Botpress pricing explained: A guide to plans & hidden costs

So you're looking into Botpress to build a chatbot. It's a popular choice for a reason, it’s powerful, flexible, and lets you build some seriously complex bots. But then you get to the pricing page, and things start to feel... complicated.

Lots of people are drawn in by the free starting point, but they quickly find themselves looking at a pricing structure that’s anything but straightforward. You’ve got different subscription tiers, a separate usage-based fee called "AI Spend," and a whole menu of add-ons that make it tough to guess what your monthly bill will actually be.

As your business grows and your bot starts handling more conversations, will your costs stay under control or just spiral? This guide is here to cut through that confusion. We’ll give you a clear, honest breakdown of the Botpress pricing model for 2025, point out the hidden costs you need to look for, and show you how it compares to some more predictable alternatives.

What is Botpress?

At its heart, Botpress is a conversational AI platform built for developers and technical teams who want to build, launch, and manage intelligent chatbots. The big draw is its customizability, which is a massive plus if you have the technical resources to really dig in.

Its main selling points include a visual drag-and-drop builder for mapping out conversation flows, an open-source foundation that lets you tinker with just about everything, and a decent list of integrations with other apps.

But that "developer-first" label is important. It's a polite way of saying that to get the most out of it, you'll need to write some code. If you want your bot to do more than follow a simple script, like making a custom API call to check an order status or running complex business logic, you’ll need someone on your team who knows their way around JavaScript. This isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, but it's a "hidden" cost you have to account for: your development team's time.

A complete breakdown of Botpress pricing plans

Botpress structures its pricing across four main plans, but they all share one common, and slightly confusing, element: "AI Spend." It’s best to think of this as a separate, variable utility bill for using the large language models (LLMs) that make your bot smart. Every time your bot understands a question or completes a task, it uses a tiny bit of processing power, and those costs get passed directly to you.

The Pay-As-You-Go plan ($0 + AI Spend)

• Who it's for: This is the "just trying things out" plan. Perfect for individuals, students, or anyone who wants to get a feel for the platform without commitment.

• What you get: You get access to the visual builder and can lean on the community forums for support. The limits are pretty tight, though, with just 500 messages per month and only one bot allowed.

• The fine print: The plan includes a tiny $5 monthly credit for AI Spend. If your bot has more than a few chats, you'll blow through that credit almost immediately. It's great for tinkering, but it's not designed for a bot that's actually interacting with customers.

The Plus plan ($89/month + AI Spend)

• Who it's for: Small businesses or startups ready to get their first real bot out in front of customers.

• What you get: This plan unlocks some must-have features. You get the ability for a human agent to take over a conversation (human handoff), you can remove the "Powered by Botpress" branding, and you get access to live chat support. The limits are also bumped up to 5,000 messages and two bots.

• The fine print: That $89 is just the cover charge. AI Spend is still a separate, unpredictable cost. And as your bot gets busier, you might find yourself needing to buy add-ons to raise your limits.

The Team plan ($495/month + AI Spend)

• Who it's for: Growing companies that have multiple people working on bots and need better security and control over the whole process.

• What you get: It introduces key collaboration tools, letting multiple builders edit a bot at the same time and set different permissions with role-based access control (RBAC). You also get priority support and much higher limits (50,000 messages and three bots).

• The fine print: At nearly $500 a month before you even add AI Spend or any extras, the cost can jump up fast. This price can be a big leap for a mid-sized business to swallow.

The Enterprise plan (Starts at $2,000/month)

• Who it's for: Large organizations with serious demands around security, legal compliance, and white-glove support.

• What you get: This is a fully custom package. You can expect things like personalized onboarding, a dedicated support manager, guaranteed service levels (SLAs), and advanced security options like Single Sign-On (SSO).

• The fine print: These plans usually require a multi-year contract. And even at this tier, you're still paying for AI Spend and fees for third-party channels (like WhatsApp) on top of the hefty subscription price. The final cost is almost always much higher than the initial quote.

This video explains the different subscription tiers available in Botpress, helping you choose the right plan for your needs.

The real cost of Botpress: Beyond the subscription fee

The monthly plan is just where the spending starts. To really understand your total cost with Botpress, you have to dig into the variable costs that can pop up and wreck your budget.

The unpredictability of AI spend

This is the biggest wildcard in Botpress pricing. Almost everything your bot does that feels intelligent, like pulling an answer from your knowledge base, figuring out what a user wants, or summarizing a conversation, uses LLM tokens. And every token costs money.

The problem is, it’s next to impossible to guess how many tokens your bot will use each month. A sudden spike in customer questions, a marketing campaign that sends a flood of traffic to your site, or a new, more complex conversation flow could easily cause your AI Spend to double or triple without warning. This turns budgeting into a constant guessing game.

The hidden costs of add-ons and overages

As your business scales, you’re going to bump up against your plan’s limits. Botpress lets you buy more capacity, but it adds up quickly. For instance, you might end up paying:

• $20 for another 5,000 messages

• $25 for every extra team member

• $10 for each additional bot you build

These might not look like huge numbers by themselves, but these à la carte fees can turn a seemingly affordable plan into a pretty significant monthly expense.

The resource cost of developer dependency

Let's circle back to that "low-code, not no-code" thing. While you can build simple bots without touching a line of code, real-world bots need to talk to other systems. Want your bot to check a customer's order status in Shopify? Or pull account details from your company’s database? You'll need a developer to write the JavaScript to make that happen.

This is a hidden operational cost. Every hour your engineers spend configuring your chatbot is an hour they aren't spending on your core product. It’s a huge difference compared to platforms that are truly self-serve. For example, a tool like eesel AI lets non-technical managers connect to help desks like Zendesk and other knowledge sources in a few clicks, letting them build powerful automation without any code.

A transparent alternative to Botpress pricing: eesel AI's predictable model

For teams that want the power of a custom AI agent without the unpredictable bills and developer reliance, there's a much simpler way. eesel AI was designed from day one to be both powerful and easy to manage for anyone.

Simple, interaction-based pricing with no surprises

eesel AI's pricing model is based on a single, easy-to-understand metric: monthly "AI interactions." An interaction is just one reply or one action (like tagging a ticket) that the AI performs.

The most important difference here is that there are no separate, unpredictable AI usage fees or weird per-resolution charges. You know exactly what your bill will be every month, which makes budgeting simple and transparent.

More value included from the start

eesel AI includes features that are often locked behind expensive plans or require a ton of setup in Botpress.

• Training on past tickets: With eesel AI, you can connect your help desk and let the AI learn from all of your past support tickets from day one. It automatically figures out your brand's tone of voice and learns how your team has solved similar issues before. This isn't an extra feature; it's just how it works.

• Risk-free simulation: How can you be sure an AI agent is ready for your customers? Instead of crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, eesel AI lets you run a simulation on thousands of your past tickets. It shows you exactly how the AI would have responded, giving you a clear forecast of your resolution rate and cost savings before you turn it on for real customers. It’s a level of confidence that's hard to find anywhere else.

Choosing the right platform for your budget and team

So, what's the bottom line on Botpress pricing? It’s a fantastic platform for highly technical teams that have developer resources to spare, need deep, code-level control, and are okay with a variable pricing model that can change from month to month.

But for most businesses, the unpredictable nature of AI Spend, the need for developers for anything beyond basic tasks, and the confusing pricing tiers can be serious hurdles.

If your goal is to launch a powerful, accurate, and helpful AI support agent quickly, without needing an engineering degree to run it and with a budget you can actually count on, then a platform built for simplicity and transparency makes a lot more sense.

eesel AI offers a radically self-serve experience, one-click integrations with the tools you're already using, and pricing that’s clear and predictable. You can be up and running in minutes, not months. Start your free trial today and see for yourself.