Chatbase vs CustomGPT

Two widgets that read your documentation and answer from it. One lets you start for nothing and worry about the bill later. The other takes a card before it shows you anything, and builds its whole argument on never making things up.

Prices read 18 September 2026

Side by side

Free plan

Chatbase
50 message credits a month, one member, one agent, 1 MB of training content. An agent is deleted after 14 days of inactivity
CustomGPT
None. Three tiers, all paid
Deacon
50 answers a month on one seat, and no card is asked for

The trial

Chatbase
Seven days on the paid tiers. The free tier needs no trial, because it does not end
CustomGPT
Seven days, and CustomGPT asks for a card: it says it requires credit card information at signup to reduce fraud. At the end you are charged for the plan you chose
Deacon
There is no trial, because there is a free plan

Cheapest paid plan

Chatbase
Hobby, $40 a month for 700 credits. The $32 a month billed annually is worked out from the page’s own payload rather than printed
CustomGPT
Standard, $99 a month, or $89 a month billed annually, for 1,000 queries and ten agents
Deacon
Starter, $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers

What the meter counts

Chatbase
A request to the model. Every model Chatbase names costs two to six credits a reply; one credit is the unnamed rest. An action can make the agent send more than one request
CustomGPT
A message. Every message processed counts against the balance, and the balance is account-wide, so all your agents share one limit
Deacon
An answer. One question, one reply, one unit

When the allowance runs out

Chatbase
The agent stops and shows the visitor a notice that it is unavailable
CustomGPT
It stops responding to queries, and stops indexing new data when the word limit is the one you hit
Deacon
It keeps responding. It says it cannot look into that one and asks for an email address so you can follow up

Buying more

Chatbase
Auto recharge at $40 per 1,000 credits, switched on in advance
CustomGPT
An add-on: 2,500 extra queries a month for $375, or $338 a month paid annually. That is more than three times the plan it sits on top of
Deacon
The next plan up, chosen by you

Answers that cite their source

Chatbase
Not claimed. Chatbase’s own guidance is to write the restriction into the agent’s instructions yourself, and it sells web search for questions your material does not cover
CustomGPT
Claimed, and it is the pitch. CustomGPT calls it a context boundary wall, returns the sources it used, and says the bot will admit it does not know
Deacon
Yes. Where the answer came from a page on your site it carries a link to that page, and when nothing covers the question it says so rather than guessing

How much you can load

Chatbase
1 MB of training content on Free, 10 MB on Hobby
CustomGPT
5,000 documents an agent and 60 million words of storage on Standard, with 10,000 documents processed a month
Deacon
one megabyte on the free plan, 15 megabytes on Starter

Channels

Chatbase
Sixteen, including a hosted help page, email, inbound phone, Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Shopify
CustomGPT
The web widget, an iframe, live chat, an API and SDK, Slack, WhatsApp and an MCP endpoint
Deacon
One. The widget on your own site

Seats

Chatbase
One on Free, two on Hobby, and $25 a month for an extra member, a figure in the page’s payload rather than its printed text — the printed $25 card next to it buys an extra agent, not a person
CustomGPT
Three on Standard, and five more for $100 a month
Deacon
one seat free, three seats on Starter

What it costs to find out

The gap between these two opens on day one rather than month three. Chatbase has a free tier with a number on it. You can put an agent on a site, watch it answer fifty credits’ worth of questions, and decide. The only catch is written on the plan card: an agent on the free plan is deleted after fourteen days of inactivity, so it does not survive being forgotten about.

CustomGPT has no free tier and asks for a card before the seven days start. It says so openly and gives its reason, which is more than most do. But it means trying it is a decision with a diary entry attached, because at the end of the week you are charged for whichever plan you picked at signup — $99 if that was Standard, and more if it was not.

The same difference shows up at the other end. Going over on Chatbase costs $40 per 1,000 credits if you switched auto recharge on in advance. Going over on CustomGPT means an add-on at $375 a month for 2,500 queries, which is more than three times the Standard plan itself. Neither of those is hidden, and both are worth knowing before you need them.

Where each one is stronger

CustomGPT has the better answer to the question that should worry you most. It says the replies come only from your content, it returns the exact sources used, and it says the bot will admit when it does not know. Chatbase claims none of that in its documentation. If you are putting a bot in front of customers and the cost of a confident wrong answer is high, that is not a small difference. It is also the one to buy if you need ten agents, a large archive, or a serious amount of storage.

Chatbase wins on everything about getting going and on reach once you have. It is under half the price at the first paid tier, it has a free plan, and it runs on sixteen channels including inbound phone, with actions that write into Stripe and Shopify. For a founder with one product and one help centre, most of what CustomGPT charges for is capacity that will sit unused.

Grounding is CustomGPT’s strong suit and getting started is Chatbase’s, and the reason Deacon is on this page is that it does not ask you to choose between them. Answers come from your own material, and where that material is a page on your site the answer carries a link to it. Anything it cannot answer is handed back to you as a gap to fill, and the free plan needs no card and does not expire.

Before you pick one

No. CustomGPT answers this on its own pricing page: it requires credit card information when you sign up for the free trial, and says this helps reduce fraud and verify that only genuinely interested users sign up. Seven days later you are charged for whichever plan you picked at signup unless you have cancelled, which you do from the billing page in your account.

Because the plans are not scoped the same way. Standard buys ten agents, 5,000 documents an agent and 60 million words of storage, where Chatbase’s Hobby buys one agent and 10 MB of training content. If you have one product and one help centre, most of what CustomGPT charges for is capacity you will not use. If you are running agents for several clients or loading a large archive, the comparison flips.

CustomGPT sells them as an add-on at $375 a month, or $338 a month paid annually. It is worth saying plainly that this is more than three times the price of the Standard plan those queries sit on top of, so going over is expensive in a way the plan price does not suggest. Chatbase charges $40 per 1,000 credits and Deacon expects you to move up a plan.

CustomGPT, out of the box. It builds its whole pitch on this: what it calls a context boundary wall, sources returned with every reply, and a bot that says it does not know rather than inventing something. Chatbase does not claim citations anywhere in its documentation, and its guidance is that staying inside your own material is an instruction you write for the agent yourself.

Where these figures came from

Every figure above was read on 18 September 2026, from these pages.

Try Deacon for free

Answers from your own material, linked back to the page they came from wherever there is a page to link to, and every question it could not answer waiting for you to write one. No card to start.

Nine of these priced side by side in the Chatbase alternatives rundown, and why support bots make things up goes into the grounding question properly. The plain facts page and the pricing page cover ours.

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