A complete guide to Forethought pricing in 2025

So, you're looking to bring AI into your customer support workflow. Good call. Teams everywhere are using it to automate the boring stuff, give customers instant answers to common questions, and let agents focus on the conversations that actually need a human touch.

But as you start digging into the options, you’ve probably hit a familiar wall: getting a straight answer on pricing.

Many of the big AI platforms guard their pricing like a state secret, pushing you into a sales funnel just to find out if you can even afford them. Forethought is a major player in this space, offering a powerful AI agent platform. Our goal here is to cut through the noise and give you a clear, honest breakdown of the Forethought pricing model, what you actually get, and the hidden costs you should keep an eye on.

What is Forethought?

First off, what exactly is Forethought? It’s an AI platform built from the ground up for customer support automation. Think of it as a digital teammate that can resolve customer questions, categorize new tickets, and even help your human agents find the right answers faster.

Its main features revolve around an AI agent that works across channels like chat and email, a system for triaging and routing tickets, and an AI copilot that feeds suggestions to your team. The whole platform learns from your company’s existing data, past support tickets, help center articles, and macros, so it can provide responses that are tailored to your business.

A breakdown of Forethought pricing plans

Alright, let's talk numbers. Or, let's try to. The first thing you’ll notice when you look for Forethought pricing is that you can’t find it. Like a lot of enterprise software companies, they use a quote-based model. To get any cost information, you have to book a demo and get a custom quote from their sales team.

This approach lets them build custom packages, sure, but it’s a real pain for teams that just want to compare options, figure out a budget, or try the tool out for themselves.

Forethought's pricing tiers

Forethought splits its platform into three main tiers: Basic, Professional, and Enterprise. Each level adds more advanced features, but you'll have to chat with sales to get a price for any of them.

Here’s a general overview of what’s included in each plan, based on what they share publicly.

Feature Category	Basic Plan	Professional Plan	Enterprise Plan
AI Agent	AI agent for chat	Omnichannel AI agent	Everything in Professional
Insights	Insights dashboard	Advanced ticket & conversation insights	Everything in Professional
Ticket Triage	Ready-to-use models	Custom ticket triage models	Everything in Professional
Core Features	Autoflows, Custom actions, CSAT collection	Multilingual support, Multiple brands	Knowledge base gap detection, Autoflow generation
Advanced	Standard security	Standard security	Forethought API, Advanced security & support

What does Forethought actually cost?

Since Forethought keeps its pricing under wraps, we have to rely on third-party data to get an idea of the real-world cost. According to the software marketplace Vendr, which has data from thousands of software contracts, the median annual cost for Forethought is around $74,483.

It's also important to know how they charge. According to Forethought’s own FAQ, their pricing is a blend of a flat platform fee and a usage-based cost. That usage cost is tied to the number of "deflections" (issues the AI resolves) and tickets the AI touches. This means your bill can be a moving target, and it will likely grow as your support volume does.

Add-ons and extra costs

On top of the main plans, Forethought sells a few add-ons that will increase your total bill. The main ones are:

• Assist Agent: An AI copilot that gives human agents ticket summaries, resolution guidance, and generated replies.

• Agent QA: An AI tool that automatically scores agent conversations for quality assurance purposes.

• Forethought for Slack: An integration that puts the AI agent inside your Slack channels to help with employee questions.

The problems with Forethought's pricing model

A "contact us for a quote" button isn't just annoying; it creates some real challenges for teams trying to find and implement the right tools.

The long sales and onboarding process

The first roadblock is the time you have to sink into it. You can't just sign up for a trial and see if Forethought clicks with your team. The process involves scheduling demos, sitting through sales calls, and going through a vendor-led "Proof of Value" period that can take weeks, if not months.

This just feels out of step with how modern teams work. Most of us are used to self-serve tools we can test on our own terms. Some platforms are completely flipping this script. With eesel AI, for example, you can sign up, connect your helpdesk, and start simulating the AI’s performance on your own data within minutes, no sales call required.

Unpredictable, usage-based bills

That usage-based component in Forethought's pricing can be a nightmare for budgeting. If you have a busy month and support tickets spike, your bill could jump unexpectedly. This makes forecasting your annual software spend incredibly difficult.

Even worse, this model basically penalizes you for growing. As your company gets bigger and more customers reach out for help, your AI bill gets bigger, too. It creates a weird dynamic where your success directly leads to higher costs from one of your key tools.

A heavy lift for setup and data

User reviews often mention that getting Forethought set up and configured just right takes a lot of work. According to reviews on sites like Capterra and Tekpon, fine-tuning the AI can be a long process.

On top of that, a review from SMBGuide points out that the platform needs a large volume of historical data to work well, they suggest around 20,000 past tickets for the best results. That can be a non-starter for smaller or newer companies that simply don't have that much data to feed the AI.

eesel AI: A transparent and flexible alternative

If all that sounds like a headache, you're not alone. eesel AI was built as a direct response to these frustrations, offering a powerful AI platform with the transparency, flexibility, and ease of use that today's support teams need.

Clear, predictable pricing you can plan around

Our philosophy on pricing is simple: your bill should never be a surprise. There are no per-resolution or per-ticket fees. You pay a flat rate based on your plan, which makes budgeting simple and gets rid of any surprise overage charges. Whether you have a slow month or a huge influx of customer questions, your price stays the same.

Plan	Price (Billed Annually)	Key Features
Team	$239 / month	Up to 1,000 AI interactions/mo, AI Copilot, Slack integration.
Business	$639 / month	Up to 3,000 AI interactions/mo, Train on past tickets, AI Actions, Bulk simulation.
Custom	Contact Sales	Unlimited interactions, Advanced actions, Custom integrations.

This model is also flexible. You can start on a month-to-month plan and cancel whenever you want, which is a lot less risky than the long-term annual contracts that are common with enterprise tools.

Go live in minutes with a true self-serve platform

With eesel AI, you don't have to wait around for a demo. You can sign up, connect your helpdesk like Zendesk or Freshdesk in one click, and start setting up your AI agent right away.

The best part is the simulation mode. Before you ever let the AI talk to a real customer, you can run it against thousands of your past tickets in a safe environment. This gives you a data-backed forecast of its potential resolution rate and shows you exactly how it would have answered real customer questions. It gives you complete confidence and a clear picture of the ROI before you commit.

Total control over your knowledge and workflows

eesel AI is designed to be powerful without being a black box. You can pull in knowledge from sources way beyond your helpdesk, like internal wikis in Confluence or files in Google Docs. This gives your AI a much fuller picture of your business.

You also get fine-grained control over the automation. Instead of flipping a switch and hoping for the best, you can start small. Have the AI handle just one or two specific types of tickets. Once you see the results and feel comfortable, you can gradually give it more to do, ensuring a smooth and controlled rollout.

Why transparent pricing matters for AI

Forethought is a capable AI platform, especially for large enterprise teams. But its opaque, quote-based pricing model and long sales cycle can be major obstacles for teams that need to be agile and keep their budgets predictable.

Choosing an AI partner is about more than a feature checklist. It’s about finding a platform that fits how your team actually works, and that includes transparency, flexibility, and control. For most modern support teams, platforms with clear, predictable pricing and a self-serve setup are just the smarter, more efficient choice. They put you in the driver's seat, letting you test, implement, and scale on your own schedule.

If you'd rather spend your time trying an AI tool than talking to a sales team, you can try eesel AI for free and see your potential resolution rate in just a few minutes.