The best WordPress chatbot plugins, compared by how they bill

The best WordPress chatbot plugin for a small business answers from your own pages, bills in a unit you can predict and hands the hard questions to you. Every price below was checked on the vendor's own page on October 21, 2026.

A WordPress chatbot is a chat window on your WordPress site, added through a plugin, that answers visitor questions automatically; the AI kind writes each answer from your pages and documents instead of following a script.

WordPress chatbot plugins compared, October 2026

Grouped by the unit each plugin bills in, our own row last; not a ranking. If you are choosing a chatbot for WordPress website visitors, read the billing unit before the price: in a busy month the unit decides the bill.

Billing unit and price per plugin

Plugin	Bills per	From / mo
Tidio	Conversation	$29
Jotform	Conversation	$39
ChatBot.com	Resolution	$25
Chatbase	Credit	$40
Robofy	Credit	$40
Elfsight	AI message	$6
WPBot	API call	$3.25
AI Engine	API call	$5.75
tawk.to	Month	$29
Ultimo Bots	AI credit	$29

The entry plans behind those prices, on monthly billing: Tidio Starter $29 ($24.17 yearly), with the Lyro AI add-on from $39 a month ($32.50 yearly); Jotform Bronze $39 with 1,000 conversations ($34 yearly); ChatBot.com Essential $25 per user with 10 AI resolutions ($19 yearly); Chatbase Hobby $40 with 700 credits ($32 yearly); Robofy Starter $40 with 60,000 AI credits, or $320 a year; Elfsight Basic $6 with 300 AI messages ($5 yearly). WPBot Pro is $39 a year for one site (about $3.25 a month), with advanced RAG from $99 a year; AI Engine Pro starts at $69 a year (about $5.75 a month); both add your AI provider's usage. tawk.to AI Assist starts at $29 a month, and Ultimo Bots Smart is $29 a month or $19 yearly for 500 AI credits.

Prices in USD before tax; "yearly" is the monthly equivalent when you pay a year up front. Elfsight's plugin holds the widget, but you build it on Elfsight's site and paste its code into the plugin.

One thing stands out: only tawk.to offers live chat free with no limit on agents, chats or sites.

Ultimo Bots is an AI agent for WordPress that installs from the plugin directory, reads your site during setup, answers visitors from your own content, hands conversations to you in live chat, and runs the same agent on a chat link, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Slack.

How these plugins bill you, and why the unit matters

Each vendor counts something different. Take one ordinary chat: a visitor asks three questions and the AI answers all three.

1 chat, 3 AI answers

Tidio1 conversation

ChatBot.com1 resolution

Robofy606060180 credits

WPBot1113 API calls

Ultimo Bots1113 AI credits

Per conversation or per resolution

Tidio counts Lyro conversations: any interaction with at least one AI reply counts once, however many replies follow. The Lyro add-on starts at $39 a month for 50 of them, or $32.50 a month billed yearly. Jotform also counts conversations, 1,000 a month on Bronze. ChatBot.com bills per user seat plus per resolution: the AI directly solving a customer question, several questions in one chat counting once. Essential includes 10 a month; 50 more cost $49.50. Fair on paper, but your best month is your most expensive.

Per message or per credit

Chatbase, Elfsight and Robofy count messages. Chatbase Hobby includes 700 credits a month, and pricier models use more credits per answer. Robofy charges 60 credits per AI message, so Starter's 60,000 credits come to about 1,000 messages. Elfsight also counts views, one per page load that shows the widget, 5,000 a month on Basic; over the limit, its pricing page says, the widget is temporarily deactivated.

Your own AI key

WPBot and AI Engine run inside WordPress and call your own OpenAI (the models behind ChatGPT), Gemini, OpenRouter or other provider account. The license is cheap or free and you pay the provider for every answer: the cheapest route at low volume, the least predictable at high volume, so set a spending limit if your provider offers one.

A flat allowance of AI credits

Ultimo Bots plans are priced per agent, never per seat or per resolution. Smart costs $29 a month, or $19 on yearly billing, for 500 AI credits a month; Boost and Ultimo raise that to 2,000 and 10,000. A standard answer on Ultimo Core uses one credit, so Smart covers up to 500 of them. If you switch the agent to Ultimo Pro or Ultimo Max, available on paid plans, every answer uses 4 or 8, and Mo, the builder in the AI Studio, draws on the same balance. Your own messages in a chat you take over cost nothing. At zero the agent pauses instead of billing overage, and on paid plans extra AI credits start at $19 for 500. Details are on the pricing page.

To price your own month, count last month's questions from your contact form, email and phone, multiply by the answers a typical question takes, and price each vendor in its own unit. Then ask what happens at the cap: a pause, an overage charge or an upgrade prompt.

Who trains the AI: your pages, your FAQ list or your own embeddings

Every WordPress AI chatbot promises answers from your own content; the difference is who does the training. If it is you, the plugin bills you in evenings.

• It reads your site for you. Jotform crawls your site and updates when you edit it, ChatBot.com scans your whole site or chosen pages, and Ultimo Bots reads your site during setup.
• You add sources in the vendor's app. Chatbase trains on what you upload; Elfsight takes links, files, text and Q&A; Robofy takes your website, FAQs, pricing and documents.
• It learns from your support content. Tidio's Lyro scrapes it, and tawk.to's AI Assist answers from the data sources you connect.
• You build the knowledge base yourself. AI Engine builds knowledge from your content and PDFs in Pro, and WPBot's RAG knowledge base comes with its Pro licenses, basic in Starter and advanced from Professional. Powerful, and a project.

With Ultimo Bots you add what is not on your website from PDF and Word files, Google Drive, OneDrive and Notion, plus question-and-answer pairs for what lives only in your head. Re-reading your site is one click on any plan; on Boost it can re-read your site monthly, on Ultimo up to daily, once you switch that on. The agent replies in the visitor's language, more than 80 of them. More on the knowledge base.

The test: useful answers ten minutes after activation mean no setup tax; an empty flow builder means a large one.

Is there a free WordPress chatbot plugin?

Yes, each with a catch. As of October 21, 2026:

• tawk.to: live chat is free without limits; AI Assist starts at $29 a month, with a free plan for sites with little chat volume.
• Jotform: 100 conversations a month and 5 AI agents, the largest stated free AI allowance here.
• Tidio: 50 conversations a month, but the 50 Lyro AI conversations are one-time, not monthly.
• Elfsight: 50 AI messages and 200 widget views a month, and every page load counts as a view.
• WPBot and AI Engine: the plugins are free, the AI is not, and answers from your own content need Pro.
• Chatbase, ChatBot.com and Robofy: trials of 7 or 14 days, no free plan.

Every new Ultimo Bots agent starts with a small one-time allowance of free AI credits for a first test on your own site, and every paid plan starts with a 7-day free trial. A free 15-minute integration call is bookable from the portal on any plan.

What is the best AI chatbot for WordPress?

The best AI chatbot for WordPress fits who answers your chats today and what should happen after an answer. Start at the top and stop at your first yes.

1. A person answers most chats. tawk.to's free live chat is hard to beat, and Tidio adds a full help desk with Lyro on top. For live chat during staffed hours, see our guide to WordPress chat plugins for live chat.

2. You want the AI on your own API key. AI Engine or WPBot run it on your own provider account, with the model of your choice.

3. The answer should turn into a lead, a booking or a handoff. That is where a WordPress AI agent differs from a chat window: Ultimo Bots takes the lead, sends the booking link and hands the chat to you while you are online.

Otherwise, AI answers with little setup. Jotform suits teams already on Jotform forms, Elfsight has the lowest entry price of the hosted plugins, for low-traffic sites, and ChatBot.com fits if you want to pay per solved question. Chatbase and Robofy bill in credits and start with a trial.

How to add a chatbot to WordPress

The steps are similar for every hosted plugin. Ultimo Bots opens a six-step onboarding, and your agent goes live during it:

1. 1

   Install the plugin

   In your WordPress admin, open Plugins, click Add New Plugin and search for Ultimo Bots. The listing is titled "AI Chatbot & Support Agent". Install and activate it.

2. 2

   Connect your site

   Your next admin page opens the Ultimo Bots onboarding once; if not, open Ultimo Bots in the admin menu and click Connect to Ultimo Bots. Create your account, or log in if you already have one; your email and first name are usually filled in.

3. 3

   Add your knowledge

   Your site address is filled in. Add any PDF or Word files and click Build my agent. The agent is ready right away and reads up to 50 pages of your site in the background; a re-read from the portal adds the rest.

4. 4

   Make it yours

   Set the header text, welcome message, theme color and logo, and watch the live preview.

5. 5

   Try your agent

   Ask what your customers ask. Anything beyond answers, such as asking for a budget before a quote, you later describe in plain words to Mo in the AI Studio.

6. 6

   Choose alerts and a plan

   Pick which events you hear about and where; requests for a person and new leads reach your email by default. Then start the 7-day free trial or continue on Free.

The widget goes live as soon as your agent exists, even if you stop halfway through the onboarding. On sites behind a security plugin, a firewall or basic auth, the widget switches on at your next WordPress admin visit, because the plugin fetches its connection from Ultimo Bots instead of waiting for a push. Opening the Ultimo Bots admin page checks right away.

Two checks after setup. On the agent's Overview page in the portal, check its name: WordPress installs take it from your site address, and the agent calls your business by it. If the chat does not show, check the status on that admin page, then your page cache and script blockers, or paste the agent's Bot ID from the portal there by hand.

After the answer: leads, bookings, handoff and channels

An answer is where a good plugin starts earning its keep. What to check, and what Ultimo Bots does on every plan:

• Leads. The built-in Lead Generation skill asks for name and email and sums up the request. Every lead lands in Leads with the full transcript, the alert reaches your email right away, and Slack alerts are optional.
• Bookings. A Calendly booking link the moment someone asks, or booking, rescheduling and canceling in Cal.com.
• A person. While you or a teammate is online in the portal, the visitor can ask for a human and you join the same chat with the full history; the AI stops replying until you leave.
• Channels. The same agent, knowledge and AI credits work on a chat link, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram DMs, Telegram and Slack.
• Tools. Contacts saved to HubSpot, Mailchimp sign-ups with double opt-in, and a six-digit email code before the agent looks up anything private.

Behind the chat, app actions send what the agent collected to Zapier, Make or n8n, so a quote request at 11 pm is a CRM record by morning. Make and n8n can also return a result into the same answer, such as whether a job qualifies for the express slot; Zapier only receives. Connect the app, then add a skill that uses it. Analytics show what visitors ask.

WooCommerce chatbot: answers from your product catalog

A WooCommerce store needs exact answers about products. Ultimo Bots reads your shop pages like the rest of your site, which covers shipping, returns and policies. For products, upload your catalog as a CSV, JSON or TSV file: the agent searches it by price, attribute and availability, for a question like "a waterproof jacket under $150 in size M", and shows the matches as product cards.

An uploaded catalog does not refresh on its own, so upload a new file when prices change and delete the old catalog. Or let the agent ask your store itself: in the AI Studio you tell Mo, the builder, what the agent should do in plain words, and Mo connects the WooCommerce REST API. The message can be this short:

When a visitor asks about a product, look it up in our WooCommerce store through its REST API and answer with the current price and whether it is in stock. Read products only, never orders or customers.

Mo reads the WooCommerce API documentation, asks for a read-only key and secret (WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > REST API) in a secure field, stored encrypted and never shown to the AI, then builds the skill and tests the call. Then "Is the rain jacket back in stock?" gets today's answer, not last month's file. Your shop needs HTTPS, human-readable permalinks and no security plugin blocking the REST API. Keep the skill to products: a skill on your own API cannot check who a visitor is, so order lookup is not available for WooCommerce; if order status dominates your chat, ask each vendor for an order demo before you buy. To decide which shop requests should reach a person, use the e-commerce support checklist.

Test any plugin in ten minutes before you pay

The best WordPress chatbot plugin is the one that passes this test on your own questions. Run it on every trial:

1. Ask your five most common questions in your customers' words. The answers should use your facts, prices and tone.
2. Ask something that is not on your site. A good agent says it does not know and offers you instead; one that invents an answer for you will invent one for customers.
3. Write in another language. It should answer in that language with no setup.
4. Ask for a person. Note where the alert lands, how fast, and whether the visitor stays in the chat.
5. Leave your details as a lead and check that the email arrives with the transcript.
6. Measure page speed with PageSpeed Insights on mobile, before and after activation.
7. Look for the AI notice. For visitors in the EU, the AI Act's rule that people must be told when they are talking to an AI (Article 50(1)) has applied since August 2, 2026. The Ultimo Bots chat widget shows a fixed "You are chatting with an AI assistant" notice before the first message, in eight languages, and you cannot switch it off. As of October 2026; practical guidance, not legal advice.

The plugin has its own WordPress page, and the listing is on WordPress.org.

Questions and answers