Spam calls grew in 2026, and AI voice agents started calling too

NextPhone, an AI receptionist for small businesses, has published The Comprehensive 2026 AI Receptionist Call Report, its first annual report on calls answered by AI. The report is free to read and its aggregate data is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.

October 12, 2026. 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 in the data. 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.

Key findings

The people

- 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. Within calls of the same length, askers converted less in short calls and more in calls over 100 words (33.0% vs 20.8%).

- 1 in 3 conversations include "thank you". Callers are most polite at 8am (37% say thank you) and least at 1am (21%).

- 1 in 15 business conversations asks about price. On Saturdays it's 8.7%, vs about 6% on weekdays.

The robots

- AI voice agents now call AI receptionists: 0.7 per 10,000 calls in October to December 2025, 2.7 in July to September 2026 and 4.0 in September (every flagged call checked by hand; 1.2 to 1.8 on the lines covered all year). 36% were sales and lead follow-up, 32% business tasks, 26% collections and account notices, 6% scams.

- 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%).

- Spam peaks at 9.6 to 9.7% of calls between 6 and 7pm and drops to 1 to 2% between midnight and 3am.

- Spam rarely shows your own area code: 17% of spam vs 45% of real calls, falling from 18.1% (Oct 2025) to 11.8% (Sep 2026). 1 in 4 spam calls (26.9%) shows a toll-free number, vs 5.2% of real calls.

- 19.1% of calls from Kentucky area codes are spam, vs 8.2% overall. By area code, upstate New York leads: 607 (47.2%), 518 (34.0%), 585 (30.5%), 315 (26.9%), 716 (25.6%).

- Sunday has the least spam (5.2% of calls vs 8.3 to 8.7% on weekdays).

When and where

- 1 in 7 calls to small businesses (14.1%) comes after hours: 7.4% on weekends and 6.6% on weekday evenings and early mornings. 23.6% of after-hours calls became a lead or booking, vs 18.6% in business hours, so 17.2% of leads and bookings arrive after hours. Emergency mentions are 44% more common at night.

- Christmas Day brings 56 real calls for every 100 on a normal day. Super Bowl Sunday brings 115.

- Callers swear 4 to 5 times more after midnight (5.4 to 6.5% of conversations between midnight and 4am, vs 1.1 to 1.3% between 9 and 11am).

Quotes

"The robocall isn't the story anymore. The new caller is another AI, and it's polite. Small businesses will need to tell a legitimate AI from a scam the same way they learned to spot a fake 800 number." Yan Mellata, founder of NextPhone

"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 the TTYL app) and small-business lines (NextPhone customers, mainly law firms, home services and local services). Monthly trends cover October 2025 to September 2026. Call, line and customer counts are not published. Phrases are matched on what callers said in call transcripts. Locations come from area codes. Transcription was upgraded in August 2026. All figures are aggregates. Full method and a downloadable CSV of the aggregate tables are on the report page: https://www.getnextphone.com/reports/ai-receptionist-call-report-2026

About NextPhone

NextPhone answers the phone for small businesses with AI: it answers calls, takes the details and books appointments, day or night. TTYL, from the same team, answers calls on personal phones. https://www.getnextphone.com

Media contact

NextPhone press, support@getnextphone.com