Chatbase, one of the best-known names in the category, has no free plan at all: its cheapest tier is US$40 a month for 700 message credits, with a 7-day trial (Chatbase pricing page, as of October 2026). Tidio does have a free plan, but its Lyro AI answers 50 conversations once, as a lifetime quota that never resets (Tidio pricing page, 2026). So if you are shopping for an AI chatbot for your website because you pay for ads and the questions arrive at 11 p.m., "free" is the wrong first filter. The right first filter is simpler: can it answer the questions your paying visitors actually ask, from your own content, before they close the tab?
This guide covers what to look for in a website AI chatbot, what free plans really include, how long setup takes, and the six questions any tool must answer correctly on day one.
What should you look for in an AI chatbot for your website?
Look for five things, in this order: it learns from your own website and documents, it answers specific questions without inventing prices, it captures the visitor's contact details, it hands off to a person cleanly, and its price stays predictable when traffic grows.
The reason for that order is money. You already paid for the visit. A click from a search ad or a social ad lands on your page, the visitor has one specific question, and nobody is at the desk. If the widget answers with "Thanks for reaching out! Someone will get back to you shortly," you have spent the ad budget and kept nothing. Our lead response time statistics for 2026 show how quickly that interest cools.
Here is a working checklist for a buyer:
- Trains on your own content. It should read your website, PDFs and FAQ pages, and you should be able to re-sync it when your prices change. Chatbase, for example, only includes automatic agent re-sync from its Standard plan (Chatbase pricing page, 2026).
- Answers, then admits what it does not know. A good tool says "I'm not sure, let me get someone" rather than guessing a fee.
- Captures the lead. Name, phone or email, and what they wanted, sent somewhere you will actually look.
- Hands off to a human with context. Chatbase lists its helpdesk features only from the Standard plan at US$150 a month (Chatbase pricing page, 2026), so check which tier the handoff lives on before you compare prices.
- Prices on something you can forecast. Seats, credits, conversations, or per-resolution fees all behave differently in a busy month.
If you want a broader vendor-by-vendor view, our list of the best AI customer service software for small business in 2026 does that. This article is the buyer's how-to for the website itself.
Is there a good free AI chatbot for a website?
There are free website chat plans, but very few free AI plans that last. Most "free" tiers give you a live-chat widget for free and meter the AI part so tightly that it works as a trial. Read the AI line, not the headline price.
Here is what the free and entry tiers looked like when I checked the vendors' own pricing pages:
| Tool | Free plan? | What the free plan includes | AI on the free plan | Cheapest paid step |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chatbase | No | — (7-day trial on paid plans) | — | Hobby US$40/mo, 700 message credits |
| Tidio | Yes, US$0 | 50 billable conversations a month, 10 seats, Flows for the first 100 visitors | Lyro: first 50 conversations, lifetime, no monthly refresh | Starter US$24.17/mo, 100 conversations |
| Crisp | Yes, US$0 | Chat widget, shared inbox, mobile apps, 2 seats, 100 customer profiles | No AI credits | Mini US$45/mo per workspace, about 90 automated conversations included |
| Intercom | No | — (14-day trial) | — | Essential US$29 per seat/mo, plus Fin at US$0.99 per outcome |
Prices from each vendor's pricing page, as of October 2026, in USD.
Read across the AI column and the pattern is clear. Crisp's free plan has no AI credits at all; its Mini plan includes roughly 90 automated conversations, Essentials (US$95) roughly 450, and Plus (US$295) roughly 1,350 (Crisp pricing page, 2026). Tidio's paid Lyro add-on starts from US$32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations (Tidio pricing page, 2026). Chatbase sells extra credits at US$40 per 1,000 (Chatbase pricing page, 2026).
So "is there a good free AI chatbot for a website?" gets an honest answer: you can test one for free, and you can run a live-chat widget for free, but an AI that answers every visitor every night is a paid product everywhere I looked. Budget for it the way you budget for the ads that bring the visitors in.
How much does a website AI chatbot cost per month?
For a single website with modest traffic, expect roughly US$25 to US$150 a month on the vendors above, and more once usage meters kick in. The real number depends less on the plan and more on how the tool counts usage, because a busy month moves each model differently.
The four pricing models you will meet:
- Per conversation or message credit (Tidio, Chatbase). Cheap when quiet, but a good ad week burns through the allowance. Chatbase's Standard plan is US$150 a month for 4,000 credits; Pro is US$500 for 15,000 (Chatbase pricing page, 2026).
- Per seat (Intercom). Intercom charges US$29, US$85 or US$132 per seat a month, depending on the plan (Intercom pricing page, 2026). Fine for a support team, odd for an owner-operator who just wants the website answered.
- Per resolution or outcome (Intercom's Fin at US$0.99 per outcome). You pay more as the AI succeeds more, which is fair in theory and hard to forecast in practice. We broke this down in Intercom Fin pricing: what per-resolution really costs.
- Flat monthly fee. One number regardless of how many people ask. This is the model Omago uses: US$49 to US$99 a month, flat, with no per-resolution fees (see pricing).
A quick way to compare them: take last month's ad-driven visits, guess what share would open a chat, and run that number through each model. If one vendor's bill doubles when your campaign works, you have found the pricing model that punishes success.
If you are already weighing Chatbase specifically, our Chatbase alternative comparison lays the two pricing approaches side by side.
How long does it take to set up an AI chatbot on a website?
The honest answer is that no vendor states an official setup time on its pricing page, and third-party estimates range from minutes to dozens of hours depending on who is counting. I would not trust any single number. What I can tell you is where the time goes.
Pasting a script tag into your site takes minutes. The work is everything around it:
- Feeding it the right content (an hour or two). Your website, your price list, your FAQ, your booking rules. If your prices live in a PDF from 2024, the AI will quote 2024.
- Writing the rules (an hour). What it must never promise, when it should hand off, which questions it should ask before booking.
- Testing with real questions (an evening). Ask it what your customers ask, in the words they use, including the awkward ones.
- Fixing the gaps (ongoing, mostly in the first two weeks). Every wrong answer points at a missing or outdated page.
Step 1 matters more than people expect, and it is where most setups go wrong. Our guide on how to build an AI knowledge base that actually works covers what to upload and how to structure it.
The shortcut I recommend before you sign up for anything: test the tool on your own website first. If a vendor makes you book a sales call before you can see the AI answer a question about your business, that tells you something about how setup will go.
What are the 6 questions a website AI chatbot must answer on day one?
On day one, your website AI chatbot must correctly handle six questions: price, availability, fit, process, location and hours, and "can I talk to a person?" These six cover most of what a paid visitor asks before deciding to contact you, and each one exposes a different weakness.
Run these tests in your own words before you go live. Ask each one twice, phrased differently.
1. "How much is it?"
This is the question that loses the most leads when it goes unanswered, and the one where AI is most likely to invent something. The right behaviour is to quote your real price or price range from your content, say what changes it, and offer the next step. The wrong behaviour is a confident number that does not appear anywhere on your site. If you do not publish prices, the AI should say so and ask what the visitor needs a quote for.
2. "Do you have anything on Saturday?"
Availability questions are buying signals. A good agent either checks a calendar, offers to book, or captures the request with a name and contact. A weak one says "please call us during business hours," at 11 p.m., to someone who just told you they want to buy.
3. "Do you do [specific thing]?" or "Am I eligible?"
Fit questions test whether the AI actually read your services page. Ask about something you do offer, something you do not, and something borderline. It should say no clearly when the answer is no. A tool that says yes to everything will fill your inbox with leads you cannot serve.
4. "How does it work, and what do I need to bring?"
Process questions are where trust is won. First visit, documents, prep, how long it takes, what happens after. These answers usually live in three different places on your site, so this question tests whether the tool can combine them.
5. "Where are you, and are you open now?"
It fails more often than you would think with holiday hours or multiple locations. If your hours change, update the source and check that the answer changes too.
6. "Can I talk to a real person?"
The handoff question is the one most buyers forget to test. The agent should say yes, explain how and when someone will reply, and collect contact details so the conversation is not lost. If the visitor asks at midnight, "someone will message you on WhatsApp by 9 a.m." is a far better answer than a dead end.
If the tool passes all six on your own site, it is worth paying for. If it fails question 1 or question 6, keep looking, whatever the price.
Should your website chat continue on WhatsApp?
Yes, if your customers use WhatsApp, because a website chat ends when the tab closes and a WhatsApp thread does not. A visitor who asks a question at 11 p.m. and leaves at 11:05 is gone unless you captured something that lets you continue the conversation.
There is a cost wrinkle in 2026 that most website-chat guides miss. Since 1 October 2026, Meta charges per message for replies sent inside the 24-hour customer service window, including replies written by a third-party AI. The first 1,000 service messages are free each month for every business phone number (WhatsApp Business FAQ, 2026), and after that, service messages are billed at the same rate as utility messages in each market, with no volume tiers (Meta for Developers, 2026). Hong Kong and Singapore became standalone rate markets with higher utility rates on 1 July 2026 (Meta for Developers, 2026), so for buyers there, the reply side of WhatsApp is no longer free.
Two other facts matter if you run ads:
- Click-to-WhatsApp ads open a free window. If someone messages you from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page call-to-action on mobile and you reply within 24 hours, a 72-hour free entry point window opens in which you can send any type of message at no charge (Meta for Developers, 2026).
- Meta now sells its own AI replies. Meta Business Agent costs US$2.00 per 1 million tokens, which Meta estimates at about 4 to 5 US cents per message, effective 1 August 2026 (Meta for Developers, 2026). Third-party AI replies are billed as ordinary service messages, with the AI vendor's own fee on top.
To estimate your own monthly message bill, use our WhatsApp API cost calculator. And if you want the website-to-WhatsApp handover built in, Omago runs one AI sales agent across your website, WhatsApp and Telegram, so a visitor who starts on your site can carry on in the app they already use. If you would rather build the WhatsApp side yourself, our guide on how to build a WhatsApp chatbot compares the three routes.
What can't a website AI chatbot do yet?
It cannot prove it makes you money, at least not with public data. I looked for independent 2025–2026 studies on how much website chat lifts conversion, what share of visitors open a chat, or what small businesses get asked, and found none that were not published by a chat vendor. So I am not going to quote a conversion lift here, and you should be wary of anyone who quotes you one without naming the study.
What you can do instead is measure it yourself, which is more useful anyway:
- Before you install, note how many enquiries you get a week and how many arrive outside business hours.
- After 30 days, count conversations, captured contacts, and bookings that started in the chat.
A few other honest limits worth knowing:
- It is only as current as your content. Change a price on Friday and forget to re-sync, and it will quote the old price on Saturday.
- It should not make binding promises. Discounts, refunds, guarantees and anything legal should go to a person.
- It does not replace follow-up. A captured lead still needs someone to call or message them back, ideally within the hour.
This is also the difference between a chatbot that answers and an AI sales agent that answers, qualifies and books. We unpack that distinction in what an AI sales agent is (and isn't).
Which website AI chatbot should you choose?
Choose the cheapest tool that passes the six day-one questions on your own website and whose pricing model does not punish a good month. That is the whole decision, and it is more useful than any ranking.
A short decision guide:
| Your situation | Start with |
|---|---|
| You want live chat with a person answering, AI later | A free live-chat plan (Crisp or Tidio free) |
| You want AI answers and you have low, steady traffic | A credit or conversation plan, with an eye on the overage price |
| You have a support team with seats already | A seat-based helpdesk with AI on top, if per-outcome fees fit your budget |
| You pay for ads and the questions arrive after hours | A flat monthly AI agent that answers, captures and continues on WhatsApp |
Whichever you pick, run the six questions, read the first week of transcripts, and fix the content gaps they reveal. The tool matters less than whether it is answering from the truth.
The fastest test is the one I keep coming back to: paste your website URL into Omago and ask it the question your customers ask at 11 p.m.
Frequently asked questions
Is Chatbase free?
No. Chatbase has no free plan as of October 2026. Its cheapest plan, Hobby, costs US$40 a month for 700 message credits, and paid plans come with a 7-day trial (Chatbase pricing page, 2026). Removing the "Powered by Chatbase" branding is a separate US$99 monthly add-on.
Does Tidio's free plan include AI?
Partly. Tidio's free plan includes Lyro AI for the first 50 conversations, but that is a lifetime quota that does not refresh each month unless you upgrade (Tidio pricing page, 2026). After that, the paid Lyro add-on starts from US$32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations. The free plan also covers 50 billable conversations a month for live chat.
What is the best AI chatbot for a small business website?
There is no single best one; the right one is whichever answers your six most common questions correctly on your own site, at a price that stays predictable in a busy month. Test price, availability, fit, process, hours and human handoff before comparing features. If you pay for ads, also check whether the conversation can continue on WhatsApp after the visitor leaves.
Will an AI chatbot on my website make up prices?
It can, if it is not grounded in your content or if your content is outdated. Test it by asking about prices in several ways, including for services you do not offer. A good tool quotes only what is on your site, says when it does not know, and offers to connect the visitor with a person.
Do I need WhatsApp as well as website chat?
If your customers use WhatsApp, yes, because the website chat ends when the tab closes. Note that since 1 October 2026, Meta charges for service replies after the first 1,000 free messages per business number each month (WhatsApp Business FAQ, 2026), so factor that into your budget.
Sources: Chatbase pricing page (2026), Tidio pricing page (2026), Crisp pricing page (2026), Intercom pricing page (2026), WhatsApp Business FAQ (2026), Meta for Developers — Pricing on the WhatsApp Business Platform and Pricing for non-template messages (2026). All prices in USD as of October 2026; check each vendor's page before you buy.