Chatbase is the name most people find first when they look for a chatbot that answers from their own website. Its cheapest plan is $40 a month. Before paying, a small business owner usually wants to know one thing: how many of my customers' questions will that answer?
That turns out to be hard to work out, because every tool counts usage in its own way. One counts credits, one counts messages, one counts conversations. This guide puts five tools on the same scale, using their cheapest plans as they were on 28 October 2026.
Why the prices are hard to compare
Imagine three phone plans: one sells minutes, one sells calls, and one sells "units" that a long call uses more of. You can't tell which is cheaper until you know how you'll use the phone.
Chatbots work the same way. A visitor who asks three questions uses three credits on one tool, three messages on another, and one conversation on a third. So the price on the page only means something once you turn it into the number of visitors it can serve.
The cheapest plans side by side
| Tool | Price a month | What's included | How it's counted | Chatbots |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BusinessChat Starter | $29 (KES 3,499 in Kenya) | 2,000 conversations | Per visitor chat, up to 20 questions each | 2 live |
| Tidio Lyro | from $32.50 | 50 conversations | Per visitor chat, once the AI replies | n/a |
| Chatbase Hobby | $40 ($32 paid yearly) | 700 message credits | Credits; the page doesn't say how many an answer uses | 1 |
| DocsBot Personal | $49 | 5,000 credits | 1 credit per answer on its basic model, more on larger ones | 1 |
| SiteGPT Starter | $59 ($39 paid yearly) | 4,000 messages | A question and its answer count as one message | 1 |
Free options: DocsBot has a free plan (100 credits a month). Tidio gives your first 50 AI conversations free, once. Chatbase and SiteGPT have 7-day trials. BusinessChat has a free trial with no time limit, but a chatbot can only go live on your website on a paid plan.
What that means in visitors
To put them on one scale, take an example: each visitor asks three questions. That's an assumption to make the numbers comparable, not a measured average, so change it to whatever fits your business.
| Tool | Answers a month | Visitors a month, at 3 questions each |
|---|---|---|
| BusinessChat Starter, $29 | up to 6,000 | 2,000 |
| SiteGPT Starter, $59 | 4,000 | about 1,330 |
| DocsBot Personal, $49 | up to 5,000 | about 1,660 |
| Chatbase Hobby, $40 | about 700, if one credit buys one answer | about 230 |
| Tidio Lyro, $32.50 | about 150 | 50 |
If your visitors ask more questions each, tools that count conversations get relatively cheaper, and tools that count each answer get more expensive. If most visitors ask one question, the gap narrows.
What else changes the price
The monthly price is rarely the whole bill. Four things add to it:
- Removing the branding: Chatbase charges $1,188 a year, SiteGPT $39 a month (paid yearly), and DocsBot only includes it on its $499 plan. BusinessChat includes it from its $79 Growth plan; on the $29 Starter plan the line stays.
- More than one chatbot: if you have two businesses, or sell chatbots to clients, check how many you get. Chatbase charges $300 a year for each extra agent. BusinessChat's Starter plan has two live chatbots and 40 in total, so you can keep drafts and demos for clients alongside the live ones.
- Bigger AI models: on DocsBot and SiteGPT, picking a larger model uses your allowance faster. SiteGPT's Starter plan gives 4,000 messages on its smaller model or 400 on the larger one, and DocsBot's largest model uses 50 credits per answer.
- Paying yearly: Chatbase, SiteGPT and DocsBot are cheaper if you pay for a year up front. BusinessChat is paid a month at a time, by card or M-Pesa in Kenya.
Which one fits which business
Each of these does something the others don't:
- Chatbase connects to the most other tools on its cheapest plan, including WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Slack and Shopify, and can take actions like booking a meeting. Pick it if the chatbot needs to work inside those apps, not only on your website.
- Tidio is a live chat tool first, with AI added. Pick it if you want your staff to answer chats themselves and use AI for the overflow.
- DocsBot has a free plan, which is useful for trying the idea out on a small site, and is built for answering from long documentation.
- SiteGPT reads the most pages on its cheapest plan (1,000), which matters for large websites.
- BusinessChat gives the most conversations for the price, and builds a chatbot from your website address in a minute or two so you can see it working before you pay. When it doesn't know an answer, it says so and can offer to pass the question to you, by a short form or WhatsApp. If you set chatbots up for clients, Starter lets you keep 20 demo links out at a time (Growth 100). Those links never show the BusinessChat name, and from the Growth plan the live chatbot doesn't either. It connects to fewer apps than Chatbase: it lives on your website.
How to test any of them before you pay
Whichever you try, use the trial the same way:
- Ask ten real questions. Use questions your customers actually send you: prices, opening hours, how to book, where you are.
- Ask something your website doesn't answer. A good chatbot says it doesn't know. A bad one makes something up, and that kind of answer can cost you a customer.
- Count your questions for a week. Look at your WhatsApp, email and phone log, and roughly count how many people ask something each month. That number, not the price, tells you which plan you need.
- Add up the extras. Branding removal, extra chatbots and model choice can double the price on the page.