How much does a call answering service cost in the UK?
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Three price bands cover the whole UK market, and only one of them is worth paying as a sole trader. What each one buys, what drives the bill, and the honest sums.
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The short answer
In the UK in 2026 you will pay one of three bands. Those bands are not ours. They are what the incumbents publish and what the market charges. The answering service guide explains what you are buying; below is where each band comes from, and the sums for a sole trader.
| Type | Typical cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Human answering service Moneypenny, ReceptionHQ, Jam, Best Reception | £115 to £389 /month, ~50 calls | Established firms with complex calls and budget to match |
| Metered AI receptionist Per-minute platforms, you build the agent | £27 to £110 /month | Businesses willing to build and tune the agent themselves |
| Brring Set up for you from your website | £49 /month flat | Sole traders and small UK trades who want it done, not built |
What human answering services charge
For an established firm with complex calls this is worth it. A good human PA is genuinely excellent at what they do. For a sole trader whose calls are “how much for a dripping tap”, it is a lot of structure for a simple job.
£1 to £2.50 a call£115 and £389 a month
setup fee of £25 to £753 to 12 month contract
What metered AI receptionists charge
If that sounds like a fun evening, great. Most tradespeople would rather be paid for their own trade.
£27 to £110 a month
you are the one building the agent
What Brring charges, exactly
Brring is flat monthly pricing with minutes included. The price you see is the price you pay. No setup fee. No contract. Overage is 25p a minute beyond your allowance, visible in your dashboard. Every plan starts with a .
| Plan | Price | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Cover | £49 /month | Answers every call 24/7, takes the details, texts you a summary. 100 answered minutes. |
| Cover+ | £79 /month | Everything in Cover, plus it knows your prices and captures the job and the preferred time in your Bookings list, and texts the caller a confirmation with their reference. 300 answered minutes. |
| Front desk | £129 /month | Everything in Cover+, plus urgent-call texts, call recording, and warm transfer to your mobile. 500 answered minutes. |
The maths for a sole trader
Take a plumber who misses three calls a week while on jobs. Some of those calls were never jobs. Say one in three would have converted, at an average £200 job. That is one lost job a week. You do not need to believe every missed call was a job. You only need to believe one a week was. For the full picture, see how a missed call service works and what it recovers , or put your own week through the missed call cost calculator .
| Missed jobs | Revenue lost | Brring Cover | Net position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 × £200 job a week | £800 /month | £49 | +£751 |
| 2 × £200 jobs a week | £1,600 /month | £49 | +£1,551 |
When an answering service is not worth it
Honesty section, because trust beats a conversion rate. For everyone else, the “on the tools all day, phone in the van, one missed job a week hurts” crowd, the sums above are the whole story.
- Fewer than five business calls a month. Voicemail is free and perfectly good at that volume.
- You always answer, every time. If your phone is never missed, there is nothing to recover.
- Your calls need a human for long stretches. If callers need 20-minute technical conversations, a human service is the right tool. No AI receptionist belongs in that conversation.
What to check before you sign up to any service
Every one of those is answered on the how it works page . Or better, just start the trial and listen to it handle a call before you pay anything.
- Per-call or per-minute? Per-call pricing punishes short spam calls; per-minute punishes long customer calls. Know which you are.
- What counts as “answered”? Some services bill a call as answered even when it is binned as spam. Ours logs spam separately so you can check nothing real was binned.
- Contract and setup fee. There is no good reason for either in 2026.
- Can it book into your Brring Bookings list? Message-taking is table stakes; booking capture is where the jobs actually stick.
- Does it know your prices? A receptionist that cannot quote “call-out is £85” is a message machine, not a receptionist.
Common questions
Start answering
How much does a telephone answering service cost in the UK?
Human answering services charge per call or per month. Pay-as-you-go rates run £1 to £2.50 per call, and monthly packages for roughly 50 calls land between £115 and £389. AI answering services are cheaper: metered ones run £27 to £110 a month, and Brring Cover is £49 a month flat with 100 answered minutes included.
Is a call answering service worth it for a small business?
It depends on what a missed call costs you. If your average job is £200 and you miss even two calls a week that would have converted, that is £1,600 a month of work going elsewhere. Against that, £49 a month for every call answered is an easy sum. If you get fewer than five business calls a month, voicemail is fine.
Are there setup fees or contracts?
Human services often charge a setup fee (£25 to £75) and ask for a 3 to 12 month contract. Brring has no setup fee, no contract, and every plan starts with a 7-day free trial without a card. You can cancel any time.
What happens if I go over my included minutes?
Brring charges 25p per answered minute beyond your plan allowance. There is no overage penalty, no surprise bill: you can see exactly where you are in your dashboard at any time.
Do I have to change my phone number?
No. Your existing number is forwarded to Brring, so customers keep ringing the number on the van. A new Brring number is optional.
The next call could be a £200 job.
Sign in, paste your website, and Brring reads your services, prices and hours before your line goes live. 7-day free trial. No card needed. Keep your number.
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