How Much Does an AI Chatbot Cost in 2026? Real Prices per Conversation
Short answer: a customer support AI chatbot costs $0.75 to $0.99 per resolved conversation on pay-per-result tools, or a flat plan from $32 a month on credit-based builders, verified on vendor pages in October 2026. Intercom Fin charges $0.99 per outcome with a $49/month minimum (50 outcomes included), Help Scout's AI add-on $0.75 per resolution, and Chatbase starts at $32 a month billed yearly for 700 message credits. At 1,000 resolved conversations a month, that is about $990 on Fin and $750 on Help Scout before seats.
The bill no longer follows your headcount, the shift our per-seat vs flat pricing explainer describes across software. It follows how many questions the bot closes, so the same tool can cost $99 one month and $4,950 the next. The table below prices five real setups at three volumes, for a small business with 2 support agents.
What an AI chatbot costs at 100, 1,000 and 5,000 conversations a month
| Setup | 100 a month | 1,000 a month | 5,000 a month | Billing basis | Hidden costs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chatbase (Hobby, Basic, Business) | $32 | $120 | $600 | Monthly message credits, plan billed yearly | Credits per reply vary by AI model; branding removal $1,188 a year |
| Help Scout Standard (2 users) + AI Answers | $125 | $800 | $3,800 | $0.75 per resolution + $25 per user a month billed annually | Needs a paid Help Scout plan |
| Intercom Fin on your current helpdesk | $99 | $990 | $4,950 | $0.99 per outcome, no seats | $49 monthly minimum |
| Intercom Fin + Intercom helpdesk (2 seats) | $137 | $1,028 | $4,988 | $0.99 per outcome + $19 per seat a month (new-customer price, Essential list $29) | Copilot $29 per agent a month billed annually |
| Gorgias Helpdesk + AI Agent (Basic, Pro, Advanced) | $182 | $1,686 | $7,932 | Plan bundle billed annually, then $1.50 per extra automated interaction | Ticket overage past the plan's allowance |
Sorted by cost at 1,000 conversations a month. All figures are our arithmetic on prices read on each vendor's pricing page on 28 October 2026. Chatbase rows assume 4 AI replies per conversation on a 1-credit model; the Gorgias rows use the plan whose ticket allowance covers the volume.
Dupple data: at 1,000 resolved conversations a month, the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive setup in this table is $1,566 a month, or $18,792 a year (our arithmetic on the five vendor pages above, October 2026).
How we worked out these numbers
The scenario is a small business with 2 human agents whose bot fully resolves 100, 1,000 or 5,000 conversations a month. Where a vendor has a monthly/yearly toggle we used yearly billing for subscriptions; usage fees (outcomes, resolutions, extra interactions) are billed monthly on every tool.
The math, shown once:
- Fin: 1,000 outcomes x Fin's per-outcome rate = $990. At 100 outcomes, $99 clears the $49 minimum. Adding 2 Intercom seats at the $19 new-customer price adds $38 (at the $29 Essential list price it would be $58).
- Help Scout: 1,000 x $0.75 = $750, plus 2 Standard users x $25 = $50, so $800.
- Chatbase: 1,000 conversations x 4 replies = 4,000 credits, the exact allowance of Basic at $120. At 5,000 conversations, 20,000 credits exceed Business's 15,000, and the extra 5,000 cost $40 per 1,000 through auto-recharge, so $400 + $200.
- Gorgias: Pro with AI Agent is $471 a month billed annually and includes 190 automated interactions; the other 810 at $1.50 add $1,215, so $1,686.
What does per-resolution pricing mean?
Per-resolution pricing means you pay only when the AI closes a conversation without a human. Each vendor defines that moment differently, and the definition decides your bill more than the headline rate.
Intercom Fin counts an outcome when a customer confirms the issue is solved, when they ask for nothing more after Fin's answer, or when Fin completes a workflow, handoffs included. It charges at most once per conversation, refunds the outcome if the conversation is reopened, and charges nothing if the customer asks for a human. Spending limits and alerts cap the risk.
Help Scout counts a resolution when the customer gets an AI reply and does not escalate, search the knowledge base, ask more questions or say they need more help. You can set a monthly cap; when it is hit, AI Answers switches off until the next cycle. That is predictable, but a busy month can leave customers without the bot.
Chatbase does not charge per resolution at all. Every request to the AI model costs credits: 1 per message on its Auto model, 2 on mid-tier models such as Claude 5.5 Sonnet, up to 5 on Claude 5.5 Opus, per its models comparison. An action, such as checking calendar slots, adds a second request and doubles the credits for that reply. You pay for conversations the bot fails too.
Gorgias bills "automated interactions" inside a bundle, then $1.50 for each one past the plan's allowance.
Intercom Fin: the per-outcome benchmark
Fin's pricing page lists $0.99 per outcome on two routes. On your current helpdesk (Zendesk, Salesforce, Freshdesk and others), Fin costs a $49/month minimum that includes 50 outcomes, with no seat costs and no setup or integration fees. With Intercom's own helpdesk, the same rate applies and seats are billed on top at $19 per seat a month as shown on that page; Intercom's main pricing page advertises that new customers save 35%, so confirm the seat price you will renew at.
The upside is clean scaling: on the existing-helpdesk route there are no seats and no platform fee, so a team on Zendesk can add Fin without a migration. The weakness is that every busy month bills in full. At 5,000 outcomes you pay $4,950, more than the Help Scout setup by $1,150.
A 14-day trial needs no card. Startups with under $10M raised and 15 employees or fewer can apply to an Early Stage Program that gives a year of Fin plus 93% off Intercom.
Help Scout AI Answers: the lowest per-resolution rate here
Help Scout's pricing page lists its AI add-on, shown on the card as Envoy, at $0.75 per resolution billed monthly, with pre-paid discounts available. It sits on top of a paid plan: Standard is $25 per user a month on annual billing, Plus $45 and Pro $75, and the page labels the annual discount at 16%.
New accounts get 3 months of free, unlimited AI resolutions from the day the account is created. That is the longest free window in this comparison, enough to measure your real resolution volume before paying anything for the bot.
The catch: the free Help Scout plan (5 users, 1 inbox, 1 Docs site, 100 contacts a month) does not list the AI add-on, so the bot always comes with paid seats. For a team of 10, Standard seats alone are $250 a month before any resolution, which makes Help Scout a better fit for small teams than for large ones. Our helpdesk software ranking compares it with the other inboxes.
Chatbase: flat plans, credit math
Chatbase sells three self-serve plans on yearly billing: Hobby at $32 a month with 700 message credits and 2 members, Basic at $120 with 4,000 credits and 3 members, and Business at $400 with 15,000 credits and 5 members. On monthly billing the same plans are $40, $150 and $500. Each plan includes 1 agent and a 7-day trial; Enterprise is quoted.
At our scenario, Chatbase is the cheapest setup at every volume, by a wide margin. Two caveats keep that from being the whole story. First, Hobby does not include API access or the helpdesk integrations (Zendesk, Intercom, Help Scout, Freshdesk and more start on Basic), so a bot that hands off to a human needs Basic. Second, Chatbase is a chatbot, not a helpdesk: the humans who take over still need an inbox, and that cost sits outside this row (our live chat software ranking prices those inboxes).
Subscription credits renew on the 1st of each calendar month and unused ones do not carry over. Auto-recharge credits cost $40 per 1,000 and do not expire.
Gorgias: a helpdesk for online stores with AI on every plan
Gorgias prices a helpdesk by ticket volume, never per agent, with an AI Agent bundle added on. On annual billing with AI Agent, Basic is $77 a month (300 tickets, 30 automated interactions), Pro $471 (2,000 tickets, 190 interactions) and Advanced $1,227 (5,000 tickets, 530 interactions). On monthly billing those are $90, $550 and $1,430, and Starter is $40, monthly only.
Gorgias prints two AI rates, and they fit together. Its comparison table prices interactions inside a bundle at $1.00 on Starter, $0.90 on Basic and Pro, and $0.85 on Advanced; each interaction past the bundle costs $1.50. At high volume the overage rate dominates, which is why Gorgias is the most expensive row at 1,000 and 5,000 conversations. The price buys a full helpdesk built for Shopify brands, with AI actions such as cancellations and discounts listed in its comparison table, so it suits stores that would otherwise pay for a helpdesk and a bot separately.
What hidden costs come with an AI chatbot?
The per-conversation rate is rarely the full bill. Every item below has a figure on the vendor's own page:
- Monthly minimums: Fin on another helpdesk costs at least $49 a month.
- Seats for the humans: $25 per user a month on Help Scout Standard (annual), $19 per seat on Intercom's helpdesk as shown on Fin's page, which is Intercom's new-customer price: Essential lists at $29 per seat billed annually, and Intercom's pricing page shows new customers saving 35%.
- AI help for agents: Intercom Copilot is $29 per agent a month billed annually or $35 monthly; 10 conversations per agent a month are free.
- Analytics add-ons: Intercom's Pro add-on starts at $100 a month with 500 analyzed conversations and 6,000 credits; extra credits are $0.01 each.
- Voice: Fin Voice is sold through sales at $1.99 per voice outcome, about double the chat rate.
- Branding: removing "Powered by Chatbase" costs $1,188 a year on yearly billing.
- More bots or data: Chatbase charges $300 a year per extra agent and $300 a year per extra 10 MB of training text.
- Overages: Gorgias charges $0.40 per ticket past the limit on Starter and Basic, and $36 per 100 tickets on Pro and Advanced.
- Extra inboxes: Help Scout charges $10 a month per extra inbox on annual billing, $12 monthly.
Is there a free AI chatbot for a website?
Mostly no, for support use, but trials are generous. Help Scout gives 3 months of free AI resolutions, Fin a 14-day trial, Chatbase 7 days, and Gorgias a free trial with no card on most plans.
Toolradar data: Toolradar, our software directory, tracks 91 chatbots as of 28 October 2026, and 56% of them are free, freemium or open source. Among the 24 that publish a paid price, the median cheapest paid plan is $30.50 a month, close to Chatbase's entry plan (Toolradar chatbot ranking). Intercom is the most cross-shopped chatbot there, listed as an alternative to 107 other tools. Our free AI chatbot roundup covers the free consumer assistants, which answer you, not your customers.
Fin vs Help Scout vs Chatbase: which costs less at my volume?
Chatbase costs least at every volume we priced, as long as you accept credit math and run a separate inbox for handoffs. Between the two per-resolution tools with their own helpdesk, Help Scout beats Fin plus Intercom seats at every volume, because its rate is 24 cents lower per resolution. The order flips for a team that already pays for Zendesk or Salesforce: there, Fin needs no new seats, while Help Scout means moving the whole helpdesk.
Scale changes the gap. At 100 conversations the four non-Gorgias setups sit within $105 of each other; at 5,000 they are $4,388 apart. If your volume is small, pick on features and handoff quality. If it is large, the rate per conversation decides the budget. Our AI customer support tools ranking compares the features behind those prices, and the small-business support software guide covers the helpdesk side.
Is it cheaper to build my own chatbot?
Building your own swaps a per-conversation fee for model API costs, hosting and engineering time, and the time is the expensive part. Our Python chatbot tutorial walks through a basic bot, but handoff to humans, analytics, spending caps and channel integrations are what the vendors above charge for, and each is work you would rebuild and maintain. If you go hosted but want control over the answers, our guide to training an AI chatbot on your own data covers the setup work, and the chatbot builder comparison lists no-code options.
How much does an AI chatbot cost per month for a small business?
For a small business with 2 agents and 1,000 resolved conversations a month, expect $120 to $1,686 a month depending on the setup, per the table above. The cheapest full support stack (bot plus human inbox from one vendor) in our comparison is Help Scout at $800; the cheapest bot alone is Chatbase Basic at $120. For a broader shortlist by use case, see our AI chatbots for business ranking.
Methodology
We read each vendor's pricing page, structured price data and pricing FAQ on 28 October 2026 and priced one scenario: 2 human agents, 100, 1,000 and 5,000 conversations a month resolved by the bot. Every total is our arithmetic on printed prices, with subscriptions on yearly billing and usage fees monthly. Zendesk and HubSpot also sell AI agents; check the current price on their sites. We review these prices every 60 days.
FAQ
How much does an AI chatbot cost in 2026?
For customer support, AI chatbots cost $0.75 to $0.99 per resolved conversation on per-resolution tools (Help Scout and Intercom Fin) or a flat plan from $32 a month billed yearly on Chatbase, per vendor pages read in October 2026. At 1,000 resolutions a month that is $750 on Help Scout before seats and $990 on Fin.
What is the cheapest AI chatbot for customer support?
Chatbase Basic at $120 a month billed yearly was the cheapest setup in our 1,000-conversation scenario, at 4 replies per conversation on a 1-credit model. It is a bot only; the human inbox is a separate cost.
Is Intercom Fin worth its per-outcome price?
Fin's main advantage is that it runs on Zendesk, Salesforce and other helpdesks with no seat costs, so you avoid a migration. If you are open to switching helpdesks, Help Scout's AI add-on costs less per resolution.
Does Help Scout charge for AI Answers on the free plan?
The free plan does not list the AI add-on, so the bot needs Standard at $25 per user a month on annual billing or a higher plan. New accounts get 3 months of free AI resolutions.
How many conversations do Chatbase credits cover?
It depends on the model and the number of replies. On a 1-credit model, Hobby's 700 credits cover 175 conversations of 4 replies; on a 2-credit model, half that. Actions that call tools double the credits for that reply.
Why do AI chatbot quotes vary so much?
Vendors bill different units: outcomes, resolutions, message credits or automated interactions in a bundle. At 5,000 conversations a month our five setups range from $600 to $7,932.
Can I cap my AI chatbot spending?
Yes on the per-resolution tools. Fin offers spending limits and alerts, and Help Scout lets you set a monthly cap after which AI Answers switches off. Chatbase stops at your credit allowance unless you enable auto-recharge.
Bottom line
Price the bot on your own conversation volume, not the headline rate. Under a few hundred conversations a month, the setups sit close together, so pick on handoff quality. Above 1,000, the per-conversation rate drives the bill: Chatbase is cheapest if you can live with credit math, Help Scout is the cheapest bot and inbox from one vendor, and Fin is the one to beat when you want to keep your current helpdesk. Prices were read on 28 October 2026 and move often.
Cite this: Dupple, "How Much Does an AI Chatbot Cost in 2026? Real Prices per Conversation", November 2026.
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