Heyline vs Smith.ai: per minute or per call.

Smith.ai bills per call and can pull a live person onto the line. Heyline bills by the minute, books into your Google Calendar on every plan, and puts you on a call with your own receptionist — in your browser, before you make an account. Their free tier is real; ours is a test drive.

Both answer around the clock. The split is how you're billed, and what happens when a call goes sideways. Smith.ai counts calls and can hand one to a person. Heyline counts minutes and, when she can't help, takes a message that turns into a to-do on your list.

Every Smith.ai number on this page was read from Smith.ai's own pages. Prices checked September 2, 2026. Each figure carries a link to the page it came from and the date it was checked, because prices in this category move and a stale comparison is a wrong one.

Carefully, and never by pretending one unit converts into the other. Smith.ai's own published figure on their 75-call plan is $2.00 a call. A Heyline minute costs 50¢ on Starter, 40¢ on Growth and 33¢ on Scale. The two only meet if you know how long your calls run.

Per call rewards long conversations: a caller who talks for twelve minutes costs what a thirty-second caller costs. Per minute rewards short ones, and charges nothing at all for the call that never comes. Heyline also ends any single call at ten minutes, politely, so one rambling caller can't swallow a month of minutes.

Capacity at a similar price is the one clean comparison. Near $500 a month, Smith.ai publishes 300 included real calls; Heyline Scale is $499 a month for 1,500 minutes, pooled across up to five businesses on one subscription. Which of those is more depends on your average call — a number neither of us publishes, so neither of us should guess at yours.

Several things, and they aren't small. Their free plan is not a countdown: $0 a month, 25 real calls a month, no credit card and no expiry — their pricing page calls it “the real AI Receptionist — not a watered-down trial”. When a caller needs a person, a live agent takes the call over for a flat $3.00 a call, charged only when it happens. They also run a human receptionist desk from $300 a month for 30 calls, they port your business number at no charge, they answer in English and Spanish, and their paid plans carry a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Heyline matches none of that. She never hands a caller to a person; an answer she doesn't have becomes a name, a number and a to-do with the transcript attached. She doesn't text anybody. She's English-only, works in the United States and Canada, and writes to one calendar: Google. Smith.ai publishes no list of served countries.

Heyline books into your Google Calendar on Starter, Growth and Scale. She reads the day the caller asked about, names two or three openings that are genuinely free, writes the event, then reads the day, the time, the caller's name and their callback number back before anyone hangs up. Nothing to text, nothing to click.

Smith.ai's pricing page lists AI Scheduling with Calendly named among the integrations, while their Free-plan help article calls real-time booking a paid add-on with no published price, and their Calendly scheduling needs a paid Calendly plan. Google Calendar is not among their listed scheduling integrations, checked September 2, 2026. So your calendar decides how much of their scheduling you can use, and what a booking costs you elsewhere.

One button connects Heyline, and only two Google permissions are involved: calendar.freebusy and calendar.events.owned. Heyline has Google-verified Calendar access (2026-08-27). Starter gets exactly what Scale gets here — the calendar is not the thing the higher plans sell you. The rules she books by are on Google Calendar booking.