The honest answer is that headline prices tell you almost nothing, because chatbot vendors charge on four different bases and the cheapest-looking one is often the most expensive at your volume.
Here is how to work out what it will actually cost you.
The four pricing models
Flat monthly, by message allowance. You pay one figure for up to a number of AI replies a month. Predictable. The risk is running out mid-month, so check what happens then — most tools either pause or charge overage.
Per seat. You pay per person with access to the inbox. Standard for support platforms. Irrelevant if nobody on your side is answering, which is why paying per seat with a team of one is usually the wrong shape.
Per resolution.You pay each time the bot resolves a conversation. Intercom's Fin is the best-known example, at roughly a dollar a resolution on top of the seat cost. The uncomfortable property: the better the bot works, the larger the bill.
Usage or token-based. You pay for what the underlying model consumes. Common with developer tools. Hardest to forecast unless you already know your traffic.
What the same volume costs under each
Take a small business with 500 chatbot conversations a month, one person, no support team.
- Flat, by allowance: one mid-tier plan. Same number every month.
- Per seat: one seat, but the AI is usually an add-on on top.
- Per seat + per resolution: seat cost plus several hundred conversations charged individually — often the largest total of the four.
- Usage-based: varies with conversation length; short answers are cheap, long ones are not.
The pattern is that per-resolution pricing is competitive at low volume and punishing at the volume where a chatbot is actually earning its keep.
The costs that are not on the pricing page
Setup time. A tool that needs a knowledge base assembling and conversation flows built costs you a day or two of your own time. One that trains itself from your website costs an hour. At any realistic value of your time, that gap is bigger than the difference between plans.
Maintenance.Every branch in a scripted bot is something to update when your prices change. Every gap in an AI bot's knowledge is something to fill — the question is whether the tool tells you where the gaps are, or leaves you to find out from an annoyed customer.
Overage. Find out what happens when you exceed the allowance. Pausing is honest but embarrassing; automatic overage charges are convenient but can produce a surprising invoice.
Branding.Most free plans put the vendor's name in the chat window. Removing it is usually the real reason people move to a paid plan.
Seats you do not need. If the pricing assumes a team, you are subsidising features you will never open.
What free plans actually include
Free tiers split into two kinds and the difference matters.
A free trial ends. Fourteen days, then a card screen. Useful for evaluating, useless for running.
A free plan does not end. It has a smaller allowance and usually vendor branding, but you can run a real chatbot on it indefinitely. For a small site with modest traffic, a free plan is sometimes the permanent answer rather than a stepping stone.
Ask which one you are being offered. The word free is used for both.
How to work out your number
- Estimate conversations, not visitors. A tiny fraction of visitors start a chat. Guessing from traffic overstates it badly.
- Start on a free plan for a month and read the actual count. This is more accurate than any calculator.
- Multiply by the model. Flat: pick the tier that covers it. Per resolution: multiply conversations by the per-resolution rate and add the seat cost.
- Add your own time at the rate you would charge a client. Setup and maintenance are real costs.
- Check the ceiling. What happens at twice your current volume? Under flat pricing you move a tier. Under per-resolution you double.
A rough guide by situation
- Solo owner, small site, modest traffic: a free plan is often genuinely enough. Paid tiers start being worth it when branding matters or the allowance runs short.
- Small business, steady enquiries: a flat monthly plan in the low tens. Predictability is worth more than the last few pounds.
- Ecommerce with real volume: watch per-resolution pricing closely. This is the volume at which it stops being the cheap option.
- Business with a support team: you are buying a support platform, and seats are the honest cost of that. Budget accordingly.
Where we sit. AI Chatbot is flat monthly by message allowance, with no per-seat and no per-resolution charge — there are no seats because nobody sits in an inbox. There is a free plan with no card and no countdown; if you exceed the allowance the chat pauses until the cycle resets, which we would rather tell you here than have you discover from a customer.
Related: Pricing · Free AI Chatbot · Compared with Tidio, Chatbase and Intercom