AI Receptionist for Real Estate Agents, $0.130

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An AI receptionist for real estate agents costs $0.130 for each connected minute once listing notes are switched on. That figure is Retell's voice infrastructure at $0.055, GPT 5.1 on the standard tier at $0.040, a platform voice at $0.015, US telephony at $0.015, and the knowledge-base add-on at $0.005. Say you bill one solo agent $199 for the month and cut the line off at 200 minutes: the tool bill is $28, a domestic card fee is $6.07, and $164.93 is left before your hours and US tax.

If the agent wants the phone in their own accounts instead of a fee you invoice, Michael Heredia deploys an AI receptionist on the buyer's number for $8,000 once, with Google Calendar, Gmail, and Twilio connected, and with the Twilio line and xAI voice usage billed to the agent. There is no required monthly fee to him. You keep the $199 only when the Retell account stays yours and the agent is paying you for coverage plus the listing updates.

Who buys an AI receptionist for real estate agents?

The buyer is a working US agent, or a team of two to five, who is inside a house when the next inquiry lands. HousingWire reported on 13 August 2024 that Mike DelPrete's shoppers sent 100 inquiries through brokerage websites, not through Zillow, on median-priced homes, during weekday business hours, across more than 25 firms including Redfin, RE/MAX, Berkshire Hathaway, eXp, Douglas Elliman, and Compass. The average reply took 8 hours and 17 minutes, the median took 39 minutes, and 47 percent of the inquiries got no reply at all.

The same shoppers went to open houses. About 42 percent were never asked for contact details. Of the 58 percent who were asked, a third got no follow-up, and 62 percent of in-person shoppers overall heard nothing after the tour. The line you sell answers the curb call while the agent is still in the next room. It does not repair a tour where nobody took a name.

What the call is allowed to do

On a live real-estate pricing page, Ringing.io describes the job as buyer-or-seller, budget or price, timeline, pre-approval, and the address, then a handoff. Smith.ai's human plan includes up to five short intake questions and uses "address for real estate" as one of its own examples. Match that narrow list. The assistant may take those facts, offer the booking link the agent already uses, and promise a callback. It does not discuss offer price, contingencies, or which block "fits" the caller.

People already pay for this. Ringing.io, fetched in November 2026, posts a solo plan at $99 a month for 250 minutes, a team plan at $179 for 500 minutes, and a brokerage plan at $299 for 1,500 minutes, after 25 free minutes and with no card required to start. Smith.ai's AI Pro plan is $150 a month, which is the 75-call column at $2.00 a call, and custom prompting is marked not included until the Enterprise column at $500 a month. To see whether agents near you will answer a maintained version of that offer, post it as a free listing on Brixaz. The marketplace is early, and the listing itself is free.

How much does an AI receptionist for real estate agents cost to run?

It costs $0.130 a connected minute on the stack in the table, plus $2.00 a month for a Retell US number, as of 2 November 2026. Retell's headline band is $0.07 to $0.31 a minute because the model and the voice change the total. The $0.130 line is one specific combination, not the whole band. Failed calls that never connect are not billed. A call that reaches voicemail is billed only while the assistant is still on the line.

Piece	Published rate	Role on a realtor line
Retell voice infrastructure	$0.055 / minute	Keeps the live call running, including silence
GPT 5.1, standard tier	$0.040 / minute	The language model. Fast tier is $0.080 and is not in the $0.130
Platform voice	$0.015 / minute	Speech. ElevenLabs voices on the same card run from $0.040 to $0.10
US telephony on a Retell number	$0.015 / minute	Drops to $0 if you bring your own carrier
Knowledge base add-on	$0.005 / minute	Listing facts. The first 10 knowledge bases have no extra monthly fee; the 11th is $8 a month
Retell phone number	$2.00 / month	One number per agent. Custom numbers are not charged this fee
SMS summary	$0.01 / message	Only if you text the agent. Leave it off until the cap is agreed
Extra concurrency	$8 / extra line / month	The first 20 simultaneous calls are included. One agent does not need the add-on

Retell tracks each call to the nearest second and does not round a call up to a full minute. It does bill silence and hold time, because speech recognition stays on for the whole connection. After you transfer to the agent's mobile, the AI fee stops and the telephony fee keeps running until the human hangs up. A long warm transfer is a phone bill, not a model bill.

Bring the agent's own US number

An agent who already has a US line can forward it and skip Retell's $0.015 telephony and the $2.00 number. Twilio's US voice page, current as of August 2026, lists inbound calls on a local number at $0.0085 a minute plus $1.15 a month for the number. Voice infrastructure, GPT 5.1, the platform voice, and the knowledge base still add up to $0.115, so the combined minute is $0.1235. Two hundred hypothetical minutes on that path are $24.70 plus the $1.15 number, or $25.85, against $28.00 if Retell supplies the number. The Twilio voice minute guide is the carrier detail; the gap on one solo agent is $2.15 a month, so start on the single Retell bill and move the number only after the script is stable. Twilio's trial credit is $15 if you do open a carrier account.

Calendly's free plan is one event type and one calendar connection, enough for a single showing link. Leave text summaries off in week one. Each one is $0.01 on Retell.

What should you charge the agent?

Charge for the maintained script, not for raw minutes. Ringing.io already sells 250 minutes for $99 and 1,500 minutes for $299. Smith.ai already sells 75 AI calls for $150, and it withholds custom prompting until $500. A $199 month you choose sits $100 above the $99 solo plan and $49 above the $150 AI plan, and $301 under the $500 plan where custom prompting is finally included. If the agent only wants minutes, send them to the $99 plan. You get paid when you load their listings and read the transcripts.

A human receptionist is the other anchor, and it is a different unit. Smith.ai's live-staffed Starter plan is $300 for 30 calls, then $11.50 a call. Inside the allowance that is $10 a call. Booking onto a calendar is a further $1.50 a call on that human card. Your $0.130 minute is not competing with $10 a call. It is competing with the AI plans above, plus the hour you spend keeping facts current.

The same shape, a published plan on one side and a thin usage bill on the other, is how a veterinary answering service gets priced. The buyer changes. The rule does not: quote under a card the buyer can already open, and cap the unit the vendor meters.

Write the cap into the first invoice

Use 200 connected minutes as the included amount on the $199 example, then stop or rebill. At 250 minutes, the solo allowance Ringing publishes, tools would be $32.50 plus the $2 number, or $34.50, and the same $199 would still leave $158.43 after the $6.07 card fee. That is a comfortable solo month. The month that breaks is the uncapped open-house weekend you promised would be "unlimited." Retell also gives you 20 simultaneous calls before the $8 concurrency add-on, so one forwarded mobile does not need extra lines. Deposit the Stripe payout into Mercury so the agent's card payment lands in a US business account you can use from abroad. International cards add 1.5% at Stripe on top of the domestic rate, which this example does not assume. The fee is still US self-employment income when you live elsewhere, which is the separate problem in the self-employment tax trap for expat freelancers.

How do you turn one realtor line on?

Say the first client is one agent who forwards the mobile after 6 p.m. and all day Sunday. You are not opening a dialer. You are answering people who already called that agent. Budget a hypothetical 10 connected minutes of testing before you take the fee: 10 × $0.130 is $1.30, plus the $2 number, so $3.30 leaves your account before the first invoice.

Step	What you do	What you pay
1. Open the voice account	Create a pay-as-you-go Retell agent. Pick GPT 5.1 standard, not the fast tier, and a platform voice.	$0.040 + $0.015 + $0.055 per minute once calls connect
2. Attach one number	Buy one Retell US number, or forward the agent's existing number and leave Retell telephony at $0.	$2.00 a month, or Twilio's $1.15 number if you bring your own
3. Load one knowledge base	Paste only facts the agent emails you: address, price, beds, baths, and whether it is still available. The first 10 bases have no monthly knowledge-base fee.	+$0.005 per minute while the base is on
4. Write the script	Ask buyer or seller, area, budget or list price, timeline, pre-approval, and the address if they have one. Then send the agent's booking link or take a callback window. Say at the start that the caller has reached an assistant.	Included in the minute rate
5. Hand off in writing	Use the included webhook to email the agent a summary. Leave SMS off until you want the extra $0.01 a message.	$0 for the email path
6. Cap and invoice	Stop the agent at 200 connected minutes or send a new quote. Charge the $199 on Stripe. Read sold listings out of the knowledge base every week.	Card fee $6.07 on that example charge

Run five test calls yourself before the forward is live: a buyer, a seller, a wrong number, a caller who will not give a budget, and a caller who asks what the house will "go for." The fifth call should capture the question and end. If the model names a number, the script is not ready, no matter how cheap the minute is.

What makes the retainer lose money or create a complaint?

The expensive failure is a flat promise copied from someone else's minute bucket. Ringing's Growth plan includes 1,500 minutes for $299. Your cost for 1,500 minutes at $0.130 is $195 before the $2 number. Put that usage on a $199 invoice and the tools plus the $6.07 card fee are $203.07. Pause the assistant at the cap and email the agent the same day. Do not "let it run and sort it out Monday."

Keep neighborhood steering out of the script

HUD's 2 May 2024 release restates that the Fair Housing Act bars discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex (including gender and sexual orientation), disability, and familial status. The two guidance documents issued that day are about tenant screening and about housing ads on digital platforms, including when AI is involved, not a word-for-word phone script. Treat the script more strictly than that gap. The assistant may repeat the address, price, and timing the agent supplied. It may not suggest a different neighborhood because of who the caller seems to be, and it may not rank areas by schools, "safety," or family type. If a caller asks for that, the line is: the agent will call them back. A stale price in the knowledge base is the other complaint that gets you fired. Sold listings come out the week they go under contract, or the assistant will recite last month's number with a confident voice.

Smith.ai's human plan does not charge for spam when caller ID is passed through. Retell bills a connected call for as long as the assistant stays on it, including silence. A robocall that connects is your minute, not a freebie. Hang up in the script when there is no caller and no question. Recording is a state-law question this setup does not answer; leave recording off until the agent has told you, in writing, that their state allows it. You are also not their broker. Nothing in the transcript is an offer, a negotiation, or advice about a commission.

Start with one forwarded mobile

Pick one agent, one number, and a 200-minute ceiling at the $0.130 rate. Collect the six facts, refuse offer talk, and replace sold listings every week. A second agent is another $2 number and another knowledge base inside the ten that are included, which is the natural next offer among AI income and cash flow work once the first line has survived a weekend. If they want the system in their own Twilio account instead, the $8,000 build is the other door, and your retainer was never the right sale.

Data notes and sources checked

Rates and plan cards were read on 2 November 2026, except Twilio's page, which labels its US voice rates as current as of August 2026. Plan cards change. Re-open the vendor page before you quote a live agent.

• Retell AI pricing — $0.055 voice infrastructure, $0.040 GPT 5.1 standard, $0.015 platform voice, $0.015 US telephony, $0.005 knowledge base, $2 numbers, $0.01 SMS, 20 included concurrent calls, silence billed, transfer rule.
• Twilio US voice pricing — local inbound $0.0085 a minute and $1.15 a month, as of August 2026; trial credit $15.
• Ringing.io real estate plans — $99 / 250 minutes, $179 / 500 minutes, $299 / 1,500 minutes, 25 free minutes.
• Smith.ai AI receptionist — Pro $150 at $2.00 on the 75-call column; custom prompting on Enterprise at $500.
• Smith.ai human receptionist — $300 for 30 calls, then $11.50; booking add-on $1.50 a call.
• Stripe pricing — 2.9% + 30¢ for domestic cards; +1.5% for international cards; no monthly fee on standard pricing.
• HousingWire, 13 August 2024 — DelPrete's 100 brokerage-site inquiries: average 8 hours 17 minutes, median 39 minutes, 47 percent with no response.
• FCC, FCC-24-17 — released 8 February 2024; AI voices that sound human are artificial voices under the TCPA and need prior express consent when you place the call.
• HUD No. 24-098, 2 May 2024 — Fair Housing Act protected classes, and AI guidance on tenant screening and housing ads.
• Michael Heredia pricing — AI receptionist $8,000 once; Twilio and xAI billed to the buyer.
• Calendly pricing — free plan includes one event type and one calendar connection.

This is not legal advice, tax advice, or financial advice. Call-recording rules depend on the agent's state, fair-housing duties sit with the agent and the brokerage, and a US citizen still files a US return on this income. Have the agent confirm the script with their broker before the forward goes live, and have a tax professional look at the retainer before you treat it as spending money.