Voco vs Moneypenny

Moneypenny vs Voco: what each one publishes

Moneypenny sells two things: an AI receptionist starting at £25 a month, and a human telephone answering service priced on request. Voco is an AI receptionist at 29p a minute ex VAT with no monthly fee, or monthly plans from £49. All figures here were read on each company’s own pages on 5 September 2026.

Start with the concession, because it matters. Moneypenny’s AI receptionist has a lower headline price than any Voco plan. If you are comparing published starting figures alone, they win that line and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

What Moneypenny charges

Their AI Receptionist page states you can get started from £25 a month, and that the product is built on the 180 million calls the business has handled for clients. Beyond that starting figure the route is “Get your quote”.

Their human telephone answering service publishes no rate card at all. Their own FAQ says pricing is flexible and based on call volumes and hours of coverage, and asks you to get in touch for a quote.

So Moneypenny publishes an entry price for one product and nothing for the other, and what you actually pay in either case comes from a conversation.

What Voco charges

29p a minute ex VAT on pay as you go. No monthly fee, no minimum, no contract. Calls are billed by the minute and rounded up to the whole minute. On Voco’s observed data the average billed call runs about 1.9 minutes, so a typical call costs around 55p. Monthly plans start at £49 if your volume is steady enough to make one worthwhile.

That rate is on the page. There is no form between you and it.

The £25 question worth asking

A monthly figure and a per-minute rate are not comparable until you know two things, and only one of them is published.

At 29p a minute, £25 buys roughly 86 minutes of talk time, or about 45 typical calls. So the honest question to put to Moneypenny is what the £25 includes and what happens when you go past it. We do not know the answer, because it is not published, and we are not going to guess at it.

Ask them for the included allowance, the overage rate, and whether unused allowance rolls over. Then put those three numbers next to 29p a minute at your own volume. If your calls are few or unpredictable, paying nothing in a quiet month tends to beat any plan. If your volume is steady and high, a plan can win, which is why Voco sells those too.

Commitment is the clearest difference

This is the part that is published on both sides, and it is where the two services genuinely diverge.

Moneypenny’s own FAQ states that its smaller telephone answering schemes, those with 150 inclusive minutes and below, have a minimum contract length of three months, with one month’s notice to close the account thereafter. Larger schemes require a six or twelve-month commitment with three months’ notice to terminate.

Voco’s pay as you go has no agreement at all. You load credit, you use it, you stop whenever you like. There is nothing to give notice on.

That is worth weighing before price. A cheaper headline on a twelve-month commitment is a different proposition from a slightly higher rate you can walk away from on a Tuesday.

Where Moneypenny wins

They are one of the best known names in UK call answering, and the scale is real: their AI is trained on 180 million calls they have handled themselves, which is a genuine advantage over a model trained on generic data. They put dedicated human PAs on the phone when you want people rather than software, and for a business whose callers expect a person who learns the account over time, that is the product.

If you want a single supplier who can put either a person or an AI on your line, and you are comfortable getting a quote for the detail, they are a serious choice.

The honest summary

Choose Moneypenny if you want the scale and reputation of a large established provider, if you want the option of human PAs alongside AI, and if a monthly plan with a minimum term suits how you buy.

Choose Voco if you want the rate you will actually pay published on the page, no monthly minimum so a quiet month costs close to nothing, and no contract of any kind. The rate is on the pay as you go page, and the monthly plans are on the pricing page.

Whichever you shortlist, ask for the same four things in writing: the per-minute or per-call rate, the monthly minimum, the out-of-hours rate, and the notice period. Work your own numbers out first with the missed call calculator.