{
  "name": "AI agent statistics for 2026",
  "url": "https://conecto.chat/statistics",
  "markdown": "https://conecto.chat/statistics.md",
  "publisher": "Conecto",
  "published": "2026-11-10",
  "updated": "2026-11-10",
  "summary": "AI crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity made 5,335 requests to one business website in 14 days, twice as many as Google's crawlers, and 39 percent of their crawl requests asked for Markdown. The official MCP Registry lists 60,115 MCP servers. The median AI receptionist costs $0.99 a call. Conecto measured each number on this page, and each one names the study it comes from.",
  "cite_as": "Conecto, \"AI agent statistics for 2026\", https://conecto.chat/statistics, updated November 10, 2026",
  "studies": [
    {
      "name": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "what": "Every request a named search or AI crawler made to conecto.chat in 14 days, 22,051 requests in all, read from the web server's logs. Crawlers whose operators publish their IP ranges are counted only from those ranges.",
      "url": "https://conecto.chat/statistics#conecto-ai-crawler-log"
    },
    {
      "name": "Conecto MCP Registry Count",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "what": "Every server in the official MCP Registry, read through the registry's public API on November 10, 2026, counted once per server name at its latest active version.",
      "url": "https://conecto.chat/statistics#conecto-mcp-registry-count"
    },
    {
      "name": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "what": "The monthly bill of 18 live and AI answering services for the same 50, 150 and 400 calls of two and a half minutes, worked out from each service's published plans on November 5, 2026.",
      "url": "https://conecto.chat/statistics#conecto-answering-service-price-index"
    },
    {
      "name": "Conecto Virtual Receptionist Price Check",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "what": "The monthly bill of six live virtual receptionist services for the same 50, 100, 200 and 500 answered minutes, worked out from each service's published plans on November 10, 2026.",
      "url": "https://conecto.chat/statistics#conecto-virtual-receptionist-price-check"
    },
    {
      "name": "Conecto Agent Price List",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-09",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "what": "The published price of every tool an AI agent can call on Conecto, 582 tools in 52 areas, as of the catalog of November 9, 2026.",
      "url": "https://conecto.chat/statistics#conecto-agent-price-list"
    }
  ],
  "statistics": [
    {
      "section": "Key AI agent statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity made 5,335 requests to one business website in 14 days, against 2,689 from Google's crawlers.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "Key AI agent statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that 39 percent of crawl requests from GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot asked for a Markdown copy of a page, against 1 percent of Googlebot's.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "Key AI agent statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Googlebot fetched llms.txt 0 times in 14 days.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "Key AI agent statistics",
      "statistic": "The Conecto MCP Registry Count found 60,115 MCP servers in the official MCP Registry on November 10, 2026.",
      "study": "Conecto MCP Registry Count",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "Key AI agent statistics",
      "statistic": "The Conecto MCP Registry Count found that 67 percent of the MCP servers in the official registry can be reached at a web address, with nothing to install.",
      "study": "Conecto MCP Registry Count",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "Key AI agent statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that the median AI answering service costs $0.99 a call and the median live service $4.20 a call, at 150 calls a month.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "Key AI agent statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that a full-time receptionist on staff costs about 30 times the median AI receptionist's bill for 150 calls a month.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/ai-receptionist-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "Key AI agent statistics",
      "statistic": "The Conecto Agent Price List shows that 54 percent of the 582 tools an AI agent can call on Conecto cost nothing, and the median paid call costs $0.01.",
      "study": "Conecto Agent Price List",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-09",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/tools"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawler statistics: what AI bots read on a website",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log counted 2,063 requests from OpenAI's three agents in 14 days: 1,220 from GPTBot, 722 from OAI-SearchBot and 121 from ChatGPT-User.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": [
        "https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawler statistics: what AI bots read on a website",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log counted 1,665 requests from Anthropic's three agents in 14 days: 1,599 from ClaudeBot, 62 from Claude-User and 4 from Claude-SearchBot.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": [
        "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawler statistics: what AI bots read on a website",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log counted 1,607 requests from PerplexityBot in 14 days.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawler statistics: what AI bots read on a website",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log counted 2,689 requests from Google in 14 days: 1,555 from Googlebot and 1,134 from GoogleOther.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": [
        "https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot.json"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawler statistics: what AI bots read on a website",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity together sent 3.4 requests for every request from Googlebot.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawler statistics: what AI bots read on a website",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log counted 745 requests from Bingbot in 14 days, about one seventh of what OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity sent.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawler statistics: what AI bots read on a website",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that Bytespider, ByteDance's crawler, made more requests than any other crawler: 6,807 in 14 days, 65 percent of them for images, scripts and styles.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawler statistics: what AI bots read on a website",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log counted 2,411 requests from Amazonbot, 1,714 from Applebot, 499 from Meta's crawler and 462 from Common Crawl's CCBot in 14 days.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawler statistics: what AI bots read on a website",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Applebot, Amazonbot and Googlebot each visited on all 14 days.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawlers ask for Markdown, and search crawlers don't",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that 48 percent of GPTBot's requests asked for a Markdown copy of a page (591 of 1,220).",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawlers ask for Markdown, and search crawlers don't",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that 44 percent of ClaudeBot's requests asked for a Markdown copy of a page (707 of 1,599).",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawlers ask for Markdown, and search crawlers don't",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that 32 percent of PerplexityBot's requests asked for a Markdown copy of a page (510 of 1,607).",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawlers ask for Markdown, and search crawlers don't",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that 1 percent of Googlebot's requests asked for a Markdown copy of a page (17 of 1,555), and 0.3 percent of Bingbot's (2 of 745).",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "AI crawlers ask for Markdown, and search crawlers don't",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that the four crawlers of OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity asked for Markdown in 2,000 of their 5,148 requests, or 39 percent.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "Do AI crawlers read llms.txt?",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Googlebot fetched llms.txt 0 times in 14 days.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "Do AI crawlers read llms.txt?",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot fetched robots.txt 194 times in the same 14 days.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "Do AI crawlers read llms.txt?",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log counted 145 requests for llms.txt from all clients in 14 days: 53 from browsers, 24 from curl, and most of the rest from directory checkers and site audit tools.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "How often ChatGPT and Claude open a website for a user",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log counted 183 page fetches made for users of ChatGPT and Claude in 14 days, about 13 a day: 121 by ChatGPT-User and 62 by Claude-User.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "How often ChatGPT and Claude open a website for a user",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that ChatGPT-User came on all 14 days and Claude-User on 13 of them.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "How often ChatGPT and Claude open a website for a user",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that 47 percent of ChatGPT-User's fetches went to the home page (57 of 121).",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "How many fake crawlers there are",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that 37 percent of requests claiming to be Googlebot came from outside Google's published ranges (927 of 2,482).",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "How many fake crawlers there are",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that 701 of the 927 fake Googlebot requests came from one network, and the other 226 from 29 addresses.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "How many fake crawlers there are",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that all 6 requests claiming to be Perplexity-User came from outside Perplexity's published ranges, and each asked for a file such as /.env.production or /railway.json.",
      "study": "Conecto AI Crawler Log",
      "measured_from": "2026-10-27",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": []
    },
    {
      "section": "How many MCP servers are there?",
      "statistic": "The Conecto MCP Registry Count found 60,115 MCP servers in the official MCP Registry on November 10, 2026.",
      "study": "Conecto MCP Registry Count",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "How many MCP servers are there?",
      "statistic": "The Conecto MCP Registry Count found that 67 percent of the servers in the official MCP Registry are remote: 40,562 list a web address an agent connects to, with nothing to install.",
      "study": "Conecto MCP Registry Count",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "How many MCP servers are there?",
      "statistic": "The Conecto MCP Registry Count found that 39 percent of the servers in the official MCP Registry list a package to install and run (23,428), and 4,540 servers offer both ways.",
      "study": "Conecto MCP Registry Count",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "How many MCP servers are there?",
      "statistic": "The Conecto MCP Registry Count found that 68 percent of packaged MCP servers are on npm (16,009), 21 percent on PyPI (5,031) and 7 percent are container images (1,717).",
      "study": "Conecto MCP Registry Count",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "How many MCP servers are there?",
      "statistic": "The Conecto MCP Registry Count found that 98 percent of remote MCP servers use streamable HTTP, and 1,100 still offer the older SSE transport.",
      "study": "Conecto MCP Registry Count",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "How many MCP servers are there?",
      "statistic": "The Conecto MCP Registry Count found that 57 percent of the servers in the official MCP Registry are published under a GitHub account's name (34,066 of 60,115).",
      "study": "Conecto MCP Registry Count",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "How many MCP servers are there?",
      "statistic": "The Conecto MCP Registry Count found that 53 percent of the servers in the official MCP Registry published their latest version on or after October 1, 2026 (31,853 of 60,115).",
      "study": "Conecto MCP Registry Count",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "What AI agents cost per action",
      "statistic": "The Conecto Agent Price List shows 582 tools in 52 areas as of November 10, 2026, and 314 of them, 54 percent, cost nothing to call.",
      "study": "Conecto Agent Price List",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-09",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/tools"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "What AI agents cost per action",
      "statistic": "The Conecto Agent Price List shows that the median price of a paid tool call is $0.01, and 82 percent of paid calls cost one cent or less.",
      "study": "Conecto Agent Price List",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-09",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/tools"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "What AI agents cost per action",
      "statistic": "The Conecto Agent Price List shows that a small business's month of CRM, help desk, scheduling, e-signature and accounting work costs $25.10 in agent calls, against $98 for five subscriptions at list price.",
      "study": "Conecto Agent Price List",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-09",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/ai-questions"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "What AI agents cost per action",
      "statistic": "The Conecto Agent Price List shows that a phone call answered by an AI agent costs $0.25 per started minute, and a phone number $2.00 to $25.00 a month.",
      "study": "Conecto Agent Price List",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-09",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-09",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/tools"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI receptionist and answering service cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that for 150 calls a month, live answering services charge $309 to $1,725, with a median of $630.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI receptionist and answering service cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that for 150 calls a month, AI answering services charge $79 to $270, with a median of $149.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI receptionist and answering service cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that a call answered by a person costs 4.2 times as much as a call answered by an AI: $4.20 against $0.99 at the median.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI receptionist and answering service cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that the gap grows with volume: at 400 calls a month the median live bill is $1,499 and the median AI bill $235, more than six times apart.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI receptionist and answering service cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that the median AI receptionist costs $75 a month for 50 calls, $112 for 100, $149 for 150 and $199 for 300.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/ai-receptionist-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI receptionist and answering service cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that the median AI receptionist's price per call falls from $1.50 at 50 calls a month to $0.59 at 400.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/ai-receptionist-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI receptionist and answering service cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that 3 of 7 AI receptionists cost under $100 a month at 100 calls.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/ai-receptionist-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI receptionist and answering service cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that for the same 150 calls, the most expensive live service charges 5.6 times as much as the cheapest, and the most expensive AI service 3.4 times as much.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI receptionist and answering service cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that 3 of 21 answering services publish no prices at all.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "AI receptionist and answering service cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that billing a call of 2 minutes 30 seconds as 3 whole minutes adds 20 percent to the bill.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "Virtual receptionist cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Virtual Receptionist Price Check found that 100 answered minutes a month cost $159 to $415 across six services, with a median of $272.",
      "study": "Conecto Virtual Receptionist Price Check",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/virtual-receptionist-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "Virtual receptionist cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Virtual Receptionist Price Check found that the median price of a live virtual receptionist falls from $2.94 a minute on a 50-minute month to $2.36 a minute on a 500-minute month.",
      "study": "Conecto Virtual Receptionist Price Check",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/virtual-receptionist-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "Virtual receptionist cost statistics",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Virtual Receptionist Price Check found that the same 200 minutes cost $1.35 a minute at the cheapest service and $4.05 at the most expensive, three times as much.",
      "study": "Conecto Virtual Receptionist Price Check",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-10",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-10",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/virtual-receptionist-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "What a receptionist on staff costs",
      "statistic": "The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median receptionist earned $18.27 an hour in May 2025, or $38,010 a year.",
      "sources": [
        "https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/receptionists.htm"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "What a receptionist on staff costs",
      "statistic": "The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that wages make up 70 percent of what a private employer pays for a worker, as of June 2026.",
      "sources": [
        "https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "What a receptionist on staff costs",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index puts a full-time receptionist on staff at about $54,300 a year, or $4,525 a month, from those two figures.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
      ]
    },
    {
      "section": "What a receptionist on staff costs",
      "statistic": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that a receptionist on staff costs about 7 times the median live answering bill and about 30 times the median AI bill for 150 calls a month.",
      "study": "Conecto Answering Service Price Index",
      "measured_from": "2026-11-05",
      "measured_to": "2026-11-05",
      "sources": [
        "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    {
      "question": "How many MCP servers are there in 2026?",
      "answer": "The Conecto MCP Registry Count found 60,115 MCP servers in the official MCP Registry on November 10, 2026. Of those, 67 percent are remote servers at a web address and 39 percent are packages to install. The registry lists only servers their makers published there, so the number of MCP servers in use is higher."
    },
    {
      "question": "Do AI crawlers read llms.txt?",
      "answer": "Not in our logs. The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Googlebot fetched llms.txt 0 times in 14 days on conecto.chat, while three of them fetched robots.txt 194 times. The 145 requests for llms.txt came from browsers, curl, directory checkers and audit tools."
    },
    {
      "question": "Do AI crawlers read Markdown?",
      "answer": "Yes, when a site offers it. The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log found that 48 percent of GPTBot's requests, 44 percent of ClaudeBot's and 32 percent of PerplexityBot's asked for the Markdown copy of a page, against 1 percent of Googlebot's."
    },
    {
      "question": "How often do AI crawlers visit a website compared with Google?",
      "answer": "On conecto.chat, more often. The 2026 Conecto AI Crawler Log counted 5,335 requests from OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity in 14 days and 2,689 from Googlebot and GoogleOther."
    },
    {
      "question": "How much does an AI receptionist cost?",
      "answer": "The 2026 Conecto Answering Service Price Index found that the median AI receptionist costs $149 a month for 150 calls, or $0.99 a call, with bills from $79 to $270. The median live answering service costs $630 for the same calls."
    },
    {
      "question": "How much do AI agents cost?",
      "answer": "It depends on what the agent does. On Conecto, where an agent pays per action, the median paid tool call costs $0.01 and 54 percent of tools cost nothing. A month of CRM, help desk, scheduling, e-signature and accounting work comes to $25.10. The agent's own subscription, such as Claude or ChatGPT, comes on top."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers, OpenAI, read November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots"
    },
    {
      "title": "Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, Claude Help Center, read November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler"
    },
    {
      "title": "Googlebot IP ranges, Google Search Central, read November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot.json"
    },
    {
      "title": "The /llms.txt file, v2, llmstxt.org, read November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://llmstxt.org/"
    },
    {
      "title": "The MCP Registry, Model Context Protocol, read November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io/registry/about"
    },
    {
      "title": "MCP Registry API, list of servers, counted November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers"
    },
    {
      "title": "What an answering service costs, Conecto, prices read November 5, 2026",
      "url": "https://conecto.chat/guides/answering-service-cost"
    },
    {
      "title": "What an AI receptionist costs, Conecto, prices read November 5, 2026",
      "url": "https://conecto.chat/guides/ai-receptionist-cost"
    },
    {
      "title": "Receptionists, Occupational Outlook Handbook, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, read November 5, 2026",
      "url": "https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/receptionists.htm"
    },
    {
      "title": "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, read November 5, 2026",
      "url": "https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm"
    },
    {
      "title": "Every Conecto tool and its price, Conecto, catalog of November 9, 2026",
      "url": "https://conecto.chat/tools"
    },
    {
      "title": "What is Conecto, with the sample month and each subscription's price, Conecto",
      "url": "https://conecto.chat/ai-questions"
    },
    {
      "title": "Bingbot IP ranges, Microsoft Bing, read November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json"
    },
    {
      "title": "PerplexityBot IP ranges, Perplexity, read November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://www.perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json"
    },
    {
      "title": "Applebot IP ranges, Apple, read November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json"
    },
    {
      "title": "DuckDuckBot IP ranges, DuckDuckGo, read November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot.json"
    },
    {
      "title": "What a virtual receptionist costs, Conecto, prices read November 10, 2026",
      "url": "https://conecto.chat/guides/virtual-receptionist-cost"
    }
  ]
}