What does a chatbot cost for a small business?

What does a chatbot cost? On a ready-made platform you pay a fixed monthly fee for a bundle of conversations, or an amount for each conversation the bot handles on its own. At Watermelon it starts with a free version and the first paid plan costs €99 per month. A custom build costs one-off build hours plus monthly software fees.

What does a chatbot cost per month?

For a small business, the well-known platforms range from a free trial to plans for a whole team. What you pay depends mostly on the number of conversations, how many colleagues need access and which channels you want to connect. The table below shows entry prices as the providers publish them on their own pricing pages. Check them before you sign, because they change often.

Mind the currency. Chatbase and Intercom charge in dollars, so the amount on your bank statement moves with the exchange rate. Watermelon and Trengo list their prices in euros. Ask every provider whether the price includes VAT or not.

What does it cost to have a chatbot built?

There is no public price list for a custom chatbot. You pay the builder's hours to set the bot up, fill it with your information and connect it to your systems. After that you pay monthly for the platform or language model it runs on. The more connections, the more hours.

The figures you find online for custom builds vary widely and are often written for large companies in the United States. So ask for two or three quotes and have each one broken down the same way:

• One-off: setup, writing the answers, connecting your calendar, webshop or customer system, testing.
• Monthly: the software or hosting, and how many conversations that includes.
• Usage: cost per conversation, per message or per token once you go over the bundle.
• Maintenance: who updates the answers when your prices or opening hours change, and what that costs.

If a builder runs your chatbot on a language model such as OpenAI's, OpenAI charges per token, a small piece of text a few letters long. The current rates are on OpenAI's pricing page. Ask the builder for an estimate per conversation, so you can compare it with the platforms in the table.

What is the difference between monthly fees and per-conversation pricing?

With a monthly fee you pay a fixed amount for a bundle of conversations, even if you use fewer. With per-conversation pricing you only pay for what the bot actually handles, but you do not know the exact bill in advance. For a custom build, one-off costs come on top. Which model is cheaper depends on how many conversations you have.

How do you work out what a chatbot will cost you?

Take your number of chat conversations per month and run it through every provider you are considering. Add the users who need access and the VAT. The worked example below shows how big the gap between pricing models can be for exactly the same number of conversations.

Say an installation company gets 200 chat conversations per month through its website. Watermelon's cheapest paid plan covers 250 conversations per month and costs €99 per month. If that amount is quoted before tax, you pay €119.79 per month, because the Belastingdienst charges the standard rate of 21% on most services.

Suppose that at Intercom the bot resolves 120 of those conversations itself and one employee handles the rest. Then you pay Intercom $118.80 per month for those resolved conversations, plus the monthly fee for that one user. If the bot resolves more, that amount goes up with it.

So the difference is not only in the entry price. A fixed bundle is predictable, but you pay the full amount in a quiet month too. Paying per resolved conversation is fair as long as the bot really answers well, and gets expensive when you have many questions.

Where are the hidden costs of a chatbot?

The biggest costs are rarely at the top of the pricing page. They sit in extra users, conversations beyond your bundle, paid add-ons and the time you spend keeping the answers up to date. Before you sign, look at these items:

• Users: at Intercom you pay per user per month on top of the cost per resolved conversation. We saw that amount change when reloading the pricing page, so ask.
• More conversations than your bundle: at Chatbase you top up for $40 per 1,000 credits.
• Your own brand: removing the Chatbase logo from the chat costs $99 per month.
• Monthly or annual: at Trengo the same plan costs €349 per month when billed monthly and €299 per month with an annual contract, but then you are tied in for a year.
• WhatsApp: if you want the bot on WhatsApp too, Meta charges separately per message. Read more about an AI assistant on your business WhatsApp.
• Your own time: a bot that quotes outdated prices or opening hours costs you customers. Set a fixed moment each month to check the answers.
• The AI disclosure: your chatbot has to say it is an AI. What you need to arrange for that is in the rules for chatbots.

The most expensive hidden cost is a bot that answers badly. The Klantenservicefederatie (2026) found that only 12 percent of consumers in its survey said their question to a chatbot or voice assistant was answered well. A cheap bot that cannot answer many questions gives you little in return.

When is a chatbot not worth the money?

A chatbot only pays off when enough questions come in through your website or WhatsApp. If your customers mostly call you, a chatbot solves the wrong problem. And if you get a handful of chat questions a week, you are better off answering them yourself or putting your frequently asked questions on your site more clearly.

According to research by Telecompaper (2025), seven in ten consumers name mobile calling as their preferred way to contact an organisation. Chat on a website is named by 13 percent as their preferred method. Calls are also where missed calls cost small businesses customers.

If most of your contact comes in by phone, an AI phone assistant is often the more logical first step. At Lumivia a chat widget for your site comes free with the Plus plan of the AI phone assistant, which costs €319 per month. All plans, and what is not included, are on the pricing page.

How do you choose a chatbot that fits your budget?

Start with your own numbers, not with the provider. For one month, count how many questions come in through chat, email and WhatsApp and which questions keep coming back. With that list you compare plans on the monthly total at your volume, instead of on the lowest entry price.

• Test with a free version or trial first, using real questions from your own customers.
• Ask how the bot hands over to a person when it does not know the answer.
• Check what happens when you go over your bundle in a busy month.
• Ask where the conversations are stored and who can access them.
• Choose a plan you can cancel monthly while you do not yet know whether it works.

Want to hand over other repetitive work besides a chatbot, such as following up quotes or confirming appointments? The solutions page shows what else is possible.