Compare
tufu vs Chatbase
Looking for a Chatbase alternative for a small team? Both answer your customers from your docs. They differ in what you pay for and in what happens when the bot can't help. Here are our numbers and theirs, side by side.
At the same traffic: a month of 1,000 conversations, about 4,000 bot replies. How each bill adds up
- Chatbase pricing and documentation as read on October 14, 2026; check chatbase.co for current terms.
- DocsBot pricing and documentation as read on October 14, 2026; check docsbot.ai for current terms.
- Fin pricing as read on October 14, 2026; check fin.ai and intercom.com for current terms.
tufu and Chatbase, row by row
marks the stronger side on each row, by our reading.
| What buyers compare | tufu | Chatbase |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Answers. One per reply on Haiku; Sonnet and Opus count as more, and the page says how many. | Message credits. A reply costs 1 to 5 credits depending on the AI model, and a reply that runs an action can cost twice that or more.1 |
| Entry plan | Team at $49 a month or $490 a year: 4,000 answers, unlimited bots and teammates. Free is $0, with 200 answers a month. | Hobby at $40 a month, or $32 a month billed yearly: 700 message credits, 1 agent and 2 seats. No free plan on their pricing page; plans start with a 7-day trial.1 |
| Remove branding | Included in Team. | A $99 a month add-on on top of a paid plan, so at least $139 a month (or $131 a month billed yearly).1 |
| When the allowance runs out | The bot pauses on tufu's AI until next month, and visitors can still ask for a person if your bot offers it. Nothing is billed after the fact: on Team, add a prepaid pack, or let auto-recharge buy one under a monthly limit you set. | Without auto-recharge the bot says “This AI Agent is currently unavailable” until the credits renew. Auto-recharge adds 1,000 credits for $40, and those credits don't expire.1 |
| Inactive bots | Never deleted for being quiet, on any plan. | Their Terms say they may delete an account's data after more than a year without activity. Their pricing page doesn't say.1 |
| Human handoff | On every plan: a ping with a summary and, when your docs cover it, a drafted reply. You answer by replying to the email, no login needed. On Team, in Slack too. | A full help desk (live chat, takeover, tickets, Slack ticket threads, AI drafted replies that use credits) from Standard at $150 a month. Not on Hobby.1 |
| Where it answers | A chat bubble on your site, an Ask console in your docs, a WordPress plugin, email, Slack and Discord. | More places than tufu: a help page, iOS and Android apps, phone, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Zendesk, Salesforce and Shopify. Like tufu, also the web, email, Slack and a WordPress plugin. No Discord.1 |
| Actions | None, by design. The bot answers from your docs and hands anything that needs doing (a refund, a plan change) to a person, with a reply already drafted. | AI actions, 5, 8 or 12 per agent by plan: Stripe, Shopify, Salesforce, Calendly, your own API and more.1 |
| Installation help | Free with Team: we put tufu on your site with you. | Not stated for self-serve plans. There's a directory of freelancers and agencies to hire, and a named team on Enterprise.1 |
| Security | No SOC 2 report yet. Our AI providers don't train on your data. With your own key, your agreement with that provider applies. How we handle it: our Privacy Policy. | SOC 2 Type II, GDPR support and a Trust Center. Single sign-on, audit logs and HIPAA-eligible workspaces on Enterprise.1 |
- Chatbase pricing and documentation as read on October 14, 2026; check chatbase.co for current terms.
See it answer from your own docs.
In fairness
When Chatbase is the better choice
- You need the bot on WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, the phone, or inside your mobile app.
- You want the bot to do things, not only answer: plan changes and cancellations in Stripe, orders and returns in Shopify, support cases in Salesforce.
- Your buyers ask for a SOC 2 Type II report, single sign-on or HIPAA today.
If none of those is you, and your support is a small team's side job, tufu is built for that. Try it free on a real site and see the whole loop before you pay anything.
Set it up before your next support email.
Free to start. Point it at your site and it's answering in about ten minutes.