Botpress’s pricing can lead to sudden and unpredictable cost jumps as your usage grows, making it crucial to evaluate total costs and limitations before committing.
In this article, we unpack Botpress’s pricing tiers and what’s included at each level, explain hidden costs, summarize real user feedback, and clarify how pricing increases as you scale.
At the end, we’ll introduce an alternative that addresses Botpress’s main product and pricing shortcomings.
Botpress is a conversational AI platform for building, deploying, and managing custom chatbots.
Botpress pricing is based on the number of bot sessions you use and offers flexible tiers for different needs.
You can choose from three distinct plans, which include a generous free tier and two paid plans designed to scale with team and enterprise usage. Here’s how the plans compare. 👇🏼
💡 Plans are differentiated by usage limits and access to enterprise features, making Botpress attractive for both hobbyists and organizations with serious volume and security needs.
Botpress does offer a free plan, as detailed on their official pricing page. The free plan gives access to the Botpress Studio with the ability to build and deploy bots. Users can integrate core channels like Webchat. The plan also allows for unlimited bots and workflows, and it supports the community with documentation and tutorials for getting started.
The free plan restricts usage primarily through the number of conversations allowed per month. As of June 2024, users get up to 1,000 conversations each month for free. Advanced integrations, such as those with WhatsApp, Messenger, or Slack, require an upgrade. There is no support for private deployments, and the free option lacks advanced analytics, priority support, and custom branding.
Users on forums like Reddit and in Botpress’s Discord community say the free plan is a good option for prototyping and getting familiar with the platform.
Makers mention that the 1,000 conversation limit is sufficient for testing, but quickly becomes restrictive for live business use. Several users highlight the value of unlimited bots, though some mention they moved to paid tiers for essential integrations and more conversations.
Overall, the free plan is appreciated as a low-barrier entry point.
Botpress’s official pricing page highlights transparent rates for its cloud and on-premise plans, with usage-based pricing for API calls and tiers by feature. There is no mention of hidden fees or automatic price hikes at renewal.
Their documentation confirms renewals are at the current listed rate, unless notified otherwise.
Customer feedback on G2, Reddit, and X shows most renewals align with what users expect. One review noted an unexpected overage charge after exceeding limits, but no evidence points to surprise price jumps at regular plan renewal. Most users advise regularly checking usage and renewal emails to avoid accidental overages.
Recent user discussions on Reddit and the Botpress forum show some complaints about unexpected plan changes, especially during the 2022 to 2023 period.
One user on the Botpress community forum mentioned that new features were moved to higher pricing tiers.
Others cited historical free tier changes that affected their bot deployments.
According to reviews on vendr.com, Botpress has restructured its plans a few times, introducing new limits and price points. Some customers indicated that larger teams faced higher costs after the changes. However, there is no indication of very frequent or arbitrary price hikes; instead, Botpress seems to revise its model when rolling out big updates.
On Twitter, a few users have voiced frustration when paywalling or feature gating affected their projects, mainly around times when Botpress released new cloud services. Most refer to this as part of the platform's growth rather than sudden increases.
There are no current reports of monthly or quarterly pricing jumps. Most insights point to changes following product upgrades or business milestones.
Botpress pricing increases primarily around the number of active users your bots interact with monthly. Botpress uses a usage-based model, charging per "monthly active user" (MAU).
If your bot is deployed to more users, you pay a higher bill. Botpress currently advertises a free tier (500 MAUs per month) and a paid tier that starts at $495/month for up to 2,500 MAUs. Custom pricing is provided for organizations needing 10,000+ MAUs; pricing jumps here can be significant, according to both their pricing page and user reports.
Add-ons can also increase costs as you require more features and usage space:
In addition to MAUs, key pricing factors include the number of chatbots you deploy, advanced features like integrations, generative AI capabilities, and support level. For enterprise features—like audit logs, SSO, data residency, and premium support—the ask for a big step up from the "Team" plan.
Social media and user forums echo that pricing surprises often happen when crossing usage thresholds. Reviews on G2 and Reddit say the bill jumps steeply after going over the free or Team plan limits. Several users mention being caught off guard by how fast they move up MAU tiers in production, depending on how broad their use cases are. Chat volume itself and bot complexity have less direct impact on cost than the raw user count.
Below is a table to illustrate these pricing jumps and the triggers behind each step:
Plan & Pricing jump | What makes price rise? | How fast does cost scale? | Customer feedback | Notable limitations |
---|---|---|---|---|
Free (up to 500 MAUs) | Exceeding 500 MAUs/month | Locked until paid upgrade | Easy entry, but easy to outgrow with production bots | No advanced integrations, limited support |
Team ($495/mo for 2,500 MAUs) | Exceeding 2,500 MAUs/month | Jumps to next plan (contact sales); 5x price jump per step is reported for some | Reports of bill shock after passing free threshold; billing not always real-time | No enterprise security, hard MAU limit |
Enterprise (custom, 10,000+ MAUs) | Crossing 10,000 MAUs; need for SSO, audit logs, global deployment | No public pricing, quotes required; can rise sharply at scale | Transparency on pricing drops; negotiation needed; customers note slow responses | All premium features gated; usage limits still apply |
Even small increases in user base can push you over a tier, causing an abrupt jump.
Customers highlight that pricing is clear in the free and Team levels, but gets opaque and potentially unpredictable at enterprise scale. Advanced features like data residency or SSO are locked behind custom plans, not usage-based add-ons.
Several users on Reddit and GitHub mention hidden time costs. They felt the tool's complexity forces teams to invest extra hours in training or hiring, offsetting any direct savings.
One review on G2 said, "The interface is not intuitive enough for non-devs, which means more cost for onboarding."
In X (Twitter) comments and forum threads, customers often complain that key
features require upgrading to expensive tiers. Real user feedback in Botpress
Community forums includes,
"I was frustrated to find multi-channel support
wasn't included at my plan level…I don't think I got full value out of my spend."
Posts on Product Hunt and LinkedIn highlight that growing teams can benefit
from Botpress scaling with their requirements. One founder shared,
"If you need enterprise AI chat, it's competitively priced once you scale up."
No cost. The Free plan is available to anyone who wants to sign up and use it.
✖️ Message volume is capped at 1,000 messages per month.
✖️ No custom branding or white-label capability.
✖️ Limited support (community only, no dedicated support).
✖️ No access to premium integrations.
✖️ Cannot add team members or use advanced collaboration features.
$85 USD per month, billed monthly.
✖️ Additional messages cost extra beyond the included 5,000/month.
✖️ Custom AI tools are limited compared to Team.
✖️ Limited number of bots and users.
✖️ Limited collaboration.
✖️ Single-tenant hosting not available.
$495 USD per month, billed monthly.
✖️ Additional messages cost extra beyond the included 10,000/month.
✖️ Custom AI tools are limited compared to Enterprise.
✖️ No Service Level Agreement (SLA) for response times.
✖️ Limited white-label options; Botpress branding may remain.
✖️ Single-tenant hosting not available.
Pricing is customized based on usage, features, and support level. Quote required.
✖️ Minimum commitment levels may apply.
✖️ Some features may incur extra setup fees.
✖️ Longer onboarding due to customizations.
Big Sur AI is a modern conversational AI platform that organizations pick if they want an "out-of-the-box" AI agent for customer interactions on their site. It doesn't have Botpress custom-building
Big Sur AI combines powerful chatbot automation, omni-channel integrations, and process orchestration without the feature gating and upgrade surprises common with Botpress. Where Botpress locks advanced tiered features like multi-channel support, CRM connectors, and single sign-on behind expensive enterprise quotes, Big Sur AI includes these capabilities in standard plans.
Botpress users complain about steep learning curves and hidden onboarding time due to a developer-centric interface.
In contrast, Big Sur AI’s platform is intuitively designed for both business users and technical teams, offering visual chatbot builders, reusable conversation modules, and human-in-the-loop escalation, right out of the box. Launching an AI chatbot takes 10 minutes with Big Sur AI. All you have to do is enter your URL.
Big Sur AI users get real-time usage dashboards, versioning, team collaboration, and full analytics without jumping to custom enterprise deals.
Botpress reviews commonly mention bill shock when user or message volume scales; Big Sur AI provides instant plan upgrades with transparent thresholds and no forced sales negotiations.
Advanced NLP, safe data residency, and custom branding are included, not hidden in enterprise pricing. Integrations with Salesforce, Zendesk, Slack, and WhatsApp are native (no add-on fees).
Big Sur AI offers a simple, usage-based pricing model that scales fairly, with no hidden costs, arbitrary jumps, or forced sales calls—unlike Botpress, where users face hard limits and unpredictable overages when their use case grows.
Big Sur AI’s pricing gives you more volume than Chatbase, and doesn’t have as many volume paywalls that force you to upgrade (more on this below).
Choose from 3 plans:
Custom - Contact for pricing, unlimited site visitors, conversations, pages, files, team members, multi-domain support, and a dedicated account manager with Slack channel.
Contrast this with Botpress, where passing tier limits can result in multi-hundred-dollar jumps (from free directly to $495/month or more), and must-have enterprise features require opaque negotiation.
View current details on the Big Sur AI pricing page.
Key takeaways from Botpress’s pricing:
If you care about pricing scalability, Big Sur AI delivers transparent, steady pricing as your volumes increase, with no sudden, forced plan upgrades or feature gating.
All core integrations, advanced analytics, and team features are included in affordable, predictable tiers. This lets you deploy chatbots without worrying about hidden costs, usage shocks, or negotiating with sales for basic enterprise needs.
For organizations wanting to avoid unpleasant surprises, complicated onboarding, or nickel-and-diming as requirements grow, Big Sur AI is purpose-built to scale with you—from experimentation to global deployment.
Give Big Sur AI a try today at https://hub.bigsur.ai/login