COMPARISON
Botpress alternatives that skip the build
Botpress is a platform for building AI agents, by conversation, on a canvas or in code. A site that only needs answers from its own pages can skip the build.
Published
A Botpress bot, which its pages also call an agent, has to be built and published before it can answer anyone. Botpress’s documentation offers Viber, which builds a bot through conversation, Studio, a drag-and-drop canvas, and the ADK, a TypeScript library.
We read Botpress’s pages, and every other vendor’s, on 20 September 2026.
A published bot comes before the embed code
The webchat quick start lists a published bot as the first thing you need. The embed code is then two script tags, pasted into the head section of your site’s HTML.
Teaching the bot is a step of its own. Botpress’s page on knowledge sources says you add a domain, let Botpress discover its pages and select which ones to keep. It also takes documents of up to 50 MB each, tables, formatted text and live web search.
What the build buys
The FAQ on Botpress’s page for Desk has nine channels, from webchat and email to WhatsApp, Slack and voice, and says more are planned. The plan table on the pricing page puts voice on Enterprise only.
Botpress’s home page says a bot can issue refunds and update accounts. The same plan table ticks Botpress Desk, a helpdesk, on every plan from Free up.
What Botpress costs
Two top-ups on Botpress’s pricing page are bought for you at 95% of an allowance.
| Item | What the page says |
|---|---|
| Free | 25 conversations, with no top-ups or overages |
| Plus | $150 a month on annual billing, including $25 of AI usage and 250 conversations. Click Monthly and the card reads $189 |
| A conversation | Two or more messages from the end user within a billing month. Test chats in the emulator count |
| Past the allowance | At 95% a pack of 100 conversations is bought for you, at $65 on Plus. The FAQ says you cannot turn that off |
| AI usage | A tooltip says $0.10 of AI usage in each conversation is covered. On paid plans, at 95% of the AI spend limit, a $10 credit grant is bought for you |
Free
- What the page says
- 25 conversations, with no top-ups or overages
Plus
- What the page says
- $150 a month on annual billing, including $25 of AI usage and 250 conversations. Click Monthly and the card reads $189
A conversation
- What the page says
- Two or more messages from the end user within a billing month. Test chats in the emulator count
Past the allowance
- What the page says
- At 95% a pack of 100 conversations is bought for you, at $65 on Plus. The FAQ says you cannot turn that off
AI usage
- What the page says
- A tooltip says $0.10 of AI usage in each conversation is covered. On paid plans, at 95% of the AI spend limit, a $10 credit grant is bought for you
A month of 300 conversations on Plus passes 95% of 250, so one pack is added. On annual billing that is $150 plus $65. The $215 is before any extra AI usage. The pack stays on the bill every month until you remove it in billing settings.
Voiceflow builds on a canvas too
Voiceflow is a chatbot builder as well, with a canvas for workflows and bots that take phone calls. Its pricing page prints no prices, and Voiceflow’s billing documentation says current prices are shown inside the product. The two are compared in Botpress vs Voiceflow.
Answering from your pages without a build
| Tool | What it learns from | How it goes on your site | Before you start |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chatbase | A homepage URL it crawls, a sitemap, files, text snippets or Q&As | An embed script, in the page head or just above the closing body tag | A free plan with 50 message credits a month |
| DocsBot AI | More than 28 source types, among them websites, PDFs, RSS feeds and spreadsheets | A widget embedded in a website or a help centre | A free plan with 100 AI credits a month and no card |
| SiteGPT | A website link, a sitemap or uploaded files | One script tag, an inline embed, an iframe or a WordPress plugin | A seven-day trial that takes a card, since there is no free plan |
Chatbase
- What it learns from
- A homepage URL it crawls, a sitemap, files, text snippets or Q&As
- How it goes on your site
- An embed script, in the page head or just above the closing body tag
- Before you start
- A free plan with 50 message credits a month
DocsBot AI
- What it learns from
- More than 28 source types, among them websites, PDFs, RSS feeds and spreadsheets
- How it goes on your site
- A widget embedded in a website or a help centre
- Before you start
- A free plan with 100 AI credits a month and no card
SiteGPT
- What it learns from
- A website link, a sitemap or uploaded files
- How it goes on your site
- One script tag, an inline embed, an iframe or a WordPress plugin
- Before you start
- A seven-day trial that takes a card, since there is no free plan
Setup is described in Chatbase’s guide to data sources and in SiteGPT’s guide to adding it to a website. Chatbase says a new source takes seconds. DocsBot’s embedding is on DocsBot’s home page. The plan facts are on Chatbase’s pricing page, DocsBot’s pricing page and SiteGPT’s pricing page. What each one charges is set out in Chatbase alternatives.
Deacon
Deacon is our own product, and no bot is built or published first. It learns the pages you tick from your own site and goes on as one line of HTML. Its answers link the page they came from.
Free covers 50 answers a month on one seat. Test chats in the Playground go uncounted. Paid plans are a flat price on the pricing page, which opens on yearly billing as Botpress’s does. Nothing is bought on your behalf. When a month’s answers run out, Deacon asks the visitor for an email address in place of answering.
Deacon takes no actions in other systems, and it has no WhatsApp, voice or email channel.
Try it on your own documentation
Add your help pages, ask it the question you know your docs cannot answer, and watch it say so.
The free plan covers 50 answers a month on one seat, and the paid plans are on the pricing page.
Free plan, no card.
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