Chatbase vs Intercom

These two are not really the same kind of purchase. Chatbase is a bundle of credits with a widget attached. Intercom is a help desk you staff, with an AI agent billed by the result. The comparison is worth making because the same founder often has both tabs open.

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
Intercom
None. A 14-day trial that takes no card, then one paid seat is the floor
Deacon
50 answers a month on one seat, and no card is asked for

Cheapest paid plan

Chatbase
Hobby, $40 a month for 700 credits and two members. The $32 a month billed annually is worked out from the page’s own payload rather than printed
Intercom
Essential, $19 or $29 a seat a month on annual billing — the page runs a live price experiment and serves one or the other. Fin usage is on top of whichever you get
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
Intercom
Two things at once. A seat for every teammate, and $0.99 for each outcome Fin reaches
Deacon
One thing. An answer

What counts as one unit

Chatbase
Whatever the model was asked, so a single question can be several
Intercom
Intercom counts an outcome when a customer confirms the issue is resolved, or does not ask for more help after Fin replies, or Fin completes a workflow. At most one a conversation
Deacon
One question and the reply it gets

When it does not know

Chatbase
You are charged for the request either way
Intercom
You are not billed. Intercom says if Fin cannot answer, or the customer asks for a person, you pay nothing
Deacon
It says so and offers to take an email address. The answer still counts against the month

When the allowance runs out

Chatbase
The agent stops and shows the visitor a notice that it is unavailable
Intercom
There is no allowance to run out. Usage is pay as you go unless you set a hard limit, and Fin switches off at the limit you set
Deacon
The widget keeps talking. It says it cannot look into that one now and asks for an email address so you can follow up

Minimum spend

Chatbase
The plan price, and nothing more unless you buy recharge credits
Intercom
One paid seat, and on a third-party help desk a monthly commitment of 50 outcomes. Intercom warns that a limit set below the commitment still bills the commitment
Deacon
The plan price

Does it need a help desk underneath

Chatbase
No, though it ships one with routing, assignment and manual takeover if you want it
Intercom
Yes. Intercom’s help centre says you need an Intercom trial or subscription to install the Messenger; Fin can run on Salesforce, HubSpot or Freshdesk instead
Deacon
No. There is no help desk to buy first

Channels

Chatbase
Sixteen, including a hosted help page, email, inbound phone, Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Shopify
Intercom
Voice, email, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, SMS, Slack, Discord and an agent API
Deacon
One. The widget on your own site

If you have just raised

Chatbase
Nothing published
Intercom
Early Stage: 93% off in year one, the help desk from $33 a month with 300 Fin outcomes included, for companies under $10 million raised with fewer than 15 employees and no existing account
Deacon
Nothing published. The free plan is the offer

A note on Intercom’s seat price

You will be quoted a different number depending on which side of a test you land on, and this is not a guess. Intercom’s pricing page carries an experiment marker naming a price reduction on the Essential tier, and the Essential card sits inside it. Fetched twice seven minutes apart, the same page served $19 a seat a month to one visitor and $29 to another. The Advanced and Expert cards, which sit outside the experiment, did not move either time.

Both of those are the annual rate. The cards are served with annual billing selected, and the saving each arm advertises gives the monthly rate away: 26% against $39 in the arm showing $29, and 35% against $29 in the arm showing $19. The structured data embedded in the same page says $39 in both arms, because it does not follow the experiment, and the Early Stage page says $39 too.

So the honest summary is that a seat is $19 or $29 a month on annual billing depending on which arm you land in, that $39 is the monthly list price rather than a third possibility, and that Fin usage sits on top of it whichever you get. The part worth knowing is that the number you were quoted may not be the number a colleague was. Take a screenshot before you build a spreadsheet on it.

Who each one is really for

Intercom has the better deal for anyone it actually fits, and two of its terms are genuinely generous. You are not billed when Fin cannot answer or when the customer asks for a person, and you are billed at most once a conversation however many questions it took. If you have raised money recently and have fewer than fifteen people, Early Stage puts the help desk at $33 a month with 300 outcomes included, which no other vendor here comes near.

Chatbase wins on the thing Intercom cannot offer, which is a bill you know before the month starts. It also wins on entry: there is a free plan you can leave running, and no help desk underneath to buy, staff or migrate off later.

What neither of them sells is the shape in the third column. No seats, no outcome arithmetic, no help desk underneath. Deacon gives you one allowance of answers a month, and when it is gone the widget takes an email address instead of going quiet.

The questions that decide it

On Chatbase you buy credits, so the answer depends on the model. A thousand questions on a light model is a thousand credits, which is past Hobby’s 700 and into Standard at $150 a month for 4,000. On a heavy model the same thousand questions can be six thousand credits. On Intercom you pay for a seat and then for outcomes. If every one of the thousand ended as an outcome that is $990 of Fin on top of the seat, but Intercom bills at most one outcome a conversation and nothing at all when Fin cannot answer, so the real figure is lower and you cannot know it in advance.

Both, depending on which arm of Intercom’s own test you land in. The pricing page carries an experiment marker for a price reduction on Essential, and the card sits inside it: fetched twice, seven minutes apart, the page served $19 once and $29 once. Both are the annual rate; the $39 in the page’s structured data is the monthly one. There is no way to tell from a single visit which arm you were shown, so check it again before you plan around it.

Yes. Intercom sells Fin two ways, and the second runs on a help desk you already have — Salesforce, HubSpot or Freshdesk are the ones it names. That route has no seat to buy but carries a monthly commitment, and the example Intercom gives is 50 outcomes. What it does not sell is Fin with no help desk at all.

Chatbase, on price predictability, because you know what the plan costs before the month starts even if you cannot be sure how many answers it buys. Intercom is built on the assumption that someone works out of the inbox, which is what the seat is for, and its billing rewards volume rather than sparing you from it. Neither is designed for the case where nobody will be replying.

Where these figures came from

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

Try Deacon for free

One plan price, no seats to count and no outcomes to argue about. Deacon answers from your own pages and hands you every question it could not.

Nine ways out of an Intercom bill are worked through in the Intercom alternatives for startups piece. The Deacon and Fin AI comparison takes the AI agent on directly, and ours are on the pricing page.

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