In-house call center vs. telemarketing agency vs. AI agent: what it costs to call your leads in 2026

Short answer: to call 1,000 leads a month (3,000 attempts) in Spain, an in-house team costs about €3,100 a month in salaries and social security, a telemarketing agency between €2,550 and €5,100 depending on its hourly rate, and a ReshapeOS AI voice agent about €2,230. AI is the cheapest option and the only one that calls within seconds and handles spikes without hiring; people are still better for interviews and closing. What works best is combining them.

If you already know the difference between an AI agent and an outsourced call center, this article goes one step further: it puts numbers on all three options using Spanish data for 2026. To compare with your own figures, use the call center vs. AI agent cost calculator.

The scenario: 1,000 leads a month

We use the same example for all three options:

With these numbers, someone has to spend 170 hours a month calling: 70 hours talking and 100 hours dialing, waiting and logging. That's the work nobody sees.

Option 1: in-house team

What one person costs

• Spain's national contact center collective agreement sets a 2026 base salary of €17,139.58 gross a year for an agent (level 10), with a maximum of 1,764 working hours a year. That's barely €46 above the 2026 minimum wage (€17,094).
• On top of that, the employer pays around 32% in social security: common contingencies (23.6%), unemployment (5.5%), wage guarantee fund, vocational training, MEI and workplace accident insurance.
• Result: about €22,660 a year, or €1,888 a month per person, before supervision, workstation, telephony or software licenses.

How many hours they actually deliver

Not every paid hour is an hour on the phone. Breaks, training, absences and internal tasks take away 25–40%. On top of that, absenteeism in Spain's contact center sector reached 15.09% in the latest Asociación CEX study, double the services-sector average. With 30% non-productive time, each person delivers about 103 useful hours a month.

The cost

• 170 hours ÷ 103 hours per person = 1.65 people
• 1.65 × €1,888 = about €3,120 a month
• €1.04 per call and €2.97 per lead reached

With one important limit: the team works its hours. A lead that comes in at 9:30 p.m. on a Friday waits until Monday at the earliest.

If the calls are made by admissions advisors, the cost goes up: published salaries for education advisors in Spain are around €19,400 gross a year, though based on small samples.

Option 2: telemarketing agency

Call center agencies usually charge per agent hour, per answered call or per result (qualified lead or appointment), with a setup fee and sometimes a minimum volume.

• Published hourly rates in Spain range from €15–21/hour (market average according to Cronoshare) to €25–30/hour (and up to €40 with languages or specialized profiles) according to other providers.
• Setup usually costs between €100 and €500.

The cost

In exchange, you don't manage hiring, absences or turnover. The challenge is different: an external team knows your programs less well and you have less control over how your institution is presented.

Option 3: AI voice agent

An AI voice agent calls every lead within seconds, answers questions, qualifies and books the interview. You pay per minute of talk, not per agent hour: there's no dead time to pay for while the phone rings.

The cost with ReshapeOS

• Billed minutes: 1,050 calls × 4 minutes + 1,950 unanswered calls × 0.5 minutes = 5,175 minutes
• €280/month fee with 300 minutes included, and extra minutes at €0.40, €0.32 or €0.26 depending on leads per month (€0.40 with 1,000 leads)
• About €2,230 a month (excluding VAT): €0.74 per call and €2.12 per lead reached

The ReshapeOS team sets up the agent with your program information, and it connects to your CRM. If you'd rather build it yourself, developer-focused voice AI platforms charge roughly $0.07–0.31 per minute, but then design, integration, telephony and maintenance are on you.

Comparison

What applies to all three: the law in Spain

Switching options doesn't change the rules. Before calling, check:

• Consent: since June 2023, Spain's General Telecommunications Law requires consent or another legal basis for commercial calls, and prior consent for automated calls. A lead who requested information and agreed to be contacted meets that requirement.
• Robinson list: it must be checked before making commercial calls to people who haven't given you consent.
• Calling hours: Spanish consumer law limits commercial calls to consumers to weekdays, between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Check with your legal advisor how this applies to calls the lead has requested.
• AI transparency: since 2 August 2026, the EU AI Act requires telling people they are talking to an AI.

This isn't legal advice. More detail in is it legal to call leads with an AI voice agent in Spain?

Which one to choose

• AI agent if you get leads every day, want to reach them within minutes and your calls follow a clear process: inform, qualify, book.
• In-house team for admissions interviews, following up qualified leads and closing conversations.
• Telemarketing agency if you need people for one-off, high-volume campaigns and don't want to hire.

The combination that performs best: the AI agent handles first contact, retries and qualification; your team only talks to leads who already have an interview booked. In the example above, the 170 hours of dialing and waiting disappear and your team spends its time on the conversations that convert.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a call center agent cost in Spain in 2026?

Under the contact center collective agreement, the base salary is €17,139.58 gross a year. With social security contributions of around 32%, the employer cost is about €22,660 a year, roughly €1,888 a month, before supervision, workstation or telephony.

How much does a telemarketing agency charge per hour in Spain?

Published rates range from about €15–21 per agent hour up to €25–30 (and more with languages or specialized profiles), plus a setup fee of €100 to €500.

Is an AI agent cheaper than a call center?

For first contact and retries, usually yes: you pay per minute of talk, not for waiting time. In the example of 1,000 leads a month, the ReshapeOS agent costs about €2,230 versus about €3,120 for an in-house team.

Does an AI agent replace my admissions team?

No. It handles the repetitive work (calling, retrying, answering questions and booking) and passes interested leads to your team for the interview and closing.

Sources

• BOE: III National Collective Agreement for the contact center sector (in Spanish)
• BOE: 2026 salary tables for the contact center agreement (in Spanish)
• BOE: Royal Decree 126/2026, minimum wage (in Spanish)
• Spanish Social Security: 2026 contribution bases and rates (in Spanish)
• Asociación CEX: contact center market study in Spain (in Spanish)
• Cronoshare: how much telemarketing costs (in Spanish)
• Minute Call: how much it costs to hire a call center in Spain (in Spanish)
• Indeed: education advisor salary in Spain (in Spanish)
• Retell AI: pricing
• Vapi: pricing
• BOE: Law 11/2022, General Telecommunications Law (in Spanish)
• BOE: General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users (in Spanish)
• AEPD: Circular 1/2023 on commercial calls (in Spanish)