Best AI Receptionist for Real Estate on Twilio or Telnyx: Listing AiGENT vs Retell vs Creative Genius vs TelBuddy

An AI receptionist for a real estate agent has one job that no other business asks of it: answer a sign call at 8pm on a Sunday from someone standing in front of the house, tell them what they want to know about that house, and get them a showing before they drive to the next one. If it can do that on the number already printed on your signs, it earns its keep. If it needs a new number, or a developer, or six weeks, that is a different purchase.

Four products come up for "AI receptionist for real estate on Twilio." They are not the same kind of thing, which is why they are hard to compare from their home pages. This is the comparison, with prices as published on 21 September 2026. TelBuddy is one of the four.

The four, side by side

The column that matters most is "your own number." A sign call goes to the number on the sign. If the receptionist lives on a different number, you either reprint, forward your real line to it (and lose the texting on it), or accept that the AI only gets the leads that come through the new number. Two of the four answer the number you already own with no forwarding; one forwards; one is whatever you pay to build.

Listing AiGENT: the packaged product

Listing AiGENT is built for exactly one customer, the individual agent, and it shows in the good sense. It answers around the clock, qualifies callers as buyer, seller or investor and captures the details that matter for each (budget and timeline, property details, investment criteria) on a client card, books showings with a two-way Google Calendar sync, sends confirmation texts, and produces transcripts and summaries. It pulls live school, tax and comparable-sales data through ATTOM, which is a genuinely useful thing to have on a listing call, and it answers in more than thirty languages.

The price is $100 a month per agent after a $10 trial activation. The catch is the number: you get one dedicated AI number per agent, provisioned by them on Twilio, and you forward your real line to it if you want the AI on your existing calls. For an agent who is happy to put a new number on the next batch of signs, that is fine. For a team that already owns its numbers, texts on them and has them registered, it is the wrong direction.

Choose it if: you are a solo agent, you want it working this week with no setup, and a new number does not bother you.

Retell AI: build your own

Retell is a platform for building voice agents; real estate is one of the verticals it writes about. You bring your Twilio or Telnyx account (US telephony is $0.015 a minute through either, and SIP is free), design the agent, write its prompt, and connect functions for the things it needs to do, which for an agent means checking a calendar, looking up a listing, and texting a confirmation. The all-in rate is $0.07 to $0.31 a minute depending on the model and voice, with $10 of free credit and no minimum.

The agent you get is as good as the person who built it. Brokerages with a technical person, or an agency on retainer, build excellent receptionists on Retell. An agent on their own will not, and the platform does not pretend otherwise.

Choose it if: someone technical will build and maintain it, and you want control over every model and voice.

Creative Genius: hire it built

Creative Genius is an agency. They build a custom voice and SMS agent on your own Twilio account, wire it into your brokerage's tools, book into Google or Outlook, and hand over the source code when they are done. Their published ranges are $8,000 to $20,000 for a pilot on one workflow, $20,000 to $60,000 for production, and $60,000 and up for enterprise, with an optional retainer of $4,000 to $8,000 a month, shipping in four to six weeks.

For a brokerage with fifty agents and a speed-to-lead problem across a whole operating stack, that is a reasonable way to spend money. For anyone smaller it is the wrong order of magnitude, and it is listed here because it ranks for the search, not because it is a choice for most agents.

Choose it if: you are a brokerage, you have a budget with a comma in it, and you want the code.

TelBuddy: on the number already on your signs

TelBuddy's receptionist is switched on for a number you already own, on Twilio or Telnyx, from the same dashboard that handles the texts to that number. For real estate specifically, here is what it does on a Sunday-evening sign call:

• Answers from the listing. You add listing pages, fliers and PDFs to its knowledge base, and it answers square footage, roof age, HOA, what stays with the house, from those, while the buyer is still at the curb.
• Books the showing on your real calendar. It checks Google Calendar for actual availability, books during the call with travel time as the buffer, and confirms by text.
• Rings you for the word "offer." A transfer rule you set. On Twilio it can ring the whole team at once; on Telnyx it dials one destination at a time. A caller with an offer never waits for Monday.
• Declines what it must. Fair housing rules apply to anything said on your behalf. The questions a human agent steps around (who lives on the street, whether the area is safe) are configured as declines and handed to a person.
• Emails you the transcript after every call, and follows your business hours, so the AI takes nights and weekends and your team takes the day.

Pricing is the core plan plus the add-on: $19 a month for the dashboard with 2 numbers and 2 seats, and $19.99 a month for AI Starter with 100 voice minutes, tiers up to 2,000 minutes. Twilio or Telnyx bill the carrier minutes at your own rates. Total for a solo agent is under $40 a month before carrier usage. The add-on is not in the free trial; the core plan is.

What it does not do: it has no MLS or ATTOM feed, so what it knows is what you give it, and it is a receptionist rather than a CRM; the lead's details arrive in the transcript and the inbox, not on a pipeline board. The real estate setup page walks through each rule with the actual settings.

Choose it if: you want the AI on the number already printed on your signs, with booking and transcripts, for under $40 a month, and you are willing to give it your listings to read.

If your numbers are on Telnyx

Two of the four work on a Telnyx number: Retell (bring your own) and TelBuddy (same setup as Twilio; the only difference is the one-destination transfer). Listing AiGENT provisions its own numbers on Twilio, and Creative Genius does not mention Telnyx. If you chose Telnyx for the rates, that is a two-product shortlist, and it comes down to whether you have someone to build on Retell.

Deciding in one pass

1. Must it answer the number on your signs, without forwarding? Retell, Creative Genius or TelBuddy.
2. Do you have a developer, or a five-figure budget? No: Listing AiGENT or TelBuddy. Yes: Retell or Creative Genius.
3. Do you need MLS-style data pulled live on the call? Listing AiGENT has ATTOM. TelBuddy knows what you give it.
4. Do your customers text the same number? TelBuddy is the only one of the four with a shared inbox for that number.

Whichever you pick, decide first what the receptionist must never say; the after-hours listing call post covers that list, and the answering service cost comparison works through the arithmetic against a human service if that is still on your list.