First, these are different kinds of service
Ruby is an answering service in the original sense: a real receptionist picks up every call, around the clock. Its pricing page is explicit that the communication is 100% live, with AI limited to optional extras like transcripts and sentiment analysis. Smith.ai went the other way: its AI Receptionist answers first, and more than 500 employed receptionists based in North America step in as a paid per-call add-on. So the real question behind Smith.ai vs Ruby is whether you want a human on every call, or software on every call with humans in reserve.
The prices on comparison pages are mostly stale
The pages ranking for this search misquote each other freely. Smith.ai's own page about Ruby lists it at $245 a month. Ruby's live pricing page shows $250 a month for 50 minutes. Another ranking comparison lists Smith.ai at $95 a month, a price that matches nothing Smith.ai publishes today. That is why every number on this page links straight to a live pricing page, with the date we checked it stamped on the cost table.
Pricing: minutes against calls
Ruby sells pools of human receptionist minutes: $250 a month for 50 minutes, $395 for 100, $720 for 200, and $1,725 for 500. Every plan has the same features, including scheduling, Spanish, and robocall filtering. There are no setup or activation fees. Two things its pricing page does not say: what a minute past your pool costs, and anything about a free trial. You start by talking to sales.
Smith.ai bills per call. Its automated plans run free for 25 calls a month, then $150 a month on Pro, about $2.00 a call. Its separate human product, Virtual Front Desk, starts at $300 a month for 30 calls with overage at $11.50 a call.
Here is the conversion nobody ranking for this search does. At a typical three and a half minutes per call, Ruby's $250 entry plan covers roughly 14 calls, about $17.50 per answered call. Smith.ai's Pro plan handles the same call for about $2.00. That gap is not Ruby being greedy; it is the cost of a person on every line. You are deciding whether that person is worth nearly nine times the price per call.
Where Smith.ai wins
- Far cheaper per call, with a genuinely free tier: 25 calls a month at $0, card on file.
- Human backup when a call gets messy, without paying human rates on every call.
- Deep integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, and Clio built in, plus 5,000+ apps through Zapier and Make.
- Self-serve setup in about 15 minutes, with up to 50 simulated test calls a month before going live.
Watch for: it is two products with two price lists, and callers are told up front the receptionist is automated. If you want a person answering every call, you are back at $300 a month for 30 calls.
Where Ruby wins
- A real person answers every call, day and night. For callers who hang up on robots, that is the whole game.
- Everything is included at every tier: scheduling, bilingual answering, intake, payment collection, HIPAA options, robocall filtering.
- No setup, activation, or onboarding fees, and it can host your business number outright.
- Twenty years of doing exactly this, with a mobile app to run it from the road.
Watch for: the entry plan's 50 minutes disappear fast, the overage rate is not published, and there is no advertised free trial: signup starts with a sales conversation. One law-firm owner on Reddit put it plainly about the category's pricing: "Smith.ai became too expensive for what it is." The same math applies double at Ruby's per-minute rates.
EveryDial does one job: it answers for home-services businesses, books the work on the $49 plan, and sends you the details of every call. Extra minutes cost the same rate as included ones, so the bill can't ambush you. Try it free for 7 days.
How to choose
- Pick Ruby if a live human voice on every call is worth a premium to you, and your call volume is modest enough for minute pools.
- Pick Smith.ai if you want automation doing the volume with people in reserve, or you run structured intake the way a law office does.
- Pick ours if you run a small trade business and want booking at the entry price. The answering service for plumbers and HVAC answering service pages show how it handles a real job call.
Whichever way you go, price it against your real call volume first. Our free missed call calculator shows what a month of unanswered calls already costs you, which makes the monthly fee much easier to judge.