Chatbot Pricing in 2026: What a Chatbot Costs and How Vendors Charge

A website chatbot costs anything from nothing to a quoted annual contract. Free plans run a basic chat for a small team. Most live chat products charge per agent seat and bill the AI agent on top, standalone AI chatbots charge by conversations or message credits, support platforms add a fee for each conversation the AI resolves, and enterprise sales chat is quoted after a demo. What you pay a few months in depends more on which of those models you pick than on the starting price.

This guide explains each model, lists the published starting prices for ten tools, works through one month of chat for a two-person team, and covers the costs that are not on the pricing page.

A disclosure: we make Darwin, AI website chat that books meetings and charges per booked meeting, so we are not neutral. Per meeting is one of the six models here, and it only suits a site whose chat exists to book sales meetings. Most people pricing a chatbot are buying it for support, where seats, conversations or resolutions fit better, so Darwin comes last in the tool sections. Every price comes from the vendor's own pricing page and shows the date we last checked it.

We picked ten chatbots that between them cover every pricing model: the free and per-seat live chat products small businesses usually compare, two standalone AI chatbot builders, the support platforms that charge by resolution, a flat-fee option, and Darwin.

• Sources. We read each vendor's pricing page in September 2026 and again on 5 October 2026. Each price is stored as a fact with its source and the date we last confirmed it, which you can see by hovering over a table cell.
• Billing period. Many vendors list a monthly and a lower annual rate. Our facts say which one they quote; where both are listed, we used the monthly rate, because that is what you pay while you are still deciding.
• Quoted prices. Qualified publishes no prices, so on 2 October 2026 we asked the chat on Qualified's own website what it costs. It would not give a starting price or a range.SourcesQualified ↗
• Limits. We did not buy every plan, and meters, overages and add-ons change often, so read the vendor's page before you sign. Not documented means the page did not confirm something, not that the product lacks it.

The pros and cons under each tool are shared with our other guides. The pricing notes and verdicts are written for this one.

Free is real, and several serious products will run a website chat for a small team at no cost for as long as you like. What changes when you pay is rarely the chat window. It is the branding, the number of people who can answer, the AI, or the volume.

tawk.to goes furthest. tawk.to's live chat is free, with unlimited agents. The AI and a clean widget are where it charges. AI Assist, which answers chats from your website, documents and FAQs, starts at $29 per month; removing the Powered by tawk.to branding is $29 per month. HubSpot's free tools include live chat and a limited chatbot with HubSpot branding. Its free bot follows a flow you build rather than answering on its own. Tidio, Crisp, Freshchat, Help Scout, Jotform and Chatbase also have free plans, with limits a busy site reaches quickly. Chatbase's Free plan is $0 with 50 message credits a month and one member.Sourcestawk.to +3 ↗HubSpot ↗Chatbase ↗

Free suits a site with light traffic that does not need AI answers. Once you want the bot to answer from your content, or to take the vendor's badge off, you are on a paid plan, and the model you land in starts to matter.

Most chatbots on the market are a feature of a live chat or help desk product, and those products charge per agent seat. LiveChat's Starter plan is $25/agent/mo, Intercom's Essential seat $39/seat/mo, Zendesk's Suite Team $69/agent/mo, Freshchat's Growth plan $23/agent/mo and Help Scout's Standard plan $30/user/mo.SourcesLiveChat ↗Intercom ↗Zendesk ↗Freshworks ↗Help Scout ↗

The bill grows with coverage, not with chats. Two people covering the working day need two seats, and covering evenings and weekends takes more people. A team of eight on Intercom pays for eight seats before the AI answers a single question.

The AI is usually not in the seat price. Take LiveChat. The customer-facing AI Agent is a separate Text product from $19 per user per month, billed annually. Intercom bills its Fin agent per outcome on top of the seats, and Freshchat meters its Freddy agent once an included allowance is used. Freddy AI Agent costs $49 per 100 sessions after the free allowance. The per-seat price pays for the people; the chatbot is the line under it.SourcesLiveChat +1 ↗Freshworks ↗

Standalone AI chatbots mostly count conversations or message credits. Tidio sizes its paid plans by billable conversations, starting at $29/mo, and sells its AI agent's conversations as a separate quota. Lyro's quota starts at $39 per month for 50 conversations on monthly billing. Chatbase counts message credits instead. Paid plans start with Hobby at $40 per month for 700 message credits; Standard is $150 for 4,000 and Pro $500 for 15,000. Jotform tiers its AI agents by monthly conversations. Paid plans start with Bronze at $39 per month for 1,000 conversations; Silver is $49 for 2,500 and Gold $129 for 10,000.SourcesTidio ↗Chatbase ↗Jotform ↗

This model is cheap on a quiet site and expensive on a busy one, and the vendor's definition of a conversation decides the bill. Some count a conversation when the widget opens, others only when a visitor types, and an AI reply can use more than one credit. Read the definition before you compare two prices.

Then check what happens at the cap. Some tools stop answering, some charge an overage, and some move you to the next plan. The pricing page usually says which, in small type.

Support platforms now charge for outcomes. Intercom's Fin is the best-known example. Fin pricing starts at $0.99 per outcome. Help Scout's AI Answers works the same way. AI Answers costs $0.75 per resolution as an add-on. HubSpot's customer agent spends credits instead. The customer agent uses 50 HubSpot Credits per resolved conversation. Zendesk includes some resolutions with each seat. Plans include 5 automated resolutions per agent per month (10 on Suite Professional), up to 10,000 a year. AI agents are billed per automated resolution beyond the plan allowance: $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay-as-you-go.SourcesIntercom ↗Help Scout ↗HubSpot +1 ↗Zendesk ↗

For support, the logic is sound: you pay when a question did not need a person. The catch is that the vendor defines a resolution, usually as a conversation the visitor did not escalate, and a visitor who gave up looks much like one who was helped. Ask how resolutions are counted and whether you can dispute one.

For a sales site, a resolved conversation is not the goal; a booked meeting is. Intercom's answer is a separate per-lead price for Fin for Sales, covered in its section below.

A few tools charge one price per workspace, whatever the volume, and Crisp is the clearest example. Mini is $45 per month per workspace. AI credits are included per plan: $5 on Mini, $25 on Essentials, $75 on Plus. A flat fee is easy to budget and generous for a busy small team, though seat limits usually push a growing team up a tier.SourcesCrisp ↗

At the other end are enterprise conversational marketing platforms that print no price at all. Qualified's enterprise tiers are priced by quote. When we asked Qualified's own chat for a starting price or a typical range, it would not give either. The price may well be justified for a large Salesforce team, but you cannot compare it with anything on this page until after a sales call. If you are replacing Drift, our Drift alternatives guide covers the options; Darwin vs Qualified covers that trade-off.SourcesQualified +1 ↗

Here the bill tracks meetings the chat puts on your calendar, and requests that pass your fit rules. Darwin prices this way. Its Free plan costs $0/mo and includes 5 free credits once, then charges $30/credit; paid plans start at $299/mo with credits included every month. The nearest thing elsewhere in this guide is Intercom's Fin for Sales, which charges per qualified lead rather than per meeting. Fin for Sales charges $9.99 per qualified lead.SourcesDarwin ↗Intercom ↗

The appeal is that the bill and the pipeline move together. A quiet month costs little or nothing, and a month that costs more is one that filled the calendar. There are no seats to buy, and answering questions is not metered.

The limits are just as plain. Per-meeting pricing only makes sense when meetings are what you want from the chat; a support queue would be paying for the wrong thing. And with any per-meeting or per-lead price, ask how cancelled, rescheduled and no-show meetings are counted.

Prices per unit are hard to compare, so here is one month worked through for each tool. The company is a small B2B business: two people answer chat, the site gets about 100 chat conversations a month, the AI handles 50 of them without a person, and four visitors book a sales meeting. We used list prices on monthly billing where the vendor lists them, before tax and discounts.

The prices behind these sums, with the date we checked each one:

• LiveChat. LiveChat's Starter plan is $25 per person per month on monthly billing. The customer-facing AI Agent is a separate Text product from $19 per user per month, billed annually. Billed annually; Essential includes 10 AI resolutions a month, extra 50 for $49.50; 14-day free trial. LiveChat plans include agent-assist AI only.SourcesLiveChat +1 ↗
• Freshchat. Growth is $23 per agent per month on monthly billing. Freddy AI Agent costs $49 per 100 sessions after the free allowance.SourcesFreshworks ↗
• Intercom. Intercom's Essential plan starts at $39 per seat per month on monthly billing. Fin pricing starts at $0.99 per outcome.SourcesIntercom +1 ↗
• Zendesk. Zendesk's Suite Team plan is $69 per agent per month on monthly billing. Plans include 5 automated resolutions per agent per month (10 on Suite Professional), up to 10,000 a year. AI agents are billed per automated resolution beyond the plan allowance: $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay-as-you-go.SourcesZendesk ↗
• Help Scout. Standard is $30 per user per month on monthly billing, or $25 billed annually. AI Answers costs $0.75 per resolution as an add-on.SourcesHelp Scout ↗
• Tidio. Starter is $29 per month on monthly billing. Starter includes 100 billable conversations; Growth starts at 250. Lyro's quota starts at $39 per month for 50 conversations on monthly billing.SourcesTidio ↗
• Chatbase. Paid plans start with Hobby at $40 per month for 700 message credits; Standard is $150 for 4,000 and Pro $500 for 15,000.SourcesChatbase ↗
• Crisp. Mini is $45 per month per workspace.SourcesCrisp ↗
• tawk.to. AI Assist, which answers chats from your website, documents and FAQs, starts at $29 per month; removing the Powered by tawk.to branding is $29 per month.Sourcestawk.to +2 ↗
• Darwin. Free charges $30 per credit after the first five. Growth is $299 per month on monthly billing. Growth includes 10 credits a month; Agency includes 25, pooled across up to 200 client workspaces.SourcesDarwin ↗

Read the totals with the job in mind. Most of the support tools answer questions well but send a link for meetings, if they handle them at all; Chatbase and Freshchat can offer a time inside the chat. Darwin books the meetings but has no inbox for the two people. Seat limits on the cheaper plans vary, so check that your team fits before you compare. And the order changes with your numbers: double the AI-handled conversations and the per-resolution tools climb, double the meetings and Darwin does.

The sections below follow the table's order, from free and per-seat tools to per-meeting pricing. Each starts from the published price and adds the parts that turn it into a monthly bill.

Five things move a chatbot bill after you sign, and none of them is in the headline price.

• The AI add-on. On most live chat products the seat price pays for people; the bot that answers on its own is a second line, metered by session, resolution or credit.
• Branding removal. Free and entry plans often show the vendor's badge on your widget, and taking it off is a paid tier or a paid add-on.
• Seat limits and tiers. Flat and per-seat plans cap how many people can answer, and the next tier is usually a step up, not a slope.
• Annual versus monthly. Many vendors show the annual rate first. The monthly rate, which is what you pay while you are still deciding, is usually higher.
• Onboarding fees. Some plans add a one-time setup charge. HubSpot charges a one-time $1,500 onboarding fee for Sales Hub Professional.SourcesHubSpot ↗

Building a chatbot yourself has its own costs: a developer's time to build it, and a model provider's bill for every message it sends. That is a different decision from the one this guide covers.

Name what you want the chat to produce, then find the model that charges for that and as little else as possible.

• A support team with a steady queue. Seats suit you, and the AI add-on is the number to negotiate, because that is where the bill will grow.
• A busy site where most questions are simple. Per conversation can get expensive, so read the definition of a conversation, or take a flat plan and stop counting.
• You want the bot to close tickets by itself. Per resolution is a fair deal, as long as you agree in advance on how a resolution is counted.
• The chat exists to book sales meetings. Look for a price tied to the sales result, such as per booked meeting or per qualified lead, and check that the meeting is booked inside the chat rather than through a link.
• An enterprise sales team on Salesforce. Expect a quote, and get it in writing before the renewal date.

Whichever model you choose, ask three questions before you sign: what exactly gets counted, what happens when you reach the cap, and what the monthly price is if you leave after the first month.