Virtual receptionist pricing, fair dinkum and in full

The short version lives on the homepage. This is the long one — every plan, every inclusion, every rate, in one table. A few ground rules before you read it: every price is AUD with GST included, so what you see is what leaves your account. There's no setup fee on any plan. There's no lock-in contract on any plan. And the job is the same on every plan: the phone gets answered by a warm Aussie voice that never pretends to be a person, and messages get to you — by email on Essentials, by text and email from Starter. From Starter up, bookable jobs land in your calendar mid-call.

The names mean what they say. Essentials is for a phone that rings now and then, where an emailed message will do. Starter is for a phone that catches you out with jobs you want booked. Steady is for a phone that rings most days. Busy is for a phone that rings daily and a business that quotes a lot. Flat Out is for exactly what it sounds like.

The smallest plan isn't a demo. Essentials gets the same receptionist, the same voice, the same 24/7 coverage as Flat Out — the bigger plans buy more call time and more done-for-you extras, not a better phone manner. Here's what every single plan includes:

• Around-the-clock answering, no after-hours surcharge, ever. Nights, weekends, public holidays — same price as a Tuesday morning. That matters more than it sounds: in one real month on our engine (30 Jul to 22 Aug 2026), 1 call in 5 came in outside business hours and 1 in 10 landed on a weekend. There's more on why that's the quiet killer of small-business phones on our after-hours answering page.
• Messages straight to you. Anything that isn't a booking becomes a tidy email to you (and from Starter up, a text too), not a voicemail you'll get to on Friday.
• Spam screened out. Telemarketers and wrong numbers get politely shown the door without chewing through your minutes.
• Honest AI. Ask Giday whether it is a person and it says straight away that it is not. No pretending — it's policy, and callers respect it.
• A real Australian phone number. We set you up with your own AU number. Divert your existing number to it with one dial code (reversible any time), or advertise the new number directly — your call.

And from Starter ($49) up:

• Real bookings, not just messages. Giday sees availability, offers real times, locks the job in and texts the customer a confirmation — mid-call. The big answering services sell diary booking as a separate metered product at around $2.99 a minute on the plans we checked (published pricing, 24 August 2026). We think booking IS the job — see the full comparison against human services.
• Real emergencies put through. Genuine urgent calls can be put straight through to the number you choose, such as your on-call number, never the one you divert to Giday.

Your bill is your plan's price, plus 50c a minute past its included minutes and 15c a text past its included texts. Same rule on every plan. Essentials includes none, so every minute is 50c and every text 15c. A month is never billed as a different plan.

The arithmetic, on Starter ($49, 60 minutes included):

That's why it pays to pick the right plan: each plan's included minutes cost less than buying them at 50c on the plan below. Steady's 200 minutes are $99, against $119 for Starter plus 140 extra minutes. Busy's 350 are $149, against $174 on Steady. Flat Out's 700 are $299, against $324 on Busy. Every rate is published here, so you can check our arithmetic.

Plain rules, no fine-print gymnastics:

• Call time means talk time on answered calls — the minutes Giday actually spends looking after your callers.
• Texts covers everything Giday sends on your behalf: booking confirmations and reminders to customers, and messages relayed to you. Essentials includes none (texts to you are 15c each if you want them), Starter 60 a month, Steady 150, Busy 250, Flat Out 500.
• Extra texts are 15c each past your allowance, on every plan.
• Extra minutes are 50c each past your included minutes, on every plan — nights and weekends included, no surcharge.

In the founder's words, because there's no better way to say it: "Give it a go — 60 minutes of call time on us, for a week." That's roughly 50 real calls' worth at the mix we see — a proper trial, not a demo reel. Fully live, real callers, real bookings landing in your real calendar on Starter and up. Here's exactly how it runs:

Why card up front? Honesty runs both directions. We put real minutes and a real setup into every trial, so we ask for the small commitment of a card — and in return you get a trial that only starts when there's actually something to trial. We haven't seen another service that starts your clock at the first answered call — check the fine print on any trial you're offered.

The stuff that's usually buried in a terms page, put where you can see it:

• Billing is by card, through Stripe. Stripe handles the card; we never see your card number.
• Cancel any time, yourself. There's a self-serve portal for your card, your plan and cancelling — no phone call to a retention team, no "let me get my manager".
• Month to month means month to month. No 12-month terms, no exit fees, no notice periods beyond the month you're in.
• GST is included in every price on this page. $49 means $49.
• No setup fee. Some services charge up to $99 to switch you on (published pricing we checked, 24 August 2026). We charge nothing — setup is our problem.
• Your number stays yours. Diverting to Giday is one dial code and just as easy to undo. The AU number we set up for you is yours to use while you're subscribed, and if you ever leave we'll help you try to port it, but we cannot promise a number we supplied can be ported.
• One fair warning, because honesty is the house style: if you advertise the Giday number itself rather than diverting your existing one, leaving later means updating your ads. Most businesses will want to divert their existing number for exactly that reason — we'd rather tell you before you choose than after.

Count last week's incoming calls — missed ones included, they're the point — and multiply by four. That's your month, near enough. Then read down:

Two honest nudges. If your quotes are the money-maker — you price jobs over the phone all day — Busy is where Giday starts quoting from your own price list and chasing quotes by text, and that tends to pay for the step up. And if you're not sure you need a receptionist at all, or whether what you actually need is an extra pair of hands on admin, read our plain-English virtual receptionist vs virtual assistant guide first — they're different jobs, and we'd rather you buy the right one.

Pricing pages are cheap to write. So here's what a real month of Giday's engine looks like — the same engine, answering live for a Brisbane locksmith since late July 2026. These numbers are from the measured window of 30 July to 22 August 2026, and we'll re-cut them as the months roll on:

Same window: jobs booked into the calendar mid-call, priced quotes given over the phone from the approved price list, and messages relayed to the owner by text. Every booking in that measured window synced to the job system and was confirmed to the customer by SMS. If you want the full picture of what a virtual receptionist actually does all day, or how these numbers stack up against paying a human service per call, the honest comparison is the next read. And if you are pricing the market rather than us, what an answering service actually costs in Australia sets out the going rates.