You'll pay in two places: once to set the chatbot up, and every month for the AI it runs on. Setup ranges from free (you do it yourself) to thousands at a big agency. Our custom build is $999. Running costs for a small business site are usually a few dollars a month in OpenAI usage, plus a subscription if you choose a hosted tool.
The two bills you'll actually pay
Every AI chatbot has the same two costs, whoever builds it.
- Setup. Getting the bot onto your site, feeding it your content, and testing it until it gives good answers. This is mostly people's time, yours or someone else's.
- Running. Each time someone chats, the AI model processes some text, and the provider charges for it. On top of that, some tools charge their own monthly fee.
When you compare quotes, check which of those two each one covers. A cheap setup with an expensive subscription can cost more over two years than a one-off build.
Option 1: a plug-in you set up yourself
There are plug-ins for WordPress, Shopify and most site builders that connect to your OpenAI key. Some are free, some charge a small fee.
Good for: simple sites, a handful of FAQs, and owners who don't mind an afternoon of fiddling.
Watch out for: the time it takes to write good source content (this is the real work), plug-ins that put your API key somewhere it can leak, and bots that confidently answer questions they shouldn't.
Option 2: a hosted chatbot tool
These are monthly subscriptions. You upload your documents, paste a snippet and you're live. Pricing usually scales with the number of messages, bots or team seats.
Good for: teams that want a dashboard, live-chat handover and analytics without any development.
Watch out for: how fast the price climbs with traffic, their branding on your site, and the fact that your conversation history lives on their platform. Read the cancellation terms before you upload anything.
Option 3: a custom build
A developer builds the chatbot for your site and connects it to the AI model directly. You own the code, the key and the data. Agency prices vary a lot; ours is $999, one time, and runs on your own OpenAI account.
Good for: businesses with real support volume, specific rules ("never quote prices for custom work"), or a need to connect the bot to other systems like a booking tool or CRM.
Watch out for: builders who host it on their own account and quietly add a monthly fee, and anyone who can't explain how they stop the bot making things up.
What the AI usage actually costs
Providers like OpenAI charge per "token", which is roughly three-quarters of a word. Every chat uses tokens in two ways: the text the bot reads (the visitor's question plus the parts of your content it pulls in to answer) and the text it writes back.
Three things move the number:
- The model. Smaller, faster models cost a small fraction of the biggest ones and are plenty for answering customer questions.
- How much content it reads per answer. A well-built bot pulls in only the relevant paragraphs, not your whole website.
- How many chats you get. Obvious, but worth estimating honestly.
For a typical small business site, a few hundred conversations a month on a smaller model, usage tends to land at a few dollars a month. Prices change often, so check OpenAI's pricing page for current numbers.
The costs nobody puts in the quote
- Writing the content. A chatbot is only as good as what it reads. If your shipping policy is vague on your website, the bot will be vague too. Expect to tidy up a few pages.
- Testing. Someone has to ask it the awkward questions before your customers do: refunds, complaints, "can I speak to a human?".
- Keeping it current. New prices, a new product, holiday opening hours. The bot needs to know.
- Your time reading conversations. This one is actually valuable. The questions people ask your bot are the best list of missing website content you'll ever get.
So which should you pick?
A rough rule we give clients:
- Fewer than about 20 customer questions a month: improve your FAQ page first. You may not need a bot.
- Steady repeat questions and you enjoy tinkering: try a plug-in with your own key.
- You want a dashboard and live-chat handover with zero development: a hosted tool, with eyes open on the subscription.
- You want it done properly, branded, and owned by you with no monthly fee from a vendor: a custom build.
If you're not sure, send us a message with your site and roughly how many enquiries you get. We'll tell you honestly whether it's worth it, even if the answer is "not yet".
