Physiotherapy Answering Service UK (2026): What It Costs, and Can It Book Into Your Diary?

Disclosure first, because it shapes everything after it: Vocalenda, one of the thirteen below, is ours. Read this the way you would read any vendor's comparison. Every price and claim comes from the provider's own pages, fetched on 25 September 2026, every headline price twice; where a page does not say something, we say "not stated" rather than guess.

The short answer: where your diary lives decides it. On Cliniko or other practice software, pick Lyngo, BookedSolid or people who log in. On Google Calendar or Outlook, Voco, Ringmere or Vocalenda book straight in. For two practitioners taking 80 two-minute calls a month, the services we could price ran from about £43 to £370. Vocalenda is £49 on the founding rate for the first ten businesses, £69 standard.

Hands on a patient when the phone goes

You are twenty minutes into a treatment, hands on a stiff shoulder, and the phone on the desk starts ringing. You are not going to stop, and there is no one free to answer it. It rings out, and later there is a missed call from a number you do not know. The person with the sore back may well have booked with the next clinic that answered.

There are 78,817 physiotherapists on the HCPC register (as of 1 September 2026) and 5,761 osteopaths on the General Osteopathic Council's register (searched 25 September 2026). For every one of them running a private list, and for every chiropractor and sports massage therapist with their own diary, the phone rings while they are treating, and the one job you cannot do mid-treatment is pick it up.

So clinics pay someone, or something, to answer. There are three kinds of answer on sale:

• A message. A person or a machine takes the caller's name, number and reason, and sends it to you. You ring back between patients.
• A person in your diary. A receptionist at an answering service logs into your practice software and books the appointment, during that service's opening hours.
• Software in your diary. An AI receptionist checks your live availability and books the appointment during the call, at any hour.

The question that decides it: where does your diary live?

Before price, before hours: can whoever answers write into the diary you actually use? A clinic diary is rarely just a calendar. It holds patient records, notes, invoices and online booking, which is why so many clinics run practice software rather than a Google calendar. Here is the map, from each vendor's own pages.

Why the software rows rule us out, in the vendors' own words:

• Cliniko calls its calendar connection "a one-way sync", from Cliniko out to your external calendar, "not the other way around". A booking written into Google never reaches Cliniko, and Ringmere says plainly that it has "no live two-way sync" with Cliniko or Semble.
• Jane has "two separate 1-way syncs". Events on a practitioner's primary Google calendar come into Jane as "Busy - Google Calendar Event", so a booking we made would hold the time. But Jane's feed out to Google is "for viewing only" and "will not change your external calendar to show you as busy", so we could not see the appointments you book in Jane, and could offer a patient a time that is already taken.
• WriteUpp sends its diary out to Google, where "you can't change/create", polled once a day. Zanda sends appointments out to Outlook one way, and copies back from Google "only limited changes", never automatically.
• TM3's homepage does not state a calendar sync, so ask TM3.

If that table sends you to somebody else's product, good. It is cheaper to find that out here than in month two.

The thirteen, at a glance

Checked on each provider's own pages on 25 September 2026. "Not stated" means the page does not say, not that the answer is no.

This is not a like-for-like table. Some charge by the call, some by the minute, one by the message and one by the practitioner, and a "from" price is the lowest plan, not the one you will need. The next section puts them on the same month.

How much does a physiotherapy answering service cost?

People start at £14.99 plus VAT a month for a few messages. For two practitioners taking 80 two-minute calls a month, the services we could price ran from about £43 to £370 a month as published, before setup fees and plus VAT where it applies.

Here is that month, priced the same way for everyone who publishes enough to price it: 80 calls, each about two minutes, so 160 minutes of talking, for two practitioners.

How we worked each one out, so you can redo it with your own numbers:

• Voco: Starter is £49 for 75 calls, plus 5 more at 75p, so £52.75 a month; paid annually it is £39 a month for the 12 months up front, so £42.75 with the extra calls. Its page does not say whether those include VAT. Pay as you go, 160 minutes at 29p is £46.40 before VAT.
• Ringmere: Starter is £49 for 150 minutes before VAT, but it lists "multi-staff scheduling" on Growth, £99 for 240 minutes, so that is what two practitioners need. A single practitioner on Starter would pay £51.50 before VAT for this month.
• BookedSolid: priced per practitioner, with unlimited calls; two practitioners is £99 before VAT.
• Lyngo: £69 for 45 calls, plus 35 calls at £1.50, before VAT. A call counts only if it lasts longer than 10 seconds.
• Perfect Reception: its Inclusive plan, from £130, covers 100 calls. Diary management is on the plan from £219.
• Connect Communications: it charges by the message, not the call, so we assumed every call leaves a message: its 100-message C:100 tariff is £153.99 before VAT, and its 125-message diary tariff £271.69.
• Clinic Answer: its 60-minute plan is £60, plus 100 minutes at 99p, so £159; its 180-minute plan is £160. Diary booking adds £40.
• Paperclip: £85 a month plus 160 minutes at 85p, plus £99 setup once and 20p for each call it transfers to you.
• MyRuby: £142 plus 80 calls at £2.85, if every call leads to an action; MyRuby charges only for calls that do, and not for sales calls up to a quarter of your total.
• Vocalenda: one price, 500 minutes a month, no per-call or per-minute charge. If the 500 run out, the line pauses until the month resets, unless you buy a one-off top-up of 500 minutes for £59.

Three we could not price. Real Time Reception publishes a minimum of £90 a month plus VAT for booking but not its per-call rate. Best Reception says its plans start at £69 and points to a pricing page that returned "not found" when we checked. voiceOne's "from £29" does not say how many calls or minutes it includes.

On VAT: Connect Communications, Real Time Reception, Lyngo, BookedSolid and Ringmere say their prices are plus VAT, and so does Voco's pay-as-you-go rate. The others do not say either way, so ask. Vocalenda adds no VAT at checkout.

People or software: which should answer a clinic's phone?

It depends on your diary first and your calls second.

Pick people if your diary lives in practice software that no AI product here connects to, or your calls are often long: insurers, solicitors, a worried parent, a new patient with a complicated history. Some people services also take payment: Real Time Reception lists deposit payments by phone.

Pick software if most calls are bookings and rebookings, and your diary is one the software connects to. Evenings and weekends are when people with a desk job ring about their back, and the people services here mostly answer in office hours as standard; each of the six AI receptionists we compare says it answers 24/7.

The people, honestly

Connect Communications has the lowest entry price here: £14.99 a month plus VAT for five messages, with calls answered unlimited, because it charges by the message rather than the call, so a wrong number costs you nothing. Its diary tariffs, from £80.29 plus VAT for 30 messages, make and amend appointments for "small to medium sized practices and clinics". Rolling monthly, no setup fee, and a free trial of up to 30 days. Its pricing pages do not state its answering hours.

Real Time Reception, which its footer says is powered by ReceptionHQ, has a messaging service from £20 a month. Its booking service books "whatever treatments you tell us you provide", cranial osteopathy included, and can take deposit payments over the phone; it charges per call with a minimum of £90 a month plus VAT, and does not publish the per-call rate. Its clinic pages give cover from 8.30am to 5pm, five days a week.

Perfect Reception starts at £28 a month for 20 calls, charged by the second, on a rolling monthly contract, with a free trial whose length it does not state. Diary management is on its plan from £219, and its healthcare page says the service "can support appointment bookings ... where suitable for your practice". It also sells an AI line from £49.95, though that page prices the same plans in calls on one card and minutes in a table below, and lists "£50 per additional minute" beside 50p elsewhere on the page. Ask which is right.

Clinic Answer is built for clinics, which shows: its people know that your physio might also offer sports massage and acupuncture, and its diary service names Cliniko, PPS, Outlook and Google Calendar, among others. Pay as you go is £30 a month plus 99p a minute; bundles start at £60 for 60 minutes; booking into your diary is £40 a month on top. Out of hours, calls go to a free voicemail unless you add its out-of-hours service, which it does not price. A one-month free trial.

Best Reception answers 8am to 7pm on weekdays and 8.30am to 5.30pm on Saturday, 24/7 by arrangement, and says it works with Cliniko, Fresha, Jane, Nookal and other systems. Its plans "start at just £69 per month", and its FAQ points to a pricing page for the breakdown that returned "not found" when we checked. Rolling monthly, with two months' notice. A two-week free trial.

Paperclip books into your practice software while it is on the phone to the patient and names Cliniko and PPS. Its price is published and dated: £99 setup, £85 a month, then 85p a minute, plus 20p for each call it transfers. It answers 8am to 6pm on weekdays and 9am to 4pm on Saturday, on a 30-day rolling contract. A 14-day free trial.

MyRuby builds its clinic plans around practice software, naming PPS, PracticePal, Cliniko, Meddbase, TM3 and Clinic Office, and lists WriteUpp, Google and Outlook among the systems it uses: £142 a month plus £2.85 for each call that leads to an action, on a rolling monthly contract. Two things to ask about: the same page lists a £120 setup fee and answers "No" to "Is there a set-up fee?", and its free trial is "1 week" in one place and "10 days" in another.

The AI receptionists, honestly

Voco has a physiotherapy page and answers 24/7/365. It books into Google, Outlook, Apple or Cal.com, up to three calendars, captures assessment enquiries, and routes insurer and self-pay patients separately, which is a thoughtful touch. Starter is £49 a month for 75 calls, then 75p each, but a cap means it never cuts a call off and never charges more than £69; paid annually it is £39 a month. Or pay as you go at 29p a minute plus VAT, which on a quiet line undercuts every monthly plan here. No setup fee, no contract, and a 30-day money-back guarantee rather than a free trial. Its physio page says it "books directly into your clinic diary" but names no practice software.

Lyngo is built for clinics and connects directly to Cliniko, Nookal, PracSuite and Splose. £69 a month plus VAT for 45 calls, then £1.50 a call, with unlimited practitioners on every plan; a call counts only if it lasts more than 10 seconds. Its page shows Australian dollars first, and the pounds are one click away. Free setup, no lock-in, 7 days free. If Cliniko is your diary, Lyngo books into it and we do not.

BookedSolid is also built for clinics and prices by the practitioner: £49 a month plus VAT for one, £99 for two to four, with unlimited calls. It lists Cliniko, Coreplus, Nookal, PracticeHub, PracSuite, Splose, Semble and ClinicOffice, but no Google Calendar or Outlook, and says it is ISO 27001 certified. No setup fee, no contract, and a 7-day free trial. Unlimited calls beats our 500 minutes.

Ringmere is a general UK AI receptionist that lists private GPs and clinics among the businesses it serves. Starter is £49 a month plus VAT for 150 minutes, then 25p a minute; scheduling for several staff and text reminders are on Growth, £99 plus VAT for 240 minutes. It books into Google Calendar or Outlook, answers 24/7, and is clear that it has "no live two-way sync with salon, clinic or garage management software such as ... Cliniko, Semble". A 14-day free trial.

voiceOne has a UK site, "from £29 a month", a physio page and 24/7 answering, and says all data stays on German servers, in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), which some clinics will like. Its physio page promises "synchronization with your practice calendar" without naming one, and its home page does not say what £29 includes. It offers a free trial it calls unlimited.

We also found Bizchitchat, a managed service that says it books into Cliniko or Nookal but publishes no price, and Jane's own AI receptionist, which Jane lists as "in development".

Health questions, and callers' data

Clinic calls are not like a trade's. Callers describe symptoms and ask whether they should come in, and some are frightened. Whoever answers must not give clinical advice, and must know what to do when someone is in danger.

Vocalenda's receptionist is set never to diagnose or give treatment advice: it passes clinical questions to you, by putting the call through or leaving a message, and tells anyone in immediate danger to hang up and call 999. Ask every provider for its rule, people and software alike, and ring it yourself with a symptom question to hear what it does.

What a caller says about their health is special category data under UK GDPR. Ask any provider where call recordings and transcripts are kept, how long for, and for its data processing agreement. voiceOne says its data stays on German servers, and BookedSolid says it is ISO 27001 certified and links its data processing agreement from its pricing page. Ours is set out in our data processing agreement, and our GDPR explainer covers what callers must be told.

Vocalenda, honestly

Ours, so judge this section hardest. If your diary is Google Calendar or Outlook, Vocalenda answers the call and finishes the booking: it reads each practitioner's connected calendar, offers times that are free on it, writes the appointment in while the patient is on the line, and texts a confirmation, then a reminder the day before for appointments booked further ahead. Set up an initial assessment, a follow-up and a sports massage, each with its own length and price. When a patient rings to move Tuesday, it moves the booking. It answers questions from the key information you write, such as your prices, parking and whether you see children, and takes a message when a question is not covered.

Booking questions, added on 24 September 2026 and listed on our what's new page, let you set up to three questions the receptionist must ask before it books, such as "Is this your first visit?" or "Are you claiming on insurance?". For a mobile sports massage therapist, a postcode question takes the areas you cover, and a caller outside them is told politely instead of being booked. The answers are written on the booking.

Where that puts us ahead, on the published pages and nothing else:

• Up to five practitioners, each with their own calendar, at one price. Ringmere puts multi-staff scheduling on its £99 Growth plan, Voco connects up to three calendars, and BookedSolid charges by the practitioner; Lyngo includes unlimited practitioners, but books into practice software rather than Google or Outlook.
• 500 minutes and no per-call charge, where Ringmere's Starter covers 150 minutes and Lyngo's 45 calls; two practitioners' 160 minutes leaves room for a month three times as busy. When ours run out the line pauses, while Voco's Starter never cuts a call off and stops charging at £69, and BookedSolid's calls are unlimited. Both beat us there.
• Thirty days free, as long as Clinic Answer's and Connect Communications' trials, and longer than every other trial here with a stated length; voiceOne calls its trial "unlimited", and Voco refunds you within 30 days after you have paid.

Now the trade-offs, because a comparison that hides its own product's limits is not one. We do not book into Cliniko, Jane, WriteUpp, Zanda, TM3, PPS or any practice software, and that alone rules us out for many clinics. When your 500 minutes run out, our line stops answering until your billing month restarts, unless you buy a one-off 500-minute top-up for £59; you will see it coming on your dashboard well before, while Voco's Starter keeps answering and stops charging at £69, and the other metered services keep answering and bill the extra. We answer up to three calls at once. A transfer needs a number other than the one you divert to us, such as a second mobile. We take no payments or deposits. A person handles a worried patient or an insurer's question better than we do. And £49 is our founding rate for the first ten businesses; £69 is the standard price.

Pick Vocalenda if your diary is Google Calendar or Outlook and one of these fits: there are up to five of you, each with your own calendar; you want a flat price that does not grow with the calls; or you work a set area and want the postcode checked before anything is booked.

Questions to ask before you sign anything

1. Can it book into my diary, by name? "Your practice calendar" is not an answer. If you use Cliniko, Jane or WriteUpp, ask for the integration by name, or whether a person logs in.
2. What happens at 6.01pm and on Saturday afternoon? Several people services here send it to voicemail as standard.
3. Per call, per minute, per message or per practitioner, and how many are included?
4. Is booking on the plan I am buying? At Clinic Answer it is £40 extra; at Perfect Reception, the plan from £219.
5. What does it say when a patient asks for medical advice, or is in danger?
6. Where are recordings and transcripts kept, and can I have your data processing agreement?
7. Does the price include VAT, is there a setup fee, and what is the notice period? MyRuby's page gives both £120 and "No" for a setup fee.

Try one before you decide

Nearly everything here has a free trial or a refund: 30 days at Vocalenda, a month at Clinic Answer, up to 30 days at Connect Communications, 14 days at Paperclip and Ringmere, two weeks at Best Reception, a week or 10 days at MyRuby, 7 days at Lyngo and BookedSolid, an "unlimited" trial at voiceOne, an unstated length at Perfect Reception, and a 30-day refund at Voco.

Then ring it the way your patients will. Book an initial assessment for next Tuesday evening. Ring back and move it. Ask whether you should use ice or heat, and listen to what it says. Ask about parking.

You can hear ours now on +44 7888 866273. The demo diary belongs to a barbershop, but the manner, the booking and the confirmation text are what your patients would get. Setup is short: connect each practitioner's calendar, add your appointment types, and point your number at it; our setup guide walks through the calendar and the number. Start the 30-day free trial, and if it has not booked enough appointments to pay for itself by day thirty, don't keep it.

The short version

All thirteen beat a phone ringing out in an empty reception. If your diary is Cliniko, Lyngo and BookedSolid book into it, and several people services log into it for you. If it is Jane, WriteUpp, Zanda, TM3 or PPS, a person who logs in is the safe choice. If it is Google Calendar or Outlook, Voco, Ringmere and Vocalenda book straight into it, and Clinic Answer's and MyRuby's people can too. Vocalenda does that for up to five practitioners at one flat price.

Find out where your diary lives first. Then compare hours, the health rule and price.

For more, see our dental answering service guide, the best AI receptionist in the UK, what an AI receptionist costs, and virtual receptionist vs AI receptionist. For Outlook diaries, how an AI receptionist works with Outlook; for the reminder text, how to reduce no-shows.