Compare
Which of these is actually ready?
Put two or three capabilities side by side and see exactly where the scores diverge — technical maturity, reliability, cost, autonomy or plain regulatory reality.
| Dimension | ||
|---|---|---|
| Technical capabilityweight 25% | 88 | 85 |
| Reliabilityweight 20% | 74 | 68 |
| Accessibilityweight 15% | 82 | 88 |
| Affordabilityweight 15% | 85 | 86 |
| Autonomyweight 10% | 70 | 62 |
| Regulatory & practical availabilityweight 15% | 80 | 86 |
| Typical cost | Free to £30/month for personal use; £50–£400/month for business call handling | £0–£30/month |
| Categories | AI Agents, AI Devices | AI Agents |
| Verdict | Yes, mostly. Consumer phones and cheap call-screening services will pick up, transcribe and hold a short conversation with a caller, and they handle spam and simple appointment calls well. Anything nuanced — an emotional caller, a complex booking, a call that needs your judgement — still gets handed back to you. | Close. Assistants triage, summarise, draft in your voice and handle scheduling well enough that many people no longer read every message. Sending important replies unsupervised is still a bad idea, and quality drops on unfamiliar threads. |
All scores are indicative editorial assessments, not measurements. How we score.