Botpress alternatives for customer support

Founders usually go looking for a Botpress alternative once they see what running it takes. A bot has to be built and published before it answers anyone. At 95% of a paid plan’s conversations, Botpress adds a pack of 100 more and bills you for it, and its FAQ says you can’t turn that off. Test chats in its emulator count towards the allowance. And the AI runs on a second meter, which tops itself up the same way.

Below are eight alternatives, with each one’s free plan, first paid plan, what its meter counts and what happens when the allowance runs out. Every price was read on the vendor’s own pages on 23 September 2026, and each one links there.

Deacon comes first because it’s ours, and because it’s made for founders who answer support themselves and would rather not build a bot to do it. It’s an AI customer support agent that answers your customers from your own docs in seconds, and it shows you what they’re stuck on and what they want next. The free plan needs no card and has no end date.

Eight Botpress alternatives compared

Botpress sits in the last row, for reference.

Where Botpress’s plans stop

Botpress calls itself an AI-native customer support platform, and it does far more than answer questions. Its home page says its agents take real action on refunds and account updates, its plan table ticks WhatsApp on every plan, and its helpdesk, Botpress Desk, comes with every plan from Free up. These are the parts that catch out a founder who mainly wanted answers on a website, read from its pricing page and its docs.

First, the build. Botpress’s docs offer three ways to make a bot. Studio is a drag-and-drop interface, Viber builds one as you chat with it, and the ADK is a TypeScript library. The webchat quick start then lists “A published bot” as the first thing you need, before two script tags go in your page’s head.

The meter counts conversations. One is “any exchange with at least two messages from the end user in the billing month”. A conversation that runs across two months counts in both, each anonymous session counts on its own, and emulator conversations, from the chat you test your bot in, count the same as real ones.

Free gives you 25 conversations with “No top-ups or overages”. Plus’s card says “250 conversations/mo”, but Free’s doesn’t say whether its 25 renew each month.

Plus is $189 a month, or $150 a month billed yearly, which is the price the page opens on. It includes 250 conversations and $25 of AI usage. At 95% of the allowance, “a pack of 100 conversations is automatically added to your account”, at $65 on Plus. The FAQ asks “Can I turn off auto-recharge for conversation packs?” and answers “No.” A pack then stays on your bill every month until you remove it in billing settings, and whatever it doesn’t use expires at the end of the month. So a month of 300 conversations on Plus comes to $254 on monthly billing, or $215 on yearly, before any extra AI usage, by our arithmetic.

AI usage is the second meter. Botpress says each conversation includes $0.10 of it, and when a paid workspace reaches 95% of its AI spend limit, Botpress buys “a $10 credit grant of AI spend on your behalf, sold at cost”. The FAQ says a monthly spend cap is “coming soon”.

Plus also takes the Botpress branding off your chat widget. Routing and assignment, for sending each chat to the right person, start on Team at $939 a month, or $750 billed yearly. Botpress pricing works out a month on Plus at the volumes a founder’s site sees, and sets out the three ways Botpress describes its free plan.

Deacon

Deacon is an AI customer support agent for founders who handle support themselves, and there’s no bot to build. Add one script tag to your site, or hand the prompt on the Install page to a coding agent such as Claude Code, Cursor or Codex. Then point Deacon at your help pages, upload files or paste in text. It answers your customers in seconds, at any hour, in whatever language they write in.

Each answer is written from what your content says, and one taken from a page on your site often links to it. When your content doesn’t cover a question, Deacon says it doesn’t know rather than guess, and asks for the visitor’s email. You get an email when they leave one or ask for a person. Reply from the dashboard, and if they still have the chat open, your reply appears there under your name.

Every question your docs didn’t cover waits in your dashboard with an Answer this button. Write the answer once and press Save & check. Deacon asks itself the question again and shows you the reply it now gives. Once it answers, it also tells you how many other open questions your answer covers. Each answer you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it gets better the more you answer and needs you less as it goes.

It also tells you what your customers need, without a survey. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group their questions, count the people who asked and label most of them as a how-to, a feature ask, a bug report and so on. Analytics › Widget counts the messages and the people, shows the share it answered and lists the languages people wrote in. The same script runs your website analytics too, with visitors, sources, goals and funnels.

Every feature is on every plan, the free one included. Free covers 50 answers a month and about 67 pages of docs for one person. It needs no card, never expires and deletes nothing if you go quiet. Starter gives you 1,000 answers a month and 3 seats for $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly. Growth gives you 4,000 answers and 10 seats for $150 a month, or $120 a month billed yearly. The plans differ only in answers, knowledge, pages from your website and seats.

Nothing is bought on your behalf. No plan bills past its answers or upgrades itself. When a month’s answers run out, visitors get a short reply saying Deacon can’t look into it right now, and are asked for their email unless they’ve left it already, while you can still reply to every conversation. Your test chats in the Playground are never counted, and nor are chats from localhost. Every plan answers with the same model, so there’s no second meter for the AI.

Voiceflow

Voiceflow is the closest thing to Botpress on this list, a platform where you build an agent and publish it before it goes on your site. You build from playbooks, which let the model work towards a goal, and workflows, which you lay out step by step on a canvas. It’s strong on voice, with inbound and outbound calls on a number from Voiceflow, Twilio, Vonage or Telnyx.

The catch is a price you can’t see before you sign up. The pricing page sends businesses to a demo, and the billing documentation says current prices for its Free, Pro, Business and Enterprise plans are shown inside the product. Free is a one-time credit grant that doesn’t renew, which Voiceflow says “isn’t suitable for production usage”. On self-serve plans, each message a visitor sends costs $0.005 in credits, with the model’s tokens charged on top. Its widget docs say customers on Business can turn Voiceflow’s branding off. There’s more in Voiceflow pricing, Voiceflow alternatives and Botpress vs Voiceflow.

Chatbase

Chatbase trains an agent on your sources, such as a crawl of your site, files, text or question and answer pairs, and it answers from them. AI Actions let it do more, such as hand a chat to your team, and it reaches WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram from its first paid plan. It suits a founder who wants an agent that answers from content and handles a few tasks besides.

Free gives you 50 message credits a month and one member, and Chatbase deletes a free agent after 14 days without use. Hobby is $40 a month, or $32 a month billed yearly, for 700 credits. A reply costs 1 to 6 credits depending on the model, and an action can double that. When the credits run out, its FAQ says the agent shows “This AI Agent is currently unavailable”, unless you’ve bought auto recharge at $40 per 1,000 credits. Handing a chat to a person runs through its Helpdesk, which the pricing page lists from Standard at $150 a month, and removing “Powered By Chatbase” costs $99 a month. There’s more in Chatbase vs Botpress.

Chatling

Chatling has the lowest printed paid plan here, and it offers both ways of working. Its AI agent answers from your content, and its chatbot builder gives you a canvas for flows if you still want one. Live chat is on every plan, the free one included, so you can step into any conversation yourself.

Free gives you 200 AI credits a month and 1 seat. Starter is $25 a month, or $21 a month billed yearly, for 1,750 credits and 2 seats. The catch is the meter. A reply costs 0.5 credits on the lightest models and 25 on the heaviest, so Starter’s credits cover anywhere from 70 replies to 3,500. At zero, visitors see an error reading “Insufficient AI credits” until you buy more, at $10 a month for each 1,000. Analytics start on Starter, and removing “Powered by Chatling” is a $35 a month add-on. There’s more in Chatling alternatives.

Tidio

Tidio is live chat and a helpdesk first, with two kinds of automation sold beside it. Flows is a drag-and-drop builder that follows the paths you draw, and Lyro is its AI agent, which answers from your knowledge base. It suits a team that works from a shared inbox and wants WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger in it, which Tidio includes on every plan.

The free plan gives you 50 conversations with your team a month and 50 Lyro conversations once, which never renew. Starter is $29 a month, or $24.17 a month billed yearly, and Lyro is sold on its own from $39 a month for 50 conversations, or $32.50 a month billed yearly. On monthly billing, a new project moves up to the next tier when it uses 95% of a limit, unless you switch that off, and the Tidio branding stays on Free and Starter. There’s more in Tidio alternatives.

Dante AI

Dante AI suits a founder who wants answers more than a platform. A credit is one answer on its lighter models, and every model on the free plan costs one. Free costs nothing, needs no card and gives you 100 messages a month, 1 seat and 150,000 characters of knowledge. Starter is $40 a month, or $33 a month billed yearly, for 2,000 messages and 2 seats.

It handles the limit gently. Dante’s help centre says the widget keeps answering on its cheapest model while at least one credit is left, then says “This AI agent is offline at the moment” until the credits reset or you top up. The catch is further up its plans. A person taking over a chat from its inbox, and the leads it captures, start on Advanced at $120 a month, and removing the Dante branding on Starter costs $50 a month, a price its help centre gives and its pricing page doesn’t. There’s more in Dante AI alternatives.

DocsBot AI

DocsBot AI is built around documentation, so it fits support that’s mostly how-to questions, and it learns from more than 28 kinds of source. Free gives you 1 bot, 50 source pages and 100 AI credits a month, with no card. Personal is $49 a month, or $41 a month billed yearly, for 5,000 credits and 5,000 source pages. A message starts at one credit and costs more on bigger models.

When the credits run out, DocsBot says your bot “stops responding and shows visitors a friendly error message”, unless you’ve turned on auto-add, which raises your limit 5,000 credits at a time and keeps it there until you lower it. We found no way on its pages for a person to take over a live chat. Escalation tickets start on Standard at $149 a month, and a widget without DocsBot’s branding needs Business at $499. There’s more in DocsBot alternatives.

Crisp

Crisp is a shared inbox with a chat widget, and Hugo is its AI agent, included from the first paid plan. It suits a founder who expects to answer plenty of chats in person and wants the AI to take the easy ones.

The free plan gives you the widget and the inbox for 2 seats, but no AI credits, so Hugo doesn’t answer on it. Mini is $45 a month per workspace, with 4 seats and $5 of AI credits, which Crisp puts at around 90 automated conversations. When the credits run out, Hugo stops and chats go to your team, unless you’ve switched on pay-as-you-go, for which Crisp publishes no rate. Removing the “We run on Crisp” watermark takes Plus, at $295 a month. There’s more in Crisp alternatives.

Which one fits you

Start from what you want the tool to do for you.

If you want to keep building agents, with phone calls in the mix, Voiceflow is the platform closest to Botpress. If you want an agent that answers from your content, takes actions and reaches WhatsApp, Chatbase does that. If your team works from a shared inbox, Tidio and Crisp put AI in front of it. If you want a generous free plan, try Dante AI or Chatling, and if your support is mostly documentation, DocsBot AI is built for it.

If you answer support yourself and want answers on your site rather than a bot to build, Deacon is the one made for you. It answers your customers from your docs in seconds, hands you only the questions that need you, and shows you what customers are stuck on and what they want next. Every feature is on the free plan, and it needs no card.

Questions about Botpress alternatives

Is there a free Botpress alternative?

Yes, several, and most renew every month. Deacon’s free plan gives you 50 answers a month with every feature, no card and no end date. Chatling gives you 200 AI credits a month, Dante AI 100 messages a month and DocsBot AI 100 AI credits a month. Chatbase gives you 50 message credits a month, but deletes a free agent after 14 days without use. Tidio’s 50 Lyro conversations come once, Crisp’s free plan has no AI credits and Voiceflow’s free credits don’t renew. Botpress’s own free plan is 25 conversations, and its card doesn’t say whether they renew.

Is there an open-source Botpress alternative?

Botpress’s own older version is one. Botpress v12 is on GitHub under the AGPLv3 and a Botpress licence, and its README notes the launch of Botpress Cloud, the platform Botpress sells today. Rasa Open Source is under the Apache 2.0 licence, and its README says it’s “currently in maintenance mode”. Both are frameworks for developers to host and run. Rasa now sells Rasa Pro, and its free Developer Edition licence allows one bot per company, with up to 1,000 external conversations a month. Deacon isn’t open source. It’s a hosted service with a free plan, so there’s nothing to host.

Can I move my Botpress bot to Deacon?

You bring the content, not the bot. Your website goes in when you sign up, and Deacon learns from its home page and main pages, such as pricing and help, by itself. You can also add a single page by its link, upload PDF, Word (.docx), Markdown, text, CSV or HTML files of up to 10 MB each, or paste text in. Question and answer pairs go in with Add Q&A. Workflows, tables and actions don’t come across, because Deacon answers from your content and has none of them. There’s no import from Botpress.

Does Deacon answer on WhatsApp or the phone?

No. Deacon answers in a chat widget on your website, and you reply from its dashboard. If you need other channels, Botpress lists WhatsApp on every plan and a voice channel on Enterprise, Chatbase takes phone calls from its Standard plan, and Voiceflow answers the phone on its own numbers or yours.

Can Deacon take actions, such as refunds?

No. Deacon answers questions and hands conversations to you, and it takes no actions in other systems. It won’t issue a refund, update an account or look up an order, and it always declines questions about a visitor’s own account. If you need a bot that does those things, Botpress and Voiceflow are built for it.