Chatbase Pricing (2026): Plans, Add-ons, and What It Actually Costs
Chatbase's pricing page shows four numbers: $0, $40, $150, and $500 a month. Those numbers are real, but they are not what most teams end up paying, because the things you probably want (your own branding, more than one agent, enough credits for real traffic) live in add-ons. This is the full math, taken from their live pricing page in August 2026.
Quick disclosure: we build Murphy, an open source alternative, so read the comparison section knowing that. The Chatbase numbers themselves are just their published prices, and we note below where Chatbase is genuinely the stronger pick.
The plans at a glance
| Free | Hobby | Standard | Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price (monthly) | $0 | $40/mo | $150/mo | $500/mo |
| Message credits / month | 50 | 700 | 4,000 | 15,000 |
| AI agents included | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Team seats | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Advanced models | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| API access | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Helpdesk, voice, telephony | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced analytics | No | No | No | Yes |
| Tickets as a training source | No | No | No | Yes |
Yearly billing takes 20% off. Enterprise is quote-based and adds SSO, custom roles, audit logs, white-labeling, HIPAA eligibility, and zero data retention.
The add-ons, where the real bill forms
Three add-ons change the math for almost everyone:
Extra message credits: $40 per 1,000. When your plan credits run out mid-month, auto-recharge kicks in at this rate. These credits do not expire, which is fair, but $40 per 1,000 is the same rate as the entire Hobby plan.
Extra agents: $25 per agent per month. Every plan, including the $500 Pro plan, includes exactly one AI agent. Run a second product, a second brand, or a separate internal bot and each one is $25 a month on top.
Remove "Powered by Chatbase": $99 per month. Not a one-time fee. Keeping their logo off your chat widget costs more per month than most teams' entire hosting bill, on every plan.
The free plan catch
The free plan gives you 50 credits a month, limited models, and this line from their own pricing page: "AI agents get deleted after 14 days of inactivity on the free plan." Deleted, not paused. If you build an agent, go on vacation, and nobody chats with it for two weeks, your training work is gone. Treat the free plan as a demo, not a tier you can live on.
Credits are not messages
The first FAQ on Chatbase's own pricing page is "How do message credits work?", and that is because a credit is a metering unit, not a reply. Heavier models consume more credits per response, per their docs. If you pick one of the advanced models for quality, your effective replies per month can be a fraction of the credit number on the plan card. When you estimate, use their per-model credit costs, not the headline number.
What a real workload costs
Three honest scenarios, using their published prices:
A small SaaS doing ~1,500 support messages a month, own branding, one product. Hobby is too small once you factor advanced model credit costs, so realistically: Standard $150 + branding removal $99 = $249/month ($2,988/year, before the yearly discount).
Two products, ~3,000 messages a month, own branding. Standard $150 + one extra agent $25 + branding removal $99 = $274/month, and you are still watching the 4,000 credit ceiling if you use bigger models.
A launch spike. Our own AI image product took roughly 700 support conversations in 36 hours when a traffic wave hit. Conversations run multiple messages, so a month at even half that pace blows through Pro's 15,000 credits and into $40-per-1,000 auto-recharge territory. Success gets expensive fast when the meter is per message.
Where Chatbase is genuinely worth it
Honesty section. Chatbase has real strengths that can justify the bill:
- Voice and telephony. Phone support with SIP trunking is built in from the Standard plan. Almost nobody else in this price range has it.
- Channel breadth. WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Slack, plus a native Shopify integration with in-chat cart actions.
- Model choice. OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Mistral, DeepSeek and more, switchable per agent.
- Track record. 10,000+ businesses, years in market, enterprise certifications.
If you need phone support or Meta channels this quarter, Chatbase earns its price and you can stop reading here.
The open source math
Murphy is our product, so here is the same math on our side, stated plainly.
| Chatbase | Murphy | |
|---|---|---|
| Self-host | Not available | Free forever, unlimited messages |
| Cloud entry plan | $40/mo (700 credits, 1 agent) | $29/mo (2,000 AI messages, 3 agents) |
| Remove branding | $99/mo add-on | Included on every paid plan |
| Extra agents | $25/agent/mo | Included in plan limits |
| Free plan | 50 credits, agent deleted after 14 idle days | Self-host, no expiry, no deletion |
| Tickets become PRs | No | Yes (Dispatch, human-approved) |
| Answer traces | Analytics on higher tiers | Every answer, every plan |
The structural difference is the meter. Chatbase charges per message credit, so your bill scales with your success and your model choice. Self-hosted Murphy costs whatever your server costs, and our cloud plans meter in plain messages with no per-model multiplier.
What Chatbase has that Murphy does not, today: voice, WhatsApp and Meta channels, Shopify cart actions, and an enterprise compliance stack. If those are on your list, weigh them honestly.
The bottom line
Chatbase's advertised range is $0 to $500 a month. For a typical small team that wants its own branding and enough credits for real traffic, the practical range is more like $249 to $600+ a month once add-ons and credit top-ups land. Whether that is fair depends on how much you use the channels and model marketplace that genuinely set it apart.
If your support volume is growing and the per-message meter makes you nervous, that is the exact problem open source exists to solve. Murphy is on GitHub, self-host free, and the widget takes about five minutes to install.