Receptionist Cost Calculator: What Hiring a Receptionist Really Costs

It starts from the paycheck and adds what an employer pays on top:

• Pay: hourly pay times hours a week times 52 weeks, since paid time off is still paid.
• Taxes and benefits: pay times your percentage for payroll taxes, paid leave, insurance, retirement, and the rest.
• Cost a year and a month: pay plus taxes and benefits.
• Per staffed hour: the yearly cost divided by the hours someone is actually at the desk, after weeks off.
• Per call answered: the monthly cost divided by your calls a month.

With the starting numbers, a full-time receptionist at the US median of $18.27 an hour earns about $38,000 a year. Taxes and benefits at 35% add about $13,300, for roughly $51,300 a year or $4,275 a month. With three weeks off, that is about $26 for every hour the desk is staffed, and at 300 calls a month about $14 per call.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median at $18.27 an hour, or $38,010 a year, in May 2025. The lowest-paid 10% earned under $13.83 an hour and the highest-paid 10% over $24.01.

US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Receptionists, May 2025 pay data. Pay varies a lot by city and state; local job postings are the best guide to what you would have to offer.

There were about 947,500 receptionist jobs in the US in 2025, with healthcare accounting for 42% of them, and the BLS expects employment to fall 2% between 2025 and 2035.

The BLS measures this every quarter. In June 2026, benefits made up 30% of what private employers spent on compensation, but the share depends on the size of the business and on whether the job is full or part time:

US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (released September 9, 2026). The right-hand column is our conversion: benefits divided by wages.

Part of that is required by law whatever the size of the business. Employers pay 6.2% of wages for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare, plus federal and state unemployment insurance and, in most states, workers' compensation. Across private employers, legally required benefits came to 7.2% of compensation, or about 10 cents on each dollar of wages. The rest is paid leave, health insurance, retirement contributions, and bonuses or overtime premiums, which vary by employer. If you offer no benefits beyond what the law requires, set the calculator to about 10%.

A full-time receptionist covers about 40 of the 168 hours in a week, or 24%. In practice it is less:

• Evenings and weekends are uncovered unless you hire more people or shifts.
• Weeks off for vacation, holidays, and illness leave the desk empty, unless someone else steps in.
• Lunch and breaks take time out of every day.
• One call at a time. While the receptionist is on the phone or helping someone at the counter, the next caller waits or goes to voicemail.

That is why many small businesses pair a person with something that catches the rest: the calls after hours and the second line during a rush. If you want to know what those missed calls are worth, the missed call cost calculator works it out from your call log, and our missed call statistics show how often businesses miss them.

Receptionists: US median pay with taxes and benefits at 35% (full time) and 25% (part time). Answering service and AI receptionists: about 100 three-minute calls a month, regular published prices checked October 19, 2026, with the workings in our AI voice agent pricing comparison.

The table compares the phone part of the job only. A receptionist also greets visitors, handles paperwork, and makes judgment calls that neither an answering service nor an AI receptionist will. An answering service gives callers a person around the clock but does not know your business as well. An AI receptionist is the cheapest way to answer every call, books straight into your calendar, and hands hard calls to a person. For setup time and what else goes into the bill, see how much an AI receptionist costs.

Comparing the AI options in more depth? See the best AI voice agents for small business.

The bottom line: a full-time receptionist at the US median wage costs a small business roughly $51,000 a year once payroll taxes and benefits are added, or about $4,300 a month, and covers about a quarter of the hours in a week. That buys a person at the front desk, which nothing else replaces. If the job is mostly the phone, a human answering service or an AI receptionist covers every hour for a fraction of the cost.