HiQBot is an AI customer conversation platform. An AI agent answers from your own documents on your website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram and LINE, and a person on your team can take the thread in the same inbox. Chatbase does much of this and does it well, so the honest difference is narrower than most comparison pages claim. It is this: Chatbase will put an agent on WhatsApp from $40 a month, but the Help Desk a human answers from starts at $150, and its own documentation says the number you connect can only be used by the agent. HiQBot puts live chat on Starter at $139, and runs coexistence, so the number keeps working in the WhatsApp Business app your team already answers on.
Weighing more than one tool? See how the alternatives compare.
One correction first. Several pages ranking for this term say Chatbase is website only, or that it has no voice. Both are wrong. WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are native and start on Hobby, and voice and telephony ship on Standard. Every Chatbase figure below was read from chatbase.co and its documentation on 28 August 2026, and you can check all of it in a browser.
We publish this page, so weigh it accordingly. Chatbase is a good product and the right-hand column is longer than we would like.
The part that decides it
Chatbase’s Hobby plan is $40 a month and it will connect WhatsApp. That is a real capability and it is genuinely cheap. What it does not include is the Help Desk, which is where a human reads and replies. Their pricing page starts the Help Desk on Standard, at $150.
So on Hobby, the WhatsApp number answers with an agent and nothing else. That matters more than it sounds, because of what their WhatsApp documentation says about the number: it can only be used by the agent, and if you already use it in WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business you have to delete that account first. The phone your team answers on stops being the phone your team answers on.
A number on the WhatsApp API leaving the consumer app is Meta’s rule, not a Chatbase invention, and it would apply to us too if we left it there. Meta added coexistence, and HiQBot uses it. The number runs on the API and in the Business app at the same time, which is covered on the setup page. Your team keeps the phone. The agent takes what nobody picked up.
Chatbase documents what happens: the agent shows “This AI Agent is currently unavailable. If you are the owner, please check your account.” On Hobby there is no Help Desk, so nobody can pick the conversation up, and the number is not in the Business app any more either.
HiQBot pauses the AI in the same situation. The difference is what is still standing. The conversation sits in your inbox, a person can answer it from Starter upward, and the number is still live in the app your team uses. Add a credit pack at $20 per 1,000 and the agent picks back up.
The metering
Chatbase charges a credit per request to the model, and weights it by which model answered. Their published table runs from 1 credit to 6. Three things multiply on top of that, all documented by them: an action makes the agent call the model twice, so the reply costs double; images bill separately; and a PDF bills per page. Their own worked example is a message with two images and a three-page PDF costing 6 credits on a model that costs 1.
Read Standard’s 4,000 credits through that. It is about 4,000 replies if you stay on their cheapest model and nobody attaches anything. On Claude Opus it is nearer 666. The number on the pricing page is real, but it is a number of requests, not a number of answers, and the difference between those is a factor of six before anyone sends a photo.
A HiQBot credit is one reply at the Core level. Choose a stronger level and it thinks harder and draws more, and the level is yours to set per inbox. Top-ups are $20 per 1,000 against their $40, and unused monthly credits carry for two billing periods rather than expiring. Chatbase states that its subscription credits do not carry over and renew on the first of the calendar month whenever you subscribed, so a subscription started on the 15th gets half a month out of its first allowance.
Chatbase credits per model request
Read from their model comparison documentation on 28 August 2026. An action doubles the figure. Images and PDF pages are charged on top, per image and per page.
The plans
Worth checking these against any other page comparing the two. Several currently in the results print Chatbase allowances two to three times higher than the page states, and one lists agent counts rising by plan when every plan has one.
| HiQBot | Chatbase | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | None. 7-day trial | Yes, 50 credits, 1 agent, deleted after 14 days idle |
| Entry paid plan | Solo · $49/mo · 2,500 credits · 1 seat | Hobby · $40/mo · 700 credits · 2 seats |
| Plan where a person can answer | Starter · $139/mo · 2 live chat seats | Standard · $150/mo · 3 seats · Help Desk starts here |
| Upper plan | Growth · $229/mo · 10,000 credits · 5 seats | Pro · $500/mo · 15,000 credits · 5 seats |
| Extra seat | $15/mo | $25/mo |
| Top-up credits | $20 per 1,000 | $40 per 1,000, non-expiring |
| Unused monthly credits | Carry two billing periods on monthly plans | Do not carry over |
| When the allowance resets | On your renewal date | First of the calendar month, whenever you subscribed |
| Agents included | The channels your plan includes, in one inbox | 1 on every plan, Free through Pro. Extra agents $25/mo |
| Removing vendor branding | No branding on the widget | $99/mo add-on |
Chatbase prices from chatbase.co/pricing, HiQBot prices from our plans API, both on 28 August 2026. Chatbase also offers 20% off for annual billing, which puts Hobby at $32 a month, Standard at $120 and Pro at $400.
The channels
The overlap here is large. Both do website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. Chatbase adds phone and email, which we do not have. We add Telegram and LINE, which they do not.
| HiQBot | Chatbase | |
|---|---|---|
| Website chat widget | All plans | All plans |
| WhatsApp Business API | All plans, from $49 | Hobby and up, from $40 |
| All plans | Hobby and up | |
| Facebook Messenger | Starter and up | Hobby and up |
| Telegram | Starter and up | Not offered |
| LINE | Starter and up | Not offered |
| Inbound phone calls | Not offered | Standard and up, Twilio or your own SIP trunk |
| Email as a channel | Not offered | Yes |
| WhatsApp number also usable in the Business app | Yes, through coexistence | No. Their doc says delete the app account first |
LINE is the one that decides deals rather than arguments. If you sell into Japan, Thailand or Taiwan, it is often the channel customers actually use, and there is no workaround for its absence. Our LINE and Telegram channels land in the same inbox as the rest, so one customer stays one person with one history.
Worth knowing
Free, Hobby, Standard and the $500 Pro plan all include a single agent. Extra agents are $25 a month each. That is not hidden, it sits in their comparison table, but no page comparing Chatbase to anything currently mentions it.
It only bites in one situation, and then it bites hard: a second brand, a second business line, or a staging copy you do not want customers hitting. Each one is another $25 a month, and each is trained and configured on its own. Worth knowing on the way in rather than in month three.
Training data is capped too, by size of extracted text rather than file size: 1 MB on Free, 10 on Hobby, 20 on Standard and 40 on Pro. Their accepted formats are PDF, DOC, DOCX and TXT, plus website crawls, text snippets, question and answer pairs, and Notion.
Switching
The documents come with you. Upload the same files, point the crawler at the same site, and the agent answers from the same material. Sources are the part people expect to be painful and it is the easy part.
The WhatsApp number is the step to plan. It is connected to one provider at a time, so you remove it from Chatbase before connecting it here, and there is a short window where neither is answering. Do it outside your busy hours. Once it is across you can turn coexistence on and take WhatsApp on the app again as well.
If phone or the model picker is the reason you are on Chatbase, stay. Neither has an equivalent here, and swapping a working setup for a page’s argument is a bad trade.
Yes. Chatbase has native WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, and its pricing comparison starts them on the Hobby plan at $40 a month. Pages claiming Chatbase is website only are out of date. What Chatbase does not have is Telegram or LINE.
Only from the Standard plan at $150 a month, which is where their Help Desk begins. On Hobby at $40 you can put an agent on WhatsApp, but there is no shared inbox for a person to answer from. Seats are 1, 2, 3 and 5 by plan and extra seats are $25 a month.
Their documentation says the agent displays “This AI Agent is currently unavailable. If you are the owner, please check your account.” On HiQBot the AI pauses and the conversation stays in your inbox, so a person can still answer it on Starter and above.
No. Chatbase prices a credit per request to the model and weights it by model, from 1 credit on their Auto and Luna options up to 6 on Claude Opus 4.8. A reply that runs an action costs double, and attachments bill separately per image and per PDF page. A HiQBot credit is one reply at the Core level.
On HiQBot, yes, through coexistence. The number runs on the API and in the app at the same time. Chatbase’s own WhatsApp documentation says the number can only be used by the agent and that you must delete your account in the app first.
It depends where you land. Chatbase starts at $40 against our $49, and has a free plan. Once you need a person answering, Chatbase is $150 and HiQBot Starter is $139 with two live chat seats. Top-up credits are $20 per 1,000 on HiQBot and $40 per 1,000 on Chatbase.
On HiQBot monthly plans, for two billing periods, when the renewal is paid on time. Chatbase states that subscription credits do not carry over and renew on the first of the calendar month regardless of when you subscribed, so subscribing on the 15th gives you half a month of that first allowance.
Inbound phone and telephony, a choice of eight model vendors, a full public API with webhooks, SOC 2 Type II, and HIPAA eligibility and SSO on their Enterprise plan. If any of those decide it, Chatbase is the better buy and this page will not talk you out of it.
Seven days, your own files, your own website. Ask each one the questions your customers actually send, then hand a conversation to a person and see what that takes.