Is the advertised seat price monthly or annual?

A seat price is the rate a business phone provider charges for one user for one month, and it carries a term as well as a number. On most published pricing pages that term sits in smaller type under the figure, or in a toggle above the plan table that arrives already switched to annual.

The problem is not the discount. A twelve-month commitment is worth something to a provider and pricing it is reasonable. The problem is downstream: comparison tables, including the largest in this market, copy the annual figure into a column headed "price" and leave the term behind, so a business that intends to pay monthly is choosing between numbers none of which it will be charged.

Nextiva's Core plan is listed at $15 per user per month, and the same Nextiva page advertises "Save 35%" against monthly billing, which puts the monthly rate near $23 (checked 2026-08-21). For a ten-seat business that is $1,800 a year against $2,760 on the derived figure.

How much more does monthly billing cost than annual?

1.28 times the annual rate at the median, across the 10 plans from RingCentral, OpenPhone and net2phone where both figures are rates printed on the provider's own page (checked 2026-08-21). The range on those 10 runs from 1.03 times to 1.50 times.

The table below lists all 16 plans in this dataset that hold two per-seat figures, ordered by the size of the gap. The last column is the gap in cash, because the ratio misleads at both ends: across the 16 the difference runs from $1 to $25 per seat per month.

The six marked rows are marked because the second figure is not a printed billing rate. Nextiva prints "Save 35%" on Core and "Save 50%" on Engage rather than a monthly dollar figure, so $23 and $50 are derived and held here as unconfirmed. Vonage's three lower figures are a promotion — "30% off for 12 months" on a "Minimum 1-year contract required for new accounts" — and the Vonage page showed it as "valid through January 31, 2026" when checked on 2026-08-21. JustCall's monthly rate sits behind a toggle and was not in the page text retrieved, so the $39 is unconfirmed too. Counting all 16 rows the median is 1.37 times instead of 1.28.

The lower column is also not one offer. net2phone's three rates are annual on a 36-month term agreement, Vonage's and JustCall's require twelve months, Nextiva states a "12-month minimum for annual discounted rate", and RingCentral states no contract term on any RingEX tier. A 1.13x gap bought with three years is not the same trade as a 1.50x gap bought with none.

The home page of this site quotes 1.43 times for the same market, counting only the 13 plans costable at ten seats — which drops net2phone's three rows, because the rates held here are net2phone's 1-to-9 user band and its 25-to-99 band is priced separately at $19.99 annual.

Is a single advertised price the annual rate?

No. Of the 32 costed plans that publish one per-seat figure, 22 publish a monthly-billing rate with no annual rate beside it, 7 publish an annual rate with no monthly rate, and 3 charge a flat monthly fee that is not per seat at all (checked 2026-08-21).

Here is what each of those shapes means for a reader looking at the page.

The single-figure plans split along market lines. Only 5 of the 14 UK providers here publish a price at all, and all 5 publish a month-to-month figure and nothing else — bOnline, Voipfone and Vonage UK outright, Gradwell and Telecoms World on a "from" basis — as do US month-to-month sellers such as Ooma Office and Google Voice. The annual-only plans sit with large US brands: Microsoft Teams Phone prints four annual-subscription rates, JustCall two more, and Nextiva one for its Scale plan.

Which providers print both rates?

Only 3 of the 37 providers in this dataset print an annual and a monthly per-seat rate as plain figures on the same page: RingCentral, OpenPhone and net2phone (checked 2026-08-21). Three more show a second figure that will not bear the same weight — Nextiva's is derived from a "Save 35%" claim, JustCall's was not in the page text retrieved, and Vonage's is printed but is a twelve-month promotion rather than an annual-billing rate.

Twenty of the 37 providers publish a price of any kind, and 14 of those 20 print one figure with nothing beside it to derive a second from. CallHippo's page and JustCall's Pro and Pro Plus are a separate case: a billing toggle exists, but the second figure is drawn by script and was not in the text retrieved, which is a limit of this site's reading rather than a provider withholding a price. Which providers publish what keeps the two claims apart.

Do minimum seat counts change the answer?

Not the ratio, since a minimum multiplies both columns equally, but it changes the bill, and it changes it most for the small buyer this page is about. Only 4 plans in this dataset state a minimum seat count, and all 4 are JustCall's: Team, Pro and Pro Plus bill at least 2 seats, and the quote-only Business plan states 10 (checked 2026-08-21). At one seat, a two-seat minimum doubles the cost of the seat actually in use.

Four is a small number, and it is small for an unflattering reason: several of the providers most likely to impose a minimum are the same ones whose pricing pages could not be read.

Is the billing basis the same as the contract?

No. The billing basis is how often you are invoiced and what discount that earns; the contract is how long the provider can hold you. Five of the 37 providers here publish a contract length, and the one asking for the longest term — net2phone at thirty-six months — prints the smallest gap between its monthly and annual rates, 1.04x against Nextiva's 1.53x (checked 2026-08-21). A reader who treats a large annual discount as evidence of a long lock-in has the relationship backwards on this dataset. How long you are signing up for sets out who publishes a term and who says nothing.

A worked example at ten seats

Take RingCentral's Essentials plan, from the RingCentral pricing page, for a ten-seat business over three years.

Both RingCentral figures are printed on the same page, checked 2026-08-21, and RingCentral states no contract term for the lower one, so what the annual rate commits a buyer to is not published. Neither figure includes taxes or regulatory fees, which RingCentral confirms exist and does not quantify — see nobody publishes what the fees add. This is a worked example, not a quote.

How to read a price you are looking at now

1. Find the billing toggle. It sits above the plan table and usually arrives set to annual. Switch it and watch the numbers move.
2. Decide how the invoice will actually be paid. If it will be paid monthly, the annual column is decoration.
3. Check the term behind the lower number. Twelve months on most of these pages, thirty-six on net2phone's, unstated on RingCentral's, and a first-year promotion on Vonage's three plans.
4. Check for a minimum. If the page states one, multiply it out at real headcount before comparing anything.
5. Add nothing for taxes, and read what the provider says about them. Not one of the 37 providers here publishes a rate or a percentage for taxes and fees. Most either say the charges are extra or say nothing; two say the opposite — Talkroute states its price is all-inclusive with no separate telecom taxes, USF or regulatory fees, and Microsoft states that its Teams Phone calling plans include communication taxes and fees (checked 2026-09-05). Every figure on this page is a floor; for those two it is a floor that is closer to the invoice. *Corrected 2026-09-05: this point previously said all 37 either stated the fees were extra or said nothing.*

Where this argument is weak

The 1.28 median rests on 10 plans from 3 providers, a small and self-selected sample: the providers willing to print both numbers may be the ones whose gap looks defensible. A provider that shows only one figure could have a wider gap than any row in the table, and this dataset cannot show it.

What these pages state is also a term, not a prepayment. None of them says the year must be paid up front, so whether the annual rate can be billed monthly is a question for a sales representative, and it is unanswered on the page.

Who this is not for

A business buying twenty seats or more and willing to commit for a year is the customer the advertised price was written for, and the argument on this page barely touches it. The gap matters most at the bottom of the market, where the buyer is least able to commit and most likely to have compared plans on a column it will never be billed on.

This page is also not for anyone choosing on call quality, uptime or support. This site compares published prices, does not test products, and has no view on whether any provider here is any good.

What to do next

Price the plan at real headcount in the calculator, with the minimum applied and the term written down beside the figure. On the 10 plans with two printed rates the billing toggle alone moves the seat price by 3 percent to 50 percent, and counting the six marked rows the range runs to 100 percent, so whichever number is written down first sets every comparison that follows.

Questions people ask

Is annual billing always cheaper? Yes, on all 16 plans here that hold two figures — the ratio never falls to 1.00. It varies from 1.03 times on net2phone UNITE Professional to 2.00 times on Nextiva Engage, and the Nextiva figure is derived from a "Save 50%" claim rather than a printed price (checked 2026-08-21).

Which providers publish a monthly-billing rate? RingCentral, OpenPhone and net2phone print one beside the annual rate, and 22 further plans — including bOnline, Voipfone, Ooma Office, Google Voice, Intermedia Unite and CallHippo — publish a monthly rate as the only rate this site could read (checked 2026-08-21).

Why do some providers not publish a monthly rate at all? It depends on the provider. Of the 7 plans printing an annual rate only, Microsoft Teams Phone's four and Nextiva's Scale plan say nothing about a monthly term, while JustCall's Pro and Pro Plus carry a toggle whose monthly figure was not in the text retrieved. Where a page states no second rate, the tables here record "not published" rather than assuming the two rates are equal.

Sources

• Nextiva pricing — Core and Engage annual rates, and the "Save 35%" and "Save 50%" claims the monthly figures are derived from. Checked 2026-08-21.
• RingCentral plans and pricing — Essentials, Standard, Premium and Ultimate, both rates printed. Checked 2026-08-21.
• Vonage unified communications pricing — Mobile, Premium and Advanced, and the "30% off for 12 months" promotional terms. Checked 2026-08-21.
• OpenPhone pricing — Starter, Business and Scale. The openphone.com/pricing address redirects here. Checked 2026-08-21.
• JustCall pricing — Team, Pro and Pro Plus annual rates and the two-seat minimum. Checked 2026-08-21.
• net2phone pricing — UNITE Essentials, Professional and Ultimate on the 1-to-9 user band, 36-month term. Checked 2026-08-21.
• Medians, counts and splits are computed from data.json, which carries a source URL and a check date on every row. The formula is on the method page.

Written by Kaz (pen name). Figures are copied from providers' published pricing pages on the dates shown. We have not used these products. Corrections: contact form.