Comparison
Formala vs Chatling
Of the tools on these pages, Chatling is the closest to Formala, and there is no point manufacturing distance. Both put an AI assistant on your website, both let it book, both are priced for a business rather than a support department, and both are good at it. The differences are real but narrow: how a credit is counted, whether a visitor can send you a PDF, and what it costs to take the vendor's name off the widget.
What each one costs
- 24%cheaper to start, month to month
- $0to take the vendor badge off, on the cheapest paid plan
- 2calendars it books into, with no third account to open
Prices checked: 26 August 2026. Chatling 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 Chatling is ahead carry no marker either way.
| What is being compared | Chatling | Formala |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $25 /mo$21 a month, billed annually. 1,750 credits, weighted by model. | $19 /mo24% 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 | $35 /moCharged on top of the plan. | $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.comA Cal.com booking widget action, shipped in October 2025, with real-time availability inside the chat. It presumes you run Cal.com. | 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 | Images onlyThe agent can inspect a photo sent through the widget, WhatsApp or Instagram, but a visitor cannot send a PDF. Separate from the knowledge base size limits, which are about what you feed the agent. | 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 | WeightedCredits are weighted by model rather than counted per reply, so 1,750 credits is about 583 replies on Claude Sonnet 4.5 and about 70 on Claude Opus 5. | Flat Conversations counted, with no model arithmetic to do first. |
| Free plan | 200 creditsA month, with unlimited chats, one agent, one seat and five hundred thousand characters of knowledge base. The best free plan of the five, genuinely usable, and better than a trial that ends. | 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. |
| The tier above | $75 /mo$63 a month, billed annually. Six thousand credits. | $39 /mo $32.50 a month, billed annually. Everything on Starter, and it learns from real chats. |
| Top tier | $295 /mo$246 a month, billed annually. Thirty-five thousand credits. | $149 /mo $124.17 a month, billed annually. The top tier. There is nothing above it by quote. |
| Extra seats and agents | $10/seat /moAnd $3 per agent a month. More credits are $10 a month, per extra 1,000 credits. | Included Team seats are on Growth and up, and they are not priced per person. Everyone who logs in works the same leads for the price of the account. |
| Custom domain | $10 /moCharged on top of the plan. | Pro and up Sending from your own domain is included from Pro upward. |
Chatling's credits are weighted by model
This is the most important thing to understand before budgeting for Chatling, and it is not a criticism. Credits are not counted per reply: each model draws a different number, and the spread is wide.
So Starter's 1,750 credits is roughly 583 replies on Claude Sonnet 4.5, and roughly 70 on Claude Opus 5. Images the agent processes draw on the same pool at the model's rate.
Read the right way, this is a real advantage: it is a lever, and an operator watching costs can put a cheap model on the questions that do not need a clever one and make the allowance go a long way. Read the wrong way, it is a trap, because budgeting from the headline number can put you out by a factor of 25. Formala does not have this lever. It counts conversations, and a conversation is a conversation.
| Model | Credits per reply |
|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5 | 25 |
| GPT-4o | 5 |
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | 3 |
| Mistral Small 4 | 0.5 |
Where Chatling is better
The best free plan of the five
Two hundred credits a month, unlimited chats and a large knowledge base allowance, with no end date. Formala's free period is a trial: afterwards the contact form keeps working but the AI stops answering. If you want to run on free for real, Chatling is the one.
The cheapest way in, and you choose the model
Starter at $21 a month, billed annually is the lowest paid entry price in this comparison, below ours. Chatling also exposes the model, and because credits are weighted that choice is a genuine cost control rather than a preference. Formala picks the model and does not offer the dial.
WhatsApp and Instagram
Chatling answers on both, with the same agent and the same knowledge behind it. Formala is website only, and for a business whose customers habitually message rather than call, that is the difference between one place to answer and three.
Where Formala is better
A visitor can send a PDF
Chatling's uploads are images only. Formala takes photos and PDFs, which is the difference between a customer showing you a picture of the broken part and a customer sending you the quote they got from somebody else, the letter from their insurer, or the spec sheet for the thing they want installed. For a lot of trades that second conversation is the one worth having, and on Chatling it cannot start in the chat at all.
It books into the calendar you already keep
Both products book. The difference is what you need before they can. Chatling books through Cal.com, which is a second account to open, a second product to configure and a second thing to keep connected, and it presumes you were going to run Cal.com anyway. Formala connects to Google or Outlook directly, offers real free times inside the conversation, and writes the appointment into the calendar your week already runs on. For somebody who keeps their diary in Google and wanted a chat widget, that is the whole setup, and it is the difference between booking today and booking after you have adopted another tool.
The badge comes off without an add-on
Chatling charges $35 a month on top of the plan to remove its branding, which is more than a third again on the entry tier. On Formala it comes off on the cheapest paid plan, because taking payment is what buys it.
One number instead of a weighted allowance
The credit weighting is a real lever and it is also arithmetic you have to do before you can answer the question you actually asked, which is what this costs a month. Formala's plans count conversations. The number on the pricing page is the number, and a busy month and a quiet month cost the same.
Who should pick which
Pick Chatling if
You want to run on a free plan properly, or the lowest possible paid entry price, or you want to pick the model and tune what each answer costs, or your customers message you on WhatsApp and Instagram.
Pick Formala if
Your visitors need to send documents rather than only photos, you keep your diary in Google or Outlook and want appointments written straight into it without opening a Cal.com account, you want the badge gone on the cheapest paid plan, and you would rather have one flat conversation count than an allowance you have to convert per model.
What reviewers say
Reviewers describe the API as weak and the Zapier integration as incomplete, and note that bot flows cannot be exported. Accuracy is reported to drop when the source material behind the agent is poorly structured.
Source: G2.
Questions
It depends on the model, and by a wide margin. Credits are weighted: 1,750 credits on Starter is roughly 583 replies on Claude Sonnet 4.5 and roughly 70 on Claude Opus 5. That is a lever if you use it deliberately and a surprise if you budget from the headline figure.
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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