Chatbase alternatives: other ways to put an AI agent on your content
Chatbase does one thing well: train an AI agent on your own material and let it answer. The alternatives split into cheaper single-purpose bots and bigger platforms that include an agent. Here is the honest map.
Chatbase builds AI support agents trained on your own content and deploys them across chat, email and messaging apps. Pricing is free for 50 messages a month, then $32 (Hobby), $120 (Standard) and $400 (Pro) a month, with 20% off annual. The closest alternatives are CustomGPT.ai ($99–$499/month), SiteGPT ($39–$259/month), and the AI agents bundled into full platforms: Intercom’s Fin at $0.99 per resolution, Tidio’s Lyro from $32.50 a month, and Crisp from $45 a month per workspace. Checked August 2026.
Why teams look for a Chatbase alternative
Chatbase’s pricing (checked August 2026) is free for 50 messages a month with one agent, then Hobby at $32 for 700 messages and two agents, Standard at $120 for 4,000 messages and three agents, and Pro at $400 for 15,000 messages and five agents. Annual billing takes 20% off, extra credits are $40 per 1,000 messages, and agents on the free plan are deleted after 14 days of inactivity.
The most common reason to move is the message cliff. Message-bucket pricing is clean until you land between two buckets — jumping from Standard to Pro is a $280-a-month step, and $40 per 1,000 top-up messages is not cheap either.
The second reason is that an answering bot alone turns out not to be enough. Once you want a human to take over mid-conversation, ticketing, or a shared inbox, you are shopping for a platform, and the AI agent becomes one feature inside it rather than the product.
The third is the opposite: some teams only ever needed a bot on one website, and a flat-rate single-site product is simpler to reason about than credits.
To be fair to Chatbase: multi-channel deployment on the cheaper tiers is genuinely unusual, and the free tier is a real way to test whether your content is good enough to answer from before paying anyone.
Chatbase alternatives, compared
The first two are single-purpose AI agents like Chatbase itself. The last three are full chat platforms whose AI agent comes bundled — worth it only if you also want the inbox. Prices are as published by each vendor in August 2026.
Chatbase (opens in a new tab)
Build AI support agents trained on your own content and deploy them across chat, email and messaging apps.
- Pricing
- Free (50 messages/month, 1 agent). Hobby $32, Standard $120, Pro $400 per month; 20% off annual. Extra credits $40 per 1,000 messages.
- Best for
- The baseline you are comparing against — cheapest multi-channel agent with a free tier.
CustomGPT.ai (opens in a new tab)
Chatbots trained on your business documentation and content, aimed at larger knowledge bases.
- Pricing
- Standard $99/month ($89/month annual) for 1,000 queries; Premium $499/month ($449/month annual) for 5,000. 7-day trial, no free plan.
- Best for
- Bigger documentation sets where accuracy matters more than the monthly price.
SiteGPT (opens in a new tab)
A chatbot trained on your website content that answers visitor questions.
- Pricing
- Starter $39/month (4,000 messages), Growth $79/month (10,000), Scale $259/month (40,000). 7-day trial, no free plan.
- Best for
- A straight website-trained answering bot at a mid-range flat price.
Intercom (opens in a new tab)
Customer messaging and support platform with Fin, its AI agent, on every plan.
- Pricing
- Essential $29, Advanced $85, Expert $132 per seat/month. Fin is $0.99 per resolution. 14-day trial, no free plan.
- Best for
- Teams that want support, marketing chat and a strong AI agent in one platform.
Tidio (opens in a new tab)
Live chat, helpdesk and the Lyro AI agent, installed as a widget on your site.
- Pricing
- Free (50 billable conversations/month). Starter $290/year, Growth from $590/year, Plus from $300/month plus usage. Lyro conversations from $32.50/month.
- Best for
- Small teams and online stores that want a real free tier and cheap entry pricing.
Crisp (opens in a new tab)
Shared inbox and website chat widget, priced per workspace instead of per seat.
- Pricing
- Free (2 seats). Mini $45/month, Essentials $95/month, Plus $295/month — per workspace, extra seats $10/month. 14-day trial.
- Best for
- Small teams that would rather not pay per seat as the team grows.
Every price above was read off the vendor’s own pricing page in August 2026. Where a vendor publishes no price, this table says so rather than guessing. Vendors change pricing — check theirs before you buy.
How to choose between them
You are stuck between message buckets
Compare a flat monthly product against your real volume. SiteGPT is $39, $79 or $259 a month for 4,000, 10,000 or 40,000 messages — the step between tiers is gentler than Chatbase’s $120 to $400 jump.
Accuracy over a big knowledge base matters most
CustomGPT.ai is aimed squarely at larger documentation sets, at $99 a month for 1,000 queries or $499 for 5,000. It is the most expensive per query here, which tells you what it is optimising for.
You need a human to take over
A bot with no escape hatch frustrates people. If you need live handover, ticketing and a shared inbox, buy a platform: Tidio from free, Crisp from $45 a month per workspace, Intercom from $29 per seat.
You only pay when it works
Intercom’s Fin charges $0.99 per resolution rather than per message, which is the only genuinely outcome-shaped pricing in this list. At low volume it is excellent; multiply it out before assuming that holds.
You want to test before paying
Chatbase, Tidio and Crisp all have free plans. CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT offer 7-day trials, and Intercom offers 14 days. If you are unsure your content is good enough to answer from, start on a free tier and find out.
When Bl1nk is the right answer instead
Bl1nk belongs in a different column, and it is worth being blunt about why: every product above can be embedded on your website, and Bl1nk cannot. Bl1nk’s assistant is trained the same way — website URLs, uploaded documents, Q&A pairs, with citations — but it lives on a Bl1nk digital business card profile. If the reason you were shopping for Chatbase was "I want my content to answer for me when I am not there," and the place people actually reach you is a card, a QR code or a shared link rather than a website, that is the case Bl1nk is built for.
- It lives on your Bl1nk profile — the page someone opens after tapping your card, scanning your QR code, or clicking your link. There is no script tag and no way to embed it on your own website.
- It is text only. It does not answer phone calls and it does not make them.
- It never prospects. Nothing here sends cold email or works an outbound list.
- It answers only from the knowledge you give it — your website pages, uploaded documents, and Q&A pairs — and says it does not know rather than guessing. That is deliberate, but it does mean you have to feed it.
- Free plan: 300 AI credits a month. Pro: 10,000 credits at $5 per seat per month, or $48 per seat per year. There is no free trial of Pro — the free plan is the trial.
- You already have the material — a website, a services PDF, a price list, a set of Q&A pairs — and you want it to answer for you.
- The people asking arrive from a tap, a scan or a shared link rather than from your website’s traffic.
- You care that answers cite their source and that the assistant says "I don’t know" instead of inventing something.
- You want the conversation to end in a captured lead with a summary, not just a good answer.
See it working before you believe any of this
The link below is a real Bl1nk profile with the assistant switched on — not a mockup. Open it, use the chat button, and ask it something. Then decide whether a card-based assistant solves your problem or whether you need one of the website tools above.
More detail on how the assistant is trained and what it refuses to do: Bl1nk AI.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Chatbase cost?
Checked August 2026: free for 50 messages a month with one agent, Hobby $32 a month for 700 messages and two agents, Standard $120 for 4,000 messages and three agents, Pro $400 for 15,000 messages and five agents, and custom Enterprise pricing. Annual billing saves 20%, and extra credits are $40 per 1,000 messages.
What is the best free alternative to Chatbase?
Tidio’s free plan (50 billable conversations a month, 10 seats) and Crisp’s free plan (2 seats, website chat and shared inbox, no AI credits) are the free options, though both are chat platforms rather than pure AI agents. CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT have no free plan — they offer 7-day trials instead.
Chatbase or CustomGPT — which should I pick?
Chatbase is cheaper and multi-channel: free to $400 a month by message volume. CustomGPT.ai is priced for larger documentation sets at $99 a month for 1,000 queries or $499 for 5,000. If your knowledge base is small and your volume is moderate, Chatbase wins on price; if accuracy across a large corpus is the whole point, CustomGPT.ai is built for that. Checked August 2026.
Is there an alternative to Chatbase with live human handover?
Yes — that is what the chat platforms add. Tidio (free, then $290/year), Crisp ($45–$295 a month per workspace) and Intercom ($29–$132 per seat per month) all combine an AI agent with a shared inbox so a person can take over mid-conversation.
Can I use Bl1nk instead of Chatbase?
Only if you do not need it on your website. Bl1nk trains its assistant the same way — website URLs, documents and Q&A pairs, with source citations — but it runs on a Bl1nk digital business card profile and cannot be embedded on your own site. If your visitors arrive by tapping a card, scanning a QR code or clicking a shared link, it fits; otherwise pick one of the tools above.