AI chatbot pricing in 2026: what support teams pay

AI chatbots for customer support list at $0.05 to $2 per conversation or resolution in 2026, depending on the vendor and the unit it bills. Most also need a help desk plan, so the monthly bill is the platform plus the AI volume times the unit price, and two tools with similar unit prices can end up far apart at your volume.

This guide explains the five billing units, lists AI prices from ten vendors and Gleap, works through three team sizes and shows the costs that sit outside the unit price. All prices are USD list prices from each vendor’s own pages, checked on September 27, 2026; Gleap’s prices are as of November 10, 2026. It covers AI chatbots for customer support; subscriptions to general assistants such as ChatGPT or Claude are priced per user and are a different product.

How AI chatbots are priced: five billing units

Every AI chatbot bill counts something. The unit decides what you pay for and how the bill grows with your volume.

Per resolution or outcome

You pay when the AI settles a conversation, by the vendor’s definition. Intercom charges $0.99 per Fin outcome: the customer confirms the issue is resolved, does not ask for more help after Fin responds, or Fin completes a workflow, including a handoff. It charges at most once per conversation. Help Scout charges $0.75 per resolution and counts one only when the customer gets an AI answer and does not escalate, search the knowledge base, ask more questions or say they need more help.

Since April 14, 2026, HubSpot’s Customer Agent uses 50 HubSpot credits per resolved conversation, which HubSpot prices at $0.50 (HubSpot announcement). Zendesk bills verified resolutions, which a language model confirms after the conversation ends, against a dollar allowance that comes with each agent seat (About automated resolution tiers).

The definitions differ, so read them before you compare prices. A Fin outcome can include a handoff to your team, while a Help Scout resolution does not count once the customer asks for more help.

Per conversation or session

You pay for every conversation the AI joins, whether it resolves it or not. Freshdesk bills Freddy AI Agent by session: all chat interactions within 24 hours count as one session, and an email session is a 72-hour window from the customer’s first email. Sessions cost $49 per 100 after 500 free sessions per account. Tidio bills every conversation with at least one Lyro reply, $0.70 to $0.78 each on monthly plans. Salesforce sells Agentforce conversations at $2 each, and Front lists Autopilot from $0.05 per conversation. Gleap prices Kai Support this way too: about $0.05 per conversation (estimate), whether Kai resolves it or hands it to your team.

Per seat

Some tools put the AI into the per-user price with a monthly cap. ChatBot, from Text, includes 10 AI resolutions a month on Essential at $19 per user a month and 200 on Growth at $79, billed annually, and 50 more resolutions cost $49.50.

AI for your own agents is usually billed per seat as well. Copilots, the AI assistants that work next to your team in the inbox, cost $50 per agent a month at Zendesk and $29 at Intercom and Freshdesk, billed annually, and $20 per seat a month at Front.

Per message or action

A few tools count each AI reply or action. Chatbase sells message credits, and each AI reply uses 1 to 6 credits depending on the model (Chatbase FAQ). Its Standard plan costs $150 a month with 4,000 credits on monthly billing, and extra credits cost $40 per 1,000. Salesforce also sells Agentforce by action: an action uses 20 Flex Credits, and Flex Credits cost $500 per 100,000, so an action costs $0.10.

Prepaid credits by usage

Usage billing charges for the AI work itself, by the model that runs a task and how much work it takes, from a prepaid balance. A short task costs less than a long one with several tool calls, so there is no fixed price per task. Gleap bills Kai Code’s Cloud sessions this way. Kai Support costs about $0.05 per conversation instead (estimate), against Intercom Fin’s $0.99 per resolution. Kai stops at $1 each time it works on a ticket.

AI chatbot prices by vendor

List prices from the vendors’ own pages, checked on September 27, 2026. The units differ, so use the table to see what each bill depends on, then compare monthly totals for your own volume.

Two notes on the table. Intercom showed some visitors a $19 Essential seat price as a price experiment on the day we checked; the table uses the standard $29. Free allowances run out: Freshdesk’s 500 sessions and Tidio’s 50 Lyro conversations come once per account, and Help Scout’s unlimited AI Answers last three months.

For plan details and team totals on the three largest help desks, see our guides to Intercom pricing and Fin AI costs, Zendesk pricing and Freshdesk pricing.

What else goes into the bill

The unit price is one line. These are the others:

1. Seats. Per-seat help desks grow with every person who needs access, including part-time helpers and engineers who look at tickets.
2. Copilot seats. Agent-side AI is often a separate per-seat add-on, from $20 to $50 per agent a month at the vendors above.
3. Minimums and plan requirements. Fin on another help desk has a minimum monthly commitment; Intercom gives 50 outcomes as an example. HubSpot’s Customer Agent needs a Professional or Enterprise subscription, and Service Hub Professional adds a one-time onboarding fee of $1,500.
4. Limits and defaults. At Zendesk, resolutions beyond the ones included per agent are billed unless you turn overage off, and unused included resolutions do not carry over. HubSpot credits reset every month, unused credits expire, and by default usage-based features pause when the included credits run out (HubSpot credits and billing).
5. Two meters on one conversation. Tidio bills the conversations your team answers and the conversations Lyro answers separately, so a conversation that Lyro starts and a person finishes can count on both.
6. Channels and messages. WhatsApp, SMS and phone are often billed by usage; Intercom, for example, bills email campaigns, SMS, WhatsApp and phone pay as you go.
7. The content the AI answers from. An AI chatbot needs current help content. Check which plan includes the help center or knowledge sources you plan to connect.

Before you forecast, check what counts as billable, what happens at the limit and which free allowances expire.

How to estimate your monthly cost

A monthly AI support bill has four parts: the platform plan, the AI billing unit, the AI volume and the add-ons. Put them in one formula:

Monthly cost = platform + (AI conversations × billable share × unit price) + add-ons

1. Count the conversations the AI would take. Use the last three to six months of chats and emails, not only the busy weeks.
2. Estimate the billable share. With per-resolution pricing you pay for the share the vendor counts; with per-conversation pricing you pay for all of them.
3. Price the platform for the seats you need, at the billing period you will sign.
4. Add the extras: copilot seats, channels, emails, onboarding fees and minimums.
5. Test on your own tickets. Run a representative set of real questions in a trial and read the usage report before you commit.

Worked examples for three team sizes

These examples use annual list prices from September 27, 2026, before tax. Assumptions, not vendor figures: the AI takes every conversation first; 60% of AI conversations end in a billable Fin outcome; each Freshdesk conversation is one session and the 500 free sessions are used up. Gleap’s AI line counts about $0.05, Gleap’s estimate, for every AI conversation.

The first number in each cell is the platform, the second the AI usage. Three cautions:

• Gleap’s AI line is an estimate. It counts about $0.05 for every conversation Kai Support answers; the price depends on the model and how long the conversation is. Kai Support’s investigations, Kai Code, Kai Copilot and custom agents are not in the table.
• Plans are not equal. Each plan includes different features, and larger teams on per-seat tools often need a higher plan, which raises the seat line.
• Zendesk is left out because its bill depends on the seats and the resolutions included per agent; the Zendesk pricing guide works through team totals.

The pattern matters more than the totals. Per-seat tools grow with the team, and per-unit AI grows with the volume. Gleap Growth includes 4 seats and adds $250 a year for each extra seat ($25 a month on monthly billing), and from 14 seats Pro, with unlimited seats, costs less.

Building your own AI chatbot: the cost drivers

Many guides to chatbot cost quote build prices from development agencies. A custom build replaces the vendor’s unit price with your own costs:

• Model usage. Model providers price their APIs per million input and output tokens. Every question sends your instructions and the matching help content along, so context size and model choice drive this line.
• Retrieval. Your help content has to be indexed for search, stored and kept in sync when articles change.
• The chat surface. A widget for your website and apps, plus every other channel you answer on.
• The handoff to people. An inbox or help desk integration, so a teammate can take over with the conversation history.
• Quality work. Test sets, answer reviews and fixes for wrong answers, every week.
• Security and privacy. Access controls, data processing terms and logs.
• Engineering time. The build, and the maintenance after launch.

Ask for a quote broken down by these lines, and compare it with a year of vendor pricing at your volume.

How Gleap prices Kai Support

Kai Support, Gleap’s AI support agent, is on every Gleap plan. Gleap charges a monthly plan for the workspace, and AI usage is paid from a prepaid balance. Kai Support costs about $0.05 per conversation (estimate), against Intercom Fin’s $0.99 per resolution. Kai Copilot costs about the same, and Kai Code and custom agents are paid from the same AI balance.

As of November 2026, Hobby costs $29 per month billed annually ($35 monthly) with one seat, one project and Kai Support on the first line. Growth costs $99 per month billed annually ($119 monthly) with 4 seats included (then $25 per extra seat per month), unlimited projects and every Kai agent: Kai Support with its investigations, Kai Copilot and Kai Code, plus custom agents. Pro costs $299 per month billed annually ($359 monthly) and adds unlimited seats, advanced reports, LLM model choice, the SOC 2 report and priority support, at the same AI prices, and Enterprise starts at $999 (from $1,199 monthly).

These are the prices per task, the same on every plan that has the agent:

Kai Support investigates only the hard tickets, on the boards where your team turned on Kai investigates here. The per-conversation figure is our estimate as of November 2026, not a quote (how we estimate).

• Free trial. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is needed. After 7 days you pick a plan to continue.
• Top-ups. Usage is paid from a prepaid balance. Auto-recharge is on by default for paid workspaces, and you can change it or turn it off in Billing. It does not run during the trial. When the balance runs out, AI work pauses until you top up.
• Emails. Growth and Pro include 1,000 emails to customers a month, then $2 per 1,000.
• Enterprise. AI pricing by agreement.

The trade-offs are real. Gleap Hobby has one seat, and Kai Support on the first line is its only AI feature. The knowledge base, email and the WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Slack and Telegram channels, tools for Kai Support, its investigations and Kai Code need Growth (Kai Copilot works on every plan), as do custom agents; LLM model choice and advanced reports need Pro. On every plan, AI usage comes on top: Kai Support at about $0.05 per conversation (estimate), the other agents from the same AI balance, so run a representative set of your own tickets before you pick a plan and read the usage breakdown in Billing before you set a budget.

Gleap pricing explained has the full breakdown with an example bill, and the pricing page always shows current prices.

Gleap publishes this guide. Competitor prices come from each vendor’s own pages, checked on September 27, 2026, and can change.