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Honest comparison, updated 2026

Relay vs My AI Front Desk:
same category, half the entry price.

Both are self-serve AI receptionists targeting small business. My AI Front Desk earns its market position with a deep Zapier story and SMS-heavy workflows. Relay sits next to it at $19.99/mo instead of $99, includes 29-language mid-call switching on every tier, and uses Google’s native-audio Gemini Live model for lower-latency voice. Here’s a sourced, side-by-side look.

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Two stylized smartphones side by side, the Relay phone glowing teal with more included-feature icons floating around it
The 30-second version

Lower price, more included.

Three numbers that tell the whole story.

Entry price

$19.99 vs $99

Relay’s Solo plan starts at $19.99 with 90 included minutes. My AI Front Desk’s Basic plan starts at $99/mo (or ~$79 on annual billing) for roughly 300 minutes.

Languages included

29 vs Pro upgrade

Relay handles 29 languages on every plan with automatic mid-call switching. MAFD’s multilingual support is gated to higher tiers.

Voice architecture

Native-audio vs stitched

Relay uses Gemini Live, a single bidirectional native-audio model. MAFD publishes a multi-LLM stitched pipeline (GPT, Claude, Grok with a separate voice layer); adds latency at each hop.

Feature-for-feature, side by side.

Pulled from each company’s public pricing and product pages, 2026. Where My AI Front Desk wins, we say so.

Feature Relay My AI Front Desk
Pricing
Entry monthly price$19.99$99 ($79 annual)
Included minutes90 to 900 by plan200 free / 300 Basic / 300 Growth
Overage$0.15/min, opt-in, off by default~$0.12/min
Free demo before payingFree tier (200 min)
AI & voice
Voice architectureGemini Live native-audio (bidirectional)Stitched STT → LLM → TTS pipeline
LLMs supportedGemini Live native-audioGPT-4, Claude, Grok (publicly listed)
Languages29, auto-mirror mid-call, every plan10+ on Pro and above
SHAKEN/STIR spam rejectionNot disclosed
Booking & integrations
Live Google Calendar bookingEvery plan
Zapier breadth10 templates + custom Zaps9,000+ apps marketed
HMAC-signed webhooks + REST APILimited
Native HubSpotIn marketplace review
Outbound dialerInbound onlyYes (Growth+)
SMS workflowsEmail-only by designHeavy emphasis
Multiple businesses on one account (per-line config)Yes, unique to RelayNo
Caller experience
Trusted-caller Assistant ModeYes, unique to RelayNo
Live AI-initiated transfer to a person
Per-call summaryEmail-onlyEmail + SMS
Trust signals
Founded2025 (Sandy Brook DevWorks, Austin TX)2023 (YC-backed)

Pricing pulled from My AI Front Desk’s public pricing page and our own pricing, May 2026. We’ll keep this in sync as pricing changes.

Four reasons people switch to Relay.

Specific, sourced, no marketing fluff.

Half the entry price for the same product shape.

Both products serve the same buyer: an SMB owner who wants an AI receptionist answering their phone 24/7. Relay’s Solo plan is $19.99/mo for 90 minutes (good for ~40 short calls). MAFD’s Basic is $99/mo for 300 minutes. If your call volume fits Solo, the math is decisive; if it fits Team ($64.99 for 300 min), still a meaningful saving.

Native-audio voice means lower latency.

Most AI receptionists run a three-step pipeline: speech-to-text, then LLM, then text-to-speech. Each hop adds latency, especially when the caller interrupts. Relay uses Google’s Gemini Live, a single bidirectional model that processes audio in and out without the hops. The practical effect: more natural prosody, faster turn-taking, fewer awkward overlaps.

29 languages on every plan, not a Pro upgrade.

Spanish-speaking caller dials in? Mandarin? Vietnamese? Relay mirrors them mid-sentence without prompting, on every plan from $19.99. MAFD scopes multilingual to higher tiers; if you have any meaningful share of non-English callers, that gating matters.

Per-line config: multiple businesses, one account.

Each Relay phone number is independently configurable: greeting, voice, tone, language, FAQ knowledge base, trusted numbers, notification recipients. Useful for agencies, multi-brand operators, multi-property hosts. No competitor in the category offers this today.

Honesty section

When My AI Front Desk is the right choice.

MAFD is a serious product with two real advantages over Relay. If either of these describes you, pay them.

You need a Zapier connection to a tool we don’t have a template for.

Relay ships 10 approved Zapier templates plus webhooks. MAFD markets connectivity to 9,000+ Zapier apps. For most small businesses, our ten cover the highest-leverage tools (Sheets, Slack, Gmail, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Airtable, Twilio SMS, PagerDuty), and webhooks handle the rest. But if your stack relies on a long-tail app that we don’t have a template for and you don’t want to wire a webhook, MAFD’s breadth wins.

Outbound dialing or SMS workflows are core to your use case.

Relay is inbound-only and email-only by design. MAFD invested heavily in outbound dialing and an SMS-first product layer. If your business runs on automated outbound calls (appointment confirmations, lead follow-ups) or SMS-led customer support, MAFD’s product shape fits you better. Relay is not the right tool there.

For the inbound-call-receptionist core use case, Relay covers it at a much lower price with a more natural voice.

What you’ll actually pay.

Three realistic small-business scenarios.

Solo plumber, 40 calls/month

Average 2 minutes per call (~80 min total).

Relay Solo$19.99
MAFD Basic$99
MAFD free tier$0

MAFD’s free tier covers this volume too, but you’re paying with limited language support, branded outbound caller ID, and no priority support.

Three-agent realty team, 120 calls/month

Average 2.5 minutes per call (~300 min total).

Relay Team$64.99
MAFD Basic$99
MAFD Growth$149

Relay’s Team plan covers it cleanly. If Spanish-speaking clients are part of your book, the multilingual gating on MAFD makes Growth ($149) more realistic.

Property manager, 300 calls/month

Average 3 minutes per call (~900 min total).

Relay Business$199.99
MAFD Growth + overage~$220

At this volume MAFD’s Growth plan’s 300 included minutes runs out quickly; $0.12/min overage on the additional ~600 minutes lands you north of $220.

MAFD numbers estimated using publicly listed tiers as of May 2026. Confirm against their pricing page before deciding.

Common questions

Is Relay a good My AI Front Desk alternative?

Yes. Same self-serve SMB category, roughly one-fifth the entry price ($19.99 vs $99). Both ship calendar booking, Zapier, and per-call summaries; Relay additionally includes 29-language mid-call switching on every plan, uses native-audio Gemini Live for lower latency, and supports per-line config for multiple businesses on one account.

How does My AI Front Desk pricing actually work?

Free tier at 200 min/month (loss-leader to convert), then $99/mo Basic (300 min) and $149/mo Growth, with overage around $0.12/min. Annual billing gets about 20% off. Multilingual support, outbound dialing, premium voices, and white-label are scoped to specific tiers.

How does Relay’s voice quality compare?

Relay uses Google’s Gemini Live native-audio model, a single bidirectional model that processes audio in and out without a separate STT and TTS pipeline. The practical effect is lower latency (no pipeline hops) and more natural prosody, especially during interruptions. MAFD publishes that it uses GPT-4, Claude, and Grok with a separate voice layer; that architecture is industry-standard but adds latency at each handoff. The fastest way to compare is to call a live demo from each.

Does Relay match My AI Front Desk’s Zapier breadth?

Honestly, no. MAFD markets 9,000+ Zapier apps as a headline feature. Relay ships 10 approved templates (Sheets, Slack, Gmail, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Airtable, Twilio SMS, PagerDuty) covering the highest-impact destinations, plus HMAC-signed webhooks and a REST API for anything else. For typical small-business workflows ours usually cover it; if your stack has a niche tool that needs a Zapier template, MAFD wins on breadth.

When should I pick My AI Front Desk over Relay?

When outbound dialing or heavy SMS workflows are core to what you need: MAFD treats both as first-class features and Relay does neither (inbound-only, email-only by design). Also when your integration needs span the long tail of Zapier apps that Relay doesn’t template directly.

How do I move from My AI Front Desk to Relay?

Sign up, get a Relay phone number, forward your existing line to it (or port it over once you’ve verified Relay handles your typical calls). Most users run both in parallel for a week, then cut over. Start with a free demo.

Hear it before you switch.

Sign up free, Relay phones you back within seconds for a ten-minute live demo configured for your business. No card, no contract.

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