A typical independent repair shop takes more than 800 phone calls a month and lets roughly one in nine go unanswered. Most of those calls come in while the service advisor is writing up a car at the counter or walking a customer through an estimate. An AI receptionist is meant to catch that overflow and the after-hours calls, take the vehicle details and put the job on your calendar before the caller dials the shop down the road.
For a general shortlist across every trade, see our best AI receptionists for small business. This page narrows it to auto repair: shops with 2 to 10 bays and one location, running Tekmetric, AutoLeap, Shopmonkey or a paper calendar.
How we put this list together: researched from vendor pages, not hands-on tested. We read each vendor’s pricing page, product pages and integration pages on November 3, 2026, and priced the same two call volumes on each tool. We have not run any of these on a live shop line, so there are no scores on this page. Our testing method explains how hands-on reviews work when we publish them.
The five options and who each one suits
If you run AutoLeap, AutoLeap AIR is the only option here that books straight into your shop calendar for a flat monthly fee. If you run Tekmetric, AgentZap is the one that writes into Tekmetric and claims it can answer “is my car ready?” from the repair order. Everyone else is choosing between general AI receptionists that book into Google Calendar or similar.
| Tool | Best for | Price from | Bills by | Books into shop software | Main limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AutoLeap AIR | Shops already on AutoLeap | $99/mo for 200 calls, or $1 per call | Calls | AutoLeap calendar | Calendar booking is for AutoLeap users only |
| AgentZap | Tekmetric shops with many status calls | $109/mo for 150 minutes | Minutes | Tekmetric (REST API) | $499 setup fee on Starter |
| Upfirst | Low call volume, any software | $24.95/mo for 30 calls | Calls | No (Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly and others) | No auto repair or shop software features |
| Rosie | Long calls, busy front counter | $49/mo for 250 minutes | Minutes | No | Booking and transfers need Scale at $149/mo |
| My AI Front Desk | Shops that want several calls answered at once | $99/mo for 200 minutes | Minutes | No (Zapier) | 200 included minutes run out fast |
Prices checked November 3, 2026, monthly billing, US dollars.
What callers to a repair shop actually need
An auto shop phone line is not the same as a plumber’s or a salon’s, and the differences decide which tool works. Four things stand out in the industry data.
- Volume is high and answer rates slip. OktoRocket’s 2025 State of the Industry Report, based on data from over 1,000 shops, says the typical shop “fields over 800 inbound calls monthly but answers only about 89%.” By our arithmetic that is about 88 unanswered calls a month, or 3 to 4 every working day.
- Each missed booking is worth a lot. The Tekmetric Shop Index, with data from more than 10,000 North American shops through June 2026, puts the national average repair order at $704.25 and the median shop at $649.88, on 97 cars a month for the median shop. One lost brake job a week covers any plan on this page.
- Many calls are status checks, not new work. Numa, which sells AI phone agents to dealerships, says 75% of afternoon calls to a service department are status requests. That figure is from dealers and from a vendor, but anyone who has worked a shop counter will recognise the 3 p.m. “is my car ready?” rush. A tool that cannot read your repair orders can only take a message for those.
- A shop booking needs vehicle data. A plumber needs an address; you need year, make, model, mileage and the symptom, and ideally the VIN and any warning lights. An AI that only captures a name and a phone number leaves the advisor calling everyone back.
Shops that answer more calls do write more work: OktoRocket says shops answering above 85% “write 50 to 80 more repair orders a month than lower performing shops of similar size.” Our missed call cost calculator lets you plug in your own call count and repair order value.
AutoLeap AIR: the pick for AutoLeap shops
Best for: shops that already run AutoLeap and want after-hours and overflow calls turned into calendar appointments without a second system.
AutoLeap launched AIR in April 2026 as an AI receptionist built for auto shops. The AIR page says it “places appointment requests directly onto your AutoLeap calendar while the call is happening”, captures customer and vehicle details, and sends a transcript and summary. It answers “after hours, weekends, and holidays”, and if a caller needs a person, “AIR forwards the call to your team during business hours.”
Price: pay as you go at $1 per call with “no contracts, no minimum spend”, Starter at $99/mo for 200 calls, or Growth at $199/mo for 500 calls, with overage at $0.75 per call on both plans. The page adds that a “$100 Set Up Fee May Apply” and is running a 30-days-free offer. AIR is priced separately from the AutoLeap shop software, which starts at $199/mo on the Essentials plan.
Limit: AutoLeap says AIR “is compatible with any shop software”, but calendar booking is listed as an AutoLeap Calendar Integration “for AutoLeap users”. On Tekmetric or Shopmonkey you would get answered calls and summaries, not bookings in your system. The AIR page also says nothing about reading repair order status.
AgentZap: the pick for Tekmetric shops
Best for: Tekmetric shops where status calls tie up the advisor, and where new callers should land in Tekmetric with their vehicle already filled in.
Tekmetric itself does not sell an AI receptionist. Its Phones feature is a RingCentral integration that shows caller and repair order details to your staff while they answer. AgentZap fills the gap from the outside: its Tekmetric page says it “books repair appointments into your Tekmetric calendar through the REST API”, adds first-time callers “with full contact info, vehicle details, and requested service”, and handles “is my car ready?” calls “by checking repair order status in Tekmetric.” No other tool on this list makes that status claim.
Price: Starter $109/mo with 150 minutes ($0.85 per extra minute), Professional $295/mo with 450 minutes ($0.75), Business $899/mo with 1,500 minutes ($0.70). There is a $499 one-time setup fee on Starter and Business, waived on a 6-month Professional term. No free trial; AgentZap offers a 30-day money-back guarantee instead.
Limit: per-minute billing plus the setup fee makes it the most expensive option here at higher volume. Status lookups are only as good as your repair order statuses, so advisors have to keep them current in Tekmetric.
Upfirst: the cheapest way to cover overflow
Best for: one- and two-bay shops that miss a few calls a day and want them answered, logged and booked into Google Calendar or Outlook.
Price: Starter $24.95/mo for 30 calls ($1.50 per extra call), Premium $59.95 for 90 calls ($1), Pro $159.95 for 300 calls ($0.75), Scale $299 for 600 calls ($0.70). Spam calls, calls under 15 seconds and calls where nobody speaks are not billed, which matters on a shop line that gets parts-supplier robocalls. 14-day trial with no credit card.
Limit: Upfirst has no auto repair page and no shop software integration; its industry list includes towing but not repair. Bookings go into a general calendar, and someone still has to move them into your shop software.
Rosie: the pick when calls run long
Best for: shops whose calls are long, such as customers describing a noise or comparing quotes, because Rosie counts minutes rather than calls and its middle plan includes a lot of them.
Price: Professional $49/mo for 250 minutes, Scale $149/mo for 1,000 minutes, Growth $299/mo for 2,000 minutes. Website texting is a $50/mo add-on. 7-day free trial.
Limit: calendar booking and live transfers start on Scale, so the real starting price for a shop is $149, not $49. Rosie connects to other software through Zapier, not directly to any shop system, and its pricing page does not publish an overage rate. We compare its billing with Upfirst and Goodcall in our Rosie vs Upfirst vs Goodcall breakdown.
My AI Front Desk: the pick for rush-hour overlap
Best for: shops where several calls arrive at once, such as Monday mornings, since the vendor advertises “unlimited parallel calls”, and owners who want an auto repair-specific setup page to start from.
Price: $99/mo (or $79/mo billed annually) with 200 minutes, then 25 credits per minute at $0.01 a credit, which works out to $0.25 per extra minute. 7-day free trial, no credit card.
Limit: 200 minutes is small for a shop line; at our 2.5-minute assumption that is about 80 calls. The auto page quotes results from named shops without sources, so treat those as marketing. Shop software connections go through Zapier.
What 150 and 300 AI-answered calls cost each month
Most shops will not hand every call to an AI. We priced two cases: 150 calls a month (after hours plus some overflow) and 300 calls a month (after hours plus most overflow). For the tools that bill by the minute we assumed 2.5 minutes per call; your call recordings will tell you your real average.
| Tool | 150 calls/mo | 300 calls/mo | How we got there |
|---|---|---|---|
| AutoLeap AIR | $99 | $174 | Starter $99 + 100 extra calls at $0.75 |
| Upfirst | $119.95 | $159.95 | Premium + 60 extra calls at $1; then Pro |
| Rosie (Scale) | $149 | $149 | 375 and 750 minutes both fit in 1,000 |
| My AI Front Desk | $142.75 | $236.50 | $99 + extra minutes at $0.25 |
| AgentZap | $295 | $520 | Professional; 300 extra minutes at $0.75 in the second case |
Monthly billing, before any setup fee (AutoLeap up to $100, AgentZap $499 unless you take a 6-month Professional term). At the median $649.88 repair order, even the top cost in this table is less than one extra booked job a month.
Setting one up without annoying your regulars
Regular customers who are used to hearing the advisor’s voice are the ones most likely to hang up on a machine. Three habits help.
- Start with after-hours only. Forward the line to the AI when you close and on weekends for the first two weeks, then read the transcripts before you send daytime overflow to it.
- Give it a vehicle intake script. Year, make, model, mileage, the symptom in the customer’s words, warning lights, whether the car is drivable, and when they can drop it off. Our checklist below is a starting point.
- Say it is an AI in the greeting. Our guide on whether an AI receptionist should say it’s AI covers the state rules and the hang-up data.
If you are not sure a machine should answer your shop phone at all, compare the costs with a human service in our guide to AI receptionist vs answering service. More options are in our AI receptionist guides.
Sources
Checked November 3, 2026: AutoLeap AIR, AutoLeap pricing, AgentZap Tekmetric integration, AgentZap pricing, Tekmetric Phones, Upfirst pricing, Rosie pricing, My AI Front Desk pricing, My AI Front Desk for auto repair, OktoRocket 2025 State of the Industry Report release, Tekmetric Shop Index and Numa on dealership status calls.
