Best AI chatbot for your website (2026): 7 options compared

An AI chatbot on your website answers visitors' questions from your own content, at any hour, and hands over to a person when it should. There are dozens to choose from, and they're built for different jobs: some are AI answer engines, some are live chat tools with AI added, and some are platforms for building your own agents.

We compared seven common options for a business website. Asktopus is our own product, so we've tried to make this useful even if you don't pick it: every fact about the others comes from their own pricing pages and documentation, with numbered sources at the end.

How we compared them

We looked at what matters when you put an AI chatbot on a business website:

1. What the AI learns from: website pages, documents, Q&A, and how it stays up to date.
2. What it really costs: the pricing unit (conversations, credits, resolutions) and what the entry plan includes.
3. A way to a person: live chat, tickets or messages to your team.
4. Your brand: whether you can remove the vendor's branding, and at what price.
5. Data protection: who you contract with and where data is processed.

The seven options at a glance

Prices are per month excluding VAT, as shown on each vendor's pricing page. Most US vendors show prices in dollars.

The options in detail

Asktopus: best for answering visitors from your own website

Asktopus reads your sitemap, groups your pages by URL pattern and learns from the sections you choose, plus PDF and Word files, questions and answers from a CSV file, and knowledge articles you write. It answers in the visitor's language and says so when it doesn't know. Visitors can ask for a person at any time; their message goes to your team by email, Slack or webhook with the conversation so far.

• Pricing: €39, €99 or €249 a month for 300, 1,500 or 5,000 conversations, and a year costs ten months' price (two months free). A conversation is one visitor's chat, up to 25 questions, and the AI is included.
• Room for large sites: 500, 5,000 or 25,000 pages per site.
• Always current: each site's knowledge updates automatically every week on Pro and every 3 days on Business, including new pages in the sections you chose.
• Shop products: syncs your webshop's catalogue from Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and most other shop systems, or from a Google Shopping product feed, with prices, variants and stock. Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and feeds sync every hour on Pro and Business and daily on Starter; other shops daily.
• Data: an EU data processor with servers in France. The language models run in the US under the EU's standard contractual clauses, and chat content is deleted after 90 days.
• Not for you if you want live chat with your team, or WhatsApp and Instagram alongside the website.

Chatbase: best for one AI agent on many channels

Chatbase runs the same agent on your website, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Slack, email and phone,² and learns from files, websites, Q&A, Notion and support tickets, with weekly re-syncs on its Standard and Pro plans.³ You pay in message credits, and premium models cost more credits per answer.¹ Removing its branding is a $99 monthly add-on.¹ Our Chatbase comparison goes into detail.

Tidio: best for live chat, helpdesk and AI in one tool

Tidio's helpdesk plans include live chat and tickets for your team, and Lyro, its AI agent, is priced as a separate package from $39 a month for 50 AI conversations up to $700 for 1,000.⁵ Lyro can sync products from Shopify and WooCommerce, and its website scan covers up to 60 priority pages, with 500 URLs below the Plus plan.⁶ Our Tidio comparison goes into detail.

Intercom Fin: best for support teams already on Intercom

Fin costs $0.99 per outcome, charged at most once per conversation, on top of Intercom's seat-based plans. It can also run standalone on Salesforce, HubSpot or Freshdesk with a minimum commitment.⁹ It learns from help centre articles, snippets, public URLs (re-synced weekly) and tools like Confluence and Notion.¹⁰ EU data hosting is available for new contracts on the Advanced and Expert plans.¹¹ It's a strong choice if your support team already works in Intercom; for a small website it's usually more than you need.

Crisp: best for a shared inbox at a flat price

Crisp is a shared inbox with live chat at a flat price per workspace. The AI agent is included from the Mini plan ($45 a month, with $5 of AI credits, about 90 automated conversations), and training the AI on your knowledge starts on Essentials ($95).¹² It learns from web pages, help centre articles, files and snippets.¹³ Crisp is a French company with its core infrastructure in Amsterdam.¹⁴ Removing its branding needs the Plus plan.¹²

Botpress: best for building your own agent

Botpress is a platform for building agents in its visual studio or with code. The Plus plan costs $189 a month ($150 billed yearly) for 250 conversations and $25 of AI usage, with extra packs bought automatically when you run over.¹⁵ It learns from websites, documents, tables and tools like Notion and Google Drive.¹⁶ Choose it if you have someone who enjoys building; choose a ready-made chatbot if you don't.

Chatling: best for trying a no-code chatbot for free

Chatling has a free plan with 200 AI credits, and a Starter plan at $25 a month ($21 billed yearly) with 1,750 credits and weekly auto-sync.¹⁸ It learns from websites (up to 1,000 crawled pages; beyond that, via a sitemap), documents, FAQs and tools like Zendesk and Notion,¹⁹ and includes live chat for handoff.²⁰ Removing its branding costs $35 a month or comes with the Scale plan.¹⁸

How the pricing models differ

The entry price says little on its own, because the unit differs:

• Per conversation (Asktopus, Botpress): one visitor's chat counts once, however many questions they ask, within limits.¹⁵
• Per message credit (Chatbase, Chatling): each AI answer uses credits, and better models use more.^{1, 18}
• Per resolution (Intercom Fin): you pay when the AI resolves a conversation, plus seats.⁹
• AI conversation packages (Tidio Lyro): a separate AI package on top of the helpdesk's human-handled conversations.⁵
• Flat plan with AI credits (Crisp): a flat price per workspace with an AI allowance included.¹²

Estimate your monthly chats and questions per chat, then work out what each option costs at that volume. Our AI chatbot pricing guide shows how.

How to choose

• You want answers from your website, not a chat team: Asktopus, Chatbase or Chatling.
• Your team wants to chat with visitors live: Tidio, Crisp or Intercom.
• You need WhatsApp, Instagram or voice too: Chatbase, Tidio or Crisp.
• You want to build something custom: Botpress.
• You want a European vendor: Asktopus or Crisp.

Whichever you pick, test it on your own site with the questions your visitors actually ask before you decide. Asktopus has a 14-day trial with no credit card: see the plans and prices.