88Agents vs Chatbase

88Agents

88Agents is aimed at agencies and builders rather than a single company's support desk: the bring-your-own-model-key approach and multi-channel deployment make it flexible for reselling to clients. Plans scale by chatbot count and storage rather than by usage, so pricing can climb quickly for anyone running many small bots rather than a few large ones.

Pros

• +Deploys the same trained agent across web, Slack, email, WhatsApp, and SMS
• +Lets customers choose between OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini per agent instead of locking into one provider
• +Trains on documents, websites, databases, and video, not just text uploads

Cons

• −No free tier; entry plan starts at $22-29/month
• −Plan limits are based on chatbot count and storage rather than conversation volume, an awkward fit for one high-traffic bot
• −Bringing your own model keys means separate, uncapped LLM provider costs on top of the subscription

Chatbase

The fastest route from a folder of help docs to a working support widget, and priced accordingly once real traffic arrives. Credits are the whole story: 700 messages a month on Hobby ($40, or $32 billed yearly) is a small site's volume, and the plans that carry real traffic cost $150 and $500 a month. There is no free plan to fall back on, so budget from expected conversations, not from the feature grid.

Pros

• +Crawl-and-embed setup produces a usable widget in an afternoon with no retrieval plumbing to write
• +Actions and human handoff mean it degrades into a ticket rather than a dead end
• +Every paid plan carries a 7-day trial, and the yearly toggle takes 20% off

Cons

• −The free plan is gone, so evaluation is limited to a 7-day trial
• −API access is gated to Standard at $150/month ($120 billed yearly), several times the entry price
• −Overage at $40 per 1,000 credits is steep next to the in-plan rate on Pro
• −Each plan includes a single agent; more cost $300 per agent a year, and removing branding $1,188 a year

Is 88Agents cheaper than Chatbase?

On published entry prices, 88Agents starts lower — $22/mo against $32/mo for Chatbase. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it; what each plan includes differs.

Which has a public API, 88Agents or Chatbase?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.