The best Chatbase alternatives depend on what you want the AI agent to be: something you build and tune, something inside a help desk, or one agent that answers every channel on your own AI key. Here are six options, with how each one charges according to its own website, and who each one suits.
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Chatbase made it simple to put an AI agent on a website that answers from your own content. You connect websites, documents, text, Q&A pairs or a Notion workspace, give the agent a role and guardrails without code, and deploy it on your site, Meta apps, Slack and email, with voice and telephony on the higher plans. It has grown into a platform for customer experience, with support, sales and product guidance agents, actions such as looking up an order, and a help desk where people and the AI work from the same conversation.
The search for Chatbase alternatives usually starts with message credits. At the time of writing, paid plans start at $40 a month on Hobby with 700 credits, then Standard and Pro with larger allowances, and Chatbase's FAQ lists how many credits a response uses by model, from one on most models to six on the largest. It also says credits renew on the 1st of each month, and that an agent shows an unavailable message when they run out. Extra agents are an add-on. For one agent on one site, that is easy to reason about. For several agents, a bigger model or a busy month, it is a balance to watch.
The second reason is what the buyer is actually trying to build. Some want more control than Chatbase gives: a visual builder, custom workflows and an engineering team behind it. Some want less: an AI agent inside a help desk that a support team already runs. And some want a different shape entirely, one agent that answers the website chat, the support@ mailbox, texts, phone calls and social DMs, with the model on their own key and no credits at all.
This list covers each of those directions. Botpress and Voiceflow are AI agent platforms for teams that want to build. Intercom Fin is an AI agent that sits in a help desk. Tidio is live chat with an AI agent for small businesses. Chatfuel is for businesses that sell through WhatsApp and Instagram. Bold Agent Kit is one agent on every channel, on your own key, for $25 a month. Each entry says how it charges, from its own site, and who should choose it.
None of these is about whether Chatbase answers well. Each comes from how it publishes its plans and its scope, and whether that shape fits how many agents you run and how busy they are.
Chatbase's FAQ lists how many credits a response uses by model, from one credit on most models to six on the largest. Choosing a more capable model for difficult questions means the same monthly allowance covers fewer replies. The plan has to be sized with the model in mind as well as the number of customers, and changing model is also a billing decision.
According to its FAQ, credits renew on the 1st of each month, and when they are used up the agent shows a message saying it is currently unavailable. Auto-recharge is a published add-on: at the time of writing, its published price is $40 per 1,000 credits. A launch, a sale or a delivery problem has to be planned around the balance, or around the recharge.
At the time of writing, Chatbase's published price for an extra agent is $25 a month, and workspace seats rise by plan. A business with several brands, or an agency with a dozen clients, adds a line for each agent and sizes the credits across all of them. For a single agent that barely matters; for many, it becomes the main thing to manage.
Chatbase's pricing page lists voice and telephony from the Standard plan, at $150 a month at the time of writing, alongside the help desk and outbound campaigns. A business that wants the same agent to answer the phone as well as the website is choosing its plan by channel as well as by volume.
Three questions separate the options quickly. The answers depend less on features than on who will build the agent and how many of them you need.
Platforms such as Botpress and Voiceflow give a team a canvas, workflows, code and integrations, and reward the time spent on them. Others ask you for material and instructions and do the rest. Be honest about who will maintain the agent in six months. A founder with an afternoon a month needs something different from a CX team with a conversation designer.
Chatbase counts message credits. The alternatives count conversations, outcomes, contacts, or nothing, with the model on your own key billed by the provider at cost. Check which unit applies, whether a bigger model costs more in that unit, and what happens when an allowance runs out mid-month. The answer decides whether you choose the model the job needs or the one the plan can afford.
One agent on one website is the simple case, and most tools handle it. Several brands, several stores or an agency with clients is different: check whether each extra agent is priced, whether each gets its own knowledge base and channels, and whether a client can log in to their own agent and see nothing else. That question alone can change the order of this list.
Bold Agent Kit is first because we make it, and it is built for the buyer who wants many agents on every channel without credits. The rest are ordered by how closely each matches a typical Chatbase buyer, someone putting an AI agent on their own content: agent-building platforms first, then an AI agent that lives in a help desk, then live chat with an AI agent for small businesses, then a tool for WhatsApp and Instagram sellers. Each says when it is the better choice.
We make Bold Agent Kit, which is why it is first on this list. Every other entry is described from its own website, including when it is the better choice.
Bold Agent Kit is unlimited AI agents on one account, each answering email, a website chat widget, texts to your own number, phone calls and DMs on Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, Viber, Slack, Discord, Bluesky, Reddit and X. You build an agent by giving it material: documents as PDF or Word, Q&A pairs, your prices, hours and lead times as data points, and the pages of your own site it may link to, which are read, stored and linked verbatim. Then you write its instructions in plain sentences, including when it should stop and fetch a person.
There are no credits. Each agent runs on your own API key with one of sixteen providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Mistral, DeepSeek and OpenRouter, or a model you host through Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, and the provider bills you at cost. Choose the largest model for a difficult job and nothing on our side counts it. Each agent has its own knowledge base, channels and analytics, content from one is never used to answer for another, and a client can be invited into their own agent with a login that shows nothing else.
Choose it when the credits, the per-agent price or the channel list are what you want to leave. The plan is $25 a month or $200 a year for the account, with a 7-day free trial and no free plan. It is not a builder: there is no canvas, no custom code and no API. It is not a ticketing help desk either, and it does not host a help centre. If you want to design flows and wire in your own systems, Botpress and Voiceflow are built for that.
Botpress describes itself as an AI agent platform for customer support. It offers Botpress Studio, a visual agent builder, alongside a natural-language builder, knowledge bases and tables, and Botpress Desk, an AI help desk. Its site says agents can process refunds, update accounts, correct orders and run multi-step workflows, with escalation rules that hand a ticket to a person along with its context. It works on top of an existing help desk, naming Intercom, Zendesk, HubSpot and Salesforce, or as a standalone one, and it deploys to web chat, WhatsApp, Slack and other channels.
Botpress prices by conversations rather than by seats or per message. At the time of writing, there is a free plan with 100 conversations, three seats and three AI agents, and paid plans start at $150 a month, billed annually, on Plus, with 250 conversations a month, unlimited AI agents and an AI usage allowance included. Its pricing page defines a conversation as an exchange with at least two messages from the customer in a billing month, and adds packs of 100 automatically as you approach the limit.
Choose Botpress when you want the agent to take real actions in your own systems, and you have someone who will build and maintain those workflows. It is a natural step up from Chatbase for a team that has outgrown a no-code agent, with a free plan to prototype on. It asks more of you than Chatbase does, and gives you more control in return.
Voiceflow describes itself as the AI agent platform that helps CX teams own every customer interaction, and it names its users plainly: CX and support leaders, engineers, enterprise teams and conversation designers. It lists web, app, WhatsApp, SMS and voice as channels, integrations with Zendesk, Salesforce, HubSpot, Shopify, Airtable, Google Sheets, Gmail and Make, and a choice of large model providers or your own model.
Voiceflow does not publish plan prices on its pricing page at the time of writing. It offers agencies and partners a free trial with usage-based billing, and asks businesses to book a demo or request pricing. That suits a buyer with a procurement process more than one who wants a monthly number before speaking to anyone.
Choose Voiceflow when the agent is a product in its own right, owned by a CX team with conversation designers and engineers, which needs voice and chat designed together and connected to systems such as Zendesk or Salesforce. It asks for more building than Chatbase does, deliberately so, and it is built for the teams who want exactly that.
Fin is Intercom's AI agent, built to work inside a help desk. It works natively with Intercom's own help desk and, according to Fin's site, with Salesforce, HubSpot, Freshdesk and others, and its channels page lists voice, email, live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, SMS, Slack and Discord. Fin's site says it can update accounts and process payments and refunds, so it acts on the systems behind the conversation as well as answering.
Fin charges per outcome rather than per message. At the time of writing, its published price is $0.99 per outcome, charged once per conversation, where an outcome is a resolution, a hand-off Fin completes through a Procedure, or a completed workflow, with a separate, higher price for qualifying a sales lead. Intercom's own help desk plans start at $29 per seat a month, billed annually, and there is a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
Choose Intercom Fin when your Chatbase agent has become the front of a real support operation, with a team working tickets behind it, and you would rather pay for outcomes than for credits. The unit changes from each reply to each resolved conversation. The side-by-side with Bold Agent Kit covers how the two differ.
Tidio combines live chat, a help desk with ticketing, the Lyro AI Agent and Flows for automation, for small businesses and online stores, and connects to Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace and more than a hundred other tools. According to Tidio's site, Lyro learns from your support content and works only with the content and guidance you provide, and its Smart Actions can automate order updates and lead qualification. When a question is outside Lyro's knowledge, it creates a ticket for a person.
At the time of writing, Tidio has a free plan, and paid plans start at $24.17 a month with 100 billable conversations, the ones that include a message from a human agent. Lyro is sold separately by the Lyro conversation, with the add-on starting at $32.50 a month. There is a 7-day free trial with no credit card required.
Choose Tidio when you used Chatbase mainly as a website chatbot and want the rest of a small support setup around it: people replying in live chat, tickets for the questions the AI cannot answer, and store integrations. It swaps a builder for a platform. The comparison page covers how it differs from Bold Agent Kit.
Chatfuel describes itself as a lightweight tool built for WhatsApp and Instagram-first businesses, combining client messaging, booking, follow-ups and automation, and it names small businesses, creators, beauty professionals, clinics and coaches as the people it is for. Its plans cover Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp with a shared inbox, automated replies, a flow builder and templates, and the AI PRO plan adds an AI sales manager, an AI knowledge base, AI-powered automations, broadcasts and funnels for lead qualification.
At the time of writing, Chatfuel Light is free with no credit card required, and the AI PRO plan's published price is $49 a month on monthly billing, with a discount for yearly billing and usage limits that apply. For a business whose customers are already in its DMs, that is a simple thing to try.
Choose Chatfuel when your Chatbase agent was mainly answering WhatsApp and Instagram, and you want a tool built around those platforms, with lead qualification and broadcasts, rather than around a website. Its plans list three platforms, so it is a narrower tool than Chatbase in channels and a more focused one for selling in the DM.
Who each tool suits, the channels it names and how it charges, as each website stated them when we checked. For a Chatbase customer the pricing column is where the options differ most: credits, conversations, outcomes, contacts, or your own key.
| Tool | Best for | Channels | How it charges |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bold Agent Kit | many agents on every channel, on your own AI key | Email, website chat, texts, phone calls and eleven social DM platforms | $25 a month or $200 a year for the account, with unlimited agents; your own AI key at cost, and no credits |
| Botpress | teams that want to build agents that act in their own systems | Web chat, WhatsApp, Slack and more through its integrations | By conversations a month, with an AI usage allowance included; free plan, and paid plans start at $150 a month, billed annually |
| Voiceflow | CX teams with designers and engineers to build agents | Web, app, WhatsApp, SMS and voice | Not published on its pricing page; businesses request pricing, and agencies and partners get a free trial with usage-based billing |
| Intercom Fin | support teams that want the agent inside a help desk | Chat, email, voice, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, SMS, Slack and Discord | Per Fin outcome, plus per-seat plans if you use Intercom's help desk; $0.99 per outcome at the time of writing |
| Tidio | small stores that want live chat and an AI agent in one widget | Live chat, email, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp | Plans by billable conversations, with Lyro AI conversations sold separately; free plan, and paid plans start at $24.17 a month |
| Chatfuel | WhatsApp and Instagram-first small businesses | Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp | A free Light plan; the AI PRO plan is $49 a month, less on yearly billing, with usage limits |
Chatbase itself has a free plan with 50 message credits a month, and paid plans start at $40 a month at the time of writing, counted in message credits, with extra agents as an add-on. Botpress, Tidio and Chatfuel also publish free plans; Voiceflow gives business pricing on request; Intercom Fin charges per outcome. Bold Agent Kit is one flat price for the account with the model on your own key, and it is not a builder or a ticketing help desk.
We checked each tool’s public website on 11 September 2026 for this page. Plans and features change, so check each vendor’s own site for the current detail. Product names are trademarks of their owners, and Bold Agent Kit is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.
If you want to build more than Chatbase lets you, Botpress is the natural next step, with a free plan, a visual builder and agents that take actions in your systems, priced by conversation. If the agent is owned by a CX team with conversation designers and engineers, and voice matters as much as chat, Voiceflow is built for that team. If your agent has become the front door of a support operation that works in tickets, Intercom Fin puts it inside a help desk and charges per outcome instead of per message. And if Chatbase is doing the job and the credits fit your volume, staying where you are is a reasonable answer.
If you are a small store that wants live chat, tickets and an AI agent in one widget with a free plan, Tidio is closer to that. If your customers are in WhatsApp and Instagram, Chatfuel is built around those DMs. If you want several agents, each answering the website chat, email, texts, phone calls and eleven DM platforms from its own knowledge base, with the model on your own key and no credits, for $25 a month for the account, that is Bold Agent Kit.
Whatever you choose, rebuild one agent first. Load the same sources your Chatbase agent learns from, ask it the twenty questions your customers ask most, and compare the answers before you move every site and every channel.
Each agent uses a model on your own API key, in the same way it sends from your own mailbox and your own phone number. Sixteen providers are supported: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI and Mistral; DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, Qwen and MiniMax; Groq, Together, Fireworks and OpenRouter; and Ollama or any other OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host yourself.
Bring your own credentials and you own the whole stack: your model provider, your mailboxes, your carrier, your CRM. We charge for the software and nothing else — no token markup, no metering, no credit packs — so your provider bills you direct at their rates, usually a few dollars a month per agent.
OpenAI
Anthropic
Gemini
xAI
Mistral
DeepSeek
GLM
Kimi
Qwen
MiniMax
Groq
Together
Fireworks
OpenRouter
Ollama
Any OpenAI APINo seat tiers, no credit packs, no per-agent or per-channel pricing, and nothing held back behind an enterprise call.
| Agents | |
|---|---|
| How many | Unlimited — one per business, brand or job |
| Shared brain | The same identity, instructions and knowledge on every channel |
| Knowledge base | Documents, Q&A pairs, data points and pages of your own site |
| Isolation | One agent's content is never used to reply for another |
| Client seats | Invite a client into one agent, with their own login |
| Channels | |
| As many mailboxes per agent as you connect, rotated by campaigns | |
| Text messages | Nine providers — Twilio, Telnyx, SimpleTexting, Plivo, Vonage, Sinch, Bandwidth, MessageBird, ClickSend |
| Phone calls | Answering and dialling, with recordings and transcripts |
| Transcription | Google, or Deepgram nova-3 on your own key |
| Voices | Google, Amazon Polly and ElevenLabs, or your own ElevenLabs / Fish Audio account |
| Voice cloning | Record a voice in the browser and clone it on your ElevenLabs or Fish Audio key |
| Website chat | A widget on your site with your colour, image and greeting |
| Social DMs | Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, Viber, Slack, Discord, Bluesky, Reddit, X |
| Inbox | |
| One list | Every channel's conversations together, newest first, tagged by channel |
| Filters | By channel, by mailbox or number, or by agent |
| Takeover | Reply yourself and the agent stands down on that thread |
| Hand back | Return the thread to the agent when you are done |
| Campaigns | |
| Multichannel sequences | Email, text and call steps in one campaign, each with its own timing |
| Send conditions | Send a step only if they opened, did not open, clicked or did not click |
| Schedule | The days, hours and time zone anything may be sent |
| Stop rules | A reply, a booking or an opt-out on any channel ends the sequence |
| Pacing | Per-mailbox and per-number hourly limits, pausable and resumable |
| Review before start | The full plan is shown; a campaign sends nothing until you start it |
| Templates | Email, text and call scripts, saved once and reused |
| Analytics | |
| Funnel | Reached, replied, visited, converted, plus value won and time to convert |
| By channel | Where each person started, and the channel they converted on |
| Pages | Which pages known people read, and how many of them converted |
| Journeys | One row per person: every message, visit, call and booking in order |
| Goals | A page rule or a manual "won", each with a dollar value |
| Triggers | A known person returns to a page — notify you, or send a follow-up |
| Open and click tracking | Recorded per campaign and added to that person's history |
| Integrations | |
| Calendars | Google, Microsoft 365, Calendly, Cal.com, Acuity, Zoho, Square, HubSpot Meetings |
| CRMs and commerce | HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, Jobber, Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace |
| Booking | Real open slots offered, and only an offered slot can be booked |
| CRM import | Import a segment of customers into a contact list |
| Deliverability and compliance | |
| Mailbox warm-up | Ramped sending across the network, with spam rescue and replies |
| Health score | SPF, DKIM, DMARC, bounce rate and inbox placement, with reasons |
| Auto-rest | A failing address is removed from rotation automatically |
| Unsubscribes | One click, honoured automatically, including on queued mail |
| Reply limits | One reply per thread, per-sender daily and per-channel hourly caps |
| Filtering | Bounces, out-of-office and no-reply addresses ignored |
| List building | |
| Contact extraction | Emails, phone numbers and social profiles, on any site. Unlimited. |
| Deep scan | Follows the pages of a domain most likely to carry contact details |
| Domain queue | Load a CSV of sites and work through them one at a time |
| Contacts and lists | Unlimited, by email or phone, with CSV import and export |
| AI | |
| Your own key | Sixteen providers, including any OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host |
| What we charge for AI | Nothing — no markup, no metering, no credit packs |
| On calls | Uses your provider's fastest model automatically |
| Account | |
| Platforms | Chrome side panel and web dashboard on one login |
| Members' forum | Six boards, visible only once you are signed in |
| Referral program | $50 a year per referral ($5 a month), recurring for the life of the account |
| Support | support@boldagents.co |
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It depends on who you are. For a team that wants to build agents that take actions in its own systems, with a free plan to start on, Botpress. For a CX team with designers and engineers, Voiceflow. For a support team that wants the agent inside a help desk and paid per outcome, Intercom Fin. For a small store that wants live chat and an AI agent in one, Tidio. For a business that sells through WhatsApp and Instagram, Chatfuel. For many agents on email, chat, texts, calls and eleven DM platforms on your own AI key at $25 a month, Bold Agent Kit.
Mostly because of message credits. Chatbase's plans include a monthly allowance, a response uses more credits on larger models according to its FAQ, and an agent shows an unavailable message when the allowance runs out, unless you add auto-recharge. Extra agents are priced individually, and voice sits on the higher plans. Some people switch because they want to build more, some because they want an agent inside a help desk, and some because they want the model on their own key with nothing counted.
Chatbase sells message credits by plan and prices extra agents individually. Bold Agent Kit has no credits: each agent runs on your own AI key with one of sixteen providers, billed at cost, and the account is $25 a month or $200 a year with unlimited agents. Every agent answers email, website chat, texts, phone calls and eleven DM platforms from its own knowledge base, in one inbox with takeover and hand-back. It is not a builder, has no API and has no ticketing help desk. The full side-by-side is on our Bold Agent Kit vs Chatbase comparison page.
Gather the sources your Chatbase agent was trained on. Upload documents as PDF or Word, add the pages of your own site as pages the agent may link to, which are read, stored and linked verbatim, and turn your Q&A pairs and text snippets into Q&A pairs and data points. Write the agent's instructions, including when to hand a thread to a person. Then replace the Chatbase embed on your site with Bold Agent Kit's one line of script, connect any other channels, and switch auto-reply on one channel at a time.
Several on this list publish free plans. At the time of writing, Botpress has a free plan with 100 conversations, three seats and three AI agents; Tidio has a free plan with live chat, ticketing and a small allowance of billable conversations; and Chatfuel Light is free for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, without its AI features. Voiceflow offers a free trial to agencies and partners. Bold Agent Kit has a 7-day free trial and no free plan, then one plan at $25 a month or $200 a year, with your AI provider billing you for usage at cost.
With Bold Agent Kit, yes: that is how it works. You paste a key from one of sixteen providers, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI, Mistral, DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, Qwen, MiniMax, Groq, Together, Fireworks, OpenRouter, Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host, and your provider bills you directly at its rates, usually a few dollars a month for a busy agent on a small model. Nothing is metered or sold as credits. Voiceflow's site also mentions bringing your own model; check each vendor for how that is billed.
One where adding a client does not add a price. Bold Agent Kit gives an account unlimited agents for $25 a month, each with its own knowledge base, channels and analytics, and nothing shared between them. You can invite each client into their own agent, where they see its inbox, numbers and analytics and nothing of your other clients, keys or billing, and each agent can run on a key the client holds. Botpress's paid plans include unlimited AI agents, priced by conversations, which suits an agency that builds more complex agents.
Several can. Voiceflow lists voice among its channels, Intercom Fin's channels page lists voice, and Chatbase itself lists voice and telephony from its Standard plan. Bold Agent Kit answers calls on your own Twilio number on the same $25 plan, with separate switches for answering and dialling, hearing and speaking in real time on your provider's fastest model, in a voice from Google, Amazon Polly or ElevenLabs. The recording and transcript land in the same inbox as the chat. It cannot transfer a live call to a person.
The best alternatives to the other tools people shortlist for the same jobs.
Load the sources your Chatbase agent learns from, paste your own AI key and swap the embed. Try it for 7 days, then add an agent for every brand, store or client at the same $25 a month.
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