different billing shapes. Nobody puts those side by side, so here they are:
- Jobber sells an AI Receptionist as a $29 a month add-on, or bundles AI into its $499 top tier.
- Housecall Pro sells CSR AI as an add-on on any plan.
- Rosie charges by minutes, from $49 for 250.
- Goodcall explicitly does not charge for calls or minutes, and bills by unique customers instead, from $66 a month annually.
Which is cheapest depends on whether you get lots of short calls from the same people or a few long calls from new ones. That is the actual question, and it is worth ten minutes with last month’s phone log before you buy anything.
1. Jobber: the operating system, with the AI priced separately
Core $49/month, or $29 billed annually, for 1 user. Connect $139, or $99 annually. Grow $199, or $149 annually. Plus $499, or $399 annually, for 15 users, and this is the tier that includes AI Receptionist, AI Voice and AI Chat. The AI Receptionist is also available as a $29/month add-on, Marketing Suite is $99 and Pipeline is $49. Extra users are $29 each. Verified 15 August 2026.
Jobber is the default for small trades for good reason. Quoting, scheduling, invoicing and payments in one place, it works on a phone in a van, and your customers get something that looks professional without you designing anything.
The AI story needs reading carefully. The marketing talks about AI Receptionist, Voice and Chat, and those are listed on the $499 Plus plan. If you are a two-person outfit on Core at $29, you are not getting them at that price. What you can do is add the Receptionist for $29 a month on top, which is the sensible route and roughly doubles a Core subscription.
So the honest number for a small business that wants Jobber plus call answering is about $58 a month annually, not $29.
Who it is wrong for: businesses with no field work. If you do not schedule people to locations, most of what you are paying for does nothing.
2. Housecall Pro: same job, different shape
Basic $79/month, or $59 billed annually. Essentials $189, or $149 annually. Max $329, or $299 annually, which includes the sales proposal tool. CSR AI, which answers calls and chats around the clock, is an add-on available on all plans, along with Voice Solutions, Campaigns, Pipeline and Payroll. Verified 15 August 2026.
Two field service platforms on a five item list is not something we normally do. Here it is unavoidable, because this is one decision, most owners make it once, and which way it goes depends on your trade rather than on a feature comparison.
Housecall Pro leans harder into consumer-facing polish and marketing, and it is popular in home services where the booking experience is part of the sale. Jobber tends to feel tighter on the operational side. Both will run your business.
The add-on model is the thing to watch, and it is the same trap as Jobber. The base plan looks like the price and then Campaigns, Voice, Pipeline and CSR AI each carry their own line. Build the quote you actually need before comparing against Jobber, because comparing base plans compares two things you would not buy.
Who it is wrong for: very small operators. Basic starts at $59 a month annually against Jobber’s $29, and for a solo trade that difference matters more than the feature gap.
3. Rosie: the cheapest way to stop missing calls
Professional $49/month with 250 minutes. Scale $149/month with 1,000 minutes. Growth $299/month with 2,000 minutes. Verified 15 August 2026.
Rosie does one thing. It answers the phone, in a voice that does not sound like a phone tree, takes the details, and books or passes on the job. That is the highest value single purchase available to a business where the owner is up a ladder for six hours a day.
At $49 for 250 minutes it is priced for a real small business rather than for a call centre. Work out your maths from your own call log: 250 minutes is roughly 80 calls at three minutes each, which covers most one-van operations comfortably.
Minute-based pricing suits businesses whose calls are short and transactional, meaning bookings, quotes and opening hours. It suits you less if callers talk for a while, which is worth knowing before you pick this over Goodcall.
Who it is wrong for: businesses whose first call is a consultation. If the value of the call is the conversation, an AI answering it is intercepting your actual sales process.
4. Goodcall: billed by customers, not by minutes
Starter $79/month per agent, or $66 billed annually. Growth $129, or $108 annually. Scale $249, or $208 annually. The page states there are no fees for number of calls, call minutes or tokens, with pricing based on unique customers served monthly and overage at $0.50 per customer. Verified 15 August 2026.
Same job as Rosie, opposite billing model, and that is the whole reason both are here. Goodcall does not meter minutes at all. You are charged on how many distinct people it dealt with, and anything beyond the allowance is 50 cents a head.
That shape is much better for some businesses and worse for others. If your customers ring repeatedly about the same job, which is normal in trades with scheduled work, you pay once rather than every time. If you take a large number of one-off enquiries, the unique customer count climbs fast and Rosie’s minutes look cheaper.
It starts higher, at $66 a month annually against Rosie’s $49, so the crossover depends on your call pattern. Again, the phone log answers this and a feature comparison does not.
Who it is wrong for: businesses with high volumes of new callers and short conversations, which is the exact profile minute-based pricing was built for.
5. Tidio: for the ones who will not phone you
Free tier with 50 conversations and 50 one-off Lyro AI conversations. Starter $24.17/month for 100 billable conversations. Growth from $49.17/month for 250 or more. Verified 15 August 2026.
A growing share of customers will not ring a business at all, and for anyone under about thirty-five that is closer to a rule. They will message the website at ten at night and go elsewhere if nothing comes back.
Tidio handles that side. Lyro answers from your own pages, so it can cover opening hours, service areas, rough pricing and whether you cover their postcode, which is most of what gets asked before someone books.
Start on the free tier and treat the included Lyro conversations as a trial of whether your content is good enough to answer with. If the bot cannot answer, the problem is usually your website rather than the bot.
Who it is wrong for: businesses whose customers are almost entirely phone-first, which is still true in plenty of trades and regions. Look at where your enquiries actually come from before adding this.
Businesses this list will not suit
Multi-location operations with a call centre. You need routing, workforce management and reporting across sites, which is a different tier of software.
Businesses with no repeat custom. Three of these five earn their keep on customers coming back or being reached again.
Regulated clinical practices. Patient data handling changes which of these you can legally use, and that comes before any comparison.
Anyone hoping software fixes demand. If the phone is not ringing, answering it faster changes nothing. Every tool here is about not wasting the demand you already have.
Considered, and left off
Podium and Birdeye. Both aimed squarely at this market and both quote by sales call. We could not read pricing at source on 15 August 2026, and we do not rank what we cannot verify.
ServiceTitan. The serious option once you are running multiple crews, priced and sold accordingly. If you are reading a list like this, you are not there yet.
Google Business Profile. Free, and more important than anything on this page. If your listing is incomplete or your review count is thin, fix that before spending a penny here.
General AI assistants. Useful for writing quotes and replies, and they will not answer your phone, which is the job that actually matters in this trade.
Questions owners ask us
Rosie or Goodcall, which is cheaper?
Look at last month’s calls. If you get lots of short calls from many different people, Rosie’s minutes are cheaper and $49 covers roughly 80 three-minute calls. If the same customers ring repeatedly about scheduled work, Goodcall’s unique customer model means you pay once per person rather than per call, and that gets cheaper the chattier your customers are.
Does Jobber include AI on the cheap plan?
No. AI Receptionist, Voice and Chat are listed on the $499 Plus plan. The workaround is the $29 a month Receptionist add-on, which you can put on top of a cheaper tier. Budget about $58 a month annually for Core plus answering, not $29.
Will customers know they are talking to an AI?
Often yes, and it matters less than people fear. What annoys customers is not being answered by software, it is being answered by software that cannot help and will not pass them to a person. Check the handover behaviour before you check the voice quality.
What should a one-van business buy first?
Rosie at $49, before any field service software. Missed calls cost more than messy scheduling, and you can run jobs off a phone and a notebook for longer than you think. Add Jobber when quoting and invoicing start eating your evenings.
Is it worth paying for both a phone answerer and website chat?
Only once you know both channels bring enquiries. Most local businesses are heavily weighted to one. Check where your last twenty jobs actually came from, then buy for that channel and ignore the other until it earns attention.
Will AI replace the person who answers the phone?
In most one-van businesses there was never a person answering the phone, which is the whole point. This is not replacing a receptionist, it is replacing voicemail, and voicemail was losing you jobs.
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Last reviewed: 15 August 2026. Every price was read off the vendor’s own pricing page on that date. Podium and Birdeye are unranked because they quote by sales call. We review this page quarterly.
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