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Home/AI Receptionist ROI Calculator

What's the ROI of an AI Receptionist for Your Trade Business?

Most contractors evaluate AI receptionists on the monthly price. The right question is what it returns. Use this calculator to model 12-month ROI based on your trade, call volume, current call handling setup, and average job value.

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Quick answer

What SubCall returns depends almost entirely on two numbers you set yourself: what a job is worth in your trade, and how many captured leads you close. On the calculator's default assumptions the same call volume produces roughly 4x for a locksmith and over 300x for a solar installer, so there is no single multiple worth printing here. Run your own figures below. As a floor: at those defaults SubCall pays for itself once your monthly call count multiplied by your average job value clears about $4,800.

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Model your 12-month ROI

How it works

The three components of AI receptionist ROI

1. Recovered revenue from previously-missed calls. The Missed Call Cost Calculator measures this. AI receptionist answers calls you currently miss, captures them as structured leads, and dispatches to your tech. The recovered revenue is the dollars that previously walked away.

2. Cancelled cost of your current call-handling service. If you pay for an answering service, a virtual receptionist, or a hired receptionist today, SubCall replaces some or all of that spend. The calculator reports it on its own card rather than folding it into the ROI figure: money you stop paying someone else is a saving from cancelling them, not a return on this subscription. Adding the two together would flatter whichever half is larger.

3. Time you get back. Even without a dedicated receptionist, you spend time on voicemail triage, callbacks and manual dispatch. SubCall removes most of it. The calculator does not price that time and we do not put a figure on it here: what an hour of your day is worth depends on whether you would otherwise be on a billable job, out quoting, or off the clock. Read the output as the money side alone.

SubCall vs hiring

The difference vs hiring a receptionist is the cost

The calculator gives both options the same 95% call capture. We don't claim SubCall answers more calls than a competent receptionist does — carrier drops and misheard callers are real, and a capture edge isn't what makes the case.

What differs is the bill. A full-time receptionist costs about $45,000/year (BLS median wage plus benefits and payroll taxes); SubCall costs $4,188. On identical capture and identical close rates, that is $40,812/year — the same calls answered, for a tenth of the cost.

Coverage differs too: $45,000 buys roughly 40 hours a week, so nights, weekends, breaks and sick days fall back to voicemail, while SubCall answers around the clock and takes concurrent calls. That gap is real but we don't put a number on it here — how much your after-hours calls are worth depends on your trade, and the missed-call rate slider above is where you can price it yourself.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

It runs the same chain as the Missed Call Cost Calculator, and most of it is yours to set: call volume, missed-call rate, close rate on captured leads, average job value, and what you spend on call handling today. One figure is fixed: $45,000/year for a hired receptionist (BLS median wage plus benefits and payroll taxes). The share of missed callers you treat as lost is a slider, because no published research measures it. Job value pre-fills from HomeAdvisor cost data by trade. Capture is held at 95% for both SubCall and a hired receptionist, deliberately, so the comparison rests on coverage and cost rather than on an edge we can't evidence. The output prices the first job only — no repeat customer value, no referrals.
Yes, if you have one — that is what the "call-handling cost removed" figure assumes. It is reported on its own rather than folded into the revenue or the ROI, because money you stop paying a receptionist is a saving from cancelling them, not a return on SubCall. If you don't pay for call handling today, that figure is zero and nothing else moves.
Adjust the "Current missed call rate" slider down. If you have a hired receptionist who catches 95% of business-hours calls, set the slider to 5–10% (accounting for after-hours, sick days, lunch). The recovered revenue calculation will reflect that.
No. It counts hard dollars only — revenue recovered and call-handling cost removed. The time you spend on voicemail triage, callbacks and manual dispatch is real and it isn't in the model, but we don't put a figure on it: what an hour of your day is worth depends on whether you'd otherwise be on a billable job, out quoting, or off the clock. Read the calculator's output as the money side alone.
There isn't a single figure worth quoting, because ROI here is driven almost entirely by two things you set yourself: your average job value and your close rate on captured leads. A roofer recovering $8,500 jobs and a locksmith recovering $175 ones are not in the same arithmetic, and shifting the close rate moves either of them proportionally. Put your own numbers into the calculator above — that result is the answer to this question, and any range we printed here would just be someone else's inputs.
SubCall is purpose-built for trade contractors at $349/month. Other AI receptionists range from $49–$249/month (budget tier) to $1,000+/month (enterprise). The ROI math depends on which alternative you're comparing to. For most trade-specific use cases, SubCall's trade-specific intake produces stronger ROI than generic alternatives.
When your call volume multiplied by your average job value is too small to clear the subscription. At the calculator's default 30% missed-call rate and 30% close rate, SubCall breaks even at about $4,800 of calls times job value per month. Twenty calls a month at a $200 average job is $4,000, which comes out at 0.8x: a loss, not a thin gain. Thirty calls at $300 is 1.9x, positive but not dramatic. Below that line voicemail is the rational choice for a solo, low-volume operator, and the calculator will show you so rather than round it up.
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