OpenPhone vs Google Voice vs Grasshopper (2026)
Your second phone number is a bigger decision than it looks
There’s a moment in every solo founder’s first year when a real customer asks for your number. Not “join my Discord” or “book a call,” but an actual phone number they can dial or text. Handing over your personal cell works, until it’s 9pm on a Friday and someone you met at a conference wants a status update. A separate business line fixes that without a second phone in your pocket.
Three tools keep showing up in solo-founder stacks: OpenPhone, which rebranded to Quo in September 2025, Google Voice, and Grasshopper. I’ve built most of my own one-person operation around WordPress, Make, and Discord (the about page covers that story), so I’m not a carrier-sales guy. What I can tell you is which of these three fits a one-person business, based on the current pricing pages, the billing fine print, and what actual users say.
One honesty note before the numbers: I haven’t ported my own number across all three services, so this isn’t a hands-on, six-months-of-calls review. It’s a pricing and fit breakdown built from vendor documentation (checked October 3, 2026), independent review roundups on Trustpilot and Software Advice, plus PCMag’s lab-tested takes. You should be able to trust every dollar figure here more than the dollar figures on most “we tested 47 phone apps” listicles.
The quick comparison
All prices below are US list prices, pulled from each vendor’s own pricing page before publishing. Annual billing is shown where the vendor quotes it that way.
| Quo (formerly OpenPhone) | Google Voice | Grasshopper | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lowest price | $15/user/mo (annual), $19 monthly | $10/mo standalone | $14/mo (annual), $18 monthly |
| Billing model | Per user | Per user or single-line subscription | Flat rate per plan |
| Numbers included | 1 per user | 1 per line | 1 on True Solo, 4 on Small Business |
| Extra numbers | $5/mo each | Buy another subscription | Via higher tiers or add-ons |
| Texting fine print | $19.50 one-time carrier registration + $1.50 to $3/mo | Texts work with US numbers only | About $19.50 one-time + $1.50/mo |
| AI in the box | Sona call agent on every plan | AI note-taking from $20/mo | Call transcription since late 2025 |
| Try it free | 7-day trial | Free personal version | 7-day trial |
| Best for | Client-facing founders who text a lot | Budget, US-only solopreneurs | Solos who might add a team later |
Two patterns jump out. Quo charges per head, which is fine for one person and stings when you grow. Grasshopper flips that with flat-rate tiers where adding people costs nothing. Google Voice sits cheapest of all, with a catch list you’ll read below.
Quo (formerly OpenPhone): the modern pick, with fine print
Same product, new name. OpenPhone quietly became Quo in September 2025, so if you see 2024-era reviews raving about OpenPhone, they’re describing this one. The Starter plan runs $19 per user per month on monthly billing, or $15 if you pay annually. Business moves to $33/$23, Scale to $47/$35, and the jump buys things like AI call summaries on every call, phone menus, auto call recording, and HubSpot/Salesforce integrations. The current pricing page lays it out more cleanly than most SaaS pricing pages I’ve clicked through this year.
Every tier includes one local or toll-free number per user, unlimited calling and texting with US and Canadian numbers (subject to fair use), voicemail transcripts, and an API. The AI part matters for founders: Sona, an AI agent that answers calls around the clock, ships on every plan, not behind the top tier. Every plan also includes an MCP integration for ChatGPT and Claude, so you can pull call and text activity into the AI tools most of us already have open. Quo says it’s rated #1 in customer satisfaction on G2 with 90,000+ companies onboard; that’s vendor marketing, but the claim is at least checkable.
Here’s the credit math nobody explains well. Sona calls burn credits at 100 per call, and each plan includes 1,000 free credits. That’s ten answered calls before you either buy a credit tier ($25/mo for 4,000 credits, up to $199/mo for 60,000) or ration your robot receptionist. If you’re curious how dedicated AI agents compare to this bolt-on approach, I broke down agent-builder options like Vapi vs Retell vs Bland earlier this year.
Now the part Quo buries in checkout: texting through a business app requires registering with The Campaign Registry before major US carriers will reliably deliver your messages. That’s a $19.50 one-time fee plus $1.50 to $3 per month depending on your use case. Extra numbers run $5/month. Sentiment is genuinely mixed: Quo’s Trustpilot profile sits at 3.6/5 across 750 reviews, and the recurring complaint pattern involves new-account reviews that hold some signups up at onboarding. Meanwhile the mobile app holds 4.4 stars from 11,000 App Store ratings, which suggests the product itself works fine once you’re in.
Google Voice: the budget line that quietly works
Google Voice earned its place by being the least complicated offer on the table. The standalone Starter plan costs $10 per month, attaches to a personal Gmail account, and gives you a real number with unlimited US domestic calling, voicemail transcripts, spam filtering, and apps that sync across whatever devices you own. That’s it. For a solo founder in the US who wants a professional-looking line on their website and business cards, ten dollars buys you most of what Grasshopper sells for $14. Google’s Voice plans page lists the full feature matrix.
The catches are real, though. Local numbers are US-only, and texting only works with US numbers, so this is a bad fit the moment you have international clients. Sharing a number is not really a thing on the cheap plans: the Starter add-on caps out at 10 users, and proper business features like auto attendants, ring groups, and AI note-taking start with the $20/mo Standard plan. Teams also buy Voice as an add-on to a paid Google Workspace subscription ($10 to $30 per user per month for Voice, on top of Workspace itself). If you’re already paying for Workspace, the math works; my Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 vs Zoho comparison covers what that base subscription costs.
There’s also a free personal version of Voice, and plenty of side-project founders run on it forever. It works. Just know it’s a consumer product: no business support, no seat management, and no promises when something breaks on a Friday. PCMag’s May 2026 review scored Voice 3/5, calling it dependable and best suited to individuals and Workspace-based businesses that need straightforward calling. Dependable is the right word. Google Voice is the option you pick with your spreadsheet, not your heart.
Grasshopper: 20 years old and still worth shortlisting
Grasshopper launched in 2003, which in startup-tool years makes it a fossil. GoTo (the LogMeIn people) owns it now, and the service has been modernized: AI call transcription arrived in late 2025, and GoTo shipped more AI features in May 2026. The plans are True Solo at $14/mo billed annually ($18 monthly), Solo Plus at $25/$32, and Small Business at $80/$92, per grasshopper’s own pricing page and a detailed March 2026 pricing breakdown from checkthat.ai.
The quirk that defines Grasshopper is capacity-based tiers instead of feature gates. True Solo gets 1 number, 1 extension, and 1 user. Solo Plus keeps 1 number but adds 3 extensions and unlimited users. Small Business gives you 4 numbers and unlimited everything. Every tier gets the identical feature list: unlimited US and Canada calling, texting with MMS, voicemail transcription, custom greetings, auto-attendant, call screening, even fax. Unlike Quo’s approach, there’s no AI agent answering calls here, just transcription and the classic forwarding model. Quo’s competitive writeup also points out that Grasshopper leans on your existing cell carrier for calls rather than acting like a full app-first VoIP platform, which keeps it simple but means fewer app-native tricks.
Add-ons add up, similar to Quo. Grasshopper’s registration step runs about $19.50 up front ($4.50 for the Campaign Registry plus $15 in carrier fees) and $1.50/month after. PCMag scored Grasshopper 3/5 in June 2026, noting that similarly priced alternatives offer more, and that tracks if you’re comparing app experiences. Yet Software Advice shows a 4.3/5 average across 347 reviews, and the service claims over 400,000 customers served, so the older model clearly keeps a loyal base. My take: the flat-rate tiers are quietly the best deal in this category once you add a second human. True Solo for one person is fine, but Solo Plus at $25 covers a five-person support team for less than two Quo seats.
What a one-person business actually pays in year one
Advertised prices hide the registration fees, so let’s do the boring math. Assuming annual billing, one user, US-based, light texting:
- Quo Starter: $180/year for the plan, plus the $19.50 registration, plus $18 to $36 in messaging fees. Call it $218 to $236 for year one by my math.
- Google Voice Starter: $120/year flat. No registration step on Google’s pricing page. Cheapest professional line in the group.
- Grasshopper True Solo: about $168/year for the plan, plus roughly $19.50 to register, plus $18 for messaging. Around $206 all in.
The Campaign Registry fee is the one nobody bundles into comparison charts. I missed it the first time I skimmed Quo’s billing docs, and it applies to most legitimate business-texting setups with US carriers. It’s not a scam, it’s just the cost of carriers trusting that you’re not a spammer, which honestly is fair after the texts I get from contractors.
How I’d choose as a solo founder
If you text clients and prospects constantly, Quo is the one I’d pay for. The shared inboxes, snippets, AI-suggested replies, and Sona’s call answering make it feel built for founders who live in their messages, and the Claude/ChatGPT hook-in is a real differentiator for anyone running AI-assisted ops. Just budget for credits if you lean on the agent.
If your phone is mostly a trust signal that occasionally rings, Google Voice at $10 saves you $60 to $116 a year over the others. I’d take that deal for a quiet number attached to a website. It gets awkward if you ever need two lines or non-US reach, since Voice lines are single-user, US-only subscriptions.
If you can picture adding a partner, a VA, or a small support pod within a year, Grasshopper’s flat-rate tiers beat per-user pricing badly. The feature-gated-everywhere structure means you’re never upsold mid-call, and that predictability is worth real money to bootstrappers.
One shared limitation worth repeating: all three are US-first. Quo and Grasshopper center US and Canadian numbers and calling, and Google Voice local numbers are US-only. If your customers call from Germany or Brazil regularly, none of these three is the right answer as configured.
Key takeaways
- OpenPhone rebranded to Quo in September 2025. Starter costs $15/user/mo on annual billing, and every plan includes the Sona AI call agent plus ChatGPT/Claude integration.
- Google Voice Starter is the cheapest professional line at $10/mo standalone, but texting is US-only and team features require the $20/mo Standard plan plus a Workspace subscription.
- Grasshopper’s True Solo plan runs $14/mo annual with the full feature set on every tier, and its flat-rate higher tiers undercut per-user pricing for small teams.
- Every texting-focused option here carries carrier registration fees, roughly $19.50 up front plus $1.50 to $3/month on Quo and Grasshopper.
- Real first-year costs for one person range from about $120 (Voice) to $236 (Quo) once the fine print is counted.
FAQ
Can I keep my current phone number?
Yes. All three services support free porting of existing US numbers, and each documents the process on their site. Budget a few days for the transfer; timing depends on your current carrier.
Is Google Voice actually free for a business?
The free version is a personal product with basic features: calling, texts to US numbers, and voicemail. It doesn’t come with business support or team management. If your business depends on that number, the $10 Starter subscription is the honest floor.
What if I need two separate business lines?
Quo makes this simplest: extra numbers are a $5/month add-on per number rather than another full seat. On Grasshopper you’d move to a higher tier for more numbers, and Google Voice would want a second $10 subscription. For a founder juggling two brands, that Quo pricing is the easiest to live with.
The bottom line
None of these three will wrong you. Quo is the best daily driver for client-heavy solo businesses, Google Voice is the smartest ten dollars in the category, and Grasshopper rewards anyone planning to grow past one person. Pick for the next twelve months of your business, not the last month’s invoice.
And while you’re deciding how clients reach you, it’s worth deciding what happens after they do. The AI Blueprint walks through building automated follow-up and business systems around conversations like these, which is the part most solo founders leave on the table. Missed calls leak revenue quietly; an automated system at least catches the drips.
