AI phone call statistics: sourced numbers for 2026

By the CallForMe team at Great Work LLC · Updated Oct 7, 2026 · 5 min read

We make CallForMe, an AI calling service. Some figures below are about competing products; we cite their own announcements or independent reporting, never our guesses.

Short answer: AI calls to businesses are new and measured mostly by third parties. Invoca found businesses missed 26% of Google's AI pricing calls in 2025 and gave no price on 48% of the ones they answered. People avoid the phone too: YPulse found 41% of 18 to 30 year olds anxious about calls. Every figure here links its source.

Most numbers about AI phone calls come from vendors guessing at a market size. This page skips those. Every figure below comes from a survey, a government report, a court or agency document, or a company's own announcement, and each one links to where it came from and says when it was measured. Where we could only find the figure in news coverage, we say so.

AI assistants that call businesses

• Google's Ask for Me started as a Search Labs experiment on January 30, 2025, calling nail salons and auto shops in the US, in English, and sending a summary of prices and availability by text or email about 30 minutes later (9to5Google).
• By Invoca's account, in July 2025 Google began offering the AI calls for auto repair and tires, hair salons, wellness centers, dry cleaners, veterinary services, pest control and plumbing (Invoca, Dec 10, 2025).
• Pricing calls from Google's AI rose more than 300% in November 2025 compared with October, across businesses that use Invoca's call tracking (Invoca, Dec 10, 2025).
• Google started testing Call for Me in Gemini on September 24, 2026, for Pixel 11 owners in the US who pay for a Gemini subscription and run the beta Phone app (TechCrunch).
• Meta expanded calling to US businesses in its Muse agent on September 16, 2026, the same day Instinct put calling into early access in its Concierge assistant (TechCrunch, Sept 17, 2026).
• Meta tested routing some Muse calls to human contractors after users reported that businesses hung up once they realized the caller was AI, then ended the test (PYMNTS, Sept 22, 2026).

How businesses answer AI calls

• Businesses failed to answer 26% of pricing calls from Google's AI between July and November 2025 (Invoca).
• On 48% of the AI pricing calls they did answer, businesses gave no pricing information (same Invoca study).
• Answer rates for those calls differed by industry: auto repair and tire shops answered 79%, pest control 75%, plumbing 66% and veterinary practices 65% (same Invoca study).
• In a February 2025 test by Search Engine Journal, Ask for Me called 8 businesses about an oil change and 3 responded; a second test about tires reached 6 of 11 (Search Engine Journal, Feb 18, 2025).

The 48% figure matters more than the 26%. A business that won't quote without seeing the job won't quote for an AI either. The fix is in how you ask: a range, the diagnostic or trip fee, and the earliest opening. See why businesses won't quote over the phone.

Calls businesses miss

• In Invoca's analysis of inbound calls published April 2023, banks and lenders missed 49% of calls, telecommunications companies 45%, insurers 39%, dental offices 27%, home services 27%, and auto service centers 20% (Invoca). Invoca describes the sample only as "thousands of phone calls."

A missed call is free with CallForMe, and a call that reaches voicemail in the first 60 seconds is free too, so a low answer rate costs you time rather than money.

Hold times

• During the 2026 tax filing season the IRS received 48.1 million calls, telephone assistors answered 9.9 million of them (21%), and the average hold was 14 minutes across all lines (National Taxpayer Advocate, June 24, 2026).
• On the IRS Accounts Management lines in the same season, the level of service was 73% and holds averaged 8 minutes (same report).
• The average IRS hold in the 2025 filing season was 8 minutes, so the all-lines average rose by 6 minutes in a year (same report).

Hold time is the part of a call an assistant can sit through for you. See phone menus and hold for how CallForMe handles it and what hold time costs.

People and the phone

• 41% of 18 to 30 year olds in the US, UK, Latin America and Europe say they feel anxious answering or making calls, per YPulse's 2025 Mental Health report (YPulse, May 14, 2026).
• In the same YPulse research, 74% of 18 to 30 year olds ignore calls from unknown contacts, 69% keep their phone on silent most days, 64% prefer a text, DM or voice note to a call, and 53% say calls out of the blue feel intrusive even from someone they know.
• 86% of calls from unknown numbers go unanswered, according to Hiya's State of the Call 2026 survey of more than 12,000 consumers in 6 countries (Hiya).
• About 1 in 3 consumers in Hiya's 2026 survey said they had received a deepfake call (same report).

If calls make you anxious, AI calls for phone anxiety covers which errands you can hand off and which still need you on the line.

Robocalls

• Americans received 3.8 billion robocalls in September 2026, about 128.0 million a day, by YouMail's estimate (YouMail Robocall Index).

That volume is why businesses screen calls and why an honest AI call says who it is in the first sentence. See what an AI call sounds like to the business.

Rules for AI voices on the phone

• The FCC ruled that AI-generated voices count as "artificial or prerecorded voice" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, in a declaratory ruling adopted February 2, 2024 and released February 8, 2024 (FCC 24-17).
• In August 2024 the FCC proposed rules that would define AI-generated calls, require disclosure at the start of the call, and protect uses by people with disabilities (FCC 24-84, CG Docket 23-362). As of October 2026 the FCC has not adopted them.

For what this means for a call your agent places to a business, see is it legal for an AI to call a business and recording consent by state.

CallForMe numbers

CallForMe went live at the end of September 2026. We don't publish usage figures until there's a full month of calls from people outside the company. When we do, this section will list calls placed, the share answered, the share that hung up early, and the most common errands, with the date range.

What we can state now are product facts, which come from our own code rather than measurement: every call opens with "Hi, this is an AI assistant calling for (your name), on a recorded line," and an answered call costs $1 including the first 2 minutes.

What it costs

$1 per answered call, including the first 2 minutes, then $0.40 a minute, up to 30 minutes. Calls nobody answers and busy lines are free, and so is voicemail reached within the first 60 seconds when there's no message to leave. Three brake quotes that each take under 2 minutes cost $3.

Related

• Can AI make phone calls for me?
• Will a business hang up on an AI call?
• The best AI that makes phone calls
• Google Ask for Me compared

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