Chatling alternatives and what each reply costs

Founders usually go looking for a Chatling alternative after one of four surprises. A reply costs anywhere from 0.5 to 25 credits depending on the model, so a plan’s credits don’t tell you how many replies you’ll get. When the credits run out, visitors see an error reading “Insufficient AI credits”. The free plan has no analytics. And removing “Powered by Chatling” costs $35 a month, more than the $25 Starter plan itself.

Below are eight alternatives, with each one’s free plan, its cheapest paid plan with AI, what its meter counts and how many replies that plan covers, worked out by us from each vendor’s own figures. 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 built for founders who answer support themselves. 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. One answer is one reply, on the same model on every plan, and the free plan needs no card and has no end date.

Eight Chatling alternatives, reply by reply

Chatling is in the last row, so you can hold each one up against it.

Where Chatling’s plans stop

Chatling packs a lot into a low price. It has an AI agent that answers from your content, a flow builder for scripted chats, live chat on every plan, and WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger from Starter. These are the limits founders run into, read from its pricing page, its docs and its terms.

The credit depends on the model. The pricing FAQ gives a rate for each of 29 models, from 0.5 credits a reply on the lightest, such as Grok 4.1 Fast and DeepSeek V3.2, to 25 on Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol. So Starter’s 1,750 credits cover anywhere from 70 replies to 3,500, by our arithmetic. Chatling’s docs give different rates for some models, such as 10 credits a reply for GPT-5.6 Terra, where the pricing page says 8.

The free plan is smaller than 200 credits sounds. It offers three models, GPT 5.1, GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o, at 2.5 or 5 credits a reply, so its 200 credits come to 40 to 80 replies a month. It has one agent, one seat, 500,000 characters of knowledge and a 1 MB limit on each uploaded file. Analytics start on Starter, and so do the API, Zapier, Slack, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Telegram.

At zero, the widget stays on your site but stops answering. Chatling’s help article says visitors can still send messages, and “an error will be displayed saying ‘Insufficient AI credits’”. You then buy more, at $10 a month for each 1,000, or upgrade. Nothing tops up on its own.

Handing a chat to a person is an action you set up. Chatling’s docs say the Human Handoff action is created for every agent but is “disabled by default”, so you switch it on and describe when it should hand over. Once it does, you take over from Chatling’s live chat inbox, which every plan has.

Removing “Powered by Chatling” is a $35 a month add-on, more than Starter’s $25, or comes with Scale at $295 a month. Exporting chats and leads starts on Growth, at $75 a month. And Chatling’s terms say all of your content “will be scheduled for deletion shortly after your subscription comes to an end”, and can’t be recovered. Every plan, add-on and model rate is in Chatling pricing, with a founder’s month worked out model by model.

Deacon

Deacon is an AI customer support agent for founders who handle support themselves, and its meter is one number. An answer is one reply Deacon writes. Every plan answers with the same model and there’s no model menu, so the answers on your plan are the replies you get. Chats you try in the Playground are never counted.

You add one script tag, point Deacon at your help pages, files or pasted text, and it answers your customers in seconds, around the clock, in whatever language they write in. Each answer comes from what your content says. When your content doesn’t cover a question, Deacon tells the visitor it doesn’t know and asks for their email, and you’re emailed when they leave one or ask for a person. Reply from the dashboard, and your words appear in their chat if it’s still open.

Questions your content didn’t cover wait in the dashboard with an Answer this button. Write the answer and press Save & check, and Deacon asks itself the question again and shows you its new reply. Every answer you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it gets better the more you answer and leaves less for you to do.

You also see what customers need, on every plan, the free one included. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group the questions, count how many people asked and label most of them, as a feature ask, a bug report, a how-to and more. Analytics › Widget shows the messages, the people and the share Deacon answered, and the same script runs your website analytics, with visitors, sources, goals and funnels.

Every feature is on every plan, and the plans differ only in answers, knowledge, pages from your website and seats. Free covers 50 answers a month for one person, with room for about 67 pages of docs, no card, no end date and nothing deleted if you go quiet. Starter is $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers and 3 seats. Growth is $150 a month, or $120 a month billed yearly, for 4,000 answers and 10 seats.

When a month’s answers run out, your visitors don’t get an error. They 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, and nothing more is billed. No plan upgrades itself, and there’s no “powered by” line to pay to remove.

Chatbase

Chatbase is the tool Chatling most resembles, with credits priced by model, but its range is narrower, from 1 to 6 credits a reply. It trains an agent on your site, files, text or question and answer pairs, and reaches WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram from its first paid plan.

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, which is 116 to 700 replies, and fewer when an action doubles a reply’s cost. At zero, its FAQ says the agent shows “This AI Agent is currently unavailable”, unless you’ve bought auto recharge at $40 per 1,000 credits. The Helpdesk where a person takes over starts on Standard at $150 a month, and removing “Powered By Chatbase” is $99 a month. There’s more in Chatbase alternatives.

Dante AI

Dante AI has one of the simplest credits here. A credit is one answer on its lighter models, and every model on its 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, and the 100 reset on the 1st of each month.

Starter is $40 a month, or $33 a month billed yearly, for 2,000 messages and 2 seats, and every model. A heavier model costs up to 25 credits a reply, so the same plan covers anywhere from 80 replies to 2,000. At the limit, Dante’s help centre says the widget answers on its cheapest model while at least one credit is left, then tells visitors “This AI agent is offline at the moment”. A person taking over from its inbox starts on Advanced, at $120 a month. There’s more in Dante AI alternatives.

DocsBot AI

DocsBot AI meters much as Chatling does, but its credits start from one a message, with bigger models and actions costing more. It’s built for documentation and learns from 28 or more kinds of source. Free gives you 1 bot, 50 source pages and 100 AI credits a month, with no card, for personal use. Personal is $49 a month, or $41 a month billed yearly, for 5,000 credits and 5,000 source pages.

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 lifts your limit 5,000 credits at a time and keeps it there. 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 a month. There’s more in DocsBot alternatives.

SiteGPT

SiteGPT counts messages rather than credits, and it counts a question and its reply as one message. There are two models, and the lighter one gives you ten times as many messages. There’s no free plan, and the 7-day trial takes a card and charges it on the last day unless you cancel.

Starter is $59 a month, or $39 a month billed yearly, which is the price the page opens on. It covers 4,000 messages on GPT-4.1 mini or 400 on GPT-4.1, with 1 chatbot, 1,000 pages and 1 member. Past the quota, SiteGPT says your chatbots keep answering, but every chatbot page in your dashboard is blurred behind a card asking you to buy more messages. Removing the SiteGPT branding is an add-on at $59 a month, or $39 a month billed yearly. There’s more in SiteGPT pricing and SiteGPT alternatives.

tawk.to

tawk.to gives its live chat away, with no limit on team members, and sells its AI, AI Assist, on top. Its meter is plain. Each message the AI sends costs one credit.

The free AI tier, Hobby, gives you 100 message credits a month, one AI agent and a crawl of up to 100 pages. Growth is $29 a month, or $290 a year, for 1,000 credits, three AI agents and escalation to your team, which Hobby doesn’t have. When the credits run out, tawk.to says AI Assist finishes the conversations it’s in, takes the extra from next month’s credits and joins no new ones until you buy more at $30 per 1,000 or the month resets. Removing “Powered by tawk.to” costs $29 a month for each site.

Tidio

Tidio doesn’t charge by the reply at all. Lyro, its AI agent, is billed by the conversation, and the pricing page says that even if Lyro replies a dozen times or more, “that still counts as a single conversation”. It says the same of a customer who leaves and comes back later, but Tidio’s help centre says a thread closes after 15 minutes without a message, so a visitor who comes back after that starts a new one.

Lyro is sold on its own from $39 a month for 50 conversations, or $32.50 a month billed yearly, and the free plan’s 50 Lyro conversations come once. Live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are on every plan, and Starter is $29 a month for 100 conversations with your team. On monthly billing, a new project moves up to the next tier when it uses 95% of a limit, unless you switch that off. There’s more in Tidio alternatives.

Botpress

Botpress counts conversations, not replies. A conversation is any exchange with at least two messages from the visitor in the month, and Botpress covers $0.10 of AI usage in each. It’s a platform for building agents, in a drag-and-drop editor, by chatting with its builder or in code.

Free gives you 25 conversations, with no top-ups. Plus is $189 a month, or $150 a month billed yearly, for 250 conversations and $25 of AI usage. The catch is that at 95% of the allowance, Botpress adds a pack of 100 conversations for $65, and its FAQ says you can’t turn that off. There’s more in Botpress alternatives.

Which one fits you

Start from how you want to be billed.

If you like Chatling but want a narrower meter, Chatbase is the closest match. If you want a credit that means one reply, tawk.to counts that way and adds free live chat, and so does Dante AI on its lighter models. If your support is mostly documentation, DocsBot AI is built for it. If you’d rather the AI kept answering past your quota, SiteGPT does on its paid plans. If your team works from a shared inbox, Tidio charges by the conversation instead, and if you want to build agents in depth, Botpress is the platform for it.

If you answer support yourself, Deacon is the one built for you. It answers your customers from your docs in seconds, sends you only the questions that need you, and shows you what they’re stuck on and what they want next. One answer is one reply, every feature is on the free plan, and it needs no card.

Questions about Chatling alternatives

How many replies do Chatling’s credits buy?

It depends on the model you pick, by our arithmetic from its pricing page. Free’s 200 credits come to 40 to 80 replies a month, since its three models cost 2.5 or 5 credits a reply. Starter’s 1,750 credits cover 70 to 3,500 replies, and Growth’s 6,000 cover 240 to 12,000, at 25 credits a reply on the heaviest models and 0.5 on the lightest. There’s a model-by-model table in Chatling pricing.

Is there a free Chatling alternative?

Yes. Deacon’s free plan gives you 50 answers a month with every feature, analytics included, no card and no end date. Dante AI gives you 100 messages a month, tawk.to 100 AI message credits a month with free live chat, 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. Botpress gives you 25 conversations, Tidio’s 50 Lyro conversations come once, and SiteGPT has a trial rather than a free plan.

What happens when Deacon’s answers run out?

Your visitors still get a reply. It’s a short one saying Deacon can’t look into it right now, and they’re asked for their email unless they’ve left it already in that conversation. You can still read and reply to every conversation from the dashboard. Nothing is billed past your plan’s answers, and no plan upgrades itself.

Can I move my Chatling content to Deacon?

Yes, by adding it again. Sign up with your website’s address, and Deacon picks its home page and a few main pages, such as pricing, to learn from on its own. You can change them afterwards. 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. Your question and answer pairs go in with Add Q&A. Flows and actions don’t come across, because Deacon answers from your content and has none of them. Copy your content out before you cancel Chatling, since its terms say it’s deleted soon after a subscription ends.

Does Deacon have live chat like Chatling?

Deacon has human handoff on every plan, the free one included. You get an email when a visitor leaves their address or asks for a person. Reply from the dashboard, and your words appear in their open chat under your name while Deacon steps back. It isn’t a shared inbox, so there’s no routing, assignment or rota, and it doesn’t run satisfaction surveys. It answers only on your website, with no WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger. Chatbot vs live chat weighs a person in the chat against an AI that answers alone, and the setup where the AI answers first and you step in.