I priced the same job on three AI chatbot platforms: answer about 1,000 customer conversations a month from a company knowledge base, on a website and ideally on WhatsApp. The monthly quotes ranged from under HK$300 to well over HK$5,000. The gap is not about quality. It is about what each platform counts as a unit, and that is exactly where most Chatbase comparisons stop being useful.
This page is for practitioners who already know what a knowledge-base chatbot is and are deciding what to buy. It compares Chatbase with two alternatives a Hong Kong team is likely to shortlist: Tidio's Lyro AI agent and UD's AI Chatbot Master. Prices are as published in September and October 2026, and every platform, including UD's, gets an honest limitations section.
Why are people looking for Chatbase alternatives?
Most teams leave Chatbase for three reasons: message credits are spent per AI reply, so busy months get expensive; every plan includes only one AI agent; and removing the Chatbase badge costs US$99 a month extra. Teams in Hong Kong also want WhatsApp and Messenger coverage, local billing and Cantonese-speaking support.
Chatbase itself is a solid no-code tool. You upload documents or point it at your website, and it builds a support bot quickly. The friction shows up at scale. According to a Layer3Labs pricing breakdown updated on 6 September 2026, which cites Chatbase's own pricing page, one message credit is used each time the agent generates a reply, credits reset monthly with no rollover, and free-plan agents are permanently deleted after 14 days of inactivity.
That per-reply metering is the key point. A customer conversation is rarely one reply. If your average chat runs three or four AI replies, 1,000 conversations can burn 3,000 to 4,000 credits.
How do Chatbase, Tidio Lyro and AI Chatbot Master compare on price and limits?
Chatbase charges per AI reply from US$40 a month. Tidio's Lyro charges per AI conversation from US$39 a month for 50, on top of a Tidio help desk plan. UD's AI Chatbot Master charges a flat monthly fee per conversation tier, from $298 a month for 1,000 conversations, with a setup fee and a six-month minimum.
Chatbase (published pricing, September 2026)
- Free: 50 message credits a month, 1 agent; inactive agents deleted after 14 days.
- Hobby: US$40 a month (US$32 billed annually), 700 credits.
- Standard: US$150 a month (US$120 annually), 4,000 credits, 3 seats, integrations.
- Pro: US$500 a month (US$400 annually), 15,000 credits, 5 seats.
- Add-ons: US$40 per extra 1,000 credits, US$25 per extra agent a month, US$99 a month to remove branding. 7-day trial on paid plans.
Tidio Lyro (Tidio pricing checked 4 August 2026, via eesel's Lyro pricing guide)
- 50 free Lyro conversations, one time only; they do not reset.
- Paid quotas: 50 conversations for US$39, 100 for US$75, 200 for US$140, 500 for US$350, 1,000 for US$700 a month. Annual billing takes about 17 percent off.
- Lyro is an add-on: you also need a Tidio help desk plan (Starter is US$29 a month).
- A conversation counts when Lyro first replies; a chat counts as new after 15 minutes of inactivity. Lyro runs on Anthropic's Claude.
UD AI Chatbot Master (UD's pricing page, checked 2 October 2026)
- Starter: $298 a month, 1,000 conversations, 1,000-page knowledge base, $1,000 one-time setup, 30-day chat history.
- Standard: $498 a month, 10,000 conversations, 5,000 pages, $3,000 setup (waived on annual billing), 90-day history.
- Professional: $988 a month, 50,000 conversations, 20,000 pages, $3,000 setup (waived on annual billing), 180-day history.
- Enterprise: custom. All plans list website, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, a live dashboard and 90+ languages.
- Minimum subscription six months; one free month on a one-year plan, two on a two-year plan. The page shows "$" without a currency code; as a Hong Kong product we read these as HK dollars, so confirm with sales.
What does 1,000 conversations a month actually cost?
For about 1,000 AI conversations a month, Chatbase lands near US$150 (about HK$1,170) if each chat averages three replies, Tidio Lyro near US$729 (about HK$5,690) including the help desk plan, and AI Chatbot Master at HK$298 plus a one-off HK$1,000 setup. Units differ, so test your own reply ratio.
Here is the arithmetic, using the HK$7.8 peg and one stated assumption: an average of three AI replies per conversation.
- Chatbase: 1,000 conversations times 3 replies is about 3,000 credits. Hobby's 700 credits is far too few, so you need Standard at US$150 a month. Over six months that is US$900, roughly HK$7,020, before any branding or extra-agent add-ons.
- Tidio Lyro: 1,000 Lyro conversations is US$700, plus US$29 for the Starter help desk, so US$729 a month. Six months is about HK$34,100.
- AI Chatbot Master: Starter covers 1,000 conversations at HK$298. Six months (the minimum) plus setup is HK$2,788.
Two caveats keep this honest. First, if your chats average five replies, Chatbase needs about 5,000 credits, which means Standard plus extra credits or a jump to Pro. Second, from 1 October 2026 Meta charges per message for WhatsApp service replies; our Hong Kong WhatsApp cost guide estimates about HK$0.20 per reply. None of the three platforms' list prices above clearly include that Meta fee, so ask before you sign.
Which Chatbase alternative fits which kind of team?
Pick Chatbase if you want to self-serve, test free and cancel monthly. Pick Tidio Lyro if you already run Tidio live chat or a Shopify store and want AI that can take actions like order lookups. Pick AI Chatbot Master if you need website, WhatsApp and Messenger in one HKD plan with predictable conversation-based pricing and local support.
Choose Chatbase if you are a solo operator or small marketing team that wants to build the bot yourself tonight, test it on the free plan or the 7-day trial, and keep the freedom to cancel monthly. It also wins if you need API access and integrations on a self-serve plan.
Choose Tidio Lyro if your support already lives in Tidio, you sell on Shopify, or you want the AI to perform tasks through Lyro Actions, such as checking an order status. It is the most expensive per conversation here, but it sits inside a full live-chat and help desk product.
Choose AI Chatbot Master if you expect high volume, want WhatsApp and Messenger included rather than bolted on, and prefer a fixed monthly HKD bill. Its Standard plan at $498 for 10,000 conversations is where the conversation-based model pulls far ahead on cost.
Honest limitations: what could stop you buying each one?
Chatbase gets expensive per reply and limits you to one agent per plan. Tidio Lyro's free conversations never reset and its per-conversation price is the highest. AI Chatbot Master has no free trial on its page, requires a setup fee and a six-month commitment, and publishes less technical detail than its rivals.
- Chatbase: per-reply credits make long conversations costly; no rollover; branding removal is US$99 a month; a second bot is US$25 a month; free agents vanish after 14 idle days.
- Tidio Lyro: 50 free conversations, once; paid tiers stack on a separate help desk subscription; website scanning is capped at 60 pages per eesel's review, and there is no bulk test against past tickets.
- AI Chatbot Master: no free plan or self-serve trial is listed, so you start with sales; HK$1,000 to HK$3,000 setup unless you pay annually; six-month minimum; Starter keeps chat logs for only 30 days; the page does not name the underlying AI model or list API, action or CRM integrations; and currency is shown only as "$". We have not independently benchmarked answer accuracy for any of the three.
- All three on WhatsApp: since 15 January 2026, Meta's WhatsApp Business terms ban general-purpose AI assistants. Task-specific customer service bots are allowed, so scope your bot to your products and services.
How should you test a chatbot before you commit?
Build a 30-question test set from real customer messages, including tricky and off-topic ones, run it through each platform's trial or demo, and score accuracy, refusals and handover behaviour. Then measure replies per conversation, because that ratio decides your real bill on per-reply pricing.
Use this prompt in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to build the test set from your own FAQ in about five minutes.
Try this prompt:
You are a QA lead testing a customer service chatbot before purchase. Below is our FAQ and product information.
Create a 30-question test set in a table with columns: Question, Category, Expected answer (from the FAQ only), Pass criteria.
Include: 15 common questions phrased the way real customers type (short, informal, some in Cantonese-style written Chinese), 5 questions that need two facts combined, 5 questions the FAQ does not answer (the bot should say it does not know and offer a human), and 5 off-topic or manipulative prompts (the bot should politely decline).
Finally, estimate how many bot replies a typical conversation for each category would need.
[Paste FAQ here]
Run the same 30 questions through each shortlisted bot. A platform that answers 27 correctly but takes five replies to do it may cost more than one that answers 25 in two replies.
The right chatbot is the one whose pricing unit matches how your customers actually talk. Do the arithmetic with your own reply ratio, read the limitations twice, and test before you sign. We understand AI. We understand you better. With UD by your side, AI doesn't feel cold.
Reviewed by the UD AI team. Prices change often; check each vendor's live pricing before buying. Sources: Layer3Labs Chatbase pricing guide, eesel Lyro pricing guide, respond.io on WhatsApp's 2026 AI policy, UD AI Chatbot Master.
Want to see AI Chatbot Master on your own FAQ?
Bring your 30-question test set and your expected monthly volume. UD's team will set up AI Chatbot Master on your knowledge base for website, WhatsApp and Messenger, and we'll walk you through every step, from document upload and tone setup to going live and reviewing the first month of conversations.
