fastbots alternative
By Saurav | Founder of saavos | Building in public toward $10k MRR
[!TLDR] FastBots Essential went from $16–19/month to $39/month in May 2026. If you picked FastBots for the price, that price is gone. The current indie SaaS entry tier landscape: saavos ($19/month), Chatbase Hobby ($32/month), FastBots Essential ($39/month). All three have free tiers. If you need a website chatbot under $20/month in 2026, saavos is now the only option in this group.
FastBots ran one of the lowest entry-tier prices in the AI chatbot market for most of 2025 and early 2026. Their Essential plan sat at $16–19/month — competitive enough that price-sensitive indie founders regularly picked it over Chatbase, which was $40/month at the time.
In May 2026, FastBots Essential moved to $39/month.
That is a 2x increase on the sticker price.
The feature set at $39 includes what you'd expect: URL crawl training, PDF uploads, live agent takeover from the entry tier, and a widget you embed via script tag. The live agent feature is a real differentiator — saavos and Chatbase don't include human handoff at the entry tier. But the pricing story changed overnight.
Pricing confirmed directly from fastbots.ai/pricing on 2026-05-18. Check the page yourself before committing — they've adjusted once this year already.
Here is where things actually stand, all from vendor pages on 2026-05-18:
| Tool | Entry paid tier | Price/month | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| saavos | Starter | $19 | Yes (50 msg/mo) |
| Chatbase | Hobby | $32 | Yes (50 msg/mo) |
| FastBots | Essential | $39 | Yes (50 msg/mo) |
| Tidio | Starter | $25 (live chat only; AI at $50/mo) | Yes |
| Botpress | Plus | $89 (repriced May 14, 2026) | Yes (100 conv/mo) |
| Intercom Fin | — | $49.50/mo minimum + $0.99/resolution | No |
Sources: fastbots.ai/pricing, chatbase.co/pricing, saavos.com/pricing, tidio.com/pricing, botpress.com/pricing, intercom.com/pricing. All checked 2026-05-18.
For a founder at $0–$1k MRR picking a chatbot purely on entry price, the ranking just reshuffled. A year ago FastBots was cheapest. Now saavos is.
I'm the founder, so read this with the obvious grain of salt. I'll tell you what saavos doesn't do because a comparison that hides weaknesses is useless.
At $19/month, saavos Starter includes:
What it doesn't include: live agent takeover (FastBots has this; saavos does not), WhatsApp or social channels (Chatbase has these; saavos doesn't), model selection across providers (Chatbase has GPT-5 variants; saavos runs Claude natively). If any of those are real requirements, FastBots at $39 or Chatbase at $32 is the honest recommendation.
If your requirement is: answer visitor questions from your docs, deflect repeat FAQ traffic, embed it in under 10 minutes, and spend under $25/month — saavos is the only current option in this comparison.
I don't want to write a post that says "FastBots raised prices, they're bad now, use me instead." That's the wrong read.
FastBots at $39 is still cheaper than Botpress ($89 since May 14, 2026) and significantly cheaper than Intercom Fin (which bills per resolution on top of platform fees). The product is solid. The live agent handoff is a feature saavos doesn't have. If you're running a site where some percentage of visitors need to be connected to a real person — not just an AI answering from your docs — FastBots has that built in at the entry tier.
What changed is the price. If you picked FastBots in 2025 because it was $16/month and you're on a tight bootstrap budget, the calculus is different now.
If you're currently on a FastBots plan, a few things to think about:
Annual subscribers probably locked in the old rate — check your billing page to confirm. If you're month-to-month, the new pricing likely applied on your next cycle.
Switching isn't hard. The move from FastBots to saavos (or Chatbase) takes about 20 minutes: you retrain from your same source URLs or PDFs, update the embed script in your site HTML with the new script tag, and your fallback message. There's no data migration because these tools don't share a format. Your conversation history stays in FastBots; you start fresh logs in the new tool.
Is it worth switching? Depends on whether $20/month matters to you at your current stage. For a founder at $2k MRR, probably not. For a pre-revenue founder where every tool dollar is a real decision, the gap matters.
Here is the thing I keep thinking about when I look at this pricing landscape.
For most of 2025, indie SaaS founders had two good options under $25/month: FastBots at $16–19 and a few others in the $20 range. The category had real price competition at the low end.
In May 2026, saavos is now the only entry-paid chatbot at $19 in this comparison. Chatbase is $32. FastBots is $39. The next tier after saavos — Tidio Growth which includes AI — is $50/month.
That is an $13-20 gap between saavos and the next cheapest competitor. I'm not going to perform false modesty about this: that gap is saavos's positioning right now, and it's why I built the thing for this exact ICP.
But I'll also say: if you outgrow saavos — if you need WhatsApp integrations, live agent takeover, advanced analytics, or multi-channel routing — the $13–20/month price gap is not a reason to stay. Pick the right tool for your stage. The goal isn't to spend the least; it's to solve the problem without over-engineering it before you have the revenue to justify the overhead.
Pick saavos ($19/month) if: you need FAQ deflection from a website, your docs are a URL and maybe a PDF, you don't need live agent handoff, and budget is real. Setup is under 10 minutes. No card on free tier.
Pick Chatbase ($32/month) if: you need model selection (GPT-5, multiple providers), want WhatsApp or social channel integrations, or are training on Notion/YouTube sources. $13/month more than saavos; genuinely different product at that margin.
Pick FastBots ($39/month) if: live agent takeover at the entry tier is a hard requirement, or you're OpenAI-stack-aligned and prefer that over Claude. Real feature, real reason to pay the premium.
Pick Tidio Growth ($50/month) if: you need live chat alongside AI deflection and want them in one platform. The AI chatbot is not on Tidio's cheaper tier, so the $25 Starter tier is live-chat-only.
Don't use Botpress or Intercom Fin if you're a solo founder at $0–$1k MRR. Wrong product for the stage. Botpress Plus is $89/month (repriced May 2026) and they just launched Desk — an AI helpdesk product aimed at enterprise support teams. They're moving upmarket, not toward indie SaaS. Intercom Fin bills per resolution and stacks on top of platform fees. The math doesn't close before you're at $5k+ MRR with real support volume.
If you want to test saavos against your current setup: start on the free tier at saavos.com — no card, 50 messages/month, and your bot can be live in under 10 minutes.
Related reading: saavos vs Chatbase vs FastBots: an honest comparison · How to deflect 40% of SaaS support tickets with an AI chatbot · Your indie SaaS doesn't need Intercom Fin
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Yes. FastBots Essential moved from $16–19/month to $39/month in May 2026 — roughly a 2x increase. The free tier (50 messages/month) remains. Existing annual subscribers likely locked in the old rate; month-to-month customers saw the new pricing on their next billing cycle. Check fastbots.ai/pricing directly for the current number.
saavos Starter at $19/month is the lowest entry-paid tier among the main indie SaaS chatbot options as of May 2026. Chatbase Hobby is $32/month, FastBots Essential is $39/month, Tidio Growth (the tier that includes AI) is $50/month. All four have free tiers capped at 50 messages/month. Pricing verified from vendor pages on 2026-05-18.
FastBots at $39/month is still below Botpress ($150/month) and Intercom Fin (platform fee plus $0.99/resolution). The product includes live agent takeover at the entry tier — a feature saavos and Chatbase don't include at their entry tiers. If live agent handoff is a real requirement, $39 is still a reasonable price. If you're shopping purely on entry price, saavos at $19/month is now $20/month cheaper.
About 20 minutes. Retrain from your same source URLs or PDF uploads on the new platform, update the embed script tag in your site HTML, and rewrite your fallback message. There is no data migration — these tools use different formats and conversation history stays in the original tool. Test on a staging URL before swapping the live embed.
Depends on the requirement. For FAQ deflection under $25/month with no live agent handoff needed: saavos at $19/month. For live agent handoff from the entry tier: FastBots at $39/month. For WhatsApp/social channels or model selection including GPT-5: Chatbase at $32/month. For live chat plus AI in one platform: Tidio Growth at $50/month. Botpress and Intercom Fin are designed for larger teams with existing support infrastructure.
Builds tools for solopreneurs and small SaaS teams who don't have an afternoon to spare.
Paste your URL. Train your bot. Drop one script tag. No credit card.