Chatbase Pricing 2026: Credits, Add-Ons and the Real Monthly Cost

Chatbase costs $40 a month for Hobby (700 message credits), $150 for Basic (4,000 credits) and $500 for Business (15,000 credits) on monthly billing, or $32, $120 and $400 a month billed yearly. One credit pays for one AI reply on the cheapest models, and two to five on stronger ones. Extra credits cost $40 per 1,000. Prices read on Chatbase's pricing page on 28 October 2026.

That makes the model you pick a bigger lever than the plan you pick. A support bot answering 3,000 chats a month on a 1-credit model fits inside Business; the same traffic on a 2-credit model needs Business plus 9,000 bought credits, or $860 a month, our arithmetic below. Intercom Fin, the obvious alternative, charges per resolved conversation instead, which flips the math depending on how many chats your bot actually closes.

Toolradar data: Toolradar tracks 90 chatbot tools as of 27 October 2026, and 57% of them (51 of 90) offer a free tier, per Toolradar's chatbot statistics. Chatbase's own pricing page now lists only paid plans, each with a 7-day trial. Chatbase is also listed as an alternative to 25 other tools on Toolradar, fourth among 87 chatbot tools in October 2026, per its Toolradar profile.

Plan	Monthly billing	Yearly billing (per month)	Message credits a month	Seats	What it adds
Hobby	$40/mo	$32/mo	700	2	Advanced models, basic integrations, basic analytics, file attachments
Basic	$150/mo	$120/mo	4,000	3	API access, helpdesk inbox, voice and telephony, Zendesk, Salesforce, HubSpot and Intercom integrations
Business	$500/mo	$400/mo	15,000	5	Advanced analytics, source suggestions, tickets as a source, 20 concurrent calls
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Custom	Custom	SSO, audit logs, white-labeling, SLAs, HIPAA-eligible setup

Source: Chatbase pricing, read 28 October 2026. The page's yearly toggle states the savings as $96, $360 and $1,200 a year.

What changed on the Chatbase pricing page in 2026?

Chatbase renamed two tiers and took the free plan off its pricing page during October 2026. A Wayback Machine copy of Chatbase's pricing page from 1 October 2026 still showed a Free plan with 50 message credits a month, and called the middle tiers Standard and Pro. The live page now names them Basic and Business, at the same prices, and starts the ladder at Hobby.

The Hobby allowance also moved. The 28 July 2026 copy listed 500 credits a month on Hobby; by the 4 September 2026 copy it was 700, the figure printed today. Older third-party guides that quote "Standard" and "Pro" or a 500-credit Hobby plan describe the earlier lineup.

The free tier has not vanished from the product. Chatbase's workspace settings docs still say that a cancelled plan drops to the free plan at renewal, and its tests docs list 0 test credits for Free. What is gone is a published allowance: a buyer who wants to start free should check what the signup screen offers before planning around it.

How do Chatbase message credits work?

A message credit is spent on each request the agent sends to an AI model, and the number per request depends on the model. Chatbase's model comparison docs list the recommended models and their cost:

Credits per reply	Models (Chatbase's recommended list)
1	Auto, GPT-6 Luna, Claude 5.5 Haiku
2	GPT-6.1 Sol, GPT-6.1 Terra, Claude 5.5 Sonnet, Gemini 3.8 Flash
4	GPT-5.5
5	Claude 5.5 Opus

Source: Chatbase models comparison and the pricing section of the Chatbase FAQ, read 28 October 2026.

Actions multiply the count. The pricing page's own example: a customer asks to book a meeting, the agent first calls the model to run a calendar action, then calls it again to write the answer. That one reply costs two requests, so twice the model's credit rate. An agent with several actions enabled can spend noticeably more per conversation than its reply count suggests.

Three rules decide how much of what you pay for actually gets used. Subscription credits renew on the 1st of each calendar month, whatever day you subscribed, and unused credits do not carry over. When credits run out, the FAQ says the widget shows "This AI Agent is currently unavailable", which is the outage you are paying to avoid. Each agent can be capped at a share of the workspace's credits from its settings.

What does a credit cost on each plan?

Per credit, Business is the cheapest way to buy in bulk and Hobby the dearest. Dividing each plan's price by its allowance gives the rate below, our arithmetic on Chatbase's printed prices:

Plan	Monthly billing, per credit	Yearly billing, per credit
Hobby	about 5.7 cents	about 4.6 cents
Basic	3.75 cents	3 cents
Business	about 3.3 cents	about 2.7 cents
Auto-recharge credits	4 cents	4 cents

The top-up rate sits between the plans, so buying credits on top of a smaller plan is sometimes cheaper than upgrading, and sometimes not. The difference is that top-up credits never expire, while plan credits reset every month.

How much does Chatbase cost for 3,000 support chats a month?

Our cost model: a support bot answers 3,000 conversations a month, and each conversation takes four AI replies on average. That gives 12,000 replies a month. The reply count is our assumption; check your own transcripts, because a bot that triggers actions or handles long troubleshooting threads will run higher.

Model choice	Credits a month	Cheapest setup, monthly billing	Same setup, yearly billing
1-credit model (Auto, Luna, Haiku)	12,000	Business: $500	Business: $400
1-credit model, alternative	12,000	Basic plus 8,000 top-up credits: $470	Basic plus top-up: $440
2-credit model (Sonnet, Sol, Gemini Flash)	24,000	Business plus 9,000 top-up credits: $860	$760
5-credit model (Claude 5.5 Opus)	60,000	Business plus 45,000 top-up credits: $2,300	$2,200

All totals are our arithmetic on Chatbase's printed plan prices and its auto-recharge rate, read 28 October 2026.

On monthly billing, Basic with top-ups undercuts Business by $30 for a 1-credit bot. On yearly billing, Business is the cheaper of the two and leaves 3,000 spare credits for busy months. Either way, the 1-credit setup works out to about 13 to 17 cents a conversation, while moving to Opus multiplies the bill by nearly five.

Two items commonly land on top. Removing the "Powered by Chatbase" badge costs $1,188 a year, which is $99 a month, so a branded Business bot on monthly billing comes to $599. Voice is metered separately: every voice minute uses 6 credits, plus the model's credits per reply, per Chatbase's agent settings docs. Chatbase's own worked example, a 10-minute call with 15 replies on a 1-credit model, uses 75 credits, which is $3.00 at the top-up rate.

Which Chatbase add-ons raise the bill?

The pricing page lists four add-ons, all sold on the same billing cycle as the plan (monthly plans take monthly add-ons, yearly plans yearly ones, per the settings docs).

Add-on	Price	What it buys
Auto-recharge credits	$40 per 1,000 credits	Credits added when the balance falls below a threshold you set; they do not expire
Remove "Powered by Chatbase"	$1,188 a year	Strips Chatbase branding from the widget and iframe
Extra AI agent	$300 per agent a year	One more agent in the workspace; every paid plan includes one
Extra storage	$300 per 10 MB a year	More training text per agent, up to 4 purchases (40 MB extra)

Source: Chatbase pricing, read 28 October 2026.

The agent count is the trap for agencies and multi-brand teams. Hobby, Basic and Business each include one agent, so a company with a sales bot and a support bot pays for a second agent even on Business. Storage is the other ceiling: every self-serve plan gives 40 MB of extracted text per agent, and 80 MB is the most the add-on can reach. Free users must subscribe to a plan before buying any add-on.

Which Chatbase plan should you pick?

Hobby fits a test or a low-traffic site, not a support desk. Its 700 credits cover roughly 175 conversations at four replies each on a 1-credit model, and it has no API access, no helpdesk inbox and none of the Zendesk, HubSpot or Salesforce connectors. The plan is cheap to try for a month and limiting to run.

Basic is the real entry point for support teams. API access, the helpdesk inbox, voice and the helpdesk integrations all start here, and its 4,000 credits cover about 1,000 four-reply chats on a 1-credit model. Business adds analytics and the ability to learn from closed tickets, which matters once a team wants the bot to improve from its own history rather than only from documents.

Annual billing is worth it once the bot is live and traffic is steady. Downgrades take effect immediately with a prorated credit, per the settings docs, and a cancelled plan stays active until the renewal date. Shopify merchants who install through the Shopify App Store get a single agent, a reduced add-on list and no 7-day trial, according to Chatbase's Shopify docs, so signing up on Chatbase directly keeps more options open.

For the wider field, our best AI chatbots ranking compares Chatbase with general assistants, the best free AI chatbots list covers the no-cost options and best AI agents covers autonomous tools. If you are building a broader stack, the AI tools for business guide and our Zapier pricing breakdown help with the automation side, and what agentic AI is explains why actions add requests. The models behind those credit rates have their own subscription and API prices, covered in our Claude pricing, ChatGPT pricing and Claude API pricing pages, and Manus AI pricing shows another credit-metered agent.

Chatbase vs Intercom Fin: which costs less per resolution?

Intercom charges $0.99 per Fin outcome, and only when Fin resolves the conversation, according to Intercom's pricing page on 28 October 2026. It bills at most once per conversation, refunds the charge if the conversation is reopened, and charges nothing when the customer asks for a human. Fin works inside Intercom's helpdesk, where Essential costs $29 per seat a month billed annually (Intercom was also showing a 35% discount for new customers), or on top of an existing helpdesk such as Salesforce, HubSpot or Freshdesk.

Chatbase charges for every reply, resolved or not. On our 3,000-chat model, Business covers a 1-credit bot for a flat monthly fee, which equals about 505 Fin outcomes. Fin is cheaper only if it resolves fewer than about 505 chats a month, roughly one in six; above that, Chatbase's flat plan costs less. With a 2-credit model, the crossover moves to about 869 resolutions. These crossovers are our arithmetic on both vendors' printed prices.

3,000 chats a month	Chatbase Business, 1-credit model	Chatbase Business, 2-credit model	Intercom Fin, 50% resolved	Intercom Fin, 70% resolved
Monthly AI cost	$500	$860	$1,485	$2,079
What you pay for	Every reply	Every reply	Resolved conversations only	Resolved conversations only

The 50% and 70% resolution rates are illustrative, not Intercom figures; Fin costs are our arithmetic at the printed per-outcome rate, before any helpdesk seats.

Price is not the only difference. Intercom's model guarantees you pay nothing for a conversation the bot fumbled, while Chatbase bills a failed conversation the same as a solved one. Voice follows the same split: Fin Voice costs $1.99 per voice outcome through sales, against Chatbase's per-minute metering. A team that already runs Intercom's inbox, or values paying only for results, can justify the higher bill; a team watching cost per conversation will find Chatbase's flat credits cheaper at volume.

What to check before you pay

Set the per-agent credit cap on day one if the widget is public, because anyone with the link can talk to a public agent and every one of those chats draws on the same monthly pool. Then confirm which model the agent runs before launch: a switch from a 1-credit model to a 2-credit one doubles the burn with no change in traffic, and the first sign is usually the "currently unavailable" message late in the month.

Finally, decide between monthly and yearly billing after the first full month of real traffic, not before. The yearly discount only pays off if the plan you lock in still fits, and the credit-heavy setups in our cost model are the ones most likely to need a different tier once real reply counts are known.

Want price changes like Chatbase's tier rename flagged as they happen? Get the AIpresso brief.

How we checked these prices

Louis Corneloup, founder of Dupple and Toolradar, prepared this breakdown for teams budgeting a support bot. Plan prices, credit allowances, seat counts and add-on prices come from Chatbase's pricing page, read on 28 October 2026 with its yearly toggle and the plan data behind it. Credit costs per model, renewal rules, voice metering and add-on rules come from Chatbase's docs the same day, and earlier tier names and allowances from dated Wayback Machine copies of Chatbase's own pricing page, linked above. Intercom figures come from Intercom's pricing page on the same date. Per-credit rates, per-chat costs and crossovers are our arithmetic; the four-replies-per-chat figure and the resolution rates are assumptions, labelled where used. Site policies are on the AIpresso about page.

FAQ

How much does Chatbase cost in 2026?

Chatbase costs $40 a month for Hobby, $150 for Basic and $500 for Business on monthly billing, or $32, $120 and $400 a month billed yearly. The plans include 700, 4,000 and 15,000 message credits a month. Enterprise is priced on request, based on a commitment to credits, conversations or resolutions.

What does a Chatbase message credit cover?

One credit covers one AI reply on the cheapest models (Auto, GPT-6 Luna, Claude 5.5 Haiku). Mid-tier models such as Claude 5.5 Sonnet use 2 credits a reply, GPT-5.5 uses 4 and Claude 5.5 Opus uses 5. When an action runs, each extra model request is charged too.

Does Chatbase have a free plan?

The pricing page no longer lists one: it shows Hobby, Basic, Business and Enterprise, with a 7-day trial on the paid plans. Chatbase's docs still refer to a Free plan, which a cancelled subscription drops to. A 1 October 2026 copy of the pricing page showed Free at 50 credits a month.

What happens when Chatbase credits run out?

The agent stops answering and shows "This AI Agent is currently unavailable" until credits renew on the 1st of the month or you add more. Auto-recharge avoids that by buying credits at $40 per 1,000 when the balance drops below your threshold, and those credits never expire.

How much does it cost to remove the Chatbase branding?

Removing "Powered by Chatbase" from the widget is an add-on at $1,188 a year, which works out to $99 a month. White-labeling is listed as an Enterprise feature, and custom domains are Enterprise-only.

Is Chatbase cheaper than Intercom Fin?

At volume, usually. Intercom charges $0.99 per resolved conversation, so Chatbase Business on a 1-credit model costs the same as about 505 Fin resolutions a month. If Fin would resolve more than that, Chatbase's flat plan is cheaper; if it resolves fewer, Fin is, and Fin never charges for unresolved chats.

Cite this: AIpresso, "Chatbase Pricing 2026: Credits, Add-Ons and the Real Monthly Cost", November 2026.

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