If you've spent any time shopping for an AI chatbot for your website, you've probably noticed a pattern: most of the big names -- Intercom, Drift, Zendesk -- don't show you a price until you talk to a salesperson. That's usually a sign the product is built for enterprise budgets, not a 5-person shop trying to stop answering the same three questions all day.
What actually drives the cost
Strip away the marketing and most AI chatbot pricing comes down to three things:
- Conversation volume. Nearly every vendor caps how many conversations (not messages) you get per month before charging overage or forcing an upgrade.
- Seats. Some platforms charge per team member who can view the dashboard or transcripts, which adds up fast for a growing team.
- The underlying AI model. Chatbots built on a frontier model (like Claude or GPT-4-class models) cost more to run per conversation than ones using a cheaper, older model -- and answer quality usually reflects that difference.
Typical price ranges in 2026
For a small-to-mid-size business (a handful of team members, a few hundred to a few thousand support conversations a month), realistic monthly costs look like:
- Budget/DIY tools: £0-£30/month, but usually rule-based or very limited AI, no real knowledge-base training.
- Mid-market AI chatbots (this is where a tool like ReplyFox sits): roughly £29-£200/month depending on volume, with the bot actually trained on your own site/FAQ content and answering in natural language.
- Enterprise platforms: often £500+/month once you factor in seats, add-ons, and onboarding fees -- and frequently require an annual contract.
Questions to ask before you commit
- Is the cap based on conversations or individual messages? (A "500 messages" cap can be just 50 real conversations.)
- What happens when you go over the cap -- hard block, or metered overage?
- Can you cancel monthly, or are you locked into an annual contract?
- Does training it on your content cost extra, or is it included?
For what it's worth, ReplyFox publishes its pricing openly: Starter is £29/month for 500 conversations, Growth is £79/month for 2,000, and Scale is £199/month for 6,000 -- all with the option to pay annually for a 10% discount, and no seat limits or contracts. You can see the full breakdown and try it free from the signup page.