AI Chatbot Pricing
Seventeen AI support platforms, their published prices, and the reason those prices are so hard to compare.
All vendor pricing read first-party in August 2026.
How much does an AI chatbot cost?
Self-serve AI website chatbots typically cost $0 to $50 a month at entry level and $150 to $500 at higher volumes, charged as a flat fee with a message quota. Support suites with AI agents cost more because they add per-seat licences of $19 to $132 plus a per-resolution charge, typically $0.49 to $0.99. Four of the seventeen platforms we checked publish no usable rate at all.
Last reviewed 10 August 2026 · vendor pricing checked August 2026
Why AI chatbot pricing is hard to compare
Every vendor publishes a monthly price, and almost none of them are selling the same unit. One charges per message, another per credit — where a single reply may consume five credits, and more if it uses a larger model. A third charges only when a conversation is resolved. A fourth charges per human seat before the AI has answered anything.
The result is that a $49 plan from one vendor and a $49 plan from another can differ by an order of magnitude in what you actually get. Comparing headline prices without converting the units tells you nothing useful.
We read all seventeen vendors’ published pricing in August 2026. Below is what they charge, grouped by how they charge, with the units stated.
Flat monthly plans with a message or credit quota
| Platform | Free tier | Entry paid plan | Higher tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| WhisperChat | 150 questions/mo, no expiry | $49 — ~5,000 questions, 10 chatbots | $399 — ~40,000 questions, 40 chatbots |
| Chatbase | 50 credits/mo; agents deleted after 14 days inactive | $32 — 700 credits | $400 — 15,000 credits |
| SiteGPT | None — 7-day trial | $39 — 4,000 messages, 1 chatbot | $259 — 40,000 messages, 3 chatbots |
| DocsBot | 100 AI credits; 30-day bot lifetime | $49 — 5,000 credits, 1 bot | $499 — 60,000 credits, 10 bots |
| Botsonic | None — 7-day trial | $19 — 1,000 messages, 1 chatbot | $299 — 12,000 messages |
| CustomGPT | None — 7-day trial, card required | $99 — 1,000 queries, 10 agents | $499 — 5,000 queries, 25 agents |
| Wonderchat | 20 credits (~10 resolutions) | $149 — 5,000 credits (~1,000 resolutions) | $499 — 25,000 credits (~5,000 resolutions) |
| Dante AI | 100 credits/mo | $40 — 3,000 credits, 2 chatbots | $400 — Pro tier |
On the Dante AI row
Dante AI’s pricing page returned an access error to our automated check in August 2026, so its figures came from search results over the vendor’s own site rather than from a page we read directly. Treat that row as lower confidence than the rest of the table and confirm it on dante-ai.com before relying on it. We would rather flag this than quietly present it as equivalent to the others.
Per-seat plans with a per-resolution AI charge
| Platform | Seat price per month | AI charge | Included AI allowance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intercom (Fin) | $29 / $85 / $132 per seat | $0.99 per outcome | None |
| Freshdesk (Freddy) | $19 / $55 / $89 per agent, billed annually | $49 per 100 sessions | First 500 sessions, all plans |
| HubSpot (Customer Agent) | $0 / $7 / $90 / $150 per seat | 50 credits per resolution at $0.010 per credit | 500 / 3,000 / 5,000 credits by tier |
| Zendesk | $55 / $115 per agent, paid yearly | Per automated resolution — rate not published | Not published |
Per-conversation, per-ticket, and workspace pricing
| Platform | Model | Published entry price |
|---|---|---|
| Tidio | Per billable conversation; Lyro AI metered separately | Free for 50 conversations; Starter $24.17; standalone Lyro from $32.50 for 50 conversations |
| Kommunicate | Per conversation | $40 — 250 conversations (~10K messages); overage $15 per 1,000 |
| Gorgias | Per billable ticket plus an outcome fee on AI resolutions | Mechanism documented; rates not stated in documentation |
| Crisp | Flat per workspace plus AI credits | Free for 2 seats; Mini $45 with $5 AI credits (~90 conversations); Plus $295 with $75 (~1,350) |
Four platforms you cannot budget for without a sales call
Ada publishes no pricing at all — its pricing page offers a consultation booking and nothing else. Voiceflow’s documentation states that current rates are visible only inside the product. Zendesk publishes Suite seat prices but not the rate for the automated resolutions it bills on. Gorgias documents its billing mechanism, a billable ticket fee plus an outcome fee, without stating either rate. This is a fact about disclosure, not about cost — an unpublished price is not necessarily a high one. But if you need a number before a sales conversation, these four cannot give you one.
What actually drives the cost
Volume, more than features
Below roughly 500 resolutions a month, per-resolution pricing is usually cheapest, because you pay nothing on a quiet month. Above roughly 1,500, flat-quota pricing usually wins, because the cost stops rising while the traffic does not. Most teams do not know which side of that line they are on, and the answer is in their existing support reporting.
Seats, if you buy a suite
Per-seat pricing charges you for team size independently of how much the AI does. Three agents on Intercom Essential is $87 a month before Fin answers a single question; on Zendesk Suite Team it is $165. If only one or two people ever open the tool, that is the line to scrutinise first.
Add-ons that are not in the headline price
Branding removal is $1,188 a year at Chatbase, $39 a month at SiteGPT, and included in WhisperChat’s $399 plan. Extra chatbots are $300 a year each at Chatbase. Extra credits run $40 per 1,000 at Chatbase, $29.99 per 1,000 at Wonderchat, and $20 per 1,000 at Dante AI. Check these before comparing plan prices, because they can exceed the plan.
The unit itself
Wonderchat is the only vendor in this set that publishes the conversion: roughly five message credits per resolution. Apply that ratio to any credit-based quota and it shrinks by 80%. Vendors that do not publish a ratio leave you to discover it in production, and that discovery is usually a surprise in one direction only.
What is published and what is our arithmetic
Every per-unit rate on this page comes from the vendor’s own pricing page. Every monthly total is our multiplication of that rate by a volume, and is labelled as such. These are illustrations of what published rates imply — not quotes, and not accounting for volume discounts we cannot see. Check the vendor’s current pricing page before budgeting.
How to work out what you would actually pay
Start with a number you already have: how many customer questions arrived last month. Most helpdesks and analytics tools will tell you, and if nothing does, count a typical week and multiply by four.
Then decide what share of those an AI could reasonably answer. Questions that are answered by information already published on your site — pricing, policies, how something works, what is included — are the realistic target. Account-specific questions and anything requiring a decision are not.
Take that number to each vendor’s pricing page and find the plan that covers it, adding any per-resolution charges and add-ons. Do it for the volume you expect in twelve months as well as today, because the models diverge sharply as volume grows.
A worked example, using published rates: 1,000 AI-answered questions a month costs $49 on a WhisperChat Standard plan, $32 on a Chatbase Hobby plan if 700 credits stretch that far, $39 on a SiteGPT Starter plan, and roughly $990 in Fin charges plus seats on Intercom. The spread between the cheapest and the most expensive is not a rounding error, and it is entirely explained by which pricing model you picked.
Work out your own number
WhisperChat’s free plan covers 150 questions a month with no expiry, which is enough to see what share of your real questions an AI chatbot answers before you price anything.
Start FreeFAQ
How much does an AI chatbot cost per month?
Is there a free AI chatbot for websites?
What does per-resolution pricing mean?
Why do Ada and Voiceflow not publish pricing?
Which is cheaper, a flat plan or per-resolution pricing?
Do AI chatbot prices change often?
How we researched this
- Written by
- WhisperChat Research
- Competitor pricing checked
- Published
- Last reviewed
Where the numbers come from
Every competitor price, plan limit, and quota on this page was read from that vendor’s own public pricing page or documentation on the date shown above. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, this page says so rather than estimating one.
What we have not done
We have not run a hands-on trial of the competing products, and we do not claim to have. This page compares published capabilities and published pricing. Anything that would require using the product to know — answer quality, support responsiveness, reliability — is outside what we can honestly assess here.
How we decide who wins a row
A row goes to the product whose published information supports it. Where a competitor is stronger than WhisperChat, the page says so. Where a competitor costs less than WhisperChat at a given volume, the page shows both numbers.
What we do about stale prices
AI chatbot pricing changes often. Each page shows the month its competitor pricing was checked. If that date is more than a few months old, check the vendor’s pricing page before making a decision on it.
Sources
Every competitor figure on this page was read from these pages on the dates shown. Prices change — check the source before making a decision on it.
- Chatbase pricingChecked August 2026
- Tidio pricingChecked August 2026
- Intercom pricingChecked August 2026 — Fin at $0.99 per outcome, and Intercom’s own definition of an outcome
- SiteGPT pricingChecked August 2026
- DocsBot pricingChecked August 2026
- Botsonic pricingChecked August 2026
- CustomGPT pricingChecked August 2026
- Wonderchat pricingChecked August 2026 — the only vendor publishing a credit-to-resolution ratio
- Crisp pricingChecked August 2026
- Kommunicate pricingChecked August 2026
- Zendesk pricingChecked August 2026 — Suite seat prices published; automated-resolution rate not
- Freshdesk pricingChecked August 2026 — Freddy AI at $49 per 100 sessions after 500 included
- HubSpot Service Hub pricingChecked August 2026 — 50 credits per resolved conversation at $0.010 per credit
- Gorgias billing documentationChecked August 2026 — billing mechanism documented; rates not stated
- Ada pricingChecked August 2026 — no pricing published
- Voiceflow billing documentationChecked August 2026 — defers to rates visible inside the product
- WhisperChat pricingChecked August 2026 — our own plans