Chatbase vs CustomGPT vs SiteGPT in 2026: Pricing, Limits, Verdict
Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT compared on October 2026 monthly and yearly prices, message limits, human handoff, integrations and who each one suits.
Short answer
As of 22 October 2026, none of the three lists a free plan. Chatbase starts at $40 a month, or $32 billed yearly, for 700 message credits; CustomGPT.ai at $99, or $89 yearly, for 1,000 queries; SiteGPT at $59, or $39 yearly, for 4,000 messages, where a question and its answer count as two. Pick Chatbase for channels, CustomGPT.ai for cited answers over large libraries and SiteGPT for human handoff on its cheapest plan.
Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT sell the same core product: a ChatGPT-style chatbot trained on your own website. All three crawl your pages, read your files and answer visitors in a chat widget. The differences sit in the meter each one runs, the plan on which a person can take over a chat, and what the bot can do besides answer.
This comparison is for founders, course creators and small support teams choosing between the three. It covers every self-serve plan on both billing periods, the limits behind the prices, answer controls, human handoff, integrations, privacy and a verdict by situation.
PepoChat is our product and competes with all three, so it appears only in the last section. Every vendor figure below comes from that vendor's own pricing page or documentation, read on 22 October 2026, and PepoChat's behaviour was checked in its code and documentation the same day.
Who are Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT for?
Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT all build a chatbot from your website and documents, but Chatbase is a multi-channel AI agent platform, CustomGPT.ai a retrieval platform built around cited answers, and SiteGPT a website chatbot with a human inbox.
Each one is a website-trained chatbot, a chatbot that answers from a stored copy of your own pages and files rather than from the model's general knowledge, so the quality of your pages matters as much as the vendor.
Chatbase sells message credits and deploys one agent to a chat bubble, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Slack on every plan, adding voice, phone calls and its own helpdesk from the Standard plan. You pick the AI model per agent from a menu that spans OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, Mistral and others.
CustomGPT.ai sells queries and is built for large libraries: 5,000 documents per agent and 60 million words of storage on Standard, more than 1,400 file formats, YouTube and audio, and a citation on every answer. Besides the website widget, it deploys to Slack, through a RAG API and as an MCP server for other AI tools.
SiteGPT sells messages and concentrates on the website chat. Human support, with written escalation rules and working hours, is on every plan, and from Growth the same chatbot answers inside Slack, Messenger, Google Chat, Crisp, Freshdesk Messaging and Zoho SalesIQ. It answers with GPT-4.1 or GPT-4.1 mini, chosen per chatbot.
How much do Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT cost in 2026?
Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT start at $40, $99 and $59 a month on monthly billing, or $32, $89 and $39 a month billed yearly, and none of the three lists a free plan on its pricing page as of 22 October 2026.
Chatbase's pricing page no longer shows the 50-credit Free plan that many older comparisons still describe; Hobby is now the entry tier. Chatbase's pricing page and SiteGPT's pricing page open with yearly billing switched on, so the first figures you see are yearly prices expressed per month, while CustomGPT.ai's pricing page opens on monthly. SiteGPT's yearly plans are paid upfront: Starter's $39 a month is one payment of $468.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Included each month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chatbase Hobby | $40 a month | $32 a month ($384 a year) | 700 message credits, 1 agent, 2 members |
| Chatbase Standard | $150 a month | $120 a month ($1,440 a year) | 4,000 credits, 1 agent, 3 members |
| Chatbase Pro | $500 a month | $400 a month ($4,800 a year) | 15,000 credits, 1 agent, 5 members |
| CustomGPT.ai Standard | $99 a month | $89 a month ($1,068 a year) | 1,000 queries, 10 agents, 3 members |
| CustomGPT.ai Premium | $499 a month | $449 a month ($5,388 a year) | 5,000 queries, 25 agents, 5 members |
| SiteGPT Starter | $59 a month | $468 a year ($39 a month) | 4,000 messages, 1 chatbot, 1 member |
| SiteGPT Growth | $129 a month | $948 a year ($79 a month) | 10,000 messages, 2 chatbots, 4 members |
| SiteGPT Scale | $429 a month | $3,108 a year ($259 a month) | 40,000 messages, 3 chatbots, 10 members |
Prices from each vendor's pricing page, checked 22 October 2026, in US dollars before tax. Chatbase and CustomGPT.ai yearly totals are the per-month price times twelve. All three also sell a custom-priced Enterprise plan.
| Term | Chatbase | CustomGPT.ai | SiteGPT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | None listed | None | None |
| Trial | 7 days on Hobby, Standard and Pro | 7 days, card required, charged when it ends | 7 days, card required |
| Yearly saving | 20% | 10% | 34% to 40% by plan |
| Remove the vendor badge | Add-on: $99 a month or $1,188 a year | Included from Premium ($499) | Add-on: $59 a month or $468 a year |
| More usage | $40 per 1,000 credits, which never expire | $375 a month per 2,500 queries | $59 a month or $468 a year per 5,000 messages |
| Extra agents or chatbots | $25 a month or $300 a year each | 25 more for $100 a month | Not sold separately |
Terms from each vendor's pricing page and documentation, checked 22 October 2026.
The extras change the order. Removing the Chatbase badge costs $99 a month, more than twice the Hobby plan, so an unbranded Chatbase widget starts at $139 a month on monthly billing. CustomGPT.ai removes its badge only from Premium at $499, while SiteGPT sells badge removal on every plan.
Top-ups differ too: Chatbase's auto-recharge credits never expire, while CustomGPT.ai's and SiteGPT's extra allowances are monthly subscriptions. Our AI customer support pricing index lines up 30 vendors the same way, by the unit each one bills.
What are the message limits on Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT?
Chatbase counts message credits, CustomGPT.ai counts queries and SiteGPT counts messages, so 1,000 visitor questions can use 1,000 units on one tool and 2,000 or more on another, depending on the model, the actions and the counting rule.
A Chatbase message credit is the unit deducted for each request the agent makes to the AI model, priced by model. Auto, GPT-6 Luna, Claude 5.5 Haiku and most other models cost 1 credit; GPT-6.1 Sol, Claude 5.5 Sonnet and Gemini 3.8 Flash cost 2; GPT-5.5 costs 4 and Claude 5.5 Opus costs 5. An answer that runs an action can take two requests, one to call the action and one to write the reply, and each is charged. At zero, the widget tells visitors "This AI Agent is currently unavailable."
A CustomGPT.ai query is one answered message on a standard setup, and several features add more. On Standard, each lead-capture scan adds 2 queries, each web search 3 and each Verify Responses check 9, according to CustomGPT.ai's actions cost page. Raising the context depth from the default Compact to Balanced makes every message cost 2 queries on Standard. At the limit, the pricing FAQ says, "your agents stop responding to new queries".
A SiteGPT message is one side of an exchange. SiteGPT's plans and limits page counts the visitor's question as 1 message and the chatbot's reply as 1, so each answered question uses 2. A GPT-4.1 message uses as much allowance as 10 GPT-4.1 mini messages, and new chatbots start on GPT-4.1, although SiteGPT's own docs advise switching most chatbots to mini. When the allowance runs out, current plans keep answering while the dashboard is blurred until you buy more messages.
| Limit | Chatbase | CustomGPT.ai | SiteGPT |
|---|---|---|---|
| How one answer counts | 1 to 5 credits per AI request, by model | 1 query, more with actions or deeper context | 2 messages (question and reply); GPT-4.1 counts 10 times |
| Entry-plan allowance | 700 credits (Hobby) | 1,000 queries (Standard) | 4,000 GPT-4.1 mini or 400 GPT-4.1 messages (Starter) |
| Bots per plan | 1 agent on every plan | 10 (Standard), 25 (Premium) | 1, 2 or 3 by plan |
| Content cap | 40 MB of extracted text per agent, up to 80 MB with add-ons | 5,000 documents per agent, 60 million words (Standard) | 1,000, 10,000 or 50,000 pages of 2,500 characters |
| Seats | 2, 3, 5 | 3, 5 | 1, 4, 10 |
| Automatic re-sync | Weekly, Standard and Pro | Website auto-sync from Premium | Monthly on Growth, weekly on Scale |
| When the allowance runs out | Agent shows "currently unavailable" | Agents stop responding | Keeps answering; dashboard blurred |
Limits from each vendor's pricing page and documentation, checked 22 October 2026.
Take 1,000 visitor questions a month with no actions switched on. On Chatbase with a 1-credit model that is 1,000 credits, more than Hobby's 700, so you add one $40 recharge or move to Standard at $150. On CustomGPT.ai it is exactly Standard's 1,000 queries at $99, which leaves nothing for lead capture or a deeper context setting. On SiteGPT it is 2,000 messages on GPT-4.1 mini, inside Starter's 4,000 at $59; left on GPT-4.1, the same traffic needs Scale at $429 or Growth plus message packs.
How do Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT control answer quality?
CustomGPT.ai can attach a source citation to every answer on every plan, Chatbase offers the longest model menu plus step-by-step procedures, and SiteGPT keeps controls simple with two models, plain-language escalation rules and custom responses.
Citations matter when visitors need to check an answer. CustomGPT.ai lists citations as included on Standard, Premium and Enterprise, and its Verify Responses action re-checks an answer's claims for extra queries. Chatbase's and SiteGPT's pricing pages do not list visitor-facing citations, and the documentation we read does not describe them.
Chatbase has the most controls. You write instructions, choose the model per agent and run one message against several models side by side. Procedures, 2, 4 or 6 per agent by plan, walk the agent through multi-step workflows, and any action can be set to run only inside a procedure. Pro adds source suggestions and closed support tickets as a source.
CustomGPT.ai fixes the model by plan. Standard agents run its Optimal mode on GPT-4.1, Premium can switch between Speed, Accuracy and Understanding modes, and only Enterprise gets the model selector.
SiteGPT offers GPT-4.1 or GPT-4.1 mini per chatbot, custom responses for fixed answers and an escalation policy written in plain sentences. On sources, Chatbase takes PDF, DOC, DOCX and TXT files up to 20 MB and cannot train on scanned PDFs, CustomGPT.ai reads more than 1,400 formats and connects Google Drive, Notion and Confluence, and SiteGPT's crawler ignores robots.txt, so exclude private paths yourself.
Do Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT hand off to a human?
SiteGPT hands conversations to your team on every plan, Chatbase does so from its $150 Standard plan through its own helpdesk or nine connected helpdesks, and CustomGPT.ai has no inbox in which your team can reply to a visitor.
Human handoff is the moment the AI stops answering and a person takes over, ideally in the same chat window with the transcript in view; our chatbot human handoff guide covers how it should work.
SiteGPT's Human Support works on any plan. By default the AI escalates when a visitor asks for a person, when a situation is urgent or when a visitor is frustrated, and you can replace those triggers with your own rules. The AI then stops replying, SiteGPT emails the chatbot owner, and your team answers from Chat History, or from the iPhone app on Growth and above. Working hours can route new chats to your team by day and to the AI at night.
Chatbase's Escalations action opens a ticket in Chatbase Helpdesk or in Zendesk, Salesforce, Intercom, Zoho Desk, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Help Scout, Gorgias or Odoo. Only Zendesk can receive the full transcript; the others get an AI-written summary. A separate live chat action hands the visitor to a person in real time, and agents can take over any ongoing chat from the helpdesk, which has ticket statuses, internal notes, triggers and AI draft replies.
The catch is the plan. Chatbase's pricing page includes the helpdesk inbox and every helpdesk connector only from Standard, at $150 a month or $120 billed yearly, so on Hobby a website conversation has nowhere inside Chatbase to go. Hobby includes Slack, and a Slack notification action can alert your team, but Chatbase's docs note that it does not hand over the conversation.
CustomGPT.ai is a retrieval platform rather than a helpdesk. What its docs call Live Chat is the AI chat widget, not a person. The documented route to a human is an Intercom deployment built from two Zapier Zaps, whose error path tells the visitor it is "looping in a teammate", and MCP connectors can open tickets in tools such as Jira, Zendesk or ServiceNow.
Which integrations and actions does each one offer?
Chatbase ships ready-made actions for Shopify, Stripe, Calendly and nine helpdesks, CustomGPT.ai reaches outside tools through MCP connectors you add, and SiteGPT's integrations are chat channels, with webhooks and an API, rather than actions inside the conversation.
An AI action is a task the chatbot carries out during a conversation, such as checking an order, booking a meeting or opening a ticket, instead of only answering from text.
| Capability | Chatbase | CustomGPT.ai | SiteGPT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orders and billing | Shopify on every plan; Stripe from Standard | Through an MCP connector you add | Not documented |
| Booking | Calendly and Cal.com actions | Through an MCP connector | Not documented |
| Calls your API mid-chat | Custom actions | Custom MCP connectors | No; API from Growth, webhooks on Scale |
| Helpdesk tickets | Own helpdesk plus nine connectors, from Standard | MCP connectors, for example Jira or Zendesk | Zendesk Messaging handoff on Scale |
| Messaging channels | WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Slack; phone from Standard | Slack, website widget, API, MCP server | Slack, Messenger, Google Chat, Crisp and more from Growth |
| Zapier | Standard and up | Every plan | Webhooks on Scale instead |
| Action limits | 5, 8 or 12 per agent by plan | 1 connector on at a time without Plan & Act | No actions to limit |
Integration details from each vendor's pricing page and documentation, checked 22 October 2026.
Chatbase's Shopify actions, included on every plan, can recommend products, manage a cart, place orders, handle returns and exchanges, and answer order questions. Its Stripe actions, from Standard, show subscriptions and invoices and can change or cancel a plan.
CustomGPT.ai connects curated platforms such as Stripe, Notion and Zapier in one click, and any other MCP server as a custom connector. Without its Plan & Act mode only one connector can be on at a time, Standard allows one action call per question, and each call adds 2 queries on Standard.
SiteGPT answers inside Slack, Messenger, Google Chat, Crisp, Freshdesk Messaging and Zoho SalesIQ from Growth, inside Zendesk Messaging from Scale, and on WhatsApp or by email through $59-a-month add-ons. Its documentation describes no order lookups or booking from the chat. New leads reach you by email on any plan, while the leads webhook, its route into a CRM, needs Scale.
How do their data and privacy pages compare?
Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT all say they do not train AI models on your data, and all three claim a SOC 2 Type II audit, but they differ on HIPAA, data processing agreements, hosting and how long data is kept.
| Topic | Chatbase | CustomGPT.ai | SiteGPT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trains models on your data | No | No | No |
| Audits and certifications claimed | SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA-eligible Enterprise workspaces | SOC 2 Type 2 for May 2025 to May 2026, GDPR | SOC 2 Type II, GDPR certification, HIPAA assessment; no ISO 27001 |
| Data processing agreement | DPA page linked in the site footer | Enterprise customers only | Downloadable; signed with Enterprise customers |
| Hosting | AWS, us-east-1 | Not stated on its security page | Mostly United States; no EU-only option |
| Retention | Customer data deleted on leaving | Standard conversations deleted after 12 months | Kept until you delete; removed 30 days or more after a subscription ends |
Statements from each vendor's security page, pricing FAQ or documentation, checked 22 October 2026.
A few details stand out. Chatbase offers HIPAA-eligible workspaces, with a Business Associate Agreement, only on Enterprise. CustomGPT.ai lets you delete original files right after processing, and Premium can keep conversations for as long as you choose. SiteGPT signs users in with an emailed link instead of a password, with no Google sign-in.
This is information from each vendor's own pages, not legal advice. Before you load customer data into any of the three, ask for the SOC 2 report and the DPA, and read the subprocessor list.
Which should you pick: Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai or SiteGPT?
Choose Chatbase if customers reach you on WhatsApp, Instagram or by phone, CustomGPT.ai if you need cited answers over a large library or an API, and SiteGPT if you want a website chatbot with human handoff for under $60 a month.
Course creator or coach with a question-heavy site. SiteGPT Starter on GPT-4.1 mini covers about 2,000 answered questions a month for $59, or $39 billed yearly, with human handoff included. Chatbase Hobby costs less but covers 700 one-credit answers, and a person can take over only from Standard.
Bootstrapped SaaS founder. Chatbase Standard, at $150 or $120 billed yearly, is the cheapest plan among the three vendors that combines Stripe actions, a helpdesk and Zapier. CustomGPT.ai Standard suits a developer-led product that wants the RAG API and citations, if 1,000 queries a month is enough.
Documentation-heavy or regulated team. CustomGPT.ai, for citations, 60 million words of storage and a SOC 2 audit period stated on its security page; Premium adds badge removal, auto-sync and the PII anonymiser.
Store or team living in other apps. Chatbase if customers message on Instagram or WhatsApp, since those channels and its Shopify actions are on Hobby; SiteGPT Growth or Scale if your team works in Slack, Crisp or Zendesk.
Where does PepoChat fit next to Chatbase, CustomGPT.ai and SiteGPT?
PepoChat fits teams that support customers on their website and want to run the whole workflow before paying: every feature is on the free plan, which includes 200 AI replies a month, and paid plans charge per AI reply.
PepoChat's Free plan includes 200 AI replies a month, 5 knowledge sources (a whole site crawl counts as one), 20 MB of text and one member, with no credit card. Every feature is on every plan except new-lead emails to the team, which start on Starter, and when Free reaches 200 replies, new conversations go to the team inbox with a friendly message instead of a dead widget.
PepoChat counts only the agent's replies, not visitor messages or your team's replies. Starter is $49 a month or $490 a year for 2,000 replies, unlimited sources and 3 members; Growth is $149 a month or $1,490 a year for 10,000 replies, 10 members and no PepoChat branding. Replies past the allowance cost $10 per 1,000 and keep flowing, with no self-serve spend cap. On the 1,000-question example above, Starter covers the month with half its allowance to spare.
The team inbox is the shared inbox where your team answers chats, with unresolved, escalated and resolved statuses, assignment, internal notes and CSV export. The agent can use 22 prebuilt actions across 13 providers, among them Shopify order status by order number, WooCommerce orders, Stripe subscription checks and tickets in Zendesk, Freshdesk or Zoho Desk, plus custom HTTPS actions; none of them moves money. It can also book meetings on a PepoSmart calendar, re-checking each slot at booking.
The limits are real. PepoChat is a website widget plus a hosted chat page, with no WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram or Slack channels. It runs one AI model with no menu, shows no source citations under its answers, crawls up to 200 pages and 3 levels deep per crawl, and books only on PepoSmart. It publishes no SOC 2, ISO or HIPAA certification. If any of those decides it for you, one of the three above is the better buy.
Our Chatbase alternative, CustomGPT.ai alternative and SiteGPT alternative pages compare each one with PepoChat row by row, and the pricing page has the full plan table.
What to do next
- Set every pricing page to the billing period you will pay, and convert each allowance into answered questions before you compare prices.
- Read Chatbase vs PepoChat for a closer look at channels, voice and seats.
- Start a free PepoChat workspace and run it next to your current chatbot for a month; no credit card is needed.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Chatbase free?
- No. As of 22 October 2026, Chatbase's pricing page lists no free plan. The cheapest plan is Hobby at $40 a month, or $32 a month billed yearly, with 700 message credits, one AI agent and two members, and each paid plan starts with a 7-day trial. Articles that describe a 50-credit Chatbase Free plan are out of date.
- How much does CustomGPT cost?
- CustomGPT.ai Standard costs $99 a month, or $89 a month billed yearly, for 10 agents, 1,000 queries a month and 3 team members. Premium costs $499, or $449 billed yearly, for 25 agents, 5,000 queries, auto-sync and badge removal, and Enterprise is custom. There is no free plan: the 7-day trial needs a card and charges automatically when it ends.
- Does SiteGPT have a free plan?
- No. SiteGPT's pricing FAQ says there is no free plan, only a 7-day trial that requires a credit card. Starter costs $59 a month, or $468 a year (about $39 a month), for one chatbot, one member and 4,000 messages. The pricing page opens on yearly billing, so the first price you see is the $39 yearly rate, as of October 2026.
- Which is best for a small business website?
- For a small business website with modest traffic, SiteGPT Starter on GPT-4.1 mini gives the most answered questions per dollar of the three, about 2,000 a month for $59 or $39 billed yearly, with human handoff included. Chatbase fits better if customers also write on WhatsApp or Instagram, and CustomGPT.ai if answers must cite their sources. Prices checked October 2026.
- Do Chatbase, CustomGPT and SiteGPT hand off to a human?
- SiteGPT and Chatbase do; CustomGPT.ai has no human inbox. SiteGPT's human support works on every plan, and your team replies from Chat History. Chatbase hands chats to its own helpdesk or to nine others, such as Zendesk and HubSpot, but only from the Standard plan at $150 a month. CustomGPT.ai documents an Intercom setup built with Zapier instead.
- What are the message limits on each?
- As of October 2026, Chatbase Hobby gives 700 message credits a month, at 1 to 5 credits per AI request depending on the model. CustomGPT.ai Standard gives 1,000 queries, with actions and deeper context settings costing extra. SiteGPT Starter gives 4,000 GPT-4.1 mini messages or 400 GPT-4.1 messages, and the visitor's question and the reply count as one message each.
Try this on your own site in ten minutes
PepoChat includes every feature on the free plan — 200 AI replies and 5 knowledge sources a month, no credit card.
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