SAN FRANCISCO - TelAve -- NextPhone's first annual AI receptionist call report, based on a year of calls answered by AI, finds spam peaking at dinner time, loan pitches leading every other script, and AI voice agents calling AI receptionists.

Spam calls grew over the past year and more of the callers are now AI, according to "The Comprehensive 2026 AI Receptionist Call Report," a new report from NextPhone based on calls answered by AI at small businesses and on personal phones across the US. On the personal phones NextPhone covered all year, spam's share of calls rose by more than half, while recorded robocalls stayed flat. Spam peaked between 6 and 7pm, and 37% of spam calls with speech pitched loans or business funding. Calls from area code 607 in upstate New York were 47.2% spam, the highest of any area code with enough calls to rank. AI voice agents made 4.0 of every 10,000 calls in September 2026, up from 0.7 per 10,000 in late 2025, from debt collectors' AIs to an AI posing as a shipping carrier. After-hours callers were the most valuable to small businesses: 23.6% became a lead or booking, vs 18.6% in business hours.

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Key findings

• Only 1 in 60 callers asks whether they're talking to a robot (1.6% of business conversations). 21.9% of those who ask still become a lead or booking.
• Loans and business funding are 37% of spam calls with speech, ahead of Google listing pitches (7.4%) and government, IRS or Social Security impersonation (7.2%).
• 1 in 7 calls to small businesses (14.1%) comes after hours. 23.6% of after-hours calls became a lead or booking, vs 18.6% in business hours. Emergency mentions are 44% more common at night.

"One in seven calls to a small business comes when nobody's at the desk. Those aren't spam. They're the Saturday price question and the leak at 10pm." Yan Mellata, founder of NextPhone

Methodology

The report analyzes a subset of the calls NextPhone has answered: inbound calls answered by AI between December 2024 and October 2026 on personal phones (people using TTYL, an app from the NextPhone team) and small-business lines (NextPhone customers, mainly law firms, home services and local services). Monthly trends cover October 2025 to September 2026. The report's call, line and customer counts are not published. All figures are aggregates. Full method: https://www.getnextphone.com/reports/ai-receptionist-call-report-2026

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About NextPhone

NextPhone is an AI receptionist for small businesses and law firms. It answers every call 24/7 and books appointments, with unlimited calls on a flat monthly fee. https://www.getnextphone.com