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What are missed calls costing you?

Four numbers, one answer. This calculator turns the calls you do not answer into a monthly and annual figure, so you can decide whether an answering service is worth paying for or whether you are fine as you are. Nothing is sent anywhere, the maths runs in your browser.

Calls you get per week Percent you miss (rings out, after hours, on a job) Average value of one new customer Of missed callers, percent who would have booked

Revenue walking out the door $62,400 per year, or $5,200 a month

You miss about 10 calls a week. Roughly 3 of them would have booked.

The math is deliberately simple: missed calls x how many would have bought x what a customer is worth. Change any number to match your business. Nothing is sent anywhere, the calculation runs in your browser.

How to fill it in honestly

Count the calls you get in a normal week. Check your phone log rather than guessing. Most owners underestimate by a third.
Work out how many ring out. Count after hours, calls while you are on a job, and calls during lunch. If you do not know, 20 to 30 percent is the usual range for a one-person trade business.
Put a value on one new customer. Use the first job, not lifetime value, unless you genuinely keep customers for years. Being conservative here keeps the answer honest.
Estimate how many missed callers would have booked. Not every missed call is lost money. Some are sales calls and wrong numbers. Somewhere between 20 and 40 percent is realistic for inbound service enquiries.

Why the fourth number matters most

Plenty of calculators multiply missed calls by your average sale and stop there, which produces a scary number and a useless one. Not every missed call is a customer. Some are suppliers, some are sales calls, some are people price-shopping who were never going to book. The share who would actually have booked is the number that turns a headline into a decision, and it is the one worth arguing about with yourself.

What to do with the answer

If the monthly figure is small, do nothing. Call forwarding and voicemail-to-text are free and probably enough. If it is a few hundred dollars, an AI receptionist in the $49 to $99 range covers it several times over. If it runs into thousands, the question stops being whether to pay for answering and becomes which kind: AI answers instantly and never sleeps, humans handle complicated and emotional calls better. We compare both in AI receptionist against human answering service.

Entry prices to compare against your number

Service	Entry price	Best for
Rosie	$49/mo	Solo operators and small teams that mainly need calls answered and messages taken, with the option to grow into booking.
Goodcall	$79/mo	Businesses with long calls and a predictable number of distinct callers, where per-minute billing would punish them.
My AI Front Desk	$99/mo	Businesses that want phone, SMS, chat and email handled by one tool and are comfortable with a credit pool instead of plain minutes.
Answrr	$99/mo	Anyone who wants to try AI answering without handing over a card, and agencies that need white label.

Prices read from each vendor's own pricing page, verified July 2026.

See every vendor and what they charge →

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Frequently asked questions

How many calls does a small business actually miss?

It depends on how you work. A solo trade business that spends the day on tools with the phone in a van typically misses somewhere between a fifth and a third of incoming calls. An office with someone at a desk misses far fewer during business hours, but still loses evenings and weekends unless someone is on call.

Does a missed call really mean a lost customer?

Often, yes, because people calling about an urgent problem simply call the next business on the list. The caller with a burst pipe or a broken tooth is not waiting for a call back. That is why this calculator asks what share of missed callers would have booked rather than assuming all of them.

What number should I use for the value of a customer?

Use what a first job is worth to you, before profit. If you genuinely keep customers for years, you can use lifetime value, but the result then reflects a decade of revenue rather than this month, so it becomes harder to compare against a monthly plan.

How much do I need to be losing before an answering service is worth it?

Working AI plans in this market start around $49 a month. If the calculator says you are losing less than that, you do not need one yet. Once the monthly figure passes roughly three times the plan price, the decision usually makes itself.

This calculator gives an estimate based on the numbers you enter. It is a planning tool, not a forecast.