AI Chatbot Pricing in 2026: What Chatbots Cost, Per Resolution, Per Conversation and Custom
- Most chatbot platforms now charge for outcomes or usage on top of seats: Intercom charges from $0.99 per Fin outcome, Zendesk $1.50 to $2.00 per automated resolution, and Freshdesk $49 per 100 Freddy sessions 1,2,6.
- Entry plans range from free to about $150 a month, but the AI is usually metered separately, so the real cost depends on how many conversations the bot handles 1,3,4,5.
- The model underneath is cheap: OpenAI lists GPT-4o mini at $0.15 per million input tokens, and in our own test of real hotel agents a chat turn cost between $0.0008 and $0.005 depending on the model 7,10.
- Custom development is a different order of magnitude: Clutch puts the typical AI development project at $10,000 to $49,999, with an average of $120,595 across all AI projects 8.
- A human agent costs far more per contact: the US median customer service representative earns $44,770 a year, and a 2019 Gartner poll put live channel contacts at $8.01 each against about 10 cents for self-service 9,11.
AI chatbot pricing looks simple on a pricing page and gets complicated on the invoice, because most vendors now charge for what the AI does, per resolution, per conversation or per credit, on top of seats. This page sets out what eight major chatbot platforms charged on 29 October 2026, what the AI itself costs underneath, what custom development costs, how that compares with a human agent, and how agencies can price chatbots for clients.
· 14 sources · Published by Convocore, which sells white label AI agents. See method and limits.
The four ways AI chatbots are priced
On 29 October 2026 the eight platforms we checked used four pricing models, often combined. Per resolution or outcome: you pay when the AI closes a conversation without a human. Intercom charges from $0.99 per Fin outcome, Zendesk includes a few automated resolutions per agent and then charges $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay as you go, and HubSpot's Customer Agent spends credits, about 100 credits or $1 per conversation according to HubSpot's own Spanish blog 1,2,5.
Per conversation or session: Tidio's Lyro starts at $32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations, Botpress plans include 100, 250 or 1,500 conversations with packs of 100 for $50 to $65, and Freshdesk gives 500 free Freddy sessions once and then charges $49 per 100 3,4,6. Message credits: Chatbase plans include 700, 4,000 or 15,000 message credits a month, with extra credits at $40 per 1,000 12. Flat platform plus usage: a monthly plan that includes a credit allowance, with usage billed at cost after that, which is how Convocore prices 13.
Seats sit on top of most of these. Intercom, Zendesk, Freshdesk and HubSpot all charge per human agent seat, even though the AI agent itself needs no seat on Intercom 1,2,5,6.
Not like for like: a resolution only counts when the AI closes the conversation, while a session or conversation counts every chat. Seat fees are left out.
What the major platforms charge
The headline plan price tells you little on its own, so the table lists each platform's entry price next to how the AI part is billed. Where a vendor showed both monthly and annual prices we give monthly first.
| Platform | Plans and price | How the AI is billed | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intercom | Essential $29, Advanced $99, Expert $139 per seat a month ($19, $85, $132 annually) | Fin from $0.99 per outcome, once per conversation | Per seat; Fin needs none |
| Zendesk | Support Team $25, Suite Team $69, Suite Professional $149 per agent a month ($19, $55, $115 annually); Enterprise on request | 5 or 10 automated resolutions per agent included, then $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay as you go | Per agent |
| Tidio | Free, Starter $24.17, Growth from $49.17, Plus from $300 plus usage, Premium on request | Lyro from $32.50 a month for 50 conversations; 50 free conversations once on Free | 10 seats on lower plans |
| Chatbase | Hobby $32, Basic $120, Business $400 a month billed yearly; Enterprise custom | 700, 4,000 or 15,000 message credits a month; $40 per 1,000 extra | 2, 3 or 5 members |
| Botpress | Free, Plus $150, Team $750 a month billed yearly; Enterprise custom | 100, 250 or 1,500 conversations a month, each with $0.10 of AI usage; packs of 100 for $65 or $50 | 3 seats, unlimited on Team |
| HubSpot Service Hub | Free, Starter $20, Professional $100 per seat a month; Enterprise from $150; onboarding $1,500 to $3,500 | Customer Agent uses credits: 500, 3,000 or 5,000 a month included | Per seat |
| Freshdesk | Growth $19, Pro $55, Enterprise $89 per agent a month billed annually | 500 free Freddy sessions once, then $49 per 100; Copilot $29 per agent | Per agent |
| Convocore | Free, Starter $29, Pro $59, Business $99, White Label $199 a month | Credits included every month (5,000 on Starter to 60,000 on White Label), then usage at cost; no per-resolution fee | 1 to 10 seats included |
- ManyChat's pricing page blocked our access, Voiceflow shows no prices, and Salesloft (Drift) is sales only, so they are not in the table.
- Prices change often. Check the vendor's page before you buy; the date above is when we read them.
What the AI itself costs underneath
Whatever the platform charges, the language model underneath costs very little per message. OpenAI's API pricing lists GPT-4o mini at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens, GPT-5 nano at $0.05 and $0.40, and GPT-5 mini at $0.25 and $2.00 7.
In our own test of 9 models on 4 real hotel and venue agents, with the full prompts and knowledge bases, a single chat turn cost between $0.00078 and $0.00506 depending on the model 10. A conversation is usually a few turns, so the model cost of a typical chat is well under a cent. The rest of what you pay is the platform: hosting, the knowledge base, channels, integrations, analytics, and the vendor's margin.
Our own test with real prompts of several thousand tokens. Cost depends heavily on prompt and knowledge base size.
What custom chatbot development costs
Building a chatbot from scratch with a development agency costs far more than a subscription. Clutch's AI pricing guide, based on its client reviews and updated September 2026, puts the typical AI development project at $10,000 to $49,999, the average project at $120,594.55, the average monthly cost at $11,553.45 and the typical timeline at 10 months. Those figures cover all AI projects, not chatbots alone 8.
One agency's published estimates give a sense of how scope drives cost: $3,000 to $15,000 for a rule-based bot, $30,000 to $100,000 for an LLM-powered one, $50,000 to $150,000 with retrieval over your documents, and $80,000 to $300,000 or more for voice. That is vendor marketing from a firm that sells the work 14.
Different things: a subscription, a one-off build and a salary. Shown together only to set the scale.
AI chatbot versus a human agent
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median customer service representative at $44,770 a year, or $21.53 an hour, in May 2025 9. Gartner's 2019 poll of service leaders, as reported by DestinationCRM, found live channels such as phone and chat cost an average of $8.01 per contact, against about 10 cents for self-service 11.
Against those figures, even the most expensive per-resolution price in our table, $2.00, is a fraction of a live contact. The catch is that a resolution fee only buys value when the bot actually resolves the question, which is why testing the bot on real questions matters more than the headline price.
How agencies can price AI chatbots for clients
Agencies that resell chatbots usually charge a setup fee and a monthly fee per client. We found no reliable survey of what agencies charge, so instead of quoting a market rate, here is the cost side you need to price above.
On Convocore's White Label plan, $199 a month covers 20 client accounts, so the platform fee is about $9.95 per client at full use, and the plan includes 60,000 usage credits a month. That is our arithmetic, before your time, setup and any usage above the allowance.
- Charge for the work as well as the software: building, training on the client's data, testing and monthly upkeep.
- Price per outcome the client cares about (leads, bookings, questions answered) rather than per message.
- Put usage caps in the contract so a busy month does not erase the margin.
What the evidence does not show
- Vendor prices change often and some pages label monthly and annual prices unclearly; we note where we inferred which was which 1,5,12.
- The cost per conversation chart mixes resolutions (only successful AI closures) with sessions and conversations (every chat), so it is not a like-for-like ranking.
- HubSpot's credits per conversation come from HubSpot's Spanish blog, not its pricing page 5.
- Clutch's development figures cover all AI projects, not chatbots only, and do not state how many reviews they rest on 8.
- The Gartner cost per contact figures are from 2019 and reach us through a news report; Gartner's page blocked our access 11.
- We found no reliable survey of what agencies charge clients for AI chatbots, so we give the cost side only.
Choosing on price
Compare the cost of the conversations you expect, not the plan price: multiply your monthly chats by the AI charge in the table and add seats. Then test the bot on your real questions, because a cheap bot that hands everything to a human is the expensive one.
If you are an agency, the cheapest path to a margin is a flat platform with client accounts and usage at cost, which is how Convocore's white label plans are built. We sell them, so check the numbers yourself.
Method and limits
- Every vendor price was read on the vendor's own pricing page on 29 October 2026. Pages that blocked us or showed no prices are listed as such and left out.
- Per conversation figures marked 'our arithmetic' divide a listed pack price by the number of conversations in it.
- Convocore's prices are read from the same pricing catalog as /pricing, so they update with it.
- Convocore sells an AI chatbot and agent platform, so it has a commercial interest in this comparison. If you find an error, write to support@convocore.ai and we will correct it.
Sources
- Intercom pricingPrimary sourceIntercom. Read 29 October 2026.Monthly prices are from the page's structured price data; the visible text showed annual prices without a label.
- Zendesk pricingPrimary sourceZendesk. Read 29 October 2026.
- Tidio pricingPrimary sourceTidio. Read 29 October 2026.No annual prices shown.
- Botpress pricingPrimary sourceBotpress. Read 29 October 2026.Only annual billing prices were shown.
- HubSpot. Read 29 October 2026 (credits guide updated 27 February 2026).Credits per conversation (100) and credit value ($0.01) are from blog.hubspot.es/service/creditos-ia-hubspot-guia.
- Freshdesk pricingPrimary sourceFreshworks. Read 29 October 2026.Only annual billing prices were shown.
- API pricingPrimary sourceOpenAI. Read 29 October 2026.Standard tier prices per million tokens. openai.com/api/pricing blocked us; this is OpenAI's documentation page.
- AI Pricing GuideSecondary reportClutch. Updated 21 September 2026.Based on Clutch client reviews; the number of reviews is not stated. Covers all AI development, not chatbots only.
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics. May 2025 pay data; page modified 27 August 2026.
- Convocore. 12 August 2026.Our own test: 9 models, 4 hotel and venue agents, 3 questions each.
- Gartner Survey Finds Self-Service InsufficientSecondary reportDestinationCRM, reporting a Gartner poll. 26 November 2019.Gartner's own pages blocked our access. The figures are from 2019.
- Chatbase pricingPrimary sourceChatbase. Read 29 October 2026.Prices billed yearly; the struck-through higher prices are probably monthly but are not labelled.
- Convocore pricingPrimary sourceConvocore. Read 29 October 2026.Our own prices, read from the pricing catalog.
- AI chatbot development costCommissioned researchSpace-O Technologies. Updated 21 October 2026.Estimates published by a development agency that sells this work.
Questions
How much does an AI chatbot cost?
From free to about $150 a month for an entry plan on the platforms we checked, plus the AI usage, which is billed per resolution ($0.99 to $2.00), per conversation (about $0.49 to $0.65 in packs) or in credits. A custom-built chatbot from an agency typically costs $10,000 to $49,999, per Clutch.
What are typical chatbot costs per month?
For a small business, the plan fee plus AI usage. For example, Tidio's Lyro starts at $32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations, and Botpress Plus is $150 a month for 250 conversations billed yearly. Seat-based platforms such as Intercom, Zendesk and Freshdesk add a fee per human agent.
How much does chatbot development cost?
Clutch's 2026 guide puts the typical AI development project at $10,000 to $49,999, with an average of $120,595 across all AI projects and a typical timeline of 10 months. Using a platform instead of a custom build cuts that to a monthly subscription.
Is per-resolution pricing better than per conversation?
Per resolution only charges when the AI closes the conversation, so you pay for results, but each resolution costs more ($0.99 to $2.00 in our check). Per conversation is cheaper per chat but charges for every chat, including ones the bot hands to a human.
How much does the AI model itself cost?
Very little. OpenAI lists GPT-4o mini at $0.15 per million input tokens. In our test on real hotel agents, a chat turn cost $0.0008 to $0.005 depending on the model.
How should an agency price AI chatbots for clients?
Above the cost of the platform, the usage and your time, usually as a setup fee plus a monthly fee per client, tied to outcomes the client values such as leads or bookings. On Convocore White Label the platform fee works out to about $10 per client at full use, before usage and time.