How much does an AI chatbot cost in 2026? The four pricing models

Chatbot pricing pages look different from each other because they are counting different things. Once you know the unit, the rest of the page is arithmetic. There are four units in the market today: a resolution, which is a conversation the vendor decides went well; a conversation or a credit, which is any conversation, however it went; a seat, which is a person on your team; and a monthly amount, which is a period of time with a ceiling on it. Most vendors combine two. The combinations are where the surprises live.

A note on where the numbers sit. Search for how much an AI chatbot costs and half of page one is vendors' own pricing pages, each with a 'from $X a month' in the title, and the other half is roundups that link to them. A number that lives only on a vendor's page moves when the vendor wants it to, so this post carries every figure in the text, with the date it was read and the page it was read from, rather than sending you out to read it.

Botpress counts conversations. Its Plus plan is $150 a month billed annually for 250 conversations, and when you reach 95% of the quota a pack of 100 more is added for $65 and, in the pricing page's own words, cannot be disabled, because pausing conversations means pausing the product entirely. Team is $750 a month, billed annually, for 1,500. Every conversation counts, including the one where the visitor typed 'hello' and left. Tidio's Lyro is metered the same way at the low end: a Lyro conversation from $0.50, on top of the plan you are on, which starts at $24.17 a month. Freshchat meters sessions rather than conversations, at EUR 45 per 100 sessions for its Freddy AI agent, on top of seats from EUR 19 an agent.

Chatbase counts credits, and a credit is roughly a message rather than a conversation, weighted by the model that answered it. The tiers are free for 50 credits, $40 a month for 700, $150 for 4,000 and $500 for 15,000, with extra credits at $40 per 1,000. Chatbase does not publish how many credits a typical conversation uses, which matters, because the answer decides which tier you are really on.

Seats are the helpdesk inheritance. Zendesk and Freshchat both price the people on your team first and the AI second, so the bill has two meters, one that moves with headcount and one that moves with traffic. Docket takes the opposite view for its inbound sales agent and prices neither: Growth starts at $3,000 a month billed annually for up to 20,000 monthly visitors, Scale at $4,000 for up to 100,000, no seat fees and no conversation caps, and no trial. The unit is your traffic, whether or not anyone talks to the agent.

Cheapest depends on the unit and on the month, which is the point of the table. In the worked month Algomo's $100 is the lowest row, and we are the vendor, so check the arithmetic rather than take it. Move the volume and the order changes: at a hundred conversations a month Botpress's free tier costs nothing; at a hundred and fifty, Chatbase's $40 tier is the cheapest paid row if a conversation stays at four credits, because our lowest paid amount is $50; at ten thousand, a per-resolution vendor with no ceiling is the most expensive thing on the page and a flat amount is the cheapest, provided you accept the pause when it runs out. Nothing here is cheapest in every month.

Free plans, as published on 3 September 2026: Chatbase gives 50 credits a month and deletes an agent idle for 14 days; Tidio's free plan carries 50 conversations a month and 10 seats, with Lyro metered on top; Botpress's free tier takes no card and includes 100 conversations a month; tawk.to is free forever with unlimited seats for a live chat your own people answer, and its AI Assist is a $29 a month add-on with a free tier for limited volume, so the only fully free AI chatbot in this set is a limited one. Algomo's free plan covers twenty conversations a month that actually helped someone, the ones that went nowhere cost nothing at any volume, and, like Chatbase, an account with no conversations for 14 days is deleted. A five-person company with light traffic can run on any of these without paying; a site with real volume pays somebody, and the unit decides whom.

The second question after the price is what happens to the credits you did not use, and the third is what happens on the day you change your mind about the amount. Vendors answer both in the small print, when they answer at all, and the answers vary more than the prices do.

On rollover, the credit-selling agents mostly say no. Chatbase's subscription credits are per month, and the only credits that persist are the auto-recharge ones it sells at $40 per 1,000, which never expire. Botpress's pack conversations expire at month end. Tidio's limit refreshes every 30 days from the day you paid. Among the sales agents, Rox says plainly that unused Agent Actions do not roll over, and Clay is the exception that banks Data Credits up to twice a monthly allowance while resetting Actions every cycle. Algomo sits with Clay on its paid plans: credits roll over month to month and year to year and never expire, and what limits the balance is size rather than time. It can hold 40% more than the plan's credits, so a 2,000-credit plan tops out at 2,800, and a renewal at the ceiling fills you to it rather than past it.

On changing plan mid-month, the market has settled on one direction being instant and the other waiting. Tidio applies changes in both directions at the next billing cycle. Intercom says downgrades typically take effect at renewal. Chatbase is the outlier: a downgrade takes effect immediately and you get a prorated money credit against future invoices. Rox upgrades you at once and moves your renewal date to a month from that day. Algomo does the same in shape, without proration: raising the amount charges the new amount that day, restarts your month and carries your leftover credits; lowering it waits for your next renewal and you keep using what you have until then. Nothing is prorated in either direction, which is why every Algomo invoice is one of the plan prices. The one thing to read before going down a tier is the ceiling, since it is 40% above whatever plan you are on now: a smaller plan is a smaller buffer, and a balance above the new ceiling is trimmed to it.