Microsoft Copilot
CE 89 free tierCompanies already paying for Microsoft 365 that want drafting and meeting recaps inside apps their staff open anyway.
Entry plan$19.99 / seat
× 6 seats$119.94
Against your $234 ceiling−$114.06
Team cost$119.94 / mo
Verified
Reviewed by
Oleh Kem
Oleh KemPlans checked28 / 7 vendors
“Contact sales”4/28
Median entry$39/mo
Entry range$9.99-150
Free tier6/7
Leader89 Microsoft Copilot
AI chatbots compared: pricing, tool use, voice and file handling
Payment here takes three shapes: a personal subscription you cap yourself, per-seat licences your team carries, and a usage meter your customers move. We priced all 7 vendors from their own published tiers, then scored how much of the bill each one states up front.
How much does an AI chatbot cost per month?
The billing unit decides more than the tier does: across 7 vendors it is a seat, a single monthly account fee, or a meter counting conversations. Paid tiers open at $9.99, the priciest opener is $150, and $39 splits the field in two. The meter is the part that moves. Your customers move it, not you.
- Entry prices start at $9.99 and stop at $150 for the priciest first tier. The median lands on $39, checked July 29, 2026.
- Only Intercom Fin has no free tier, because it sells by resolved conversation rather than by month. The other 6 let you start at zero.
- 28 plans went through the check. Four withhold a price, and each of those is a vendor's last and largest tier.
- A subscription buys access to the assistant, not its work. The customer-facing tiers bill again per resolved outcome, per pack of conversations, or out of a pool of message credits.
- Three of the five customer-facing builders charge separately to take their own name off your bot or to let another person edit it.
- The consumer end of this category has a ceiling you can name in advance. The builder end does not, because your customers set the volume.
Two inputs make our number, and capability is not one of them: disclosure carries sixty, user rating forty. Printing every tier outranks going quiet at the top. The full method.
01 / 07
AI chatbots ranked: pricing transparency, tool use, voice and files
The axis carries the entry price only. A tick is one seat, a diamond is a whole account, and neither glyph shows the meter that runs afterwards: outcomes, packs of conversations, message credits.
Sorted by transparency scorePriced tiers 24 / 28Full disclosure 3 / 7
How to read this table
Reading the console
The axis is the published entry price. It runs logarithmically from $9.99, the cheapest way into this category. Granted means the capability is on the record. Sealed means a vendor lists the tier without a number. An empty cell says the feature never appeared in the recorded set, which is not the same as the product lacking it. The meter escapes all of this: Intercom bills per resolved conversation, Botpress sells conversations in packs, Chatbase counts message credits. Slide the lens over the price line to see who is still standing at a budget you name.
- Price axis
- One shared logarithmic axis, $9.99 to $750. A tick further right is genuinely dearer. The tall tick is the cheapest paid tier.
- Diamond
- A flat platform fee, billed per month, not per seat.
- Granted
- Listed on the vendor’s own pages on the verify date.
- Conditional
- Present, but some tiers carry no published price.
- Not on the record
- Absent from the recorded feature set. It means unlisted, not incapable.
01Microsoft CopilotFree tierAll tiers pricedTool use listedFile handling listedVoice listedAutonomous listed$19.99/u89Alternatives to Microsoft Copilot
02Intercom FinNo free tierAll tiers pricedTool use listedFile handling not on the recordVoice listedAutonomous listed$39/u89Alternatives to Intercom Fin
03Character.AIFree tierAll tiers pricedTool use not on the recordFile handling not on the recordVoice listedAutonomous not on the record$9.99/u84Alternatives to Character.AI
04TidioFree tier1 of 5 tiers unpricedTool use listedFile handling not on the recordVoice not on the recordAutonomous listed$29flat82Alternatives to Tidio
05BotpressFree tier1 of 4 tiers unpricedTool use listedFile handling listedVoice not on the recordAutonomous listed$150flat76Alternatives to Botpress
06ChatbaseFree tier1 of 5 tiers unpricedTool use listedFile handling listedVoice not on the recordAutonomous not on the record$40flat75Alternatives to Chatbase
07VoiceflowFree tier1 of 4 tiers unpricedTool use listedFile handling listedVoice listedAutonomous not on the record$60/u74Alternatives to Voiceflow
GrantedSome tiers sealedNot on the recordCheapest paid seatFlat account fee, not per seatScore ranks pricing transparency and user ratings, not capability. Capability is the grid.
7 vendorsMedian entry $39Coverage span 4 → 1 of fourSealed tiers 4 / 28
Scroll the console sideways to reach the remaining conditions.
02 / 07
Shortlist an AI chatbot by team size and what it really costs
The shortlist ranks by what the plan actually costs your team, not by list price. Flat plans are folded into a per-team number so they compare like for like. Only vendors rated 85 and up are eligible.
Seats
6
Budget / seat
For 6 seats at $39 per seat, start with these
Ranked by monthly team cost, vendors rated 85 and up · Your ceiling for this team: $234 / mo
Intercom Fin
CE 89A busy help centre that already answers most questions, turned into an agent that closes tickets by itself.
Entry plan$39 / seat
× 6 seats$234
Against your $234 ceiling−$0
Team cost$234 / mo
Not sure what to weigh? Five questions narrow it faster than the grid.Answer 5 questions
03 / 07
Every chatbot's plans, verdicts and the date we checked each price
Nothing here is sorted by price or by brand. The order is ours, and disclosure sets most of it. Microsoft Copilot and Intercom Fin tie at the top from opposite wings: one sells you a seat, the other sells resolved conversations. Every row unfolds into every tier, dated.
Transparency scorePricing transparency 60%User satisfaction 40%
Companies already paying for Microsoft 365 that want drafting and meeting recaps inside apps their staff open anyway. The Microsoft 365 Premium tier sells to six people yet hands the AI to the subscription owner alone, which is the line most buyers skim past.
Critical gapImage generation output quality frequently lags behind competing specialized diffusion models.
Plan table and expert take
Microsoft Copilot: expert take
Copilot Studio is a pack, not a subscription: $200 on the Copilot Studio line buys 25,000 credits, and one reasoning action can spend up to a hundred. Pay as you go runs a cent a credit, so one action can cost a dollar.
Where Microsoft Copilot holds up
- Runs OpenAI's current GPT-5.x models on the free tier, with web search and image generation included
- Reads your live Microsoft 365 content through Graph, so it answers from your actual files instead of a blank prompt
- Sits inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams, so there is no tool to open and no context to re-paste
- Commercial data protection is included on Microsoft 365 and Pro plans, so business queries stay out of training
- Takes text, voice, and image input across desktop and the mobile app
4.6CE scoreG2 4.5 · 150 reviewsCapterra 4.4Founded 2023Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Copilot | Free | Free |
| Microsoft 365 Premium | $19.99 | $16.67 |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Business | $25.20 | $21 |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Enterprise | $31.50 | $30 |
| Copilot Studio | $200 | Not published |
A busy help centre that already answers most questions, turned into an agent that closes tickets by itself. Fin also sells with no seats at all, priced purely by outcome, and the upper tiers hand back free Lite seats, twenty on Advanced and fifty on Expert.
Critical gapIt does not appear to learn from past conversations.
Plan table and expert take
Intercom Fin: expert take
Support desks at volume pay on two lines: $39 a seat on the Essential plan, plus $0.99 for every outcome Fin resolves. The meter has no ceiling, so the resolution count, and not the seat price, is what decides whether Fin is cheap.
Where Intercom Fin holds up
- Answers instantly from your existing Intercom Articles, so setup starts from content you already have
- Fires Intercom Workflows for the multi-step cases that need real logic, beyond a canned reply
- Reads conversation history to personalize replies to the specific customer
- Hands off to a human with full context in the same thread, so the customer never repeats themselves
- Can pull from outside sources like Zendesk or public URLs, beyond the Intercom help center
4.6CE scoreG2 4.5 · 3,851 reviewsCapterra 4.4Founded 2023Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Essential | $39 | $29 |
| Advanced | $99 | $85 |
| Expert | $139 | $132 |
| Fin AI Agent | $0.99 / outcome | Not published |
Long, in-character conversations that are the point of the session rather than a step towards work. Character.AI sells one paid tier and nothing above it, so the ceiling is known on day one, and there is no API to build anything on.
Critical gapRecent model updates restrict response length and output variability.
Plan table and expert take
Character.AI: expert take
The free tier is not throttled so much as interrupted: it runs with ads, and the paid tier sells their absence along with the better memory. One step, $9.99 on the c.ai+ plan, or $7.92 a month if you buy the year.
Where Character.AI holds up
- Unmatched character creation depth and customization
- Massive library of user-generated characters and scenarios
- Advanced long-term memory for continuous conversations
- Group Chat feature for multi-character interactions
- Generous free tier with core functionality included
4.3CE scoreCapterra 4.2Founded 2021Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Free |
| c.ai+ | $9.99 | $7.92 |
Small stores at the stage where the chat queue is still predictable and setup time costs more than software does. Tidio's Growth tier moves with a conversation slider instead of standing still, and the badge stays on your widget until you pay to take it off.
Plan table and expert take
Tidio: expert take
Anyone testing the free tier should read the Lyro line twice: those fifty AI conversations are a one-time allowance, not a monthly one. Live chat keeps running after they are spent. The AI stops.
Where Tidio holds up
- Best free chatbot for small business
- Resolves 70% of queries with Lyro AI
- Top-rated (4.7/5) by users
- Strong e-commerce integrations
- Easy setup - live in minutes
4.8CE scoreG2 4.7 · 1,904 reviewsCapterra 4.7Founded 2019Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Free |
| Starter | $29 | $24.17 |
| Growth | $59 | Not published |
| Plus | $749 | Not published |
| Premium | Contact sales | |
Developers who have outgrown a widget and want the flow logic in their own hands. Botpress prices by conversation volume before it prices by feature, so the tiers read as a hundred, two hundred and fifty, then fifteen hundred conversations a month, with vector storage rising alongside.
Plan table and expert take
Botpress: expert take
Overflow decides this one. Conversations past the allowance are sold in packs of a hundred, and the pack is cheaper on the higher tier, so light users pay the most per conversation. The published steps run $150 on Plus and $750 on Team.
Where Botpress holds up
- True open-source core for full control & self-hosting
- Combines a visual flow builder with native LLM capabilities
- Agent-based architecture for complex, multi-step tasks
- Native integrations for 12+ channels like WhatsApp & Slack
4.7CE scoreG2 4.6 · 486 reviewsCapterra 4.5Founded 2016Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Free |
| Plus | $150 | Not published |
| Team | $750 | Not published |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | |
A website, a PDF or a support doc turned into an embedded bot the same afternoon. Chatbase counts agents, actions per agent and message credits separately, so three counters move at once every time you change tier.
Critical gapLimited revenue generation noted by users.
Plan table and expert take
Chatbase: expert take
The model list is part of the price here. Advanced Anthropic models appear only on the $500 Pro plan, three steps up the ladder. Seats past the fifth on Pro carry their own monthly charge, and an idle free bot is deleted after fourteen days.
Where Chatbase holds up
- Instant chatbot creation from a single URL or PDF
- One-line JavaScript snippet for website embedding
- Supports 95 languages for training and responses
- Integrates with Slack, Zapier, and WordPress
- Generous free plan with 30 messages/month
4.5CE scoreG2 4.4 · 19 reviewsCapterra 4.3Founded 2023Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Free |
| Hobby | $40 | $32 |
| Standard | $150 | $120 |
| Pro | $500 | $400 |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | |
A canvas where a team drafts, tests and versions an agent before a customer ever sees it. Two meters run at once, seats and credits, and the Business plan refuses credit top-ups, which leaves a tier upgrade or a wait.
Plan table and expert take
Voiceflow: expert take
Teams that add a second builder pay for it twice over: the $60 Pro plan includes one editor seat, and every extra editor is billed monthly on top of the tier. Concurrent voice calls step one, five and fifteen across the ladder.
Where Voiceflow holds up
- Best-in-class visual conversation design
- Strong team collaboration features
- Used by enterprise companies
- Agent marketplace for templates
- Excellent prototyping & testing
4.6CE scoreG2 4.5 · 109 reviewsCapterra 4.4Founded 2019Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | Free | Free |
| Pro | $60 | $54 |
| Business | $150 | $135 |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | |
04 / 07
Compare any two AI chatbots: plans, message limits and our score
vs
What the records say
Microsoft Copilot starts cheaper: $19.99 / seat against $39 from Intercom Fin, 2.0× apart at the door.
For 6 seats, Microsoft Copilot bills $119.94 / mo and Intercom Fin bills $234 / mo, $114.06 / mo between them.
Microsoft Copilot carries 4 of the 4 capability columns on the record; Intercom Fin shows 3.
Users rate them level: 4.5 on G2 apiece.
Microsoft Copilot runs a free tier to start on; Intercom Fin does not.
Both publish every tier they sell.
Pick Microsoft Copilot for: Companies already paying for Microsoft 365 that want drafting and meeting recaps inside apps their staff open anyway.
Pick Intercom Fin for: A busy help centre that already answers most questions, turned into an agent that closes tickets by itself.
Microsoft Copilot
CE 89 · G2 4.5Published plans, US$/mo
CopilotFree
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business$25.20
Copilot Studio$200
Team of 6$119.94 / mo
Verified July 16, 2026
Intercom Fin
CE 89 · G2 4.5Published plans, US$/mo
Essential$39
Advanced$99
Fin AI Agent$0.99 / outcome
Team of 6$234 / mo
Verified July 16, 2026
Both price lists on the category axis
Microsoft Copilot
Intercom Fin
Where they differ
Only Microsoft Copilot has on the record
- $0 tier
- File handling
Only Intercom Fin has on the record
—
05 / 07
AI chatbot questions: cost per conversation, free plans, vendor badges
What is the going rate for one chatbot conversation?
That turns on who is counting, and what. Intercom's Fin AI Agent plan bills $0.99 for each resolved conversation and asks for no seats at all. Botpress sells overflow in packs of a hundred conversations. Chatbase counts message credits instead, so a single conversation draws down more than one. The unit is never the same twice, so a per-conversation figure says nothing on its own, only next to the plan it sits under.
What does a free chatbot plan not include?
Usually the AI. Tidio hands out fifty Lyro conversations once, not fifty a month, and live chat keeps working after they are spent. Chatbase deletes an idle free bot after fourteen days. Character.AI runs its free tier with ads and weaker memory. Voiceflow's Starter allows a single editor. A free tier here is a demo of the product, not a small version of it.
How do I stop paying extra to take a vendor's badge off?
By buying the tier that already includes it. Tidio charges separately for badge removal on the Growth plan and folds it into Plus. Chatbase keeps white-labelling for its unpriced enterprise step, which leaves no published way to buy it lower down. Extra editors follow the same logic: Voiceflow and Chatbase bill per additional person rather than moving you up a tier.
Can you run a customer-facing bot without paying per conversation?
Yes, when the allowance is bought up front. Botpress, Chatbase and Tidio each include a conversation or credit pool inside the monthly tier, so the bill holds still until the pool empties. Intercom inverts that: it charges for every outcome Fin resolves, seats or no seats. Fixed pools are easier to budget. They also bill the same in a quiet month.
Why is there nothing between a chatbot's mid tier and its top one?
Because the tier below it is aimed at a different buyer. Tidio steps from the $59 Growth plan to the $749 Plus plan with nothing in between, and Botpress does the same between its Plus and Team tiers. Unlimited conversations, custom limits and a named contact live up there, priced for companies whose support desk is a department rather than a person.
Can you cut the bill by committing to a year?
On most of them. Character.AI's c.ai+ drops from $9.99 to $7.92 a month on the annual rate, and Intercom's Essential seat falls from $39 to $29. Chatbase and Voiceflow discount every paid tier too. Tidio discounts its cheapest plan only, and Botpress publishes no yearly figure at all, so committing early buys nothing there.
Does a personal AI subscription do the job of a chatbot builder?
No, and the prices show why. Character.AI and the consumer tiers of Microsoft Copilot are sold per person, to the person who uses them. The other five exist to answer somebody else's questions, which is why they meter conversations. A subscription you use yourself has a ceiling. A bot your customers use does not.
Does a chatbot need an API to be worth buying?
It depends on where the bot has to live. Character.AI publishes no API at all, and that fits what it sells. Every builder here exposes one, though Chatbase withholds API access from its first paid step. If the bot must live inside your own software and not in a widget on a page, then the API tier is your true entry price.
What does "included in every plan" mean on a chatbot price list?
Access, not work. Intercom lists Fin on every seat tier, and each answer it gives still costs $0.99 on the Fin AI Agent rate. Chatbase includes AI actions on every paid tier but keeps the stronger Anthropic models behind Pro. Read an inclusion as permission to use the thing, then go looking for the counter attached to it.
Which of these can close a ticket unattended?
Intercom Fin resolves tickets on its own and bills when it succeeds. Tidio's Lyro and Botpress flows do the same inside their own limits. Chatbase and Voiceflow lean on retrieval and designed paths, so they answer what they were handed. Character.AI and Microsoft Copilot sit with the person at the keyboard, and neither was built to work a queue.
AI chatbot pricing is set by whoever pays the meter
A personal subscription has a known ceiling. One tier, one price, and the worst month costs what the quietest one costs. Seat pricing multiplies by headcount, which is still arithmetic you control. The customer-facing builders break that pattern, because your traffic sets the volume and your traffic is not something you decide.
Which assistant is better matters less than who pays the meter once the bot goes live. Sort that first. The consumer subscriptions and the bot builders answer to different budgets, and a price on one side does not read against a price on the other.
AI chatbot costs that land after the plan price
Some of the bill never reaches the price list. Microsoft's business Copilot tiers need a qualifying Microsoft 365 licence bought separately, so the tier figure is a top-up and not the whole cost. Its cheap first-year rate is promotional and expires, and the standing rate is the one to plan against.
The builders add lines of their own. Chatbase bills for every member past the fifth on its top published tier. Voiceflow bills telephony outside the plan altogether, so a voice agent's real cost rides on call minutes that no tier prints. Neither line reaches the number you compare.
The verdict on AI chatbotsSigned review · Updated
Two purchases hide under one label. The first one you operate yourself, and its ceiling is known the day you sign. The second is worked by strangers, and their volume writes the invoice.
Before committing to the second kind, find the counter sitting under the tier. A plan buys entry. Every question answered is charged on top of it, by the answer, by the pack, or out of a pool that several of these refill without being asked. A vendor keeping that counter off its price page cannot rank well with us, however good the bot turns out to be.
MethodWe read 28 plans across seven vendors, seat plans and per-conversation rates alike, and dated every figure .
DisclosureCollection is tool-assisted; every verdict is written and signed by a human analyst.
06 / 07
Not sure which? Answer one, take a shortlist.Pick the line that sounds like your team. Each one opens the vendor built for it.
Companies already paying for Microsoft 365 that want drafting and meeting recaps inside apps their staff open anywayMicrosoft CopilotA busy help centre that already answers most questions, turned into an agent that closes tickets by itselfIntercom FinLong, in-character conversations that are the point of the session rather than a step towards workCharacter.AISmall stores at the stage where the chat queue is still predictable and setup time costs more than software doesTidioDevelopers who have outgrown a widget and want the flow logic in their own handsBotpressA website, a PDF or a support doc turned into an embedded bot the same afternoonChatbaseStill weighing it? Answer 5 questions, take a shortlist.
07 / 07
Read next: cost guides for AI chatbots, plus related categories
Related categoriesLarge Language ModelsAnalytics & BICustomer SupportCRMProject ManagementEmail MarketingCompare two vendorsMicrosoft Copilot vs Intercom FinIntercom Fin vs Character.AICharacter.AI vs TidioTidio vs BotpressBotpress vs ChatbaseChatbase vs VoiceflowStill unsureAnswer 5 questions → a shortlistAll categories
How this review is made. Prices are read from vendor pricing pages and re-checked on the dates shown against each product. Condition columns reflect the feature set recorded on the vendor’s own pages on that date. ComparEdge sells no AI chatbots and takes no vendor payment for placement. Where a vendor publishes nothing, this page says so rather than estimating. Ranking is by transparency score: pricing transparency 60%, user satisfaction 40%. What a product can do is shown in the condition columns and carries no weight in the number.