Best Free AI Chatbot for Your Website in 2026: 9 Free Plans Compared

"Free" is the most stretched word on a chatbot pricing page. One vendor's free plan is a working product with a monthly cap, another's is a lifetime sample that runs out in a busy week, and a third is a chat widget with no AI in it at all. The differences only show up after you have installed the widget, trained the bot and pointed customers at it.

This guide is for small businesses, side projects, nonprofits and anyone else who wants a chatbot on their website without paying for one yet. It compares nine free plans on the things that decide whether a free chatbot is usable: whether AI answers are included, whether the allowance renews every month, whether a person can take over, what happens when the allowance runs out, and what the first paid step costs.

Every vendor detail below comes from the vendor's own pricing or help page, read in October 2026. Free plans change more often than paid ones, so treat the tables as a snapshot and check the linked pages before you commit. PepoChat is our product; where another tool is the better free choice for your situation, this post says so.

Is there a free AI chatbot you can put on your website?

Yes. As of October 2026, PepoChat, Jotform, tawk.to, Chatbase, Botpress and Tidio all let website visitors get AI-written answers without you paying anything. HubSpot, Crisp and Zoho SalesIQ also have free chat plans, but their free tiers offer scripted bots or human chat only.

The number that matters is the size of the free AI allowance, which is the number of AI replies, message credits or conversations a $0 plan includes before the AI stops or asks you to pay. Vendors count it in different units, which is why free plans are hard to compare at a glance. PepoChat counts AI replies, Chatbase and tawk.to count message credits, and Botpress, Jotform and Tidio count conversations.

Three tests separate a free plan you can run real support on from one you can only try:

1. The allowance renews every month. A one-off allowance is a trial without an end date.
2. The bot answers from your own content, meaning your website pages, documents and FAQs rather than general knowledge. The guide to training a chatbot on your website and PDFs explains what that involves.
3. There is a human path. When the bot cannot answer, the visitor can reach a person, and someone on your side sees the conversation.

Free AI chatbot plans compared (October 2026)

Six of the nine free plans include AI answers, and five of those six renew every month. The first table covers the AI. The second covers the human side, the branding and the catch.

Intercom, Zendesk and Freshdesk are missing on purpose. As of September 2026 they offered a 14-day trial rather than a free plan, as the AI chatbot cost breakdown records.

What does each free plan actually give you?

Each free plan below is described in the vendor's own terms, with the limit most likely to bite a small business. They are ordered roughly by how much AI you get for $0.

PepoChat: every feature, capped at 200 replies a month

PepoChat Free is the whole product with a monthly cap: 200 AI replies, 5 knowledge sources, 20 MB of knowledge-base text, one team member, 50 Help Center articles and 100 text snippets or Q&A pairs. A whole-site crawl or a sitemap import counts as one knowledge source, so a website, two PDFs and a Notion connection fit with a source to spare. Human handoff, the team inbox, all thirteen integrations, custom actions, appointment booking and meeting memory are on the free plan. The catches are one member, a web widget only with no WhatsApp or Messenger channel, the "Powered by PepoChat" badge, and new-lead emails to the team, which are a paid feature; the Slack card and webhook for new leads stay free. The billing docs list every limit.

Jotform AI Agents: 100 AI conversations inside a forms suite

Jotform's free plan, which it calls Starter, is a "single-user self-serve plan" that also covers its form builder. For AI agents the Jotform pricing page lists 5 active agents, 100 conversations a month counting chat and phone together, 10,000 sessions a month and a knowledge base of 10 million characters, which makes it one of the larger free AI allowances here. Two limits deserve attention. Sessions include chatbot views and page refreshes even when nobody types, so a busy site can use up 10,000 sessions before 100 conversations. Jotform branding also stays on until you pay. Jotform documents a Take Over Chat feature for replying in an active AI conversation, so check that it works on the free plan before you rely on it. It suits a business that already collects forms or payments with Jotform.

tawk.to: free live chat, plus 100 AI credits a month

tawk.to gives its human chat away. Its pricing page presents live chat, ticketing, a knowledge base and chat pages as free, and charges $29 a month to remove the "Powered by tawk.to" branding. The AI is a separate product called AI Assist, and its Hobby plan costs nothing: 100 message credits a month, one AI agent and a crawl of up to 100 web pages, according to tawk.to's billing article for AI Assist. The next tier, Growth, is $29 a month for 1,000 credits. tawk.to also sells hired human chat agents at $1 an hour. It suits a business that mainly wants people to answer, with a small AI layer for quiet hours. Our tawk.to vs Tidio comparison works out what each one's AI costs at higher volumes.

Chatbase: a 50-credit test drive

Chatbase Free gives 50 message credits a month, one AI agent, one member, 1 MB of training content and limited access to models, with AI actions set to zero and integrations starting on the $40 Hobby plan. The Chatbase pricing page also states that "AI agents get deleted after 14 days of inactivity on the free plan", so a bot you build and leave alone for two weeks disappears. Fifty credits at one credit per message is roughly 25 short conversations, enough to judge answer quality on your own content and not enough to put in front of customers. The Chatbase vs PepoChat comparison covers its paid tiers.

Botpress: a builder's free tier with 25 conversations

Botpress is a platform for building conversational agents, with more control and more setup than a ready-made support widget. The Botpress pricing page lists 25 conversations, three AI agents, three seats, a help center and capped storage on the free plan, with "no top-ups or overages". A conversation is any exchange with at least two messages from the end user in the billing month, and AI-only and human-assisted conversations count the same. Routing and assignment for human teams start on the Team plan, and removing Botpress branding from the web chat starts on Plus at $150 a month billed annually. It suits a developer who wants to design flows, not a shop owner who wants answers by lunchtime.

Tidio: free live chat with a one-off AI sample

Tidio Free is a working live chat and ticketing tool with 10 seats and 50 billable conversations a month, where a billable conversation is one that includes a message from your team. The AI agent, Lyro, is the catch: the Tidio pricing page says "Your first 50 conversations are free (lifetime)". Once those are used, the AI stops until you buy a Lyro quota, which starts at $32.50 a month for 50 conversations. Removing Tidio branding is an add-on at $16.67 a month. Tidio fits a store that wants a human inbox now and may add AI later; the Tidio vs Crisp vs PepoChat comparison goes deeper.

HubSpot: free live chat and scripted bots, no AI agent

HubSpot's free customer service tools cover up to two users and include live chat with HubSpot branding, ticketing and conversational bots, according to the HubSpot service pricing page. The free bots follow sequences you design, and they can qualify leads, book meetings and create tickets using your CRM data. Writing answers from your content is the job of HubSpot's AI customer agent, which sits on the Professional and Enterprise tiers. If your business already runs on HubSpot's CRM, the free bot is a sensible first step. If you want free AI answers, it is not.

Crisp: a free shared inbox with no AI

Crisp Free gives two seats, the website chat widget, a shared inbox and mobile apps, with "No AI credits included" and the "We run on Crisp" watermark, which white labelling removes on the Plus plan. It is a good free inbox for two people who will answer every chat themselves. On the Crisp pricing page, AI starts on Mini at $45 a month with $5 of AI credits, described as about 90 conversations, and the knowledge base arrives on Essentials at $95.

Zoho SalesIQ: free live chat for three operators, no bot

Zoho SalesIQ's free plan includes three operator licenses, 100 operator chat sessions a month and visitor tracking for up to 10,000 visitors a month. The Zoho SalesIQ pricing page puts chatbots, including the AI Answer Bot, on the paid plans, which are priced per operator. Pick it if knowing who is on your site matters more to you than automation.

What do free chatbot plans leave out?

Free plans leave out whatever makes a product hard to outgrow: a renewing AI allowance, a graceful limit, a second seat, your own branding and the actions that let a bot do things rather than say things. Check each one before you install.

A monthly allowance

Tidio's 50 Lyro conversations are lifetime, so they behave like a trial. Every other AI allowance in the tables renews monthly, which is the minimum for running support on a free plan.

What happens at the limit

This is the question vendors answer least clearly. When a PepoChat Free workspace uses its 200 replies, new conversations go to the team inbox with a friendly message telling the visitor that the team will reply right there in the chat, and the AI resumes on the first of the next month, so visitors never meet a dead widget. Botpress states that its free plan has no top-ups or overages. The other pricing pages do not describe what a visitor sees when the free AI runs out, so test it before launch.

Staying power

Chatbase deletes free agents after 14 days of inactivity. A seasonal business or a side project that goes quiet over a holiday can lose its setup.

Your own branding

Every free plan here shows the vendor's name on the widget. Removal costs $16.67 a month at Tidio, $29 at tawk.to and $99 at Chatbase as add-ons, and comes with a plan upgrade at Jotform (any paid plan), Botpress (Plus), Crisp (Plus) and PepoChat (Growth, $149 a month).

Seats and actions

Seats on free range from one (PepoChat, Chatbase, Jotform) to ten (Tidio). Actions vary even more: Chatbase allows zero AI actions on free, Tidio's first Lyro action is free, and PepoChat includes every integration, so the agent can look up a Shopify order or a Stripe subscription at $0. The Shopify order status guide shows what that lookup involves.

How far does a free AI allowance go?

A free AI allowance covers between 25 and about 100 visitor conversations a month, depending on the unit. The table converts each allowance into conversations, assuming the AI writes two replies per conversation, one answer and one follow-up.

To find your own number, count last month's support emails, calls and chats about questions your website already answers. Under about 100 a month, PepoChat and Jotform cover you on a free plan, and tawk.to's credits cover about half that. Above that, every free plan here runs out within the month, and the question becomes what the first paid step costs. PepoChat counts only answers the agent writes in visitor conversations; your team's replies, the greeting and system messages do not count, and chats in the dashboard's Test the agent drawer are free.

Which free AI chatbot should you choose?

Choose by the job, not the logo: the right free plan depends on whether the AI or a person will answer most chats, and on how many chats you get.

If human chat is the priority, the live chat vs chatbot guide explains when a person-first setup beats an AI-first one. For a wider view that includes paid tools, see the best AI customer support chatbots for small businesses.

When should you upgrade, and what does the first paid step cost?

Upgrade when the free plan stops covering a normal month, when a second person needs to answer chats, or when the vendor's badge on your widget starts to matter. The table lists the first paid step that adds or raises AI for each vendor, as listed in October 2026.

The cheapest step is not always the cheapest year. A plan priced per message or per conversation grows with every busy month, while a flat plan with a published overage rate grows in known steps. The AI chatbot cost breakdown works the bills at 300, 2,000 and 10,000 conversations a month, so link your choice to real volume rather than the entry price.

How to put a free AI chatbot on your website this afternoon

Setting up a free AI chatbot takes about ten minutes in PepoChat, plus the time to check its answers, so set aside an hour for the whole job. The steps below use PepoChat, and the same order works with any tool in this comparison.

1. List your ten most common questions from your inbox, phone notes or social messages. They become your test script.
2. Create a free workspace. No credit card is needed.
3. Add your website as one knowledge source. The crawl follows your own links up to 200 pages and three levels deep; upload PDFs such as a price list or returns policy as separate sources.
4. Fill gaps with Q&A pairs. If the agent misses a question, add the answer as a Q&A pair, which does not count against the five sources.
5. Write the greeting and three suggested questions so visitors see what the agent can do, and switch on business hours so it tells people when your team is around.
6. Test in the drawer. Ask your ten questions in the Test the agent drawer; those replies are free and stay out of analytics.
7. Install the widget by pasting one script tag before </body>, following the script tag install guide, or with the plugin described in the WordPress chatbot guide.

Then watch the team inbox for a week. Escalated conversations show you which answers are missing, and the reply meter on the billing page shows how quickly you are using the 200.

What to do next

If you get fewer than about 100 support questions a month and want the AI to answer from your own content, start with a free plan that renews monthly and has a human inbox behind it. Create a free PepoChat workspace, add your site as one knowledge source, and compare the pricing page with your first month of real volume before you pay for anything. If you are still deciding between a person and a bot answering your chats, read the live chat vs chatbot comparison first.

If one of these free plans is already on your site and you are thinking of moving, the alternatives section compares each tool with PepoChat page by page.