Most "best chatbot" roundups are affiliate farms: whoever pays the highest commission finishes first. This list ranks nothing. It matches six verified tools to six real situations, with real prices — including two situations where the right answer isn't us.
Last updated July 5, 2026 · prices verified against vendor pages, typically USD
Full disclosure: we make AutoGrow, one of the six tools below. No affiliate links anywhere on this page, and every price was checked against the vendor's own pricing page. Our bias is declared; the numbers are real either way.
| Your situation | Pick | Realistic cost |
|---|---|---|
| You want it done for you, one flat price | AutoGrow | CA$29/mo flat (≈US$21) |
| You want free live chat first, AI later | Tawk.to | Free chat; AI Assist US$29/mo |
| You want to build and tune it yourself | Chatbase | From ~US$40/mo, credit tiers |
| You run a Shopify store | Chatty | US$19.99 basic → US$68.99 for real AI |
| You have an actual support team | Intercom Fin | ~US$0.99 per resolved chat + seats |
| You're on Wix with a tight budget | Ultimo Bots | From US$19/mo, 500 replies cap |
Our lane, and the reason this page exists. Paste your URL; we crawl your site, build the knowledge base, brand the widget, and give you one line of embed code. The AI answers from your actual content 24/7 and emails you every lead. CA$29/month flat — no message meters, no AI add-on fees, no seats. If you want the same bot on WhatsApp and Messenger too, we're not your pick (yet) — see the two entries below.
Genuinely free live chat, which made it huge. The AI layer, AI Assist, is US$29/month for 1,000 AI messages, then you upgrade. You do the setup yourself, and the product's heart is still human-answered chat — the AI assists rather than runs the show. Great if you or staff actually sit in the inbox.
The strongest DIY builder platform — model choice, custom actions, deep tuning. Plans start around US$40/month with message-credit tiers. You're the builder: sources, prompts and testing are your job. Powerful if you enjoy that; a second job if you don't. Full breakdown in our Chatbase comparison.
Purpose-built for Shopify with order lookups and product answers. Read the fine print: the US$19.99 tier runs a downgraded AI model; the real thing costs US$68.99, with US$0.40-per-conversation overages. If your shop lives on Shopify it's still worth a look — alongside our own Shopify option.
If you have two or more agents in a shared inbox with SLAs and omnichannel queues, Fin is the category king — roughly US$0.99 per resolved conversation plus seat pricing, and worth it at that scale. For a business without a support department it's a help desk you'd be buying to get a chatbot. We wrote up the math in our Intercom comparison.
From US$19/month with a 500-AI-responses cap — workable for a low-traffic Wix site, and the cap is the catch as you grow. If you're weighing options on Wix, our Wix guide shows the two-minute alternative.
1. Who builds it? Half these tools sell you a workbench. If nobody at your business wants to be the bot's part-time engineer, "done for you" beats every feature list.
2. What's metered? Message credits, per-conversation overages, per-resolution fees — the sticker price is rarely the bill. Our 2026 pricing breakdown maps all three billing models across 12 tools.
3. What happens when you grow? The cruel joke of metered pricing: your bill spikes in exactly the month things go well. Flat pricing means your best month and worst month cost the same.
Paste your website URL and watch a chatbot trained on your content answer real questions in about 60 seconds. No signup, no card.
Try the free live demo Start 3-day trial — CA$29/moCard required for trial · cancel anytime in one click · nothing charged for 3 days
Competitor pricing reflects published vendor pages as of mid-2026 and is typically billed in USD. Plans change often — always verify on each vendor's own pricing page.