How much does an AI chatbot cost? Four pricing models, one store, seven bills

An AI chatbot can cost nothing or more than $1,000 a month for the same store. The difference is mostly what the vendor counts: seats, resolved conversations, AI conversations, contacts or replies. Pick the model that matches how your customers write, then price it at your busiest month.

The short answer

• Flat plans and credits: free to about $150 a month for a small business. ChatPal is free for 100 replies and $20 to $120 for 500 to 4,000. Chatbase is $40 for 700 credits and $150 for 4,000.
• Blocks of AI conversations: Tidio's Lyro is $39 a month for 50 conversations and $700 for 1,000, billed monthly, plus a live chat plan for your team.
• Contacts: ManyChat Pro is $39 a month for 2,500 people a month, billed monthly.
• Seats plus resolutions: Intercom seats from $29 and Zendesk Suite Team $69 per agent a month (billed monthly), plus $0.99 to $2.00 for each conversation the AI resolves. Gorgias prices by tickets instead of seats and lists $0.90 to $1.00 per AI interaction in its FAQ, and $1.50 above the plan's allowance in its pricing page data.

All prices are in US dollars and were checked on 13 October 2026.

We make ChatPal, so weigh what we say about it accordingly. We read every other vendor's pricing page and help center; we did not buy their plans.

The four pricing models

1. Per seat, plus per resolution. Helpdesks such as Intercom and Zendesk charge for each person on your team, then for each conversation the AI settles. Intercom calls it an outcome: $0.99, counted when the customer confirms the issue is solved, when they don't ask for more help after Fin replies, or when Fin completes a workflow, handovers included. Zendesk calls it an automated resolution: a request the AI resolved without passing it to a person, $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay as you go once the plan's allowance is used. Gorgias is a variant: no seats, but you buy tickets, and each AI interaction costs $0.90 to $1.50 and also counts as a ticket.

Good for: a support team that already lives in a helpdesk. Keep in mind: the bill grows as the AI resolves more, and Intercom also counts an outcome when the customer asks for nothing more.

2. Per AI conversation. Tidio sells its Lyro AI in blocks: 50, 100, 150 and so on up to 1,000 conversations a month. A conversation is counted once however many times Lyro replies, but a thread closes after 15 minutes of silence, and the next message starts a new one. Your team's own chats are a second meter on a separate plan.

Good for: stores with short, one-question chats. Keep in mind: the step up between blocks, and automatic upgrades.

3. Per contact. ManyChat counts active contacts: each person you exchange messages with in a month, however many messages that is. Pro includes 2,500 for $39 billed monthly, and each extra one costs $0.05.

Good for: Instagram and WhatsApp accounts with chatty followers and automations. Keep in mind: a giveaway that reaches thousands of people raises the bill even if few of them ask questions.

4. Per reply or per credit. ChatPal counts each reply the assistant writes, on flat monthly plans. Chatbase counts message credits: each request to the AI model costs credits, more on stronger models, and an action such as checking a calendar can mean two requests for one answer.

Good for: predicting a bill from your message volume. Keep in mind: long back-and-forth chats use more replies, and on credit plans the same month costs more if you switch to a stronger model.

One store, seven bills

To compare like with like, we priced one made-up month. These are our assumptions, not measured averages:

• an online store gets 1,000 customer conversations a month, on its website and messaging apps, from 900 different people;
• 2 people on the team answer what the AI can't;
• the AI fully handles 600 conversations (60%), and 400 go to a person;
• the AI writes 3 replies per conversation on average, so 3,000 replies in all.

Each tool is priced at monthly billing, on the cheapest plan that covers the month. The bills are our arithmetic on each vendor's published prices.

How each line adds up:

• ManyChat: 900 people fit Pro's 2,500. Its pricing page lists no website chat, so the website conversations need another tool.
• ChatPal: 3,000 replies need the $120 plan (4,000); Standard's 1,500 aren't enough. At two replies per conversation, 2,000 replies would still need it.
• Chatbase: 3,000 credits fit Standard's 4,000 at $150. On a model that costs 2 credits a message, it is 6,000 credits: Standard plus two $40 packs, $230.
• Intercom: 2 Essential seats at $29 is $58. Fin's 600 resolved conversations add $594. If all 400 handovers go through a Fin workflow, which Intercom counts as an outcome, they add $396 more; a customer who asks for a person isn't counted.
• Tidio: 1,000 Lyro conversations are $700, and 400 conversations your team handles need Growth at $89. If customers come back after 15 minutes of silence, Lyro counts more conversations.
• Zendesk: 2 agents at $69 is $138. The plan includes 10 automated resolutions, so 590 more cost $885 committed or $1,180 pay as you go.
• Gorgias: 600 AI interactions plus 400 human tickets are 1,000 tickets, within Pro's 2,000. Pro with AI Agent is $550 and includes 190 interactions; the other 410 are $410 at the $1.00 in Gorgias's FAQ or $615 at the $1.50 in its pricing page data.

The bills aren't buying the same thing. Zendesk, Intercom and Gorgias are full helpdesks, with email, ticketing and reporting for a large team, and the AI is one part of that. ManyChat is built around automations you design, such as comment replies and broadcasts. Tidio, Chatbase and ChatPal are mainly AI chat. If two people answer everything today and you just want the repeat questions off their plate, a full helpdesk may cover more than you need yet.

What drives your volume

The number that matters depends on the model, so find the one each vendor counts:

• Conversations a month, by channel. Check your inbox, your WhatsApp Business app, your Instagram DMs and your store chat for last month, and your busiest month of the year.
• Replies per conversation. Read twenty recent chats and count. A "do you ship to Canada?" chat takes one reply; a sizing question can take four.
• How many the AI can settle. Look at fifty recent questions and mark the ones your website, policies or catalog already answer. That share drives per-resolution bills.
• People, not chats. For contact-based pricing, count the distinct people who wrote, including everyone who answered a giveaway.
• Your team. Seats matter only on per-seat tools.
• Testing. On ChatPal, replies to your own tests count; Chatbase gives separate test credits.

Costs beyond the plan

• WhatsApp fees from Meta. Meta charges per delivered template message, the kind a business sends first, such as an order update or a promotion, at a rate that depends on the country. From October 1, 2026, Meta also charges for replies inside the 24-hour window after the customer writes, past the first 1,000 a month per business phone number, on every tool that connects through the WhatsApp Business Platform. Add a payment method in Meta's Billing Hub, or replies past the free 1,000 aren't delivered. Some tools add their own charge: Intercom bills WhatsApp per conversation.
• Branding. Removing the vendor's name from the chat costs $20 a month on Tidio Growth and $99 a month on Chatbase. ManyChat shows its branding on the free plan.
• More bots and more people. Chatbase charges $25 a month for each extra AI agent. ChatPal's free plan has one assistant. Helpdesks charge for every seat.
• Agent assist. AI that drafts replies for your agents is often extra: Zendesk's Copilot is $50 per agent a month billed yearly, Intercom's $29 billed yearly ($35 billed monthly). In ChatPal, drafts for Zendesk agents count as ordinary replies.
• Overages and automatic upgrades. ManyChat bills contacts over the limit (you can set a cap), Zendesk and Gorgias bill resolutions or interactions over the allowance, and Tidio's automatic upgrade moves new monthly projects to the next step at 95% of a quota. ChatPal stops replying at the limit until you upgrade or the month resets, and Chatbase does the same unless auto-recharge is on.
• Your country. ManyChat sets the price by billing country, and Tidio shows different prices in some regions, so check the page you see.

Seven tools, by pricing model

How to estimate yours

1. Count last month's conversations on every channel, and note your busiest month.
2. Sample twenty chats and count the replies in each, and how many people wrote.
3. Mark which questions your content already answers. That is roughly what an AI can settle on its own; the rest go to your team.
4. Price each tool in its own unit at your busiest month, on monthly billing, then check the yearly discount.
5. Read what happens at the limit: a pause, an overage charge or an automatic upgrade.
6. Add the extra costs above that apply to you.
7. Test on your real questions before you commit. ChatPal's free plan covers 100 replies; Intercom and Zendesk have 14-day trials, Chatbase a 7-day trial, Gorgias a free trial.

If your customers write on your website and in messaging apps and you'd rather have a fixed bill than a per-resolution one, ChatPal is built for that case: run step 7 on the free plan, then pick the plan that covers your reply count.

For the plan details of the biggest names, see Intercom pricing, Zendesk pricing and ManyChat pricing. Tidio's plans and Lyro blocks are broken down in Tidio pricing. ChatPal's own plans are on the pricing page.