An AI leasing agent answers calls, texts, chat and email around the clock and is priced per call, per customer or per door. An answering service or leasing call center puts a person on the line, priced per call, minute or door, and booking or follow-up often costs extra. Compare both on one workload and a booking test.
The gap is real: in EliseAI’s January 2025 mystery shop of more than 10,000 calls, US leasing offices answered 70% of calls on site and had a 7% average callback rate (EliseAI).
This analysis is published by Nolan. Prices were checked on October 15, 2026. Calculated amounts are examples, not quotes or measured conversion results.
How do AI leasing agents compare with human leasing call centers?
They differ most in who answers, which channels are covered and how you pay. Human services bill by call, minute or door and often charge extra to book or follow up, while AI products bill by call, customer or door and vary in which channels they cover.
| Option | Who answers | Channels | Booking and follow-up | Price basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anyone Home contact center | Live agents, AI assistants or both | Phone, email, SMS and chat, 24/7 | Schedules tours; answers unit pricing and availability | Not published; a la carte |
| Tenant Turner Ultra | Real agents on its live answer service | Calls; AI web chat and text as an unpriced add-on | The AI add-on pre-screens and books showings | Per unit, annual plans from $2.43 |
| Smith.ai human | People | Phone | Booking $1.50 per call; text and email follow-up $0.50 per call | Per call, from $300 for 30 calls |
| Smith.ai AI | AI | Phone | AI scheduling (Calendly and more) | Per call, free for 25 calls |
| Goodcall | AI | Phone | Starter includes 1 external tool | Per unique customer, from $79 for 100 |
| LetHub | AI | Web chat, SMS, email and phone | Leasing-specific; see below | Per unit, $199 a month minimum |
A leasing call center like Anyone Home is built around trained agents who know the apartment leasing process. A general answering service is not leasing-specific, so it depends on the unit details you keep it supplied with. An AI agent can answer every channel at the same time, but you should test whether it actually books and follows up.
How do call, minute and customer prices compare for the same workload?
On one workload, the published prices range from $79 to $1,725 a month. The scenario below assumes 100 answered calls of four minutes each, 80 distinct callers and 20 appointments, with taxes and optional services left out unless stated.
| Product and plan | Scenario calculation | Monthly subtotal |
|---|---|---|
| Smith.ai human Basic | $810 for 90 calls + 10 × $10.50 overage + 20 × $1.50 booking | $945 |
| PATLive 300 minutes | $479 + 100 extra minutes × $1.89 | $668 |
| Goodcall Starter | 80 distinct customers within its 100-customer allowance | $79 |
| Ruby 500 minutes | 400 minutes within the 500-minute plan | $1,725 |
This is a cost scenario, not a claim of equal booking or service quality. Smith.ai text and email follow-up adds $0.50 per applicable call, so 100 follow-ups add $50, and Smith.ai offers a 10% discount for a 12-month subscription. PATLive adds government taxes and fees, and Ruby’s page lists no per-minute overage rate.
Smith.ai’s AI receptionist is priced separately: free for 25 calls a month and $3.00 per call after that, or Pro at $150 a month for 75 calls with extra calls at $2.50 on that tier. Confirm which Smith.ai product you are being quoted.
Goodcall bills unique customers, not every repeat call, and says it never meters minutes. Starter is $79 for 100 customers, Growth $129 for 500 and Scale $299 for 2,000, with extra customers at 79¢, 26¢ and 15¢. At 120 distinct customers, Starter comes to $94.80, and its limits of one external tool, one team member and 30 days of call history can matter more than price.
Can answering services nurture and book, or only take messages?
Most can book, but nurturing usually means extra plans or add-ons. Check each step you need against what the plan includes.
| Service | Documented conversation and booking scope | What needs a separate decision |
|---|---|---|
| Smith.ai human | Paid add-ons per call: booking, text and email follow-up, SMS or Slack notifications, custom calendaring, a Spanish line | Which add-ons apply to each call, and how listing details stay current |
| PATLive | Appointment scheduling on every plan, with Google Calendar and Calendly among the named tools; separate outbound and live chat plans | Separate channel plans and escalation rules |
| Ruby | Scheduling, outbound call assistance, lead qualification and intake; separate chat plans | Chat package and the exact leasing workflow |
| Goodcall | Phone answering; Starter includes 1 external tool | Live inventory, calendar actions and any channel beyond phone |
| My AI Front Desk | AI voice, SMS, web chat, email drafts and outbound calls | Channel allowances, credit use and listing-data upkeep |
PATLive’s outbound plan is $309 a month for 50 outreaches, and its live chat plan is $279 a month for 50 chats. Adding both to the $668 inbound scenario makes $1,256 a month before extra outreaches at $8.29 or extra chats at $8.49.
Ruby’s chat plans run $143, $335 and $520 a month for 10, 30 and 50 chats, or $115, $268 and $416 when bundled with a receptionist plan. The 500-minute plan plus 30 bundled chats comes to $1,993 a month.
My AI Front Desk lists $99 a month, or $79 billed annually, with 200 voice minutes, 400 SMS, 100 chat conversations and 500 email drafts. Outbound calls have a hard cap of 20 a day. A 1,000-credit monthly overage pool expires each month, and auto-reload buys 1,000 credits for $10, so ask for a worked invoice for your channel mix.
What do leasing call centers and call analytics tools cost?
The leasing-specific ones mostly do not publish prices. Anyone Home asks you to request a demo, and Funnel publishes no dollar prices, so the best published reference for call analytics is a general tool like CallRail.
Anyone Home offers 24/7 phone, email, SMS and chat through live agents, AI assistants or both, with services available a la carte. LeaseHawk’s site now redirects to Funnel, which lists contact center software with call recording, transcription and call scoring, plus voice and sentiment analysis. Funnel also sells Fenix, its front office AI across email, phone, text and chat, without dollar prices.
CallRail is not built for leasing, but it publishes its rates:
| CallRail plan | Monthly price |
|---|---|
| Lead Tracking | $50 plus usage |
| Lead Tracking Complete | $95 plus usage |
| Lead Conversion | $150 plus usage |
| Lead Conversion Complete | $195 plus usage |
Plans include 5 local numbers, 250 local minutes and 25 SMS. Extra local numbers are $3 each, toll-free numbers $5 each and toll-free minutes $0.08 each, and the page shows two different extra local-minute rates, so ask which applies. Its AI voice assistant starts at $95 a month, then $1 per call after 50 calls over 15 seconds (another table on the page says 55).
How often do leasing offices miss calls, and do renters want a person?
Often, in EliseAI’s 2025 mystery shop. Renter preference data is thinner, and both sources below are vendor-published.
EliseAI made more than 10,000 mystery shopping calls to US leasing offices for its report dated January 16, 2025. It found a 70% average onsite answer rate, a 7% average callback rate and 28% of overall leads wasted (EliseAI). It is a vendor study and its method is gated.
Sinch surveyed 2,800 consumers and 1,600 business leaders across industries including retail, financial services, healthcare and technology, released June 16, 2025. It found that 42% of all age groups and 71% of Gen Z would work with an AI chatbot trained on support documentation (Sinch). It is not a renter survey, so keep a quick path to a person, and see whether AI leasing agents should disclose they are AI.
To put a price on your own missed calls, use the missed-call calculator or the arithmetic in what a missed leasing call costs.
What about showing software with human call centers?
ShowMojo and Tenant Turner price per unit, and Tenant Turner Ultra lists a human live answer service. Their AI virtual agent add-ons show no price.
| Plan | ShowMojo | Tenant Turner |
|---|---|---|
| Pro, annual, per unit, starting at | $1.30 | $1.17 |
| Ultra, annual, per unit, starting at | $2.70 | $2.43 |
| Pro, per listing | $50.00 | $42.50 |
| Ultra, per listing | $110.00 | $98.50 |
At those starting rates, 200 units on Ultra come to $540 on ShowMojo and $486 on Tenant Turner. These are illustrations, not volume quotes, and neither page names a currency. Tenant Turner’s Ultra plan says “real agents handle calls,” and both list an AI virtual agent add-on without a price.
Twenty MojoBox lockboxes at the listed $64 minimum and $3.50 per device each month add at least $1,280 upfront and $70 a month. ShowMojo’s outbound AI agent charges $1.25 per lead it calls or texts, with no setup fee or monthly minimum, so 100 engaged leads add $125 whether or not they book. It first tries 5 minutes after a lead drops off, follows up one and two days later, and stops when the prospect books, declines or asks not to be contacted.
The detailed showing-software comparison separates the channel and hardware costs.
How do leasing-specific AI alternatives compare?
They all price per unit or by package, and each bundles a different mix of channels and showing tools.
| Product | Pricing basis | Conversation, follow-up and booking scope |
|---|---|---|
| Showdigs Plus | $2.00 per unit a month, $200 minimum; Core $1.20, $120 minimum; all USD | Plus answers every prospect call and text around the clock; Core has 24/7 auto-responses and two-way SMS |
| LetHub | $199 a month platform minimum; about $1 per unit at 200 units; voice from $49 a month | Web chat, SMS, email and phone |
| Leasey.AI | Starter from $299; “From listing to signed lease” from $499 | Starter has syndication, showing scheduling and AI lead responses; the $499 package adds screening, e-signing, an inbound AI phone agent and Facebook Marketplace automation |
Showdigs Plus comes to $400 a month at 200 units and $1,000 at 500. Twenty optional agent-led tours at $49 each add $980, so a 200-unit month with those tours starts at $1,380. Compare the software and the labor separately.
LetHub’s 200-unit example plus its starting voice add-on is $249 a month. Twelve months plus the $199 starting onboarding fee come to $3,187, before extra listings beyond its 3 on-market listings per 100 units. It is a 12-month contract billed monthly in USD with no free trial and nonrefundable payments, but you get 30 days to opt out.
Leasey says its stack costs $2.95 per unit against about $6 for competitors, without naming the plan. It lists “Volume discounts available for bigger portfolios.” It offers a 30-day money-back guarantee and 5 to 7 days of setup and training, so ask for currency, units included and usage limits in writing.
When is each model a better fit?
A human service fits a team that wants a person on every call and can keep the service updated on units and showing times. A general AI receptionist can be cheap at modest phone volume, as long as its tools actually book. An AI leasing agent fits when inquiries arrive by text, email and chat as well as phone, and you want each one answered, followed up and booked without staff in the loop.
Test every product against the same inquiry and judge the work it completes, not its category name. If after-hours inquiries are your main gap, see how to answer rental inquiries after hours.
How should you test and measure value?
Run the same delayed-reply test on every option, then divide total cost by attended showings. That tells you more than any feature list.
Ask about pets, stop replying, come back the next day with a different move-in date, then book. Record whether the product remembers the unit, offers current availability, follows up without duplicates and stops once you book. Run human services through the same steps.
Add monthly cost and setup spread over the term, then divide by qualified attended showings. If a hypothetical $600 service produces 30 attended showings, each costs $20; at 15 it is $40. Track booked and attended showings separately, along with staff interventions and opt-outs, and do not credit every booking as a new lease.
What does Nolan cost for the same portfolio?
Nolan Pro is $2.99 per door a month billed annually for the first 200 doors, less as you grow, with a 100-door minimum. Starter is $29 per door a month for up to 10 doors, and every plan includes every channel with no per-user fee and no setup fee (Nolan pricing).
| Plan or portfolio | Billed annually, per month | Billed monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Pro rates per door | $2.99 for doors 1 to 200, $1.99 for 201 to 1,000, $1.49 from 1,001 | $3.59, $2.39 and $1.79 for the same bands |
| Pro, 100 doors (minimum) | $299 | $359 |
| Pro, 200 doors | $598 | $718 |
| Pro, 500 doors | $1,195 | $1,435 |
| Pro, 1,000 doors | $2,190 | $2,630 |
All amounts are USD, before taxes and usage extras. Multiply the annual monthly figure by twelve for the yearly cost.
Starter includes 30 voice minutes per door and Pro 5 minutes per door, pooled. Extra voice is $0.20 a minute, so at 100 doors, using 800 minutes in a month (300 past the 500-minute pool) adds $60, for $359 a month on annual billing. Texts, emails and chat are not metered, the main number is included and each extra number is $3 a month.
US texting needs carrier registration, passed through at cost: $19.50 once and $1.50 a month.
What does Nolan include, and what should you test?
Nolan runs the leasing conversation on phone, text, website chat and listing email, from the first question to a booked showing. Test that with a real conversation, including a delayed reply and a changed preference.
On the phone, Nolan answers on your own Nolan number or one you forward, creates a lead card after every call, turns voicemail into a lead, texts back after a missed call and transfers live calls to your team. Texting runs on your US number once carriers approve it. Listing emails from Zillow, Apartments.com, Zumper and Craigslist go to a Nolan address, and Nolan replies in the same thread from your own domain.
Nolan works from your listings and your Google Calendar. It finds the right unit among your listings, sends renters the units that fit, asks questions set by where the unit is, sends your screening link at the right step, and books showings with reminders by text and email. It also follows up with renters who did not book and confirms or frees the time before each showing.
Your team gets one inbox, a page per renter, a seven-stage pipeline, hand-off rules you set and reports per property for owners. Nolan connects to LeadSimple and HubSpot, and offers signed webhooks, a REST API and CSV import and export.
Ask for one demonstration from inquiry to booking: a listing question, a follow-up after silence, a changed preference, a new available time and a human takeover. Check that a booking or an opt-out stops further follow-ups. The answering services comparison covers more human options side by side.