How to compare AI booking tools and check their prices

Compare the limits before the headline price. Two plans that cost the same can behave very differently once the phone gets busy. And any price you read today may be out of date next month.

Why there's no price table here

Prices, plans and features of AI tools change often. A table on this page would go stale, and a stale price is worse than none. Field service software is a crowded market. Vendors offer a range of features and pricing models, and the market includes many providers whose capabilities differ from one to the next¹.

So this page shows what to look for and where to look. When you find a figure, write down the currency, the country version of the page, and the date you read it.

What the limits look like

Take one maker's public plan page as an example. ServiceM8's Australian pricing page, read on 24 October 2026, sets plans out by jobs per month and SMS per month. It also offers a free trial². That's job software rather than an AI answerer, but the pattern is common. Plans are built from limits.

Things that plans often limit or price separately:

• Users. Some plans count each person who logs in.
• Jobs or bookings per month. What happens when you pass it: a hard stop, or an extra charge?
• Texts. Each message may cost extra.
• Call minutes. For AI answering, this is a common one. Check what counts as a minute and whether a ring-out counts.
• Phone numbers. A new number, or porting your current one, can be a separate fee.
• Connections. Linking to a calendar or job software might need a higher plan.

Bundles are another thing to read closely. Microsoft's page lists the subscriptions that include its Bookings tool³. If you already pay for one of those, part of what you need might already be in the box. Shared Bookings lets you invite team members and create booking pages that customers use to book time with you and your team³.

Where to find current plans

Go to the maker's own site, in the version for your country. Look for pages called pricing, plans, limits, fair use or terms. Maker documentation and help centres often say more than the front page. Avoid third-party lists that don't give a date, and be wary of comparison sites that earn commission from the tools they rank.

Currency is easy to miss. A dollar sign could be Australian, American, New Zealand or Canadian. Tax is another: some pages show prices with tax and some without. If a page doesn't say, ask the maker before you rely on it.

What to compare

Trial before you commit

A free trial is a chance to test with your own accents, street names and background noise. The Australian privacy regulator says to consider whether a product has been tested for such uses, and that due diligence should not be a "set and forget" approach⁴. Ring it with the worst calls you can think of. The page on what an answerer does explains what it does with them.

Then review it after a month. Read a sample of the call summaries, count the wrong addresses, and check the bill against what you expected.

Keep a record

For each tool you look at, note the plan name, the price, the currency, the limits and the date you read the page, with the link. Next time you look, compare. If the page changed, the date tells you how long your numbers have been out of date.