Google Voice for Workspace vs Grasshopper
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Both sides assessedGoogle Voice for Workspace compared with Grasshopper
Grasshopper is $14 a month flat for unlimited users and forwards a business number to phones you already own, with no per-seat cost and no Workspace requirement. Google Voice charges per user and requires Workspace underneath, so for a four-person team Grasshopper is dramatically cheaper. Google Voice is the better product if you need per-user numbers, extensions, recording, queues, retention, and centralized administration; Grasshopper is the better product if you need a professional front door and nothing more.
Grasshopper compared with Google Voice for Workspace
Google Voice Starter is $10 per user on top of a Workspace subscription, supports up to ten users, and is administered from the Google console. Grasshopper is $14 flat for unlimited users and does not require Workspace at all. For a solo operator with Workspace already, Google Voice is marginally cheaper and better integrated with Gmail and Calendar; for a four-person team without Workspace, Grasshopper is dramatically cheaper because it does not charge per head.
Choose Google Voice for Workspace if
Small and mid-sized businesses already standardized on Google Workspace that want business phone numbers provisioned, governed, and offboarded from the same console as email, with the least possible additional vendor management, and whose phone usage is ordinary inbound and outbound conversation rather than sales dialing.
Choose Grasshopper if
Solo operators, consultants, freelancers, trades, real estate agents, and businesses of two to five people who want a professional business number with a menu and extensions ringing the phones they already own, at a flat price with no per-seat cost and no contract.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Google Voice for Workspace | Grasshopper |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Calling | Calling |
| Starting price | $10 per user per month, plus a Google Workspace subscription from about $7 per user per month (free plan available) | $14 per month (whole account, unlimited users) (7 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Per-user per-month add-on to a paid Google Workspace subscription, sold in three tiers with unlimited domestic US calling and texting included and international calling billed per minute from prepaid credit on the lower two tiers. | Flat monthly subscription per account rather than per user, with unlimited users, calls, minutes, and texts within the US and Canada on every plan; tiers differ by how many phone numbers and extensions are included and whether recording, transfers, and simultaneous call handling are available. |
| Free plan | A free consumer Google Voice plan exists for personal Google accounts in the US, with a single number and no business features, no admin console, no support, and no eligibility for business use. | No |
| Free trial | Google Workspace offers a free trial that includes Voice; there is no separate standalone Voice trial | 7 days |
| Best for | Small and mid-sized businesses already standardized on Google Workspace that want business phone numbers provisioned, governed, and offboarded from the same console as email, with the least possible additional vendor management, and whose phone usage is ordinary inbound and outbound conversation rather than sales dialing. | Solo operators, consultants, freelancers, trades, real estate agents, and businesses of two to five people who want a professional business number with a menu and extensions ringing the phones they already own, at a flat price with no per-seat cost and no contract. |
| Setup time | Minutes for an existing Workspace administrator on new numbers: buy licences, assign them, provision numbers, done. Porting existing numbers takes the usual one to three weeks for simple local ports. Building an auto attendant and ring group structure on Standard adds an hour or two of thought. | Under an hour on a new number: sign up, choose a number, record or upload a greeting, point extensions at existing mobile numbers, and you are live. Porting an existing number takes one to three weeks for a simple local port, during which the old line keeps working. |
| Learning curve | Very low for administrators already familiar with the Workspace console, because Voice uses the same organizational units, licence assignment, and policy model as every other Google service. Very low for users, because the interface is a Google app. The only genuine learning is the routing configuration on Standard. | Minimal. There is no PBX vocabulary to learn, no dial plan, and no device provisioning. The only real decision is how many extensions you need and where each one forwards. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS, Android, Gmail integration, Supported IP desk phones (Polycom and others), Analog telephone adapters, SIP Link for third-party carriers | iOS, Android, Windows desktop app, macOS desktop app, Web portal, Any existing mobile or landline via call forwarding |
| Compliance | SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 as part of Google Cloud, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018, HIPAA coverage under a Google Workspace business associate agreement where applicable, GDPR with Google's standard data processing terms, STIR/SHAKEN call signing, E911 address registration per user | STIR/SHAKEN call signing through the underlying carrier, 10DLC brand and campaign registration required for US business texting, E911 registration for the addresses associated with the account |
| Founded | 2009 | 2003 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, United States | Boston, Massachusetts, United States (operated as part of GoTo) |
| Ownership | Subsidiary product of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) | Owned by GoTo (formerly LogMeIn), which is privately held by Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital |
Strengths and limitations
Google Voice for Workspace
Strengths
- Provisioned, governed, and offboarded from the Google Workspace admin console, which removes an entire vendor relationship for a company already on Workspace.
- Google identity means SSO, two-step verification, security keys, and context-aware access apply to the phone system by default rather than as a premium tier feature.
- Google Vault brings calls, voicemails, and texts under the same retention, legal hold, search, and export policy as email and documents, which no competitor at this price matches.
- Unlimited domestic US calling and texting on every tier with no per-minute meter and no message allowance to trip over.
Limitations
- No dialer, no dispositions, no cadences, no local presence, and no answering machine detection, so it is unusable as an outbound sales tool.
- No CRM integration at all. There is no Salesforce or HubSpot connector, no CTI panel, no screen pop, and no automatic activity logging.
- No international SMS on any plan, and texting is US-domestic only, which rules it out for teams with contacts abroad.
- Starter is capped at ten users in one location, so growth forces a jump to the $20 tier rather than a gradual increase.
Grasshopper
Strengths
- Flat pricing with unlimited users, which is structurally cheaper than every per-seat competitor once you pass three or four people.
- Unlimited calls, minutes, and texts within the US and Canada on every plan, with no per-minute meter to model.
- The lowest-friction way to stop giving customers a personal mobile number: no hardware, no porting requirement, no new handset, live the same day.
- Instant Response, which texts back every missed call automatically, is genuinely the highest-ROI feature in the product for any local service business competing on who answers first.
Limitations
- No outbound dialer, dispositions, cadences, or local presence rotation, so it is unusable as a sales calling tool.
- Call recording, transfers, and simultaneous call handling are reserved for the top tier, which means the entry plan drops a second concurrent caller to voicemail.
- No meaningful CRM integration: no CTI panel, no screen pop, no automatic activity logging, which puts it well behind Quo, Aircall, and RingCentral.
- Reporting is a call log with charts. There are no per-rep performance metrics and no talk-time analysis.
Pricing compared
Google Voice for Workspace
Per-user per-month add-on to a paid Google Workspace subscription, sold in three tiers with unlimited domestic US calling and texting included and international calling billed per minute from prepaid credit on the lower two tiers.
- Starter$10
- Standard$20
- Premier$30
Priced strictly as telephony, Google Voice is unremarkable: $20 a seat for Standard buys routing, recording, and queues that Ooma Office sells for $24.95 with unlimited calling into Mexico thrown in, and that RingCentral sells at $25 with 330 integrations and a CTI. Priced as administration, it is excellent value, because the marginal work of adding, governing, retaining, and offboarding a phone number is close to zero when the number lives inside the identity system you already run. The Vault eDiscovery coverage for calls, voicemails, and texts is genuinely rare at this price and is the strongest single argument in its favour. For a three-person team making 100 calls a day each, three Standard licences are $60 a month on top of Workspace, and because domestic calling is unlimited those 6,300 calls add nothing to the bill; but there is no dialer, so all 6,300 are placed by hand and none of them are logged to a CRM.
Grasshopper
Flat monthly subscription per account rather than per user, with unlimited users, calls, minutes, and texts within the US and Canada on every plan; tiers differ by how many phone numbers and extensions are included and whether recording, transfers, and simultaneous call handling are available.
- True Solo$14
- Solo PlusAbout $25
- Small BusinessAbout $55
Judged on cost per person, Grasshopper is the cheapest thing in this category by a wide margin and the gap widens as your headcount grows. Small Business at around $55 flat covers unlimited users; five seats of RingCentral Advanced is $125 and five seats of Quo Business is $115. Judged on capability per dollar, it is limited on purpose: no dialer, no CRM logging, no per-user analytics, no desk phone management, no attribution. The right way to read the price is as the cost of a professional phone presence rather than the cost of a phone system. For a three-person team making 100 calls a day each, Grasshopper is technically unlimited and would cost $55 flat, but every one of those 6,300 calls is dialed by hand from a mobile with no disposition, no logging, and no recording below the top tier, which is why the number is misleading and why an outbound team should not buy this.
Editorial verdict on each
Google Voice for Workspace
Google Voice for Workspace is bought for administration, not telephony. If your company already runs Workspace, it is the least effortful business phone in existence: numbers are provisioned from the console you already use, governed by the identity policies you already set, retained under the Vault policies you already have, and revoked the moment you suspend a user. The Vault coverage for calls, voicemails, and texts is the single most underrated feature in this category. But it is a plain phone. There is no dialer, no CRM integration whatsoever, no international SMS, thin reporting, and the cheapest tier is capped at ten users with no auto attendant. Buy Standard at $20 if you are Workspace-native and want the phone to disappear into your existing IT. Buy almost anything else if the phone is how your team sells.
Read the full Google Voice for Workspace profileGrasshopper
Best ValueGrasshopper is the cheapest honest answer to a narrow question: how does a very small business stop giving customers a personal mobile number and start sounding like a company. At $14 a month flat with unlimited users, unlimited calls and texts, a custom greeting, extensions that ring the phones you already own, and automatic text replies to missed calls, it does that job better per dollar than anything else here, and the flat pricing means it gets relatively cheaper as you add people. It is also strictly limited: no dialer, no CRM logging, no per-rep analytics, no desk phones, no marketing attribution, and no recording below the top tier. Buy it if you are one to five people who want a professional front door with zero administration. Move to Quo, Ooma Office, or RingCentral the moment more than one person needs to see the same conversation, log it to a CRM, or be measured on it.
Read the full Grasshopper profileGoogle Voice for Workspace profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Grasshopper last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.