Comparison
Formala vs Chatbase
Chatbase builds one AI agent and puts it everywhere: your website, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Slack and email, with voice and telephony on the higher plans. It is a capable platform and it is priced like one, in credits, with the serious features above a step that is nearly four times the entry price. Formala does one channel, the website, and charges a flat monthly figure for it.
What each one costs
- $0to take the vendor badge off, on the cheapest paid plan
- 53%cheaper to start, month to month
- 4paid tiers to grow through, rather than a jump of nearly four times
Prices checked: 26 August 2026. Chatbase sets its own prices and can change them without telling us, so check theirs before you decide. A dot marks a row where Formala is ahead; rows where Chatbase is ahead carry no marker either way.
| What is being compared | Chatbase | Formala |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $40 /moHobby, with seven hundred credits. Yearly billing takes twenty percent off. | $19 /mo53% less $15.83 a month, billed annually. One price for the account. It does not multiply by the number of people who log in, and there is no charge per answer. |
| Removing the vendor badge | $99 /moMore than twice the price of the Hobby plan it would sit on top of. | $0 Included on every paid plan, Starter included. It is the line between paying and not paying, not a feature to resell. |
| Booking | Via Cal.comReal slots in the chat with no setup beyond your Cal.com event URL. It presumes you already run Cal.com; it is not booking into a Google or Outlook calendar. | Google, Outlook Connects directly, offers real free times inside the chat, and writes the appointment into the calendar you already keep. No third account to open. |
| Visitor uploads | Every channelPDF, PNG, JPG and JPEG, analysed by the agent, across chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. Shipped in March 2026, so anything you read saying Chatbase cannot take uploads is out of date. | Photos and PDFs Up to ten megabytes each, on by default. A visitor can send a quote, an invoice or a picture of the broken thing without anybody building a form first. |
| What an answer costs | CreditsHow a credit maps to a model call is unconfirmed, so this page does not convert it into answers. Running out auto-recharges at $40 per 1,000 credits, charged automatically. | Flat A stated number of conversations a month. No credit to convert and no auto-recharge. |
| The next step up | $150 /moStandard, with four thousand credits. There is nothing between it and Hobby. Pro is $500 a month and Enterprise is by quote. | $39 /mo $32.50 a month, billed annually. Everything on Starter, and it learns from real chats. |
| Extra agents | $25/agent /moCharged per additional agent. | Included Formala does not price by agent, and team seats are on Growth and up rather than sold per person. |
| Free plan | 50 creditsA month, with one agent. Agents are deleted after fourteen days of inactivity, so an experiment left alone for a fortnight is gone. | 30 days Everything switched on, no card. Afterwards the widget keeps taking contact form submissions and direct messages for nothing; the mark on the widget is what a free account pays with. |
| Annual billing | 20% offApplied to the yearly total. | 2 months free The same allowance paid up front. |
What a credit is, and why this page will not tell you
The credit allowances above are the numbers you would budget from, and we could not confirm how a Chatbase credit maps to a model call. So this page does not tell you, and you should be suspicious of any page that does without citing Chatbase.
Treat the figures as units of Chatbase's own accounting rather than as a count of answers, and ask them directly before you commit to a tier. A credit is not a message, and nothing here should be read as saying it is.
The step in the middle
Chatbase's cheapest paid plan is Hobby. The next one is nearly four times the price, and a good deal of what makes Chatbase worth buying, voice and telephony included, sits above that line rather than below it.
So the decision is not a gradual one. You are either on the small plan or you are paying Standard money, and there is no tier in between to grow into. Formala has four paid steps, which is a smaller rung to climb one at a time.
Where Chatbase is better
One agent, every channel
Website, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, Messenger, Slack and email, all answered by the same trained agent, with voice and telephony from Standard upward. Formala answers on your website. If your customers reach you in five places, this is the reason to buy Chatbase and nothing on this page outweighs it.
Actions that do real work
Chatbase's Actions framework lets the agent carry out transactions against your systems rather than only answering about them. Formala books appointments and captures leads; it does not call your order system.
Enterprise controls
SSO, audit logs, HIPAA eligibility and zero data retention. If your buyer sends a security questionnaire, Chatbase has answers for it and Formala does not.
Uploads on every channel
Formala takes photos and PDFs in the website widget. Chatbase takes them across chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, which is a wider surface than ours.
Where Formala is better
The badge comes off without an add-on
This is the sharpest single difference between the two products. Removing "Powered by Chatbase" costs $99 a month, which is more than twice the price of the Hobby plan it attaches to, so the cheapest way to run Chatbase unbranded is well over three times the cost of running it branded. On Formala the mark comes off on any paid plan, including the cheapest one, because it is what a free account pays with rather than a feature to resell. For a business putting this on its own site under its own name, that is not a detail.
It books into the calendar you already keep
Chatbase books through Cal.com, which is excellent if you already run Cal.com and an entire second product to adopt, configure and pay for if you do not. Formala connects to Google or Outlook directly, offers real free times inside the conversation, and writes the appointment back into the calendar your week already runs on. No third account, nothing to keep in sync, and nobody has to remember which of the two calendars is the real one.
You can tell what a month costs
Formala charges a flat price per month for a stated number of conversations. There is no credit to convert, no auto-recharge quietly topping you up, and no per-agent line item. You can put next month's number in a spreadsheet today and it will be right.
There is a rung between small and serious
Chatbase goes from its entry plan to nearly four times the price with nothing in between, and much of what makes it worth buying sits above that line. Formala has four paid tiers, so growing costs a little more rather than a lot more all at once.
Who should pick which
Pick Chatbase if
Your customers message you on WhatsApp and Instagram as well as your website, or you need the agent to do transactional work against your systems, or somebody is going to send you a security questionnaire.
Pick Formala if
Your visitors arrive on your website, you want appointments booked straight into the Google or Outlook calendar you already keep rather than through a Cal.com account you would have to open, you want the vendor badge gone without paying more than the plan costs, and you would rather have one flat number than a credit allowance you cannot convert.
What reviewers say
Chatbase has a much thinner review corpus on G2 than Intercom or Tidio, so this is directional rather than settled. The themes that do appear are cost escalation, limited customisation of the dashboards and the chat experience, and gaps in query handling and integrations.
Source: G2, a small corpus.
What we could not confirm
- How a Chatbase credit maps to a model call. We could not confirm it, so this page does not characterise it at all, and no credit figure here has been converted into a number of answers.
Questions
$99 a month, which is more than twice the price of the Hobby plan it would sit on top of. Formala includes branding removal on every paid plan, starting at $19 a month, billed monthly.
Pricing
Simple pricing. Every core feature included.
Start with 30 free conversations over 30 days, no card. Every plan has every core feature. Bigger plans add volume, and Growth and up learn from real chats, Pro adds the AI follow-up engine, and Business adds auto-sent replies plus seats for your team. How billing works →
Growth
$39/mo
400 conversations / month
about 10¢ per conversation
- Every core feature
- Learns from real chats
- Team seats
Pro
$79/mo
1,000 conversations / month
about 8¢ per conversation
- Every core feature
- Learns from real chats
- Team seats
- AI follow-up engine
- Send from your own domain
Business
$149/mo
2,500 conversations / month
about 6¢ per conversation
- Every core feature
- Learns from real chats
- Team seats
- AI follow-up engine
- Send from your own domain
- Auto-sent AI replies
And it never switches off
$0 a monthNo card to start. Your first 30 conversations are answered by the AI, over 30 days. After that the AI stops answering and the rest of it keeps working, for nothing, for as long as you like, carrying a small “Powered by Formala” line that any paid plan removes.
- The contact formThe widget falls back to your own form, so a visitor who wants to reach you still can, and the lead still lands in your inbox.
- Direct messagesVisitors can still leave a message for you or for a named person on your team, and reply to yours from the same thread.
- BookingYour booking page keeps taking appointments, with the reminders and the calendar sync that go with them.
Add voice: let visitors talk to it out loud
A microphone in the chat. Visitors speak instead of typing and hear the answer back, and you get the same transcript and the same lead as any other conversation. Works with any plan, on as many forms as you like.
$59/mo200 spoken minutes a month
Not sure what something does? Every feature, explained in plain English →
Every plan starts with a free 30-day trial: no card required, cancel anytime. If Formala catches one job you'd have missed, it's paid for itself.
Priced for small businesses, not enterprises.
You get the qualifying, structuring, and follow-up you'd expect from tools that cost far more, at pennies per conversation.
| Formala | A plain contact form | Chat / chatbot suites | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turns vague visitors into qualified leads | — | Limited | |
| Clean, structured leads, no transcripts to read | Limited | — | |
| Answers 24/7 and follows up on its own | — | Limited | |
| Live in minutes. One line, no code or setup fees | Limited | — | |
| Your brand, no “powered by” badge (any paid plan) | Limited | — | |
| Typical cost | From $19/mo · ~6–13¢ a chat | Free, but converts like a form | ~$30–130/seat + ~$1 per AI chat |
You pay less at every size
| Chats / mo | A comparable AI form tool | Formala |
|---|---|---|
| 250 | $59/mo | $39/moGrowth · 400 included |
| 500 | $98/mo | $79/moPro · 1,000 included |
| 2,000 | $330/mo | $149/moBusiness · 2,500 included |
Up to ~2.5× cheaper per conversation, and it does more.
Other tools' prices reflect major providers' publicly listed rates (AI form tools by conversation tier; live-chat suites per seat plus a per-AI-answer fee) and may change, so compare current plans before deciding.
Other comparisons
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