Free AI Chatbot for Your Website: What "Free" Actually Gets You
Free plans, free trials and free open-source tools are not the same thing. Here's what to check before you put a free AI chatbot on your site.
Published Updated 6 min read
You can put an AI chatbot on your website for free, but "free" means very different things depending on who's offering it. It can be a trial that ends after a week, a free-forever plan with a small monthly cap, or free software where you pay for hosting and the AI yourself. For a small site that gets a few questions a week, a free-forever plan can genuinely be enough. Past that, you'll pay something, and the useful question is how much and when.
I build ChatBento, which has a free plan, so I've spent a lot of time on what free can and can't cover. Here's how to read the offers.
Why no AI chatbot is free without limits
Every answer an AI chatbot writes costs the provider money. The model that reads your pages and writes the reply is billed per use, so a bot that answers a thousand questions costs roughly a thousand times more to run than one that answers a single question.
That's why every free offer has a limit somewhere: on time, on messages, on features, or on your own effort. None of that is a trick. It's just worth knowing which limit you're signing up for.
The three kinds of "free"
| Kind | What you get | Where the limit is |
|---|---|---|
| Free trial | The full product for a few days or weeks | It ends, then you pay or lose the bot |
| Free plan | A permanent plan with small caps | Messages per month, branding, fewer features |
| Free software | Open-source code you run yourself | Hosting, AI usage fees and your time |
Free trials are the most common. Chatbase, for example, has no free plan: its pricing page offers a 7-day trial on each paid plan, with Hobby at $40 a month (checked October 22, 2026). A trial is fine for testing, but it isn't a way to run a chatbot for free.
Free plans stay free. The catch is a monthly message cap, a "Powered by" link on the widget, and sometimes missing features.
Free software costs nothing to download. You still pay for a server, for the AI model's usage, and for the time it takes to set up and keep running. For a developer who enjoys that, it can be the cheapest route. For most small businesses, it isn't.
What to check before you pick a free plan
1. How many replies you get, and what counts as one
Look for a plain number of AI replies per month. Some tools count "messages", others count "credits", and credits can be used up faster depending on which AI model answers. Chatbase's Hobby plan, for example, lists 700 monthly message credits (checked October 22, 2026). Read how a reply turns into credits before you compare numbers.
2. What happens when you hit the cap
This matters more than the cap itself. Some bots simply stop answering, and a visitor clicking a dead chat bubble is worse than no bubble. Ask what the visitor sees on day 29 of the month.
In ChatBento, when a bot reaches its monthly limit, the widget stops writing AI answers and shows the contact form instead, so the visitor can still leave their question and you still get the lead.
3. How much it can learn
Free plans often cap how many pages the bot can read. If your site has 30 pages and the cap is 50, fine. If you have a 400-product shop, the bot will only know part of it.
4. Whether lead capture and human handoff are included
A support bot will hit questions it can't answer. If the free plan doesn't let the visitor leave an email for a human to follow up, every one of those questions is a lost customer.
5. Branding
Most free plans show a small "Powered by" link. For a personal site or a new shop, nobody minds. For a client site or an established brand, you might.
6. Whether it needs a card
"Free trial, card required" usually means you'll be billed on day 8 unless you remember to cancel. That's not wrong, but you should know it going in.
7. What happens when a trial ends
Does the bot disappear from your site, keep running on a free plan, or start charging? This one is rarely on the pricing page. Check the FAQ or ask support.
How many replies does a small site actually need?
You can estimate it before you sign up. Here's a rough example. These are assumptions to replace with your own numbers, not benchmarks:
- 2,000 visitors a month
- 2% to 5% of them open the chat: 40 to 100 conversations
- About 3 AI replies per conversation: 120 to 300 replies a month
On those numbers, a 50-reply free plan covers roughly the first 15 conversations of the month. That's enough for a small portfolio, a local business with low traffic, or a test run on a bigger site. It's not enough for a busy shop.
The best estimate is your own data. Put the bot on your site for a month, then look at how many conversations and replies you actually got.
What ChatBento's free plan includes
Since I'm writing about free plans, here's ours, plainly:
- Free, forever: 50 AI replies a month, one chatbot, trained on up to 50 pages of your site.
- Included: lead capture and human handoff, so visitors can always leave their details.
- Branding: a small "Powered by ChatBento" link that stays on.
- New accounts start with a 14-day trial with 200 messages, no card required. When it ends, the bot moves to the free plan instead of disappearing.
When 50 replies a month isn't enough, the Hobby plan is $8 a month for 2,000 replies and 200 pages. That's the plan I built for small sites.
When free is the wrong choice
Free is a good start. It stops being a good idea when:
- Each lead is worth a lot. If one new client pays for a year of any paid plan, a capped bot that falls back to a form halfway through the month is costing you more than it saves.
- Your traffic is real. Once you're well past the free cap every month, you're relying on the fallback more than the bot.
- The bot needs most of your site. A 50-page limit on a 300-page site means wrong or missing answers, and wrong answers cost trust.
The short checklist
- It's a free plan, not a trial, if you want it to keep running
- You know how many replies you get and what counts as one
- You know what visitors see when the cap is reached
- The page limit covers the pages that matter
- Lead capture and handoff are included
- You're fine with the branding
- You know whether a card is required and what happens when the trial ends
You can see every ChatBento plan, including the free one, on the pricing page. If you're comparing against Chatbase, the side-by-side comparison has both price lists.