"How much for an AI chatbot?" has the same honest answer as "how much for a website": it depends on what it needs to do. But the ranges are knowable, and the decisions that move them are few. Here's the breakdown.
Three ways to build one
- Off-the-shelf widget, a no-code tool trained on your pages. Cheapest, least flexible, fine for basic FAQs.
- Custom build on LLM APIs, tailored to your content, tone and systems, with real integrations. The sweet spot for most businesses.
- Fully bespoke platform, for complex, high-volume or regulated needs. The most involved.
What drives the price
- Knowledge, answering from a few pages is simple; from large, changing document sets is more work.
- Integrations, booking, CRM or order systems add engineering.
- Tone and guardrails, on-brand voice and safe, accurate behaviour take tuning.
Build vs buy
A widget gets you live this week for very little. A custom assistant costs more upfront but actually reflects your business, integrates with your tools, and you own it. For anything customer-facing and important, custom usually pays back fast.
The ongoing cost
Budget for usage (the AI API calls) and occasional tuning. Both are typically modest next to the support hours a good assistant saves, the same maths as AI versus a VA.
Scope yours
We build custom assistants as part of our AI Automation work, wired into your site and tools. Tell us what it needs to handle and we'll scope it honestly.