Most businesses asking what an AI chatbot costs per month get a range so wide it is useless. The reason is that "AI chatbot" covers two completely different products sold at two completely different prices, and nobody says which one they are quoting.
Here is the actual breakdown, including what we charge and why.
The two things people mean by "chatbot"
A generic bot is a widget you install yourself. It answers from a list of questions you type in, and it costs very little per month because nobody built anything for you. When a customer asks something slightly off-script, it fails.
A custom bot is trained on your own business — your pricing, your services, your policies, the questions your customers actually ask. It answers things nobody explicitly typed in, because it is reading from your material rather than matching keywords. That takes setup work, which is why it is priced differently.
If a quote looks surprisingly cheap or surprisingly expensive, it is almost always because you are comparing one of these to the other.
What the monthly fee actually pays for
This is the part nobody explains, and it is where "why is there a monthly fee at all" gets answered:
- Hosting. The bot has to run somewhere, around the clock, and stay up when your customers are awake at 11pm.
- The AI itself. Every conversation costs a small amount to process. More traffic means more cost.
- Monitoring. Something breaks eventually. Somebody has to notice before your customers do.
- Retraining. Your prices change. Your hours change. You add a service. The bot has to be updated or it starts confidently telling people the wrong thing.
That last one is the one people underestimate. A chatbot is not a thing you buy once. It is a thing that has to stay accurate, and an out-of-date bot is worse than no bot, because it gives wrong answers with total confidence.
Why quotes vary so much
Four things move the price more than anything else:
| Factor | Pushes cost down | Pushes cost up |
|---|---|---|
| How much it knows | A short FAQ | Hundreds of pages, pricing rules, policies |
| What it does | Answers questions | Books appointments, captures leads, updates your systems |
| Traffic | A few conversations a day | Hundreds |
| Integrations | Lives on your site alone | Connects to your calendar, CRM or booking system |
A bot that only answers questions on a small site is a genuinely small monthly cost. A bot that books appointments into a live calendar and writes to a CRM is a different product, and the monthly figure reflects that.
What we charge
We publish our pricing because hiding it wastes everyone's time. Setup is a one-time fee for building and training the bot on your business. After that there is a flat monthly fee covering hosting, monitoring and retraining.
The setup is one-time because the building is one-time. The monthly is flat because you should be able to predict it — a bill that moves every month based on conversation volume is a bill you cannot plan around.
Full current figures are on our pricing page.
Questions to ask before you pay anyone
Whoever you end up using, these five answers tell you most of what you need to know:
- What happens when it does not know the answer? A good bot says so and hands off. A bad one invents something.
- Who updates it when my prices change? If the answer is "you do", factor in your own time.
- Is the monthly fee flat or per conversation? Per-conversation pricing punishes you for being busy.
- What happens to my data? You should know where it goes and who can see it.
- Can I see it working on my own content before I pay? If not, ask why not.
Is it worth it?
The honest test is simple, and it is not about the technology. Work out what one customer is worth to you. If you are losing even one enquiry a month to an unanswered message after hours, a chatbot that catches it has paid for itself.
If nobody ever contacts you outside business hours, and you always reply within minutes, you probably do not need one yet. That is a real answer, and anyone selling you one should be willing to give it.
If you are still working out whether one fits your business at all, read what an AI chatbot for small business actually does — it covers the job it really performs, and the things it will not do for you.
See it working on your own website first
We will build a demo trained on your actual content, so you can judge the answers before paying anything.