Chatbase vs PepoChat: Which AI Support Agent Fits Your Team in 2026?

If you are searching for a Chatbase alternative, or trying to settle a "Chatbase vs PepoChat" debate inside your team, this page is the side-by-side. It is written from Chatbase's own pricing and documentation pages, fetched in September 2026 and re-checked on 23 October 2026, and from PepoChat's product as it ships today. Prices change, so check each vendor's pricing page for current numbers before you decide.

The comparison is for small and mid-sized teams who want an AI support agent on their website. An AI support agent is a chatbot that answers from your own knowledge base, takes actions in your other tools, and hands the conversation to a person when it should. Both products fit that definition; they differ in how you pay, what you get before paying, and how far beyond the website they reach.

PepoChat is our product; there are sections below where Chatbase is plainly the stronger choice, and Chatbase's docs are linked throughout so you can check every claim.

Chatbase vs PepoChat at a glance

How does the pricing model differ?

The biggest difference is not the price but the unit you buy.

Chatbase sells message credits. A message credit is the unit deducted every time the agent replies, and the number of credits per reply depends on the model you pick. Chatbase's FAQ, as of October 2026, lists most models at 1 credit per response; GPT-6.1 Sol, Claude 5.5 Sonnet, GPT-5.2, Grok 4.7 and the Gemini Pro and Flash models at 2; GPT-5.5 at 4; and Claude 5.5 Opus at 5. So 4,000 credits on the Basic plan is 4,000 replies on a 1-credit model, or 800 replies if you standardise on Claude 5.5 Opus.

The Chatbase pricing page, as of October 2026, lists no free plan. Hobby is $40 a month with 700 credits and 2 seats, Basic (formerly Standard) $150 with 4,000 credits and 3 seats, and Business (formerly Pro) $500 with 15,000 credits and 5 seats; each plan includes one AI agent and starts with a 7-day trial. Yearly billing takes 20% off ($32, $120 and $400 a month). Beyond that, auto-recharge adds credits at $40 per 1,000, extra agents cost $300 a year each, extra storage $300 a year per 10 MB, and removing the "Powered by Chatbase" badge is a $1,188-a-year add-on (about $99 a month). Check their pricing page for current numbers.

When credits run out, the FAQ says the agent displays "This AI Agent is currently unavailable. If you are the owner, please check your account." Plan around that: enable auto-recharge or accept that the widget goes dark until the month resets.

PepoChat has three plans. Free includes 200 AI replies a month and 5 knowledge sources with every feature enabled. Starter ($39) includes 2,000 replies, unlimited sources and 3 members; Growth ($149) includes 10,000 replies, 10 members, removes the PepoChat branding and adds priority support. Replies beyond the allowance cost $10 per 1,000 and extra seats $15 each; the pricing page has the details. Paying yearly costs ten months' price, and downgrading keeps your conversation history. Every reply costs one reply, because there is one model, chosen by PepoChat, rather than a menu.

Credits let you pay for a stronger model on the conversations that need it, and Chatbase's model list is genuinely long. A flat reply count means your bill is predictable and a traffic spike never changes the cost per answer.

What can you test before you pay?

Chatbase has no free plan. As of October 2026 its pricing page lists Hobby, Basic and Business, each with a 7-day trial, so you get a week to confirm the product answers from your data before the bill starts. Hobby already includes 5 AI actions per agent and the Shopify, Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Calendly connections, but the helpdesk inbox, voice, auto-resync and the helpdesk connectors (Zendesk, Salesforce, HubSpot, Freshdesk and the rest) start on Basic.

PepoChat's free plan is the product. Actions, team inbox, calendar booking, meeting memory, widget customisation, domain allow-list and analytics are all on Free; the paid plans differ only in the allowances, the seat count and the branding. When a free workspace reaches 200 replies in a month, new conversations are routed to the team inbox with a friendly message rather than failing, so the widget never goes dark. You can start a free workspace without a card and run it in production for as long as 200 replies covers you.

Knowledge sources and their limits

Both products build a knowledge base, the private collection of documents and pages the agent retrieves from before answering.

Chatbase accepts uploaded files, text snippets, website crawls, sitemaps, individual links and, on the Business plan, support tickets as a source. The limit that matters is total training content, which the pricing page sets at 40 MB per agent on every plan, with storage add-ons in 10 MB steps up to 80 MB. Automatic re-syncing of sources starts on Basic.

PepoChat counts sources rather than megabytes. A whole site crawl or a sitemap import is one source; a single link is one source; a file is one source. Free workspaces get 5; Starter and Growth get unlimited. The crawler follows same-site links breadth-first up to 200 pages and three levels deep, honours robots.txt, and accepts include and exclude path filters. URL sources are re-fetched weekly and only changed pages are re-indexed, on every plan. Scanned PDFs are read by a vision model, and articles you publish in the built-in Help Center are mirrored into the knowledge base automatically. The training guide walks through the setup.

If your documentation is one large site, PepoChat's "a crawl is one source" rule is generous and the 200-page crawl limit is the one to watch. If you have many small, unrelated documents, PepoChat's 5-source cap on Free will push you to Starter sooner.

How does human handoff work in each?

Human handoff is the moment the AI stops answering and a person takes over. How that moment is triggered, and where the conversation lands, decides whether customers trust the bot.

In Chatbase, handoff is an action. The Escalate to Human action creates a ticket in Chatbase's own Helpdesk or in Zendesk, Salesforce, Intercom, Zoho Desk, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Help Scout, Gorgias or Odoo. Most of those targets receive an AI-written summary of the conversation; Zendesk can receive the full transcript. Chatbase also lists live-chat handoff routes (its own live chat, Salesforce, Freshchat and Sunshine) and a phone-transfer action. The Helpdesk inbox and the third-party helpdesk connectors both start on Basic, so on Hobby an escalation has no ticket system to land in.

In PepoChat, handoff is built into the answer loop. The agent searches the knowledge base for every reply; when it finds nothing relevant it says so and offers a person, and when the visitor accepts or asks for one, the conversation is escalated to the team inbox with its full transcript. Operators see conversations live with unresolved, escalated and resolved statuses and reply as themselves; there is no separate helpdesk product to enable and no plan gate. If you already run Zendesk, Freshdesk or Zoho Desk, a prebuilt action can also create a ticket there. Our handoff post goes into the trigger design in more detail.

The trade-off: Chatbase's destination list is longer and includes live-chat transfer, which matters if your agents already live in Intercom or Gorgias. PepoChat's inbox is simpler, but the offer of a person is grounded in retrieval, meaning the bot offers one because it could not find an answer rather than because a rule fired.

Appointment booking: calendar link versus real calendar

Chatbase offers Calendly and Cal.com actions under its Scheduling category. The Cal.com action works from your event URL alone, with no API key, and handles both reading availability and making the reservation. There is a 12- or 24-hour time-format setting; the docs we read do not describe timezone conversion, so test that with a visitor in a different region before you rely on it.

PepoChat connects to a PepoSmart scheduling calendar with an API key. You choose which meeting types the agent may offer and write a short "when to offer this" note for each, and the agent gets a check-slots tool and a book tool per type. Slots are shown in the visitor's local time and the booking is made in the host's timezone, so the model never does timezone arithmetic. PepoSmart re-validates the slot at booking time to prevent double booking, assigns a host (round-robin is supported), creates the Google Meet, Zoom or Teams link, and sends confirmations and reminders. Paid event types are excluded. Details are in the appointment booking guide.

The obvious limit on the PepoChat side is that it requires PepoSmart. If your team lives in Calendly, Chatbase's action is the shorter path.

Meeting memory: the feature Chatbase does not have

Meeting memory is PepoChat's ability, when enabled, to recall a verified visitor's past meetings from PepoSmart meeting notes so a returning customer does not have to re-explain themselves. It is off by default and only works after the visitor verifies their email with a one-time code. The agent sees dates, key interests, commitments and summaries; raw transcripts, recordings and third-party details never cross, and access is logged on both sides.

Chatbase has no equivalent; its context is the current conversation plus whatever an action returns. If your support involves recurring calls with the same people, this is a real differentiator; if not, ignore it. We explain the design in what is meeting memory.

Actions and integrations

Chatbase groups its AI Actions into support and handoff, commerce (Shopify, Stripe, WhatsApp Catalog), lead capture (lead collection, custom data, custom forms), scheduling, and other (custom API actions, Slack notifications, web search, custom buttons). Actions can be restricted to run only inside "procedures", Chatbase's plain-language workflows, which is a sensible guard for refunds or escalations. The pricing page allows 5 AI actions per agent on Hobby, 8 on Basic and 12 on Business.

PepoChat ships prebuilt, editable actions for Stripe (find the customer, check the subscription, cancel at period end), Shopify (order status by order number), WooCommerce (an order by number, or up to three by the visitor's full billing email address), Zendesk, Freshdesk and Zoho Desk (create and check tickets), HubSpot and Salesforce (find contacts, file tickets or cases), Slack and Discord (post an alert), Jira (create an issue), Mailchimp (subscribe) and Zapier (POST to a Catch Hook). Zoho Desk, Salesforce, Slack and HubSpot connect in one click and Zendesk through OAuth; the others take a key or token you paste. Custom actions call any HTTPS endpoint with templated URL, headers and body, up to 10 inputs (all required), and an allow-list of response fields the AI may see. All of this is on the free plan.

One PepoChat caveat: action execution is at-least-once, so a non-idempotent POST can, rarely, run twice; do not wire refunds or payments as actions. Chatbase's "only use in procedures" setting addresses a similar concern from a different angle.

Chatbase is ahead on web search, custom forms and buttons, and a WhatsApp catalog connector. PepoChat is ahead on prebuilt helpdesk and CRM connectors on the free plan and on the response-field controls for custom actions.

Channels: where Chatbase is clearly ahead

Chatbase's Channels page lists a chat bubble, a hosted help page, a full-screen "Center Stage" mode, native iOS and Android SDKs, email, Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, phone via Twilio or SIP trunking, plus Zapier and WordPress. One agent, trained once, answers in all of them.

PepoChat is a website widget: one script tag and an 8.2 KB async loader whose chat frame loads in idle time after the page, or on the first click with preload off. There are no native WhatsApp, Messenger or Slack channels and no announced date for them. If a meaningful share of your support arrives through messaging apps, this row alone should decide the comparison in Chatbase's favour.

Voice: same agent versus separate assistant

Chatbase's voice channel answers inbound phone calls on a Twilio number or an existing SIP trunk, and its documentation says the voice agent uses the same knowledge, actions and instructions as the chat agent. Voice and telephony are listed on the Basic plan and above.

PepoChat's voice is optional in-widget voice powered by Vapi. You connect your own Vapi account with a public key and assistant id, and the voice assistant is configured on Vapi's platform. It does not yet share the chat agent's knowledge base and does not appear in the team inbox. That is a real gap, and if voice is central to your plan, Chatbase's integrated approach is the better one today.

Team seats, security and maturity

Chatbase counts members per plan: two on Hobby, three on Basic, five on Business, with custom roles, SSO and audit logs on Enterprise. Its homepage states it is "trusted by over 10,000 brands" and lists SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA compliance, and the plan ladder runs up to an Enterprise tier with SLAs and a success manager.

PepoChat invites team members by email with owner, admin and member roles; invitations expire after seven days; Starter includes 3 members and Growth 10, with extra seats at $15 each. Each organisation's data is isolated, credentials are AES-256-GCM encrypted and cannot be read back from the dashboard, and operators sign in with a verified email and password or Google. We do not currently publish a SOC 2 or ISO certification, a DPA, or deflection statistics. Whichever vendor you choose, ask for the compliance documents your own buyers will ask you for.

Where each product is stronger

Chatbase is stronger on:

• Channels: messaging apps, email, native mobile SDKs and phone from one agent.
• Model choice: a long menu of models, priced by credit.
• Integrated voice that shares the chat agent's knowledge and actions.
• Scale and maturity: larger plan ceilings, an enterprise tier and published compliance certifications.
• Handoff destinations: ten helpdesks plus live-chat and phone transfer.

PepoChat is stronger on:

• Every feature on the free plan, with 200 replies a month and a widget that keeps working when the cap is hit.
• Predictable flat pricing with no credits or annual lock-in; the one extra is $15 a month per additional seat.
• Real-calendar booking with slot re-validation, host assignment and timezone handling done outside the model.
• Meeting memory for returning, verified visitors.
• Grounded handoff into a built-in inbox on every plan.
• Prebuilt helpdesk, CRM and commerce actions without a plan gate.

Which one should you pick?

Bootstrapped SaaS or indie product, under a few hundred conversations a month. PepoChat. The free plan covers the whole workflow, the Stripe and helpdesk actions are included, and the inbox is where your one or two operators will live.

Ecommerce store with social-media customers. Chatbase. Instagram and Messenger DMs are where those customers are, and Chatbase answers there natively; PepoChat cannot. If your store's support is mostly on-site "where is my order" questions, PepoChat's Shopify and WooCommerce actions handle those on the free plan.

Agency, consultancy or clinic that books calls. It depends on your calendar. Calendly users get a quick path in Chatbase; teams on PepoSmart get re-validated slots, host rotation, reminders and meeting memory in PepoChat.

Mid-market support team with an existing helpdesk and phone line. Chatbase, most likely. Integrated voice, ten helpdesk targets and a plan sized for volume fit that team better than PepoChat's three small-team plans.

Team that wants to try before committing budget. PepoChat, because there is nothing to unlock. Run it on Free for a month, watch the inbox, then decide whether Starter or Growth is worth it.

If CustomGPT.ai or SiteGPT is also on your list, Chatbase vs CustomGPT vs SiteGPT compares the three on prices, limits and handoff, checked in October 2026.

What to do next

If your customers are on your website, install the widget with the one-script-tag guide, load your site and PDFs as sources, and let the free plan's 200 replies tell you how the agent performs on real questions. If they are on messaging apps, Chatbase's Basic plan is the fair comparison point, and its pricing page will have the current numbers. Either way, the PepoChat pricing page lists what Free, Starter and Growth include so you can put the plans side by side for your own volume.

For the shorter, table-first version of this comparison, with the October 2026 prices and a migration checklist, see the Chatbase alternative page.