The landscape
AI phone answering for hospitality, compared
37 vendors serving venues in the US and Europe. We list the price where the vendor publishes one and say so plainly where they do not, including the several places where a competitor is cheaper than us, better proven than us, or simply better suited to what you are trying to do.
Prices were read off each vendor's own site in July 2026. Rows marked ‡ come from a third-party roundup and we have not confirmed them at source; treat those as a starting point, not a quote. Everyone's pricing moves; check before you decide.
Built for restaurants and hotels
These sell a hospitality product rather than a platform. If your problem is the venue phone line, your shortlist is almost certainly in here.
| Vendor | Built for | Published price | Where they win |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hilda AI | Restaurants, hotels, bars, takeaway, multi-site groups | $199 / month per location | Bookings, orders and guest questions into Toast or Clover. Published price, live in days. |
| Slang AIFull comparison → | Restaurants | From $399 / month per location | The deepest reservation-platform coverage anywhere: OpenTable, SevenRooms, Yelp, Tripleseat, Fishbowl. |
| Loman AIFull comparison → | Restaurants | Not published | The best published customer proof in the category; dozens of named operators on video. POS/payments reach keeps growing: joined Toast's official Partner Ecosystem, then added SpotOn (2026-01-28) and Shift4 Dine (2026-06-03) marketplace integrations, press-corroborated, not confirmed on loman.ai directly this run (network egress blocked). |
| Kea AIFull comparison → | QSR franchises and drive-thru | From $450 / month | Flat rate with no usage component, self-serve signup and public docs. |
| Certus AI | Restaurants, single site to multi-location | Not published (demo required) | Names four POS integrations (Toast, Square, Clover and SkyTab) and leans hard on accent coverage. |
| HostieFull comparison → | Independent restaurants and hospitality groups | Reported at $199–$399 / month‡ | Unifies calls with texts, email, Instagram and Google Maps messages rather than the phone alone. Raised a $12M Series A (2026-07-08, led by Obvious Ventures), bringing total funding to $16M; added a former OpenTable exec as Head of Sales, press-corroborated, not confirmed on hostie.ai directly this run (network egress blocked). |
| Canary TechnologiesFull comparison → | Hotels | Not published (quote required)‡ | Established hotel guest-management platform; AI Voice add-on with a named global rollout alongside Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Deep PMS/CRS integration, but hotel-only and no published price. Acquired mobile-key platform OpenKey (2026-02-03, ~$85M) to extend its own Mobile Key product, a platform-breadth signal rather than a voice-product change. |
| Myma AI | Hotels | Not published (quote required)‡ | Two-way PMS integration named specifically (Oracle Opera Cloud, Mews, Cloudbeds, RMS Cloud). Hotel-only, no restaurant/bar/takeaway coverage. |
| SendSquared | Hotels and vacation rentals | Reported $500–$1,500 / month for properties under 50 keys, scaling to custom enterprise pricing above 200‡ | One of the few in this category with published pricing tiers. PMS integration spans both hotel systems (Cloudbeds, RoomKeyPMS, StayNTouch, Visual One) and vacation-rental systems (Barefoot, Streamline, Escapia, Guesty, Hostaway). Hotel/vacation-rental only, no restaurant coverage. |
| RateGain UNO VIVA | Hotels | Not published (quote required)‡ | CRS-integrated AI voice agent (launched 2025, 18 languages), syncing live rates/availability via CRS/PMS to avoid overbooking or pricing errors. Deployable standalone or with RateGain's CRS. 2026 partnership push into Greece/Cyprus. Hotel-only, no restaurant/bar/takeaway coverage. |
| Aiello | Hotels | Not published (quote required)‡ | In-room voice concierge (room controls, service requests) plus front-desk AI, deployed across 60+ hotel brands and 8,000+ rooms concentrated in Asia; named Opera PMS integration. Strongest fit if in-room smart-speaker integration matters, not just phone answering. Hotel-only, no restaurant/bar/takeaway coverage. |
| KITT (The Hotels Network) | Hotels | Not published (free trial, then quote required)‡ | AI voice/text guest-service agent from The Hotels Network (a direct-booking platform serving 20,000+ hotels). One of the first AI voice agents fully integrated with Oracle OPERA Cloud PMS, providing real-time offers, availability and pricing straight from the PMS; 40+ languages. Hotel-only, no restaurant/bar/takeaway coverage. |
| roomMaster Concierge | Independent hotels and small chains on roomMaster PMS | Not published | A PMS vendor's in-house AI layer rather than a standalone product integrating into someone else's PMS; roomMaster (5,500+ properties, 100 countries) bundles this AI voice agent (built on Sadie Technology) directly into its own PMS for North American independent hotels. Vendor claims 35% booking growth, 60% higher guest satisfaction, 35% front-desk cost reduction and 3–5 day go-live; vendor-stated, not independently verified. Hotel-only, no restaurant/bar/takeaway coverage. |
| Yelp HostFull comparison → | Restaurants already on Yelp | $149 / month for 500 calls, or $99 / month for Yelp Guest Manager customers‡ | Yelp's own AI call-answering product. Added Toast/Square/Clover pickup ordering and OpenTable reservation automation 2026-07-28; restaurant-only, and reservation automation depends on OpenTable specifically. |
| Revmo AI | Restaurants and cafés | Pilot (pay-as-you-go): $79/agent/month + $0.59 per resolved conversation. Scale and Enterprise tiers lower both rates with committed usage/term; custom quote. | Publishes real usage-based pricing, rare in this category. Direct API integrations named: Toast, Olo, Square, OpenTable, SevenRooms. Runs its own head-to-head content against Yelp Host. |
| Maple | Restaurant phone ordering and reservations | Reported from $249 / month‡ | Built around takeout ordering, with Toast and SkyTab named, plus a 2026-04-24 Quantic POS partnership. Also connects directly to OpenTable for phone-in reservations (book/modify/cancel), so no longer ordering-only. |
| RingFoods | Restaurants | Starter $100/month (200 min, 1 number), Growth $300/month (800 min, 2 numbers), Scale $700/month (2,500 min, 5 numbers), 30-day free trial‡ | One of the few in this category with published, tiered per-minute pricing. Named Square and Toast POS integration, multilingual (Mandarin, Spanish, French, Arabic). |
| Tablevoice | Restaurant reservations and guest inquiries | Not published‡ | Reservations only, not phone orders. OpenTable-partnered (2026-03-11); notable for suggesting another location in a restaurant group when the first is full. |
| Popmenu | Restaurants already on Popmenu's marketing/ordering platform | $349 / month‡ | AI Answering bolted onto Popmenu's existing restaurant website/ordering product; 6.1M+ calls answered claimed, a platform play rather than a point solution. |
| Bite Buddy | Restaurants taking 100+ calls a month | Reported around $300 / month‡ | Phone ordering with POS integration, aimed at higher-volume sites. |
| ConverseNow | Large QSR chains and drive-thru | Not published‡ | Drive-thru and phone ordering at chain scale. Not a product for one venue. |
| VOICEplug | Drive-thru and reservations at chain scale | Not published‡ | Announced an OpenTable integration covering 20 countries. Also named exclusive voice-AI partner by InTouch POS for pizza restaurant operators nationwide (its PizzaVOICE product), claiming 60% lower per-order labour cost; chain/franchise scale, not a single-venue product. |
European vendors
Local products and European enterprise platforms. Language quality and data residency are the reasons to look here rather than at the US list.
| Vendor | Built for | Published price | Where they win |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resty | Restaurants in Belgium, France and Luxembourg | From €94.90 / month (450 min), or €1 / min | The closest thing to a local hospitality product in the Benelux, in FR, NL, EN and IT. |
| Famulor | General business, no hospitality product | From €0.11 / minute | German company, German hosting, which matters if data residency is a procurement question. |
| ParloaFull comparison → | Enterprise contact centres | Not published | Excellent German, French and Italian. Travel & Hospitality is one vertical among many, not a venue product. |
| Cognigy | Tier-one enterprise contact centres | Not published | Lufthansa, DHL, Toyota. Enterprise automation, with no hospitality product. Acquired by NICE for ~$955M (announced 2025-07-28, closed 2025-09-08) and now sold as part of NICE's CXone platform; even more enterprise-scale and further from a single-venue buyer than before. |
Platforms and generalists
None of these ship a hospitality product. Depending which one, you are buying a build surface, a general small-business answering service, or an enterprise platform sized for a far bigger buyer than a single venue.
| Vendor | Built for | Published price | Where they win |
|---|---|---|---|
| PolyAIFull comparison → | Enterprise, with hotels and restaurants as named industries | Not published (per minute, on request) | The most capable platform here, and the one that most needs a contact centre to justify it. Named restaurant-chain proof point: Fogo de Chão deployed its "Selma" voice agent across all 88 U.S. locations (announced 2026-02-03), press-corroborated, not confirmed on poly.ai directly this run (network egress blocked). |
| DecagonFull comparison → | Large consumer brands automating an existing support org | Not published (sales-led quote only) | Well-funded and genuinely capable. Runs support for Chime, Duolingo, Square and Riot Games; built for that scale, not a single venue. Valuation reportedly reached ~$4.5B on a further raise (Jan 2026), with 100+ new enterprise customers added in its last fiscal year including Avis Budget Group, Block and Deutsche Telekom, press-corroborated, not confirmed on decagon.ai directly this run (network egress blocked). |
| Bland AIFull comparison → | Developers building their own voice agents | From $0.14 / min; $299–$499 / month platform fee on paid tiers | A platform, not a product. Unusually transparent about what the per-minute rate includes. Raised a $50M Series C (2026-06-16), surpassing $100M total funding, and is positioning further toward long (30–45 min), high-stakes calls for regulated enterprise industries; reinforcing this as a developer platform for large technical teams, not a self-serve fit for a single venue. Press-corroborated, not confirmed on bland.ai directly this run (network egress blocked). |
| GoodcallFull comparison → | Local service businesses, salons, agencies, now also pushing directly into hospitality via a dedicated "Restaurant Connect" product line | $79–$249 / month per agent, then $0.50 per unique caller | The cheapest way in, and the only one billing by caller rather than by minute. Beyond the Palona-powered "Goodcall for Restaurants" already noted on the comparison page, Goodcall's own site now lists a broader "Restaurant Connect" product with named reservation-platform integrations (OpenTable, Resy, SevenRooms, Tock, Eat App, Gastrovia, Yelp Guest Manager) plus a dedicated hotels/hospitality answering-service page. Press-corroborated only this run (goodcall.com egress-blocked); whether this supersedes or sits alongside the Palona partnership, and whether it changes the comparison table's current integration verdicts, needs a closer direct-site read before the /compare/vs-goodcall rows are touched. |
| SoundHound AI | Brands with their own technical teams | Not published‡ | Speech and conversational AI licensed into other people's products. Launched OASYS, an agentic platform spanning drive-thru, kiosk, phone, web and chat, plus a 2026-07 Deliverect voice-ordering partnership; still an enterprise/chain integration play, not a self-serve product for one venue. |
| Dialzara | Solo owners and very small operators | Reported from $29 / month, then $0.48 / min‡ | Call screening and routine enquiries at the lowest price point in the category. |
| Zoom AI Receptionist | Any business layering AI call handling onto an existing phone system: retail, healthcare, legal and small business named specifically, not hospitality | Reported $29.99 / month for 100 minutes ($24.99 / month with annual billing)‡ | Standalone launch (2026-07-09) works with any existing telephony, no migration to Zoom Phone required; 10+ languages. General-business play; no hospitality product or POS/PMS integration named. |
If you are buying in the EU, read this first
From 2 August 2026, Article 50 of the EU AI Act requires that anyone interacting with an AI system is told so, clearly and no later than the first interaction. A voice agent answering your phone is squarely in scope, and the obligation reaches providers outside the EU whenever the system is placed on the EU market or its output is used there. Penalties under Article 99 run to €15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.
In practice that means the agent should say it is an AI at the top of the call, and you should be able to show that it did. Ask every vendor on this page, us included, the same three questions: can the disclosure be configured per number, is it spoken in the caller's language, and is it recorded in the call log so you can evidence it.
Our answer: Hilda announces itself as an AI at the start of the call. Hold every other vendor here to the same standard.
This is general information about a published regulation, not legal advice. Check with your own counsel, and note that the same disclosure is good practice regardless of where you operate. More on how we handle recordings and consent on our security page.
Head-to-head comparisons
Where we have done the work properly: the full table, what each one does better, and when you should pick them over us.
Hilda vs. Slang AI
Both answer hospitality phones. Slang is restaurants-only and priced per location; Hilda covers hotels too, at a lower entry price.
Read itHilda vs. Loman AI
Loman is built around restaurant phone ordering and takes payments on the call. Where Hilda is the better fit, and where it is not.
Read itHilda vs. Kea AI
Kea is restaurant voice at a flat $450 a month with self-serve signup, text ordering and a loyalty integration. A straight comparison against Hilda at $199.
Read itHilda vs. Goodcall
Goodcall is the cheapest way into AI phone answering, billed per unique caller. Where that model helps a venue, and where it stops.
Read itHilda vs. PolyAI
PolyAI is enterprise voice for hotel groups and chains, sold through a sales team. Hilda is the same job for a venue, at a published price.
Read itHilda vs. Parloa
Parloa is enterprise contact-centre software: no published price, a sales-led buying process, and an implementation project before it answers a single call. Hilda is $199 a month, on the page, live in days.
Read itHilda vs. Decagon
Decagon is a well-funded enterprise support platform that now names restaurant phone agents as a marketing use case, but is still sold entirely through a sales process. Hilda is $199 a month, published, and answering calls within days.
Read itHilda vs. Bland AI
Bland is a developer platform for building voice agents. Hilda is a finished one for venues. The difference is who does the building.
Read itHilda vs. Hostie AI
Both answer restaurant phones and connect to Toast. Hostie is restaurants-only, tiered so reservation and takeout handling cost more; Hilda covers hospitality more broadly at one flat price.
Read itHilda vs. Canary Technologies
Canary is an established hotel-tech platform with a new AI Voice module, deeply integrated into hotel PMS systems. Hilda covers hotels plus every other hospitality vertical, at one published price.
Read itHilda vs. Yelp Host
Yelp Host is Yelp's own AI phone answering product for restaurants; as of late July 2026 it takes pickup orders into Toast, Square and Clover and automates OpenTable reservations, closing much of the gap with Hilda. Hilda still covers more of hospitality and doesn't depend on OpenTable or a monthly call cap.
Read itOr against the thing you do today
Hilda AI vs. a live answering service
Human operators on a shared script versus an AI receptionist that holds your business knowledge. Where each one wins.
Read itHilda AI vs. an IVR phone menu
Press 1 for sales, versus a receptionist that just asks what you need. Why menu depth costs you callers.
Read itHilda AI vs. hiring a receptionist
What a full-time hire covers, what it costs, and where an AI receptionist genuinely cannot replace one.
Read it