AI Phone Answering for Small Businesses in the UK (2026): £ Costs, Numbers, GDPR and the 2027 Switch-Off

• £39–£99a month for self-serve AI answering, vendor UK pages checked 10 Oct 2026
• 20%VAT on top of ex-VAT prices; reclaimable if you are VAT-registered
• 25p–50pper call at 200 three-minute calls a month, across the plans compared
• 31 Jan 2027BT's planned retirement of the analogue landline network, per Ofcom

AI phone answering for a UK small business costs between £39 and £99 a month on the self-serve plans we checked, before VAT, depending on included usage. Above that, pricing is quote-based. Fasthosts Spark lists £39, £69 and £99 a month for 30, 100 and unlimited calls. Sayora lists one flat £49 plan. The Starter plan of Adya by Amomic-AI, an AI agent for calls, WhatsApp and chat, is $39 a month plus $0.07 a minute, which is roughly £29 plus 5p a minute at October's HMRC rate, before number rental and tax. Adya bills in USD; confirm UK number availability and the connection path with our team.

The three questions that decide the real cost are not on the headline. Does the plan count calls or minutes? Does it include a UK number and let you port yours? Can it hand an urgent caller to a person? This guide answers those with sourced numbers, then covers recording law, trades, clinics and the landline switch-off, now under four months away.

You divert your existing number, or point a new one at the service, and the AI answers every call. It speaks first, identifies the business, and asks what the caller needs. On a good product that means three things happen without you.

It takes the job. Name, number, postcode, what is wrong, how urgent. The caller gets an answer rather than a voicemail, and you get a written summary by text or email. Fasthosts Spark, Sayora and Moneypenny's AI Receptionist all describe a summary after each call.

It books it. If the service is connected to your calendar, it offers real slots and writes the booking in. Sayora lists a Google Calendar connection; Adya mirrors bookings into a connected Google calendar and treats timed busy events there as unavailable, so it does not double-book.

It escalates. When the caller says "emergency" or asks for a person, the call goes to a mobile or a queue. Not every plan does this. Sayora states plainly that it has no live call transfer; Fasthosts lists call forwarding on every package. Check this line first.

Everything below is from each vendor's own UK page, fetched on October 10, 2026, and linked in the sources. Where a page does not state a figure, the table says so. Prices change; re-check on the day you sign.

Two things stand out. The self-serve AI products cluster between £39 and £99, with the live services above them on a per-minute meter. And almost nobody prints a VAT line. For a sole trader who is not VAT-registered, a £99 plan is £118.80; for a registered business it is £99 after reclaim. Ask.

UK plans use three meters, and the same 200 calls cost different amounts on each.

Per call. Fasthosts counts calls: 30 on Lite, 100 on Plus, then £0.49 or £0.39 each. A plumber taking 15 short calls a day burns through 100 in a week, and a long call costs the same as a wrong number.

Per minute. Adya and the live services count talk time, so a two-minute booking and a twelve-minute complaint are priced as they are. AnswerForce rounds each call up to a whole minute after 30 seconds.

Flat. Sayora's £49 and Fasthosts Unlimited at £99 are the simplest to budget and the best value at volume. Read the fair-use terms before you rely on "unlimited".

The lines a headline price hides

Whether an abandoned call counts. Whether minutes after a transfer are billed. Whether the number is included, and what porting costs. And the contract: Moneypenny puts a three-month minimum on its smaller live schemes; Sayora and Fasthosts say cancel any time.

Take a trades business or a two-chair dental practice: 200 inbound calls a month, averaging three minutes, so 600 minutes. Prices as published October 10, 2026, before VAT.

The employed row uses the National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour from April 1, 2026: the floor, not the market rate. The live-answering row is the worst case; a plan with 600 included minutes costs less, but those plans are quote-based, which is why the marginal minute is the figure to ask for.

Adya's figures are planning examples in USD, with illustrative GBP conversions. Growth includes an Indian number; UK availability, number pricing and any forwarding charges need confirmation. Compare total cost alongside bookings, messaging and handoff, rather than call volume alone.

Keep and divert. The simplest route. Your landline or mobile forwards to the number the service gives you; Fasthosts and Sayora include one. You pay your existing provider for the diversion minutes, so check your tariff.

Port it. Ofcom's switching guidance says you can keep a landline number for free when you move provider, and can still ask for it within one month of cancelling the old service. For a mobile number, text PAC to 65075; Ofcom says the code comes back by text and the switch completes within one working day. Business landline ports take longer: bOnline quotes 10 to 20 days.

Add a new one. A second number for the AI keeps your main line as it is. Planning a UK rollout with Adya? Confirm number availability, forwarding arrangements and your launch date with our team before choosing a plan. Provisioning includes a compliance review. The setup flow is on the voice channel docs.

Three pieces of law touch an AI that answers your phone, and they say less than the folklore suggests.

Recording: notice, not consent

The Lawful Business Practice Regulations 2000 let a business record calls on its own system without the caller's consent for listed purposes, including establishing facts, checking compliance with standards, and preventing or detecting crime, provided it has made all reasonable efforts to inform everyone who may use the system that calls may be recorded. The ICO's monitoring guidance adds that customers are told during the call and signposted to privacy information, and that recording every call's content is not always proportionate. Adya's recording is off by default and, when on, speaks a notice before the greeting.

UK GDPR: a lawful basis and a privacy notice

A caller's name, number and reason for calling are personal data. The ICO says you must settle your lawful basis before processing and keep a record of it; its guide lists consent, contract, legal obligation, vital interests, public task, legitimate interests and, since the 2025 Act, recognised legitimate interest. Articles 13 and 14 then require privacy information at collection: purposes, lawful basis, retention periods and the caller's rights. A line on your website and a sentence in the greeting cover most of it.

PECR: only if the AI calls out

PECR governs marketing calls, not inbound answering. It bites the moment your AI rings a lead back with an offer: no live marketing calls to numbers on the Telephone Preference Service without specific consent, automated recorded-message calls only with consent that specifically covers them, and your number must be presented. The ICO notes its PECR guide is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.

A trade misses calls for the best reason: both hands are busy. The AI's job is triage, and the test is three calls you make yourself before you buy.

1. "Water is coming through the ceiling." It should take the address, say whether you do emergency call-outs, and transfer the call or text you the details. If the plan cannot transfer, it should at least mark the summary urgent.
2. "Can you quote for a bathroom?" It should capture the job, the postcode and a time for a visit, then confirm by text. It should not guess a price.
3. "Is this Dave?" It should say it is Dave's assistant, not pretend.

On price, trades sit at the per-call trap: many short calls. Fasthosts Lite's 30 calls is a fortnight for a busy sole trader; flat plans or a per-minute meter fit better. Adya creates a ticket with a reference when nobody can take the transfer, so the 7 am call still exists at 9 am. Handoff and live hours are on the human handoff docs.

A practice has the opposite problem: fewer, longer calls, most about appointments, and a receptionist who is on the desk but on another call. The product question is calendar depth, not call volume.

BookedSolid prices by practitioner, £99 a month for four, billed yearly ex VAT, with unlimited inbound calls. Adya books into a calendar with slot length, buffers, minimum notice and capacity, mirrors the booking to Google Calendar, and reads timed busy events back so a slot blocked in Google is never offered. The setup is described step by step on the Google Calendar docs.

Two clinic rules. Health data is special category data under UK GDPR, so the AI should take a name, number and appointment type, not a symptom history. And a caller describing an emergency should hear a clear instruction to call 999 or 111, then be transferred, never booked. Write that into the script and test it.

Serve more of your community: Adya speaks English and 10 Indian languages, detecting the caller's language on the call. For a practice, shop or agency in Leicester, Southall or Bradford serving South Asian customers, that gives your team a practical way to support familiar languages alongside English. Test your own appointment flow in the languages your patients use.

Ofcom's landline page, updated August 26, 2026, states that BT plans to retire its old analogue landline network by January 31, 2027. Earlier plans had pointed at the end of 2025. Calls move to digital services carried over broadband; your phone plugs into the router rather than the wall.

Three facts matter for a business. Your number survives: Ofcom says you can keep it and carry on making and receiving calls in much the same way. Anything else on the old line, from a card terminal to an alarm panel, needs checking. And a digital line does not work in a power cut, so a business that depends on the phone needs a back-up or a mobile fallback.

Vendors are marketing on the switch-off, and for once the hook is fair. If you are moving the line anyway, what answers it is on the table. A digital number with an AI in front of it is one change, not two.

The price table answers what a plan costs. These questions answer whether that price holds once real callers arrive. Ask them in writing; a provider that cannot answer one plainly has told you something.

1. How is a call counted? Does a ten-second wrong number, a hang-up or a spam call use the allowance? Fasthosts counts calls, Adya and the live services count minutes, and AnswerForce rounds each call up to a whole minute after 30 seconds.
2. Are minutes after a transfer billed? When the AI hands a caller to your mobile, ask whether the transferred leg is charged, and at what rate.
3. Can you take the number with you? Porting in is covered by Ofcom's switching rules. Check the provider will release the number if you leave, and what it charges to do so.
4. Where do recordings and transcripts live, and who deletes them? Under UK GDPR you remain responsible for the caller's data. Ask for the retention setting and the deletion route before the first call is recorded.
5. Does the greeting say it is an AI? Ask whether you can edit that line. We recommend the caller hears plainly that an AI assistant is answering for your business.
6. What happens with an emergency at 2 am? Make the three test calls from the trades section, and for a clinic, check the 999 and 111 instruction is spoken before anything else.
7. What is the minimum term? Moneypenny puts a three-month minimum on its smaller live schemes; Sayora and Fasthosts say cancel any time. Ask for the notice period too.
8. What is the price in pounds, with VAT, and does it move? A service billed in US dollars, Adya included, costs a different number of pounds each month. Budget at HMRC's monthly rate with a margin, and ask your accountant whether the reverse charge applies to you.

To model your own volume, switch the AI call cost calculator to US dollars and enter your calls a month and average call length. It shows the monthly estimate before tax, plan by plan.

Give routine enquiries a clear next step and give your team the conversations that need their judgement. Adya brings calls, WhatsApp, website chat and email into one support workflow, with appointment booking and human handoff.

Start with overflow or after-hours enquiries. Pick a routine job such as answering opening-hours questions or taking appointment requests. Test it with real customer questions, then measure completed bookings and follow-ups.

Make the handoff personal. Set live hours and escalation instructions so sensitive enquiries and complaints reach your team. When nobody is available, a ticket keeps the enquiry ready for follow-up. AI handles the routine; your people remain responsible for professional judgement.

Confirm your launch requirements. Discuss UK number availability, forwarding, recording and billing before subscribing. Adya bills in USD from India; the GBP figures in this guide are illustrative. Check the tax treatment with your accountant for your circumstances.

Choose for the whole customer journey. An answered call is the start. Booking the visit, handling the next WhatsApp enquiry and giving your team the conversation history are where a connected support workflow earns its place. The USD price list is on the pricing page.