Chatbase vs Intercom, an AI agent or a helpdesk

Chatbase sells message credits. Each reply your agent gives costs 1 to 6 credits, depending on the model, and with an action switched on, one question can take two requests to the model and cost twice as much. Credits renew at the start of each calendar month, and unused ones are lost. The free plan has 50 a month, Hobby has 700 for $40 a month, or $32 a month billed yearly, and Standard has 4,000 for $150, or $120 a month billed yearly. So Hobby buys up to 700 replies on the cheapest models, and as few as 116 on a 6-credit one. Chatbase pricing works through a month for a founder and a team of three.

Intercom sells seats, with Fin on top. Every teammate who replies to customers needs a paid seat, and Essential is $19 or $29 a seat a month billed yearly, and $29 or $39 billed monthly, because Intercom is testing two prices on the same page. Fin costs $0.99 an outcome on every plan, with none included. An outcome is a customer confirming Fin solved their problem, leaving without asking for more help, or Fin completing a Procedure, and it’s charged at most once a conversation. Fin costs nothing when it can’t answer or the customer asks for a person, and an outcome is refunded if the conversation is reopened.

So Chatbase’s price is fixed before the month starts, unless you switch on auto recharge, and what moves is how many replies it buys. Intercom’s follows your headcount and how often Fin settles a conversation, and Fin’s share is billed at the end of each period, with no cap unless you set a hard limit.

Pick Chatbase if you want an AI agent first and a helpdesk later, if ever. You point it at your site and files, choose the model, and put it on up to 16 channels, from the chat bubble to WhatsApp and phone calls. Its AI Actions can take steps in tools like Shopify and, from Standard, Stripe. Standard also brings its Helpdesk, voice and phone, and integrations that open a ticket in Intercom, Zendesk or another helpdesk, so Chatbase can even sit in front of an Intercom inbox. You know the price before the month starts, as long as you watch which model you choose.

Pick Intercom if a team will share the replies and you want the helpdesk and the AI in one product. Every plan has the Messenger, a shared inbox, ticketing and a public help centre, and Fin costs nothing when it can’t answer or the customer asks for a person. If you’re new to Intercom, have raised up to $10M and have fewer than 15 employees, Early Stage makes the first year of Advanced $65 a month for 6 seats, with 300 Fin outcomes a month.

Both leave a founder doing support alone with something to watch. On Chatbase, a bigger model or an action spends the month’s credits faster, and handing a chat to a person needs Standard’s features. On Intercom, you pay for a seat before Fin answers anything, and Fin’s share grows with every outcome until the period ends. If you want answers from your own docs, a simple way to reply yourself and a price that stays put, there’s a third option.

Doing support alone, you want the repeat questions answered without you, nothing made up in front of a customer, and a clear signal when someone needs you. Deacon answers in seconds, at any hour, from your own docs and in the language your customer writes in. When your docs don’t cover a question, it 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, and you reply from Deacon’s dashboard, into their chat if they still have it open. That works on the free plan, with no helpdesk to buy.

Answer this is how it learns. Every question your docs didn’t cover shows up in Conversations with that button. Write the answer once and it becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it can answer the next person who asks. When you press Save & check, Deacon asks itself the question again, shows you the reply it gives now and tells you how many other open questions your answer covers. It gets better the more you answer, and needs you less.

You also hear from everyone who asks, not only the few who email. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group questions, count the people behind them and label most of them, as a how-to, a feature ask, a bug report and so on, so you know what to fix and what to build next. That’s on every plan, free included. Chatbase records no analytics until you pay and keeps topics for Pro, at $500 a month, and Intercom’s Topics Explorer needs Pro, an add-on from $100 a month. The same Deacon script also counts your visitors, where they came from and which goals they reach.

The price stays plain. Every plan answers with the same model, so no reply costs more than another, and every feature is on every plan, with the plans differing only in answers, knowledge, pages from your website and seats. Your 50 free answers come back every month. Nothing is billed past a plan’s answers, no plan upgrades itself, and there’s no badge to pay to remove. The free plan needs no card, has no end date and deletes nothing for inactivity.