ElevenLabs AI Receptionist (Reception) Review 2026: Pricing, Features & Verdict
Updated: 27 October 2026
ElevenLabs launched Reception by ElevenAgents on 16 September 2026. It packages ElevenLabs' conversational voice technology into a simpler AI receptionist for small businesses: answering calls 24/7, handling questions and booking appointments.
Mike Says is an ElevenLabs affiliate. If you sign up through a labelled affiliate link and later make a qualifying purchase, I may earn commission at no extra cost to you. I have not deployed Reception in a live business. This review is based on ElevenLabs' official product pages and documentation.
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Quick verdict
Reception looks most useful for small service businesses that lose enquiries when nobody can answer the phone. The dedicated setup, calendar booking and free trial make it easier to test than building a receptionist from scratch. I would test it with real FAQs and booking scenarios before forwarding a live business number.
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What is Reception by ElevenLabs?
Reception by ElevenAgents is ElevenLabs' AI receptionist product for small and medium businesses. It can answer incoming calls, respond to business questions and put appointments into a calendar. It runs on the ElevenAgents platform but is packaged around the receptionist job, so you do not need to design the whole agent from scratch.
ElevenLabs says Reception can be used for phone calls, chat and a booking page, all connected to the same agent. Businesses can set a greeting, personality and rules, and choose when the human team should get the first chance to answer.
What can it do?
ElevenLabs lists examples including legal and professional services, trades and other appointment-led businesses. Its product page says the voices support English, Spanish and more than 70 languages.
How quickly can you set it up?
ElevenLabs says you can paste in your website, receive a phone number and get an AI receptionist live in minutes. You can then customise the greeting, personality and business rules.
A useful feature is staff-first calling. You can choose hours when calls should go to your team first; if nobody answers, or it is outside those hours, Reception can step in.
Reception pricing
Checked 27 October 2026 on ElevenLabs' Reception plans and pricing documentation. Monthly prices are Basic $29, Plus $79 and Premium $199. Enterprise is custom. Prices are in US dollars and exclude tax.
The trial is 14 days and 30 credits, one per workspace. ElevenLabs says no credit card is required. It includes all features except custom voices.
| Plan | Monthly | Included credits | Overage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trial | 14 days | 30 credits | — |
| Basic | $29 a month | 75 a month | $0.45/credit |
| Plus | $79 a month | 275 a month | $0.38/credit |
| Premium | $199 a month | 1,000 a month | $0.30/credit |
Annual billing is $288 a year for Basic ($24 a month), $792 a year for Plus ($66 a month) and $1,992 a year for Premium ($166 a month).
After the trial, included credits are 75 a month on Basic, 275 on Plus and 1,000 on Premium. Credits are used at 1 per inbound phone minute, 0.5 per web-chat minute and 0.1 per text message. They do not roll over.
UK businesses get a held number until regulatory review is approved.
What's included?
The current plans include Google Calendar and Zapier integration. ElevenLabs' billing documentation also lists webhooks and MCP. Paid tiers increase phone numbers, concurrent calls and usage allowances. The Premium tier adds support for multiple receptionists and larger location limits.
Reception vs building your own ElevenAgent
The broader ElevenAgents platform is more flexible. You can create custom conversational agents, build workflows, connect knowledge bases and design your own behaviour. Reception is the easier route if your main goal is specifically answering business calls and booking customers.
The standard ElevenAgents pricing is different from Reception pricing. ElevenAgents currently has a Free tier with 15 included call minutes, while its paid plans start with Starter at $6/month. See my ElevenLabs pricing guide for the wider platform.
Who is Reception best for?
The strongest use case is a small service business where a missed call can mean a missed customer: tradespeople working on-site, salons with staff busy with clients, consultants, professional services and appointment-led businesses.
If most customers already book online and you rarely receive valuable phone enquiries, the subscription may be harder to justify. The free trial gives you a sensible way to test this before paying.
What should you test?
Do not judge an AI receptionist from one polished demo. Give it the awkward questions real customers ask. Test opening hours, prices, unavailable appointments, cancellations, requests it should hand to a person and questions where the correct answer is not in your business information.
Also consider privacy and data-protection responsibilities before processing real customer calls, recordings, transcripts or personal information. ElevenLabs says Reception itself does not currently support HIPAA compliance; eligible healthcare use cases may need the broader ElevenAgents platform and appropriate agreements.
Is Reception by ElevenLabs worth trying?
Mike Says verdict
The free trial is the sensible place to start. Reception solves a clear problem rather than adding AI for the sake of it: answering calls when a small team cannot. The combination of phone, chat, booking and staff-first routing is particularly interesting for service businesses.
I would build it around a narrow set of genuine customer questions, test it hard, then decide whether the number of calls or bookings it saves makes the paid plan worthwhile.
Want to test ElevenLabs?
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More ElevenLabs guides
Read my ElevenLabs review, compare plans in the ElevenLabs pricing guide, or see how businesses can use ElevenLabs as an AI SDR.
Prices and the trial were checked 27 October 2026 against ElevenLabs' Reception plans and pricing documentation. Other product details were checked 17 September 2026. Features, prices and limits can change.