AI Chatbot Pricing Compared: Boei vs Tidio vs Intercom vs Chatbase vs Chatbot.com

How much does an AI chatbot cost? Anywhere from $0 to several thousand dollars a month. The spread is huge because vendors use four completely different pricing models, and the sticker price on the homepage rarely matches what you actually pay after 60 days of real traffic.

1. Flat monthly rate (Boei): One price, no matter how many conversations. from $19/mo annual on Starter.
2. Per-conversation or per-resolution (Intercom Fin, Chatbot.com, Tidio Lyro): A base fee plus a charge for every AI-handled conversation. Ranges from $0.99 to $1.50 per outcome. Cheap at 50 conversations, expensive at 3,000.
3. Per-credit (Chatbase): You pre-buy message credits. Runs out mid-month and it auto-recharges at $40 per 1,000 credits.
4. Per-seat (Intercom, Chatbot.com): Every human on the team is a separate paid seat, on top of the base plan and AI usage fees.

The rest of this page compares the five most-searched platforms head-to-head using their own published pricing pages as of 2026-07-15.

All prices below are the vendor's own published rates as of 2026-07-15. Annual billing where available, otherwise monthly. Currency: USD.

The number that matters: Boei is the only vendor in this table where the sticker price is the price you pay at any conversation volume. Every other vendor adds AI usage fees, extra seats, or credit top-ups once you leave the free-tier volumes on the pricing page.

Sticker prices are a distraction. The real number is your monthly bill at your actual conversation volume. Here's what each vendor charges when a real SMB runs the meter, using each vendor's cheapest paid plan and their own published AI-usage rates:

Boei vs Intercom at 3,000 conversations/mo: $49 vs $3,009. That's a $2,960/mo delta, or roughly $35,000 a year, for the same job: 3,000 AI-handled conversations plus a shared inbox for your team.

Boei vs Chatbot.com at 3,000 conversations/mo: $49 vs $2,979. The Essential plan headline of $19 is real, but only for the first 10 AI resolutions each month. Everything after that is $49.50 per 50-pack.

Boei vs Chatbase at 3,000 conversations/mo: $49 vs $152. Chatbase is the closest on absolute price, but it caps the team at 2 members on Hobby and doesn't include WhatsApp, email, or SMS channels.

Why is Intercom so expensive compared to Boei or Chatbase? Intercom isn't sold as a chatbot; it's sold as a customer-support platform for teams that already have a support budget. Three things stack up:

1. Every seat is paid, even the read-only ones. A support team of 5 people on Advanced is $99 x 5 = $495/mo before AI usage. Boei's Growth plan includes 3 agents on the base $49/mo.
2. Fin AI is billed per outcome. $0.99 per resolved conversation, minimum 50/mo. A store running 3,000 AI-handled conversations pays $2,970 in Fin fees alone.
3. Analytics, Copilot, and integrations are separately priced. Copilot is $29/agent/mo. Pro analytics is $99/mo. Add-ons stack quickly.

Intercom's pricing model works for teams whose primary bottleneck is agent throughput, not chatbot deployment. For SMBs that mostly need automated first-line answers and lead capture, per-conversation platforms are almost always cheaper to run.

What's the cheapest AI chatbot for a Shopify store? If you have a real store doing actual conversation volume, the ranking looks like this in July 2026:

1. Boei Starter: $19/mo annual. Flat rate, 2,000 AI messages, WhatsApp included, works with any Shopify theme. Cart abandonment, order lookup, product Q&A all handled inside the same $19.
2. Chatbase Hobby: $32/mo if you can live with 500 credits and 2 team members. No native Shopify features; you connect via webhook.
3. Tidio Free: $0 up to 100 visitors/mo. Fine for a brand-new store, useless once traffic picks up.
4. Chatbot.com Essential: $19/mo annual but only 10 AI resolutions included, then $49.50 per 50-pack. Expensive at real Shopify traffic.
5. Gorgias: not in this comparison because it's ticket-based, but worth naming. Starts at $10/mo but charges $0.36-0.40 per ticket, so a busy Shopify store often runs several hundred a month.

See our full Shopify chatbot page for install steps.