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Decision snapshot

Fast-read signals for fit, pricing, and trust.

Category
Website and Conversion
Best for
ai chatbot
Pricing
Freemium
Access
Free plan available

What is this tool?

Strong for a small business that already talks to customers on WhatsApp or Instagram and wants one bot answering everywhere rather than a widget on the website. The number to check before anything else is messages: 1,000 a month free, 3,000 at $29 and 12,000 at $99, counted across all platforms together, with AI answers drawing on the same pool. A busy WhatsApp line will pass 3,000 quickly, and top-ups are cheap but they are the real cost.

By QT Desk
Read full overview

All five of BotPenguin's main channels are open on the free plan, as is answering with an OpenAI model against a knowledge base you have trained on your own site, PDFs and FAQs. Most tools in this category treat WhatsApp as the premium channel. Here the free tier is a genuine working bot on the channels a small business actually uses, which makes evaluating it unusually cheap.

Message count is the constraint that replaces it, and it deserves the first look at any tier. A thousand a month free, three thousand at $29, twelve thousand at $99 — counted across every platform together, with AI-answered messages drawing on the same pool rather than a separate one. Three thousand messages is a few dozen conversations a day for a modest retailer, so for anything busier the top-ups are where the real price lives: $5 for another thousand ordinary messages, but $15 for a thousand AI-answered ones. If most of your traffic is going to be answered by the model rather than by a scripted flow, run that arithmetic before choosing a plan.

The feature ladder is unusually clean about what each step buys. Little at $29 turns the bot commercial — appointments, WhatsApp bulk messaging, Instagram DM automation, a shop with a cart — and brings thirty-odd integrations including Shopify and Zendesk. King at $99 makes it programmable: a choice between GPT-5, Gemini, Claude, Llama and DeepSeek, retraining on past transcripts, API calls from inside a chatflow, Microsoft Teams. Emperor at $990 is a different kind of purchase, adding the long tail of channels and a team that builds the thing for you. Read down that ladder and the honest answer for most small businesses is $29, with the message pack as the variable.

Is this right for you?

Quick fit check against how you actually work.

ai chatbotai chatbot for whatsapp
Choose this if
  • Your customers message you on WhatsApp or Instagram rather than filling in a form on your website
  • You want one bot and one inbox across channels instead of separate tools per platform
  • You want to test answer quality before paying, since AI answers and knowledge-base training are in the free tier
  • You take bookings or sell through chat, which the $29 tier covers with appointments and WhatsApp commerce
  • You want to choose the model behind the bot, or call your own APIs mid-conversation, which the $99 tier allows
Consider alternatives if
  • Your conversation volume is high: 3,000 messages a month at $29 is a few dozen conversations a day, and the pool is shared across every channel and with AI replies
  • You need more than ten people in the inbox, since team seats stop at 5 and 10 below the enterprise tier
  • You need a platform outside the main five — WeChat, LINE, Viber, SMS or Slack — which appear only on the $990 plan
  • Your security review needs more than a stated encryption standard, as the published detail beyond that sits at the enterprise tier

Key features

What you can actually do with this tool.

Every channel on every plan, including the free one

All five channels are open on the free tier rather than gated to paid. Most competitors put WhatsApp behind a paywall, so if messaging apps are where your customers actually are, this is the unusual part.

One inbox behind all of them

Conversations from every platform land in a single inbox with live handover from bot to human. That is what makes the multi-channel claim useful rather than merely true — otherwise you are watching five apps.

Messages are the meter, shared across channels and AI

1,000, 3,000 or 12,000 a month, counted across every platform, and AI-answered messages draw on the same pool as scripted ones. This single number governs your bill more than any feature does.

A trainable knowledge base from the free tier up

The bot can be trained on your website, PDFs and FAQs using OpenAI models without paying, with Google Sheets, Drive and Notion added at higher tiers. It means the free plan is a real test of answer quality, not just of the builder.

Commerce and booking start at $29

Appointment booking, WhatsApp bulk messaging, Instagram DM automation and a WhatsApp shop with cart and checkout all arrive with the Little plan. For a business that sells or schedules through chat, that tier is the real entry point.

Choice of model at the King tier

GPT-5, Gemini, Claude, Llama and DeepSeek can each be connected, along with retraining on past transcripts and API calls from inside a chatflow. Past this point it is programmable rather than merely configurable.

Integrations

Tools and platforms this connects with.

WhatsAppInstagramFacebookTelegramShopifyWooCommerceZendeskGoogle CalendarZapierHubSpotSalesforceMicrosoft Teams

Plans & pricing

Pricing tiers and what's included in each.

Baby Plan

FREE Forever/ month
  • 1,000 messages a month across all platforms
  • 1 chatbot
  • WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and website
  • Unified inbox and live chat
  • LLM answers using OpenAI models, sharing the same 1,000-message allowance
  • Train the bot on your website, PDFs and FAQs
  • No credit card required

Little Plan

Starting paid plan
$29 /month
  • 3,000 messages a month
  • 5 chatbots
  • 5 team members
  • Appointment booking
  • WhatsApp bulk messaging and shop automation
  • Instagram DM automation
  • 30+ integrations including Shopify, WooCommerce, Zendesk and Google Calendar
  • Reports, analytics and mobile apps for agents

King Plan

$99 /month
  • 12,000 messages a month
  • Unlimited chatbots, AI agents and AI voice agents
  • 10 team members
  • Choice of model: GPT-5, Gemini, Claude, Llama, DeepSeek
  • Retraining on chat transcripts
  • API calls from inside a chatflow
  • Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp flows and department routing
  • 50+ integrations including Zapier, HubSpot and Salesforce

Emperor Plan

$990 /month
  • Messages as needed
  • Unlimited chatbots and team members
  • WeChat, LINE, Viber, SMS, Slack and Google My Business
  • Custom LLMs and enterprise fine-tuning
  • Advanced security modules
  • Vendor builds the chatbot for you

Message packs

$5 for 1,000 messages; $10 for 5,000; AI messages $15 for 1,000 or $60 for 5,000/ month
  • Top-ups on any plan, priced separately for AI-answered messages
Official pricing pagePricing may have changed. Always verify before purchasing.

Frequently asked

Common questions about this tool, answered.

What counts as a message, and what if I need more?

Every message the bot sends counts, on any platform, and AI-answered messages come out of the same allowance as scripted ones rather than a separate pool. Baby includes 1,000 a month, Little 3,000 and King 12,000. Top-ups are sold on any plan: $5 for 1,000 more messages or $10 for 5,000, with AI messages priced separately at $15 per 1,000 or $60 per 5,000 — which is the number that matters if the model, rather than a flow, is doing most of the answering.

Is the free plan a real product or a demo?

A real product, within its limit. The free tier carries all five main platforms, the unified inbox, live handover, and AI answers trained on your website, PDFs and FAQs — so what you are testing is the finished experience rather than a builder with the intelligence switched off. What it does not carry is anything commercial: bookings, bulk messaging and the WhatsApp shop all begin at $29.

Can I choose which AI model answers?

From the King plan at $99. That tier names GPT-5, Gemini, Claude, Llama and DeepSeek as connectable models, and adds retraining on your own chat transcripts so the bot improves from real conversations. Below that you are on OpenAI models as configured by the vendor, which is sufficient for FAQ-style answering and not something you can tune.

Does it cost extra to send on WhatsApp?

Meta charges for WhatsApp conversations in its own right, and the vendor states that it adds no markup to those charges. So the WhatsApp cost of running a bot here is your BotPenguin plan plus whatever Meta bills you directly — worth confirming with current Meta rates for your country before budgeting, since that side is outside the vendor's control.