Ask Benny's 300 minutes is about 236 calls, until the month your calls run long.
Ask Benny is a Canadian AI receptionist billing in Canadian dollars, bilingual in English and French on every tier, with a 7-day free trial and an official CFIB partnership. It is the most straightforward per-minute ladder in the Canadian field and a genuinely good product for a small business. What per-minute billing does is tie your invoice to how long people talk, which is the one variable you control least.
Who is Ask Benny actually for, and who are we for?
Ask Benny is for a Canadian small business that wants bilingual AI answering at a published CAD price, today. We are for a business whose calls carry decisions that need building for rather than configuring.
Ask Benny
A Canadian small business (plumbers, dentists and auto shops are the verticals they lead with) that wants a bilingual line answering quickly, billed in Canadian dollars, with no setup fee and a trial before committing. They publish a clear ladder, they take 25% off annual billing, and English and French are standard rather than an upgrade. For a business whose French-speaking callers are a real share of the phone, that last point alone can decide it.
AnswerAI
A business where the phone has to make judgments: what it must refuse to answer, who it must escalate to, which questions have to be asked before others. We build one agent against one business's own call log over about two weeks, wired into the software you already run, with your own dashboard over the top: every call logged, transcribed and searchable. That is a deeper piece of work than configuring a shared product in an afternoon, and if your calls are simple we will tell you so rather than sell you one.
Ask Benny figures read from askbenny.ca/pricing on August 9, 2026. Their full plan ladder is printed in the pricing section below.
| Ask Benny | AnswerAI | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | A configured agent on a shared product | Custom software written for one business, against your own call log. |
| Billing model | Included minutes, then per minute | One flat monthly fee. Unlimited calls, no meter, no overage line. |
| What the monthly covers | $99 CAD covers 300 minutes, then $0.45 a minute | Every call, every month; the fee is agreed in writing before anything is built. |
| When you go over | $0.45 / $0.40 / $0.35 per minute by tier | None. There is no meter to go over. |
| Currency | Canadian dollars | Canadian dollars |
| Languages | English and French on every tier; 30+ from Business PRO | More than seventy languages on the platform. English and French is a starting point, not a premium tier, and there is no per-language charge. |
| Trial | 7 days free on every tier | About 14 days, built with you, starting with a free pilot, no call limit. |
| Integrations | ~20 named, with unbuilt ones labelled “Soon” | Written into the software you already run, to a depth we state before you sign. |
Their integrations page is worth crediting: labelling the unbuilt connections “Soon” rather than listing them flat is more honest than most of this category manages, and it is the standard our own integrations pages are being held to.
How many calls does 300 minutes actually buy?
About 236, at our measured 76-second average: roughly $0.42 a call. The number that matters more is what happens when your average call length moves, because on a per-minute plan that variable moves your invoice and nothing on the pricing page tells you it will.
A model: Ask Benny's published rates, our measured call length
Ask Benny's own published plans (verified August 9, 2026) converted at an average call length of 76 seconds, or 1.27 minutes. That average is ours: 80 calls handled for Lammer Enterprises, one Calgary landscaping company, April 21 to August 6 2026. One business, one trade. Your own average is the one that matters, and substituting it is the whole point of showing the division.
- Starter: $99 CAD, 300 minutes≈ 236 calls300 ÷ 1.27 = 236.2 calls. $99 ÷ 236 = $0.42 per call.
- Business PRO: $149 CAD, 700 minutes≈ 551 calls700 ÷ 1.27 = 551.2 calls. $149 ÷ 551 = $0.27 per call.
- Enterprise: $399 CAD, 2,500 minutes≈ 1,968 calls2,500 ÷ 1.27 = 1,968.5 calls. $399 ÷ 1,968 = $0.20 per call.
- The same Starter plan if your calls average 3 minutes≈ 100 calls300 ÷ 3 = 100 calls, then $0.45 a minute. Call 101 at three minutes costs $1.35, more than three times the effective rate of call 100.
What moving from a 76-second average to a 3-minute average costs you on the same Starter plan≈ 136 fewer calls
This is the specific thing per-minute billing does, and it is not a criticism of Ask Benny's rates; their overage is competitive and it gets cheaper as you go up. The point is that the variable driving your bill is call duration, which is set by how chatty your callers are and how thorough your agent is. A more helpful agent costs you more. That incentive runs the wrong way, and it is the reason we do not meter minutes.
Every rate above is Ask Benny’s own published figure, read from their pricing page on August 9, 2026. Prices in this category move; check before you decide anything on them.
Where is Ask Benny genuinely better than us?
French, as a standard self-serve capability on every tier. Ours is available on request as part of a build, which is a slower and less certain answer for a business that needs bilingual service on day one.
For a Canadian business with genuine French-speaking demand, and in much of this country that is not optional, Ask Benny ships it as a checkbox on the cheapest plan, with 30-plus languages from Business PRO upward. We handle English as standard and French as a build consideration. If bilingual service is the requirement, they meet it as sold and we would be adding scope to match.
They are also faster and cheaper to start. A 7-day free trial, no setup fee, 25% off annual billing and a published CAD ladder means a business can be answering calls this week for a price it approved without a meeting. Our pilot is free but it is about fourteen days of building, and it involves talking to us.
Their integrations disclosure deserves credit too. They publish roughly twenty named integrations and mark the ones that are not built yet as "Soon" rather than listing them alongside the live ones. That is a higher standard than this category generally holds itself to, and it is explicitly the bar we are holding our own integration pages to.
Where are we better than Ask Benny?
We do not bill by the minute, so a longer call is not a more expensive one, and we build the agent against your own call log rather than configuring a shared product.
The billing difference is a behavioural one, not just an accounting one. When minutes cost money, the cheapest agent is the one that gets people off the phone, and that is the opposite of what a receptionist is for. A caller who needs ninety seconds of patience to describe a problem properly is a caller worth having. We would rather that call run long than run cheap.
The build difference shows on calls that need a rule rather than a setting. A med-spa agent has to price a treatment and then refuse to say whether the caller is a candidate for it: commerce on one side of a regulatory line, medicine on the other. A law firm agent has to take both parties' names before it hears any facts about the matter. Those are not tone settings in a dashboard; they are the reason a build takes two weeks.
And we publish what is actually wired rather than what is planned. Ask Benny set a good standard here with their "Soon" labels, and our answer is to go one step further: our integration pages state the literal depth (writes to it, reads from it, or texts a booking link) because prospects read these pages aloud on sales calls and being caught overstating costs more than the page earns.
How does the pricing model differ?
Ask Benny bills included minutes then charges per minute over. We quote per build with no per-minute meter, so the length of a conversation never changes what it costs.
- Starter$99 CAD300 minutes$0.45 / extra min
- Business PRO$149 CAD700 minutes$0.40 / extra min
- Enterprise$399 CAD2,500 minutes$0.35 / extra min
- CustomContactUnlimited minutes, multi-location-
Read from Ask Benny’s own pricing page on August 9, 2026.
Per-minute is the most common model in this category and the one with the least obvious failure mode. The advertised price assumes an average call length nobody states, so two businesses on the same plan can pay very different amounts, and the one paying more is usually the one whose agent is being more useful.
Ask Benny's ladder is fair as per-minute ladders go: the overage rate falls as you climb ($0.45, $0.40, $0.35), there is no setup fee, and annual billing takes 25% off. If per-minute is the model you want, this is a good implementation of it, in the right currency, with a trial. Our objection is to the model, not to their version of it.
When you bill a receptionist by the minute, you have priced patience, and patience is the entire thing a caller phoned you for.
Pull your average call length off your phone system before you compare anyone. It is the input that decides which of these models is cheaper for you, and almost nobody checks it.
Start free pilotSo who should pick which?
Pick on language and on how predictable your call lengths are. Bilingual demand and short, consistent calls point at Ask Benny; long calls or judgment-heavy ones point at a build.
Pick Ask Benny if
- You need French from day one, self-serve, on the cheapest plan
- Your calls are short and consistent in length
- You want a published CAD price and a trial this week
- You are a CFIB member and can use the partnership
- Your call volume is low enough that minutes never run out
- You want to be live in days rather than weeks
Pick AnswerAI if
- Your calls run long because they need to: intake, triage, detail
- The phone has to refuse certain questions reliably, every time
- You do not want an agent whose cheapest behaviour is to hurry people
- You have hard cases you can name and a call log to build against
- You are running multiple locations that route differently
- You want the person who built the agent to be the person you call
Questions about Ask Benny vs AnswerAI
Their published plans are $99 CAD for 300 minutes, $149 for 700, and $399 for 2,500, plus a Custom tier with unlimited minutes, verified August 9, 2026. Overage runs $0.45, $0.40 and $0.35 a minute by tier. There is no setup fee, annual billing takes 25% off, and every tier includes a 7-day free trial.
Yes, 7 days, stated on every tier, verified August 9, 2026. Our own earlier competitive scan had this wrong and recorded no trial, which is exactly why we re-read every pricing page rather than trusting a scan that was ten days old.
Not as a standard self-serve capability. Ask Benny includes English and French on every tier and 30-plus languages from Business PRO upward. We handle French as part of a build, on request, which is slower and less certain than a checkbox. If bilingual service is a day-one requirement, they meet it as sold and we would be adding scope.
It depends entirely on your average call length, which is why we publish the division rather than a verdict. At a 76-second average, Ask Benny's Starter tier works out near $0.42 a call, genuinely inexpensive. At a three-minute average the same plan covers 100 calls instead of 236, and everything after that is billed per minute. Measure your own average first; it moves the answer more than anything on either pricing page.
Two Canadian options, one honest question
If your calls are short and you need French tomorrow, Ask Benny is a good answer and we would rather you knew that. If your phone carries judgments that have to be right every time, our pilot is free: about fourteen days to a working line, no call limit, keep it or walk away.
Start free pilot