Updated October 18, 2026 · ForgeCue Editorial Team
Top AI chatbots and assistants compared
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| # | Software product | Score | Features | Key facts | Actions |
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| 11 | Troop Messenger | 8.9/10 |
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| 12 |  ElevenLabs Creator first month 50% off: $11 first month | 8.8/10 |
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| 13 |  Lindy Lindy is an AI assistant that connects to a company's tools to carry out work for teams. | 8.8/10 |
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| 14 |  Landbot Landbot is a chatbot and AI agent builder for WhatsApp and websites, combining structured flows and branded interfaces to qualify leads and support customers. | 8.7/10 |
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| 15 |  Talkpal 14 Day Free Trial: 14 days | 8.6/10 |
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| 16 |  Tidio 7-day free trial: 7 days free | 8.5/10 |
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| 17 |  CustomGPT.ai CustomGPT.ai lets businesses build custom GPT AI agents from their own content. | 8.5/10 |
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| 18 |  MeetGeek AI meeting platform that records, transcribes and summarizes meetings, then automates the follow-up. It is free to start and needs no bot to join. | 8.5/10 |
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| 19 |  Z.ai Z.ai is an AI chatbot and agent assistant that can build websites, write code and handle long tasks. | 8.4/10 |
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| 20 |  PopAi | 8.3/10 |
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About Top AI chatbots and assistants compared
Chatbots and assistants in this category are priced in one of two ways: a free plan you can start on, or a paid tier with a trial attached. Across the 28 brands here, a free plan is the more common offer, and entry prices sit well clear of the cheapest end. The median starting price is €17.54, and the middle of the range runs between €14.07 and €30.26. Per user pricing tells a similar story, with a median of €21.05. The trade-off worth weighing first is what the free tier actually lets you do, because usage caps decide whether it stays free or turns into a bill. Support matters almost as much: a help centre is the most common route at 87%, while live phone help is rare at 17.4%. Where a company is based also shapes trust, and the small business audience dominates at 85.7%. Prices below are listed as published, in the currency each brand quotes, so an entry figure and a renewal figure are never mixed.
How we picked
Every brand is scored on three things, and the weights are fixed before the order is drawn. Cost carries 40% and covers the starting price, what sits inside the plan and how usage is limited. Offer carries 40%, which is where a free plan, a free trial and the caps on each tier are judged. Trust carries 20%, reading the company behind the product, its home market and the support channels a paying customer can reach. Prices, plans and limits are taken from each brand's own pricing and product pages. Company details, home markets and founding years come from public company records. Figures are used as published, with no currency adjustment, and a price is always written next to the plan it belongs to. Partner brands are listed first and everything else follows on score. The partner listings at the top are commercial placements rather than a verdict, so weigh them on the same price, offer and trust points as the rest. This ranking covers 28 brands, of which 2 are partners and 0 are licensed.
How we rankOur top picks
4. Sider: best for SiderSider is an AI sidebar and agent for the browser. Sider Chat lets users ask about any page using GPT, Claude or Gemini, summarizing videos, translating languages, explaining ideas and answering follow-ups.
- Free plan: Yes
- Tool type: Chatbot
- Legal entity: Vidline Inc.
Pros
- Summarizes web content and videos into usable research notes
- Answers questions about visible content with follow up support
- Translates languages and explains complex ideas in plain terms
- Generates reports and captures notes inside the sidebar
Cons
- Work stays inside browser tabs, limiting use away from the web
- Relies on outside models, so results depend on connected systems
5. Merlin: best for MerlinMerlin is an AI chat service for chatting with top AI models, with a browser extension, agent and team plans.
- Free plan: Yes
- Usage limits: limited access to Basic models and 70+ tools
- Tool type: Chatbot
Pros
- One click summaries and replies using context from open pages
- Reusable knowledge bases built from uploads for repeated tailored answers
- Diagram, chart and image creation plus working app snippets
- Works across devices with synced history, prompts and custom helpers
Cons
- Heavy focus on browser based answers tied to pages being visited
- Wide menu of text, code, image and diagram helpers to learn
- Video summaries and posts depend on available online video content
6. flowith: best for FlowithFlowith is an agentic AI workspace for deep work that brings models such as ChatGPT, Claude and DeepSeek into an AI whiteboard for brainstorming and creative workflows.
- Price from: $19.90
- Free plan: Yes
- Usage limits: 300 cr. (one-time)
Pros
- Pro is $19.90 a month, and the same plan billed yearly is quoted at a lower per-month figure.
- Writing, image and video work sit inside the same subscription, so a small team buys once rather than per format.
- The terms name Flowith Technologies Pte. Ltd. as the company behind the service, which settles who you deal with.
- A free Starter plan is available, so a reader can test the tools before spending anything.
Cons
- Starter's usage limits are a credit grant that arrives once instead of refreshing each month, so a busy week runs the allowance down fast.
- Pro is $19.90 a month as the entry figure, and the lower per-month rate arrives with yearly billing, so plan for the yearly rate at renewal rather than the entry figure.
- Support runs on email, help centre and community, so a blocked account waits on email or community threads.
7. Fireflies.aiFireflies.ai holds a place in this ranking because it pairs automation with a chatbot and keeps support broad: email, chat and help centre covers email, live chat and a help centre. The service runs through Fireflies.ai Corp in the United States and targets small businesses and enterprise teams. Entry pricing starts at $18 with a free plan on board, the plan lists 100 integrations, and the free tier is bounded by 400 min storage per team, 20 AI credits. LiveChat, ranked next, starts a touch higher at $19 and has no free plan.
- Price from: $18
- Free plan: Yes
- Usage limits: 400 min storage per team, 20 AI credits
Pros
- A free plan is available, so a team can try the tool at no spend before choosing a paid tier.
- Entry price of $18 sits below Infloww at $40, so the paid step is not steep.
- The free plan allowance of 400 min storage per team, 20 AI credits gives a small team room to work before it pays.
- 100 integrations are listed, so the tool can sit alongside the apps your team already opens.
- It is listed under both automation and chatbot, so notes and follow-up answers stay in the same product.
Cons
- Support runs on email, chat and help centre only, with no phone desk listed for urgent issues.
- Entry price of $18 is higher than IFTTT at $2.99, which is the cheapest route in this group.
- Free plan limits of 400 min storage per team, 20 AI credits cap how much a busy team can keep before it moves to a paid tier.
What to look for
- What the free plan actually includes
- A free plan is the norm here, at 57.7% of brands, and it is the entry model for 57.7% of them. Read what it caps: a chatbot on one plan may be a writing and image tool on the next, and the deciding detail is what happens once the allowance runs out.
- Entry price and the price after it
- The median starting price is €17.54, and the middle of the range runs between €14.07 and €30.26. Per user pricing follows the same spread, with a median of €21.05. Check both, since entry tiers and the tiers you renew onto often sit at different points, and per seat billing moves the total further.
- Trials where there is no free plan
- For brands without a free plan, the trial is the only free look, and its length varies. The median trial runs 14 days, the lower quartile 7 days and the upper quartile 14 days. Trial-first entries account for 53.8% of the category.
- Support you can actually reach
- A help centre is the most common route at 87%, followed by email at 60.9%. Live chat sits at 39.1% and a community forum at 30.4%, while phone help is the rarest at 17.4%. If you need a person on the line, that last figure is your filter.
- What the plan is built for
- Every brand here lists a chatbot, so the wider tool mix is what separates them. Automation is the most common addition at 39.3%, with voice at 10.7% and video at 10.7%. Writing and image extras appear far less often. Match the mix to the work you expect to hand over, not to the length of the feature list.
- Who the product is aimed at
- Small business is the main buyer at 85.7%, with enterprise buyers at 60.7% and newcomers at 35.7%. A brand aimed at one of these groups usually sets its limits, pricing and support to match, which often tells you more than the headline plan name does.
Frequently asked questions
Which of these chatbots costs least to start with?+
Qwen carries the lowest-price-from label, with paid office assistant plans starting at CNY 19 and a free plan alongside. Shafrik lists entry pricing at XOF 9,900 in another currency, so those two figures need converting before they can be set side by side. Among the dollar plans, ElevenLabs at $6 and HuggingChat at $9 sit at the low end, while Infloww at $40 runs well above the median of €17.54.
Do any of these AI chatbots have a free plan?+
Most of them do. Shafrik, Qwen, ElevenLabs, HuggingChat, Claude and Fireflies.ai each include a free plan, which matches the category share of 57.7%. Infloww, Nextiva, LiveChat and Datalyst Africa do not, and each of those leans on a trial instead. Free plans deserve a close read, because the free tier of a chatbot brand is usually a small allowance rather than open-ended chat.
Which of these offer phone support?+
Nextiva lists support on email, chat and phone, pairing phone help with email, chat and a help centre, and Datalyst Africa offers email, phone and chat, adding phone alongside email and chat. Those two are the exception in this category, where phone support sits at 17.4% against a help centre at 87%. Shafrik and HuggingChat sit between the two, with email, a help centre and a community forum.
What is the cheapest way to try one before paying?+
Start on a free plan, since Shafrik, Qwen, ElevenLabs, HuggingChat, Claude and Fireflies.ai all offer one. Where there is no free plan, the trial is the free look: Infloww gives 7 days, while LiveChat and Datalyst Africa give 14 days each. The category median trial is 14 days, so a short trial says less about daily use than a free plan with a stated cap does.
Which of these fit a small business team?+
Small business is the audience most of this category serves, at 85.7%, so most of the list fits a small team on audience alone. The splits come from the offer: Infloww bills per creator profile, which suits a solo operator, while Nextiva, LiveChat and Datalyst Africa add phone, chat or automation support for teams handling customers directly. Claude and LiveChat publish the highest integration counts here, at 200 and 200.
Which of these connect to the tools a team already runs?+
Three listings publish integration counts. Claude lists 200 integrations and LiveChat lists 200, the highest figures in this ranking, while Fireflies.ai lists 100. Connector access is the point for teams running an assistant inside tools they already pay for. Read the free tier as well, because Free: limited usage, 1 connector, and a wider catalogue on a paid plan may matter more than the headline count.
Ready to try Troop Messenger?
Ranked #1 of 10.
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The data behind this ranking
| Metric | Value | Sample |
|---|---|---|
| Median price from | 17.54 EUR | 15 |
| Lower quartile price from | 14.07 EUR | 15 |
| Upper quartile price from | 30.26 EUR | 15 |
| Lowest price from | 2.48 EUR | 15 |
| Highest price from | 59 EUR | 15 |
| Free plan: true | 57.7 % | 26 |
| Free plan: false | 42.3 % | 26 |
| Median free trial days | 14 | 7 |