Grasshopper pricing: Plans, add-on fees, & what you actually pay

If you’re looking for a cost-effective business phone system, you’ve likely come across Grasshopper. At a starting price of $14 per month, it seems like a deal that’s too good to be true. 

That’s because it is. 

Grasshopper’s pricing starts at $14 per month for its True Solo plan, which includes one user, one number, and one extension. If you want unlimited users, you have to upgrade to its Solo Plus plan at $25 per month. If you want unlimited extensions, you have to upgrade to its Small Business plan at $55 per month. All these prices are available with annual billing. 

In this article, we’ll cover Grasshopper’s pricing and plans in detail. We’ll also show you why Grasshopper’s platform isn’t as cost friendly as you think. By the end of this article, you’ll understand why Grasshopper isn’t worth the price for small businesses.

Grasshopper’s pricing and plans

Grasshopper’s pricing is different from most VoIP services. It charges teams for numbers and extensions. Other VoIP providers charge teams for every user in their workspace. This can get confusing as your team grows and your reps want their own phone numbers. This pricing structure can also quickly add up for your business. 

Here’s a comparison of Grasshopper’s plans at a glance:

	True Solo	Solo Plus	Small Business
Pricing	$14 per month	$25 per month	$55 per month
Number of phone numbers	1	1	4
Extensions	1	3	Unlimited
Number of users	1	Unlimited	Unlimited
Unlimited text messaging in the US	✔	✔	✔
Unlimited phone calls in the US and Canada	✔	✔	✔
Auto-attendant	X	✔	✔
Simultaneous call handling	X	✔	✔
Call transfers	X	✔	✔
Call recording	X	✔	✔
Voicemail transcription	✔	✔	✔

Now, let’s see how each of these Grasshopper pricing plans breaks down:

True Solo plan

Pricing: $14 per month billed annually, $18 per month if billed monthly. You can save $48 a year if you opt for annual billing.

Best for: Solo entrepreneurs or freelancers who need a basic, professional business line.

The True Solo plan comes with one user, one Grasshopper phone number, and one extension per account. 

You get access to key business features, including: 

• Mobile app and desktop app
• VoIP and WiFi calling
• VoIP texting
• Voicemail transcription
• Custom greetings
• Instant text message responses for first-time callers
• Virtual fax
• Incoming call control that includes call screening and business hours
• Call forwarding
• AI voicemail sentiment

Solo Plus plan

Pricing: $25 per month billed annually, $32 per month if billed monthly. You can save $84 a year if you opt for annual billing.

Best for: Small teams that need basic call routing and want to share a business number — but don’t need advanced features.

Grasshopper’s Solo Plus gives you access to the same features as the True Solo plan, plus unlimited users and three extensions per account.

You also get access to:

• Call recording
• IVR
• Simultaneous call handling
• AI call summaries and call sentiment

Keep in mind, you only get three extensions on this plan. If you have more than three team members and want each of them to receive forwarded calls, you’ll need to purchase additional extensions. These start at $3 per extension per month.

Where this plan falls short for teams is if you need additional phone numbers. If you want the additional features but need only one additional number in the plan, you’ll end up paying $34 per month instead of $25 per month. And that’s before any other additional fees. 

Small Business plan

Pricing: $55 per month when billed annually, $70 per month if billed monthly. You can save $180 a year if you opt for annual billing. 

Best for: Growing teams that need multiple phone extensions and flexible call routing — but don’t require advanced features.

Grasshopper’s Small Business plan gives you the same features as the previous plans. Plus, it includes unlimited extensions and four business numbers.

Grasshopper add-on costs you should know

Grasshopper’s per-month plans are just the tip of the pricing iceberg. The actual cost depends on how many numbers you need and which features you require.

Here’s a quick breakdown of all the add-on fees that come with using Grasshopper:

Add-On	Cost	Notes
Additional numbers	$9 per number per month	Purchase required for True Solo and Solo Plus plans
Additional extensions	$3 per extension per month	Available for Solo Plus and Small Business plans
A2P 10DLC fees (required for texting)	$19.50 one-time, plus $1.50–$10 per month	Required to text US phone numbers
International calls	$500 one-time deposit, plus call rates	Minimum account age of 60 days required
Voice Studio	$75 per order	Professional greeting for your IVR
Virtual receptionist	$95–$2,100 per month	AI and human receptionists available through Smith.ai

Here’s what to know about the additional costs:

• Additional extensions. You can only purchase additional extensions once you upgrade to the Solo Plus plan. Additional extensions cost $3 per extension per month, billed annually, or $5 per extension per month, billed monthly.
• Additional numbers. Both the True Solo and Solo Plus plans only offer one number. Multiple users can only use extensions with the same number. If you want to add numbers to your plan, you’ll need to pay an additional $9 per number per month. This quickly drives up your monthly costs. 
• SMS registration. Virtual phone number providers are required to register their numbers for business texting. This registration process is known as A2P 10DLC. Businesses have to pay a one-time registration fee , plus monthly fees, in order to text US customers. 
• International calling. First, you have to make a $500 deposit to use international calling. Then you can add calling credits to your account, with certain countries costing as much as 95¢ per minute. Additionally, you won’t be able to make international calls until your account is at least 60 days old. This could be a dealbreaker for many businesses.
• Voice studio. $75 per order for professionally recorded voicemail greetings by voice actors. You can choose from English, Spanish, or French.
• Virtual receptionist. Grasshopper offers a virtual receptionist to handle incoming calls 24/7 through a partnership with Smith.ai. You can choose between AI and human receptionists. AI receptionists start at $95 per month. Human receptionists start at $300 per month and go up to $2,100 per month.  

Grasshopper’s cancellation and refund policy

If you decide Grasshopper isn’t right for you, you can cancel your account. However, you should know a few things about Grasshopper’s cancellation and refund policy:

1. Grasshopper doesn’t offer refunds. Grasshopper has an official no-refund policy. That applies to annual plans too. You won’t be issued a refund for canceling your subscription early. 
2. Number transfers can take two weeks. To transfer your phone number from Grasshopper to a different carrier, you have to keep your Grasshopper account active. The transfer process can take anywhere between 2 and 18 days. 
3. Contact support to cancel. You’ll need to contact Grasshopper’s support team to cancel your account. Make sure you do this after you transfer your phone numbers out of your account.

6 key things to keep in mind before choosing Grasshopper

Confusing pricing plans and add-on fees aren’t Grasshopper’s only limitations. 

Here are six drawbacks you’ll find with Grasshopper as a business phone system:

1. Plans only offer minimal features

A business phone plan with bare-bones features isn’t always a bad thing for solopreneurs and startups. But as your business grows, you need a business phone that’s built to scale. Otherwise, you’ll be spending hours following up with customers instead of understanding their needs.

You won’t find any advanced texting features to chat with customers in Grasshopper. It doesn’t let you schedule texts in advance or make your own text templates. You also can’t create automated texting workflows to send messages based on customer behavior. 

Grasshopper’s lack of automations means you won’t have much flexibility as your business scales.

2. Outdated user interface that can make it hard to use

Grasshopper’s interface hasn’t changed much in two decades — and it shows. While they’ve refreshed their apps, they haven’t updated their core admin portal. Many past users complain about its complex, outdated UI, while others say it took weeks or even months to master.

Past Grasshopper customers specifically cite its admin interface as particularly hard to use. Basic tasks like managing extensions or adjusting business hours take longer than needed. Without an easy-to-use interface, your team may spend more time simply trying to find their way around the platform. Even after they figure it out, be prepared for glitchy features that make it hard to offer a superior customer experience. Recent reviews cite poor call quality, missing notifications, and unexplained software crashes.

3. No integrations to save your team time

The average small business juggles at least four different digital tools daily. Unfortunately, Grasshopper’s phone solution doesn’t integrate with any other apps.

This lack of Grasshopper integrations could slow your communications pipeline and prevent you from getting work done effectively. For example, if your CRM is your source of truth, you can’t automatically log call and text data to apps like HubSpot or Salesforce. You also can’t push any voicemails to a Slack channel, which means your team may need to switch between tabs to get work done.

Grasshopper doesn’t connect with Zapier or Make or offer an API, so there’s no way to build custom workflows or automate tasks. You can’t automatically text customers when they take specific actions, like submitting a form on your website. As a result, your speed to lead and lead response times will suffer. 

Another integration Grasshopper is missing? Claude and ChatGPT. Grasshopper doesn’t have a Model Context Protocol, or MCP, which is necessary to connect to these AI tools. That means your team will miss out on using Claude to:

• Analyze call transcripts and gain business insights
• Batch follow up with customers 
• Update contact profiles automatically

With all these integration gaps, it’s easy to see how Grasshopper could slow your team down and hurt the customer experience.

4. You can’t easily coach team members

Grasshopper gives you the option to automatically record calls, but you need to upgrade. Even then, call recordings only remain stored for up to 30 days.

Want to understand which team members need additional coaching support? You won’t be able to do that with Grasshopper. It doesn’t offer call analytics to help you get a quick understanding of which team members are excelling and which ones need help. There’s no time-based performance reporting or call outcome tracking. 

5. You can’t collaborate easily with team members to solve problems

Grasshopper doesn’t let team members tag each other in conversations, which means they can’t work together to come up with the right responses for customers. 

Plus, there’s no built-in way to assign tasks to your colleagues. You’ll have to manually delegate work through a different channel, like email.

Whether you want to follow up on a customer request or assign a follow-up task, Grasshopper forces you to collaborate outside its platform.

6. Texting limitations may cause work for you

Your business phone system should make work easier, not harder. But if you use Grasshopper’s SMS features, the reverse might be true.
Here are Grasshopper texting limitations you should know:

• Solo proprietor businesses can’t text on Grasshopper. If your business is a sole proprietorship, you can’t use Grasshopper to text customers. They don’t provide A2P 10DLC registration to sole proprietorships.
• You can’t text international customers. If you port in a number, you might lose international customers who prefer texting over phone calls.
• You can’t send MMS messages through toll-free numbers to Canadian numbers. This means you can’t send pictures, videos, or files about your business to customers in Canada, potentially giving more work to your team.
• Group texting is only available for local numbers. If you need to message multiple customers from a toll-free or vanity number, you’ll have to find a suitable Grasshopper alternative.
• Limited SMS auto-reply functionality. Grasshopper’s Instant Response feature has multiple limitations. For starters, you can’t send instant responses after business hours. You also can’t set an auto-reply if a customer leaves a voicemail or hangs up before selecting an extension. 

Why Grasshopper users move to Quo

Features	Quo	Grasshopper
Starting price per month	$15 per user*	$14 per month*
Shared numbers	✔	✔
Simultaneous ring	✔	Requires upgrade
Auto-replies, snippets, and scheduled messages	✔	No snippets or scheduled messages
Call recording	✔	Requires upgrade
Third-party integrations	✔	X
Integrations with Claude and ChatGPT	✔	X
API access	✔	X
Additional phone numbers	$5 per number per month	$9 per number per month
G2 rating	4.7/5 from 3,300+ reviews	3.9/5 from 150+ reviews

*When paid annually

Fast-growing businesses need a scalable business phone system at straightforward prices.

With limited collaboration and automation features, Grasshopper isn’t built for teams as they grow.

That’s why thousands of entrepreneurs migrate from Grasshopper to Quo.

Here’s why thousands of brands rate us the #1 small business phone solution on G2:

1. Transparent pricing means no surprises as your business scales 

Quo offers transparent pricing you can view at any time. It’s easy to decide which plan makes sense for you and then scale up or down as your business evolves.

Not a fan of additional fees? You won’t find them here. Our pricing page is crystal clear about add-ons, additional numbers, and more. 

Here’s an overview of what you get on each plan: 

• Starter: $15 per user per month for shared phone numbers, internal threads, contact notes, voicemail transcriptions, scheduled messages, auto-replies, manual call recording, and more
• Business: $23 per user per month for automatic call recording, group calling, AI call summaries and transcripts, phone integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce, and more
• Scale: $35 per user per month for AI call tags, dedicated onboarding, inbound phone support, and priority chat and email support

Integrations and automations to work more efficiently

Grasshopper was designed to help you make and receive phone calls — not necessarily to automate your workflow. Quo has automations baked into every plan. You only need to upgrade when you need more.

We make it easy to:

• Schedule unlimited SMS messages. No need to wait for the perfect moment to press send. With scheduled messages, you can queue up a draft in the recipient’s time zone so it goes out at the right moment. 
• Create message templates to respond to frequently asked questions. Also called snippets, message templates keep reps from wasting time by not having to type the same message to different customers. 
• Auto-replies for missed calls, texts, and voicemails. Grasshopper only sends automated text messages for missed calls. With Quo auto-replies, you can instantly respond to missed calls, texts, and voicemail messages. Let customers know they’ve reached the right number and will quickly receive a reply.
• Integrate with your tech stack. Unlike Grasshopper, Quo integrates with more than 9,000 third-party apps. It takes minutes to connect the tools you’re already using, including HubSpot, Slack, and Salesforce.
• Connect to Claude and ChatGPT. Analyze your transcripts, follow up over text with groups of customers, and handle contact management in minutes. 

AI-powered features

Grasshopper only recently released AI call summaries and transcriptions to its platform. However, you can only access this feature in its admin portal, not in its mobile app. You also can’t search inside its call transcripts to find conversation snippets you’re looking for. It’s another example of how Grasshopper offers minimal features that aren’t easy to use.

With Quo, you can easily enable automatic call recordings in our Business plan. Plus, turn on AI call summaries and transcriptions. Each recorded call gets its own summary and transcript, and you can access them in both our mobile and desktop apps. If you need to review conversations later, you can search your call transcripts to find phrases and keywords that customers shared with you.

That’s not the only AI feature available in Quo. We also have a 24/7 AI voice agent, Sona, to help you handle incoming calls during and after business hours. Sona can answer questions, take down messages, and even send booking links to your customers. 

You can train Sona on your company documentation so that it always provides accurate answers. You can also share custom scripts so it knows how to deal with common call scenarios like escalations and emergencies. Every Sona call has a call summary and transcription that’s saved in your Quo workspace.

Grasshopper does advertise a virtual AI receptionist, but this feature is offered through Smith.ai. If you want to use it, you’ll need to pay for an additional subscription to Smith.ai. Pricing starts at $95 per month for 60 calls. Or you can try Sona for free, then upgrade to a paid plan starting at $25 per month.

Don’t just take our word for it. See what past customers say about Quo vs Grasshopper:

“We love the simple and beautiful interface of Quo. There is nothing wrong with Grasshopper; we used it for years, and it worked. But in comparison to Quo, it feels decades out of date. In the short time we’ve been with Quo, it’s awesome to see how many new features they’re continuing to add to an already robust offering. And price-wise, it’s a no-brainer.” – David Radparvar, Co-founder, Holstree

“Quo is head and shoulders above Grasshopper. So if you want an endorsement from somebody else, if you have someone else who’s on the fence with Grasshopper… I’ve told people we are just beyond thrilled about it. Much superior product.” – Laura Cooley, President, CarePatrol

Grasshopper pros and cons

Still weighing your options? Here’s a quick rundown of Grasshopper’s pros and cons to help you decide if it’s the right fit — or if switching to a provider like Quo makes more sense.

Pros

• Free domestic calls and text messages
• Toll-free and vanity numbers
• Unlimited extensions with an upgrade
• Ability to set business hours

Cons

• Limited customization for business hours and ring groups
• No integrations
• No ability to text internationally
• No group texting abilities when using Canadian phone numbers
• Call recording storage limits
• No advanced texting features
• No API
• Plans are more expensive than other providers for fewer features

Quo: The best Grasshopper alternative

If you’re a solopreneur or a budding business owner, Grasshopper’s VoIP system could help you find your feet. But if your business is growing, it won’t have the bandwidth to help you scale.

That’s why hundreds of Grasshopper users port their business phone numbers to Quo.

Compared to Grasshopper, Quo offers more transparency and features to any growing team. You get access to unlimited inbound and outbound calls in the US and Canada, plus shared phone numbers that are custom-built for collaboration. With features like these, it’s easier to get work done as a team and build better relationships with your customers.

No need to take our word for it, though. See for yourself by signing up for a seven-day free trial.

FAQs