Chatbase vs Intercom Fin: Credits vs Outcomes (2026 Pricing Compared)

2026-09-03 · Laurentiu Dobra · 18 min read · Comparisons

Chatbase charges you for attempts, Intercom Fin charges you for successes. We model both meters at real volumes — $40/month month-to-month vs $0.99 per outcome — and publish the fine print neither pricing page totals.

Chatbase and Intercom Fin are both sold as "the AI agent," but they bill on opposite principles. Chatbase sells message credits — you pay for attempts. Fin sells resolutions — you pay for successes. Most comparisons skip that, then quote an annual-commitment number as if it were monthly. This one does the arithmetic.

All prices were read on 3 September 2026 from each vendor's own pricing page, and every figure states its billing cycle.

Table of Contents

• Short answer
• What do Chatbase and Intercom Fin cost, side by side?
• How does each product meter you?
• What does a 350-reply month actually cost?
• What does the fine print add that the pricing pages do not total?
• Where does Chatbase genuinely win?
• Where does Intercom Fin genuinely win?
• So which one should you buy?
• Where Wallu fits as a third option
• Frequently asked questions

Short answer

Short answer: Chatbase wins if you want a self-serve AI agent live on your site today, cheaply, with model choice, AI Actions and an API — its entry paid plan is $40/month month-to-month, and the cheapest Fin configuration has a floor near $49.50/month before you have answered a single extra question. Intercom Fin wins if support is a real function at your company: it resolves inside a genuine helpdesk with ticketing, seats, escalation and a shared inbox, and at $0.99 per outcome you only pay when a conversation actually ends. The trade is exposure to volume — Chatbase's meter is cheap per unit but charges for every attempt, while Fin's is expensive per unit but charges only for successes, so Fin's bill grows in proportion to how well it works. Choose Chatbase if you are a small team bolting an answer bot onto a website; choose Fin if you already run a support queue and want the AI to close tickets in it.

What do Chatbase and Intercom Fin cost, side by side?

Everything here is month-to-month, because that is the only cycle all three products publish on comparable terms — Fin's $0.99 per outcome carries no annual discount at all. Where an annual-commitment rate exists it is shown in the same cell and labelled.

Worth noting first: Chatbase's page loads on the Monthly tab, so the number you see is the true month-to-month rate. Intercom's loads on annual, so the card shows the annual-commitment rate, not what you would pay month to month.

Two footnotes that matter when comparing these numbers to other articles.

First, Intercom was running a live pricing experiment when this page was read: some visitors see Essential at $19 per seat/month billed annually, or $29 per seat/month month-to-month, under a "New customer offer: Save 35%" banner. The list price is $39 month-to-month / $29 billed annually. A lower number is a promotional variant, not the published rate.

Second, Intercom's annual discount is not uniform: Essential saves about 26% on an annual commitment, Advanced about 14%, Expert only about 5%. Intercom's own FAQ also says self-serve monthly billing is available on Essential and Advanced — so a $139 month-to-month Expert seat may not be purchasable without sales involvement, even though the figure is published.

How does each product meter you?

These three products do not sell the same unit, and the units are not interchangeable.

Chatbase sells message credits. In Chatbase's own words, "each request made to the AI model costs a certain number of message credits depending on your chosen model." Critically: "if you have any actions enabled, the agent might make multiple requests to the AI model to generate the response... that means a total of 2 requests and 2x the number of credits." So enabling AI Actions — one of the main reasons to buy Chatbase — can halve your effective allowance.

Intercom Fin sells outcomes. Intercom defines one as: "A customer confirms their issue is resolved, or they don't ask for more help after Fin responds, or Fin completes a workflow (Procedure), including handoffs. You're only charged once per conversation." That last clause is generous — a twelve-message back-and-forth is one $0.99 charge, not twelve.

Wallu sells AI replies on a flat monthly plan, with no credit or per-outcome meter on top.

The consequence: Chatbase's cost tracks your traffic, whether or not the bot helps anyone. Fin's tracks its own success rate — deflect 80% of the queue and you pay for 80%; deflect 20% and your humans absorb the rest. That different risk profile is the honest reason a support director might prefer Fin's higher unit price.

What does a 350-reply month actually cost?

Take a small business with roughly 350 AI replies a month — realistic for a site doing a few thousand visits a week.

Most articles compare "350 replies" to "350 outcomes," which is not fair to Intercom: a resolved conversation usually takes several replies. At about three replies per conversation, 350 replies is roughly 117 conversations.

Chatbase, month-to-month. With AI Actions off, 350 replies costs about 350 message credits — comfortably inside Hobby's 700. $40/month. With Actions enabled, the same 350 replies costs about 700 credits, which is *exactly* Hobby's allowance with zero headroom. Still $40/month, but one busy week tips you into auto-recharge at $40 per 1,000 credits.

Intercom Fin, month-to-month. If Fin resolves every one of those 117 conversations: 117 × $0.99 = $115.83/month. At a more realistic 70% resolution rate, about 82 outcomes = $81.18/month, which clears the ~50-outcome minimum. Below roughly 50 outcomes you pay the minimum anyway, giving Fin a floor near $49.50/month. Add a seat if you want the Intercom inbox rather than running Fin on an external helpdesk: $39 per seat/month month-to-month on Essential, so around $120/month all-in at this volume.

Wallu. $4.99/month flat, 350 AI replies included.

At this volume Chatbase is roughly 8× the cost of Wallu, and Fin — standalone at its minimum — about 10×. Even if Fin resolved every one of those 117 conversations, $115.83 is about 23× Wallu's $4.99. Fin only reaches roughly 70× at around 350 *resolved conversations* a month — about 1,050 replies, three times the volume modelled here. Chatbase is clearly the cheaper incumbent at small scale, and stays cheaper as you grow.

Step up to 2,000 AI replies a month. Chatbase Standard is $150/month month-to-month for 4,000 credits, covering 2,000 replies with Actions enabled or 4,000 without. Fin at roughly 667 conversations and a 70% resolution rate is about 467 outcomes, or $462/month, plus any seats. Wallu Pro is $49/month flat.

On raw meter cost Chatbase wins against Fin at every volume modelled here. That should be said plainly rather than hedged. What Fin charges for is not throughput — it is resolution quality and the helpdesk around it.

What does the fine print add that the pricing pages do not total?

Four ledger facts that change the real bill and that no article on this query currently publishes.

Chatbase credits expire on a calendar boundary, not your anniversary. From Chatbase: "Subscription credits renew at the beginning of each calendar month, and any unused credits do not carry over," and "if you subscribe on the 15th of March, your credits will be renewed on the 1st of April." Subscribe mid-month and you pay a full month for a partial month of credits. Time your signup for the 1st.

Chatbase's "20% off yearly" does not apply to add-ons. The plans discount — Hobby $40 → $32/month billed annually. The add-ons do not. An extra AI agent is $25/month or $300/year: exactly twelve times the monthly price. Removing "Powered By Chatbase" is $99/month or $1,188/year, again exactly twelve times. A budget assuming a blanket 20% will come in over on those lines.

Removing Chatbase's branding costs more than the product. At $99/month, white-labelling is nearly 2.5× the entire Hobby plan. An operator wanting an unbranded bot pays $40 + $99 = $139/month month-to-month — to the dollar, the price of a single Intercom Expert seat ($139 per seat/month month-to-month), which comes with SSO, HIPAA support, SLAs and a full helpdesk.

On Hobby, the top-up credit is cheaper than the included credit. Hobby's 700 credits for $40/month is about $0.057 per credit. Auto-recharge credits cost $40 per 1,000 — about $0.040 each — and unlike plan credits they do not expire. Auto-recharge is sold in 1,000-credit blocks, so the rungs are discrete: Hobby plus one block is 1,700 credits for $80/month, plus two blocks is 2,700 credits for $120/month. A third block puts you at $160/month — past Standard's $150 — so 2,700 credits a month is the last point at which Hobby plus top-ups beats Standard month-to-month. You give up Standard's API, Helpdesk, voice, telephony and extra Actions to get there, so it is not a free win, but nobody is modelling it.

On the free tier: Chatbase's $0 plan gives 50 credits a month, but "AI agents get deleted after 14 days of inactivity on the free plan" — a trial in everything but name. Intercom has no free plan at all, just a 14-day trial requiring no credit card that includes "all features, Fin, and add-ons."

Where does Chatbase genuinely win?

Time to live. Point Chatbase at a URL or upload a document and you have an answering agent in minutes. Nothing in Intercom's stack is that fast, because Intercom provisions a helpdesk, not a bot.

Model choice. Chatbase lets you pick the underlying model and shows the credit cost of that choice. Fin does not expose this — you get Intercom's model selection and Intercom's per-outcome price.

AI Actions and a real API. Five Actions per agent on Hobby, eight on Standard, twelve on Pro, with API access from Standard up. If you want the agent to *do* something — look up an order, hit an internal endpoint — Chatbase gives you that on a $150/month month-to-month plan.

Voice and telephony without a sales call. Standard includes Voice, Telephony, outbound campaigns and 10 concurrent calls at $150/month month-to-month. Comparable voice coverage through Intercom is not a self-serve purchase.

An honest pricing toggle. Chatbase's page opens on Monthly; Intercom's on annual. A buyer skimming Intercom's cards reads $29, budgets for it, then gets quoted $39 month-to-month — the single most common error in the write-ups on this query.

Where does Intercom Fin genuinely win?

You only pay when it works. This is the strongest argument in the comparison, and it is not marketing. If Fin fails to resolve a conversation you are not billed; Chatbase bills for the attempt regardless. For a team that cannot tolerate paying for a bot that annoys customers, that alignment is worth real money.

It lives inside a helpdesk. Essential at $39 per seat/month month-to-month includes a shared inbox, a full ticketing system, pre-built reports and a public help centre. Advanced at $99 per seat/month month-to-month ($85 per seat/month billed annually) adds a Workflows automation builder, multiple team inboxes, round robin assignment and 20 free Lite seats. Chatbase lists a Helpdesk from Standard ($150/month month-to-month) up — on Hobby there is no inbox for a conversation to escalate into.

Escalation is a first-class concept. Fin's own outcome definition counts handoffs — passing a conversation to a human is a designed path, not an integration you bolt on.

It runs on someone else's helpdesk. Standalone Fin needs no Intercom seats — point it at Salesforce or another existing stack for $0.99 per outcome with no setup, integration or platform fees. "Adopt Fin" need not mean "migrate to Intercom."

Enterprise tooling exists, and is priced. Expert at $139 per seat/month month-to-month brings SSO and identity management, HIPAA support, SLAs, multibrand Messenger and 50 free Lite seats. Chatbase puts the equivalent — SSO, audit logs, white-labelling, zero data retention, HIPAA eligibility — behind an unpublished Enterprise quote. Intercom also includes 20 free Lite seats on Advanced and 50 on Expert for internal collaborators, which changes the seat maths considerably if half your company needs to read a thread.

So which one should you buy?

• A marketing site that wants a bot answering FAQs by Friday: Chatbase Hobby, $40/month month-to-month. Sign up on the 1st.
• An agent that must call an API or complete a transaction: Chatbase Standard, $150/month month-to-month, for API access and eight AI Actions.
• You have a helpdesk already and want AI to close tickets in it: Fin standalone at $0.99 per outcome. No migration, no seats, ~50-outcome minimum.
• A support team of three or more with no helpdesk yet: Intercom Essential at $39 per seat/month month-to-month plus $0.99 per outcome. You are buying the inbox as much as the AI.
• SSO, SLAs or HIPAA needed today: Intercom Expert. Chatbase's equivalent tier is not publicly priced.
• Low, predictable volume and one number on the invoice: neither, on price — see below.

Where Wallu fits as a third option

Wallu is the flat-priced answer to the same problem: from $4.99/month for 350 AI replies, across eight channels — Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, Slack, email and the web widget among them — with human handover included and a knowledge-base-only mode that stops the AI answering from anything you have not given it. Wallu Pro is $49/month flat. No credit meter and no per-outcome meter.

The arithmetic is straightforward. At 350 replies a month, Wallu is about one-eighth the cost of Chatbase Hobby month-to-month and roughly a tenth of Fin's standalone floor. Further up our ladder — $9.99, $19, then $49/month flat — Wallu Pro at $49/month flat sits against Chatbase Standard at $150/month month-to-month.

Now the concessions, because you should not buy on a partial picture.

Wallu has no free tier. Chatbase does, at $0/month with 50 credits — genuinely useful for evaluation, even with the 14-day inactivity deletion. What Wallu offers instead is a 7-day trial on the $4.99 Mini plan, and nothing beyond it. The entry price is low, but it is not zero, and there is no plan you can sit on indefinitely without paying.

The ecosystem is smaller. Chatbase publishes advanced integrations including Stripe and Zendesk, an API from Standard up, and model selection. Intercom has a marketplace, a Workflows builder and a decade of third-party tooling. If your list starts with "must integrate with," check before switching — WooCommerce, for instance, is on Wallu Pro, not the entry plan.

There is no enterprise tooling. No SSO, SLAs, HIPAA eligibility, audit logs, white-label contract or dedicated success manager. Intercom Expert has all of it at $139 per seat/month month-to-month; Chatbase Enterprise at an unpublished price. If procurement will ask for a DPA and a security review, Wallu is not the right shortlist.

No voice or telephony, and no full ticketing system. Chatbase Standard includes voice and telephony; Intercom includes ticketing, seats and reporting. Wallu answers and hands over to a human — that is the scope.

Wallu is the right choice when your volume is modest, your channels are plural, and you want the bill to be the same number every month. It is the wrong choice when you are buying a support platform rather than a support answer.

Frequently asked questions

Is Chatbase cheaper than Intercom Fin?

On the meter, yes, at every volume modelled here. Chatbase Hobby is $40/month month-to-month for 700 message credits, roughly $0.057 each. Fin is $0.99 per resolved outcome with a ~50-outcome monthly minimum, a floor near $49.50/month. The gap widens with volume: at about 2,000 AI replies a month, Chatbase Standard is $150/month month-to-month while Fin at a 70% resolution rate is roughly $462/month. Fin's higher price buys resolution quality and a helpdesk, not throughput.

Does Chatbase have a free plan?

Yes — $0/month with 50 message credits per month, one agent, zero AI Actions and 1 MB of training content. The catch is stated on the pricing page: "AI agents get deleted after 14 days of inactivity on the free plan." Intercom has no free plan; it offers a 14-day trial requiring no credit card that includes all features, Fin and add-ons.

What is an Intercom Fin outcome and when are you charged?

Intercom's definition: "A customer confirms their issue is resolved, or they don't ask for more help after Fin responds, or Fin completes a workflow (Procedure), including handoffs. You're only charged once per conversation." So a long multi-message thread bills once, at $0.99, and only if it reaches one of those endings. There is no annual discount on outcomes.

Do Chatbase message credits roll over?

Plan credits do not: "Subscription credits renew at the beginning of each calendar month, and any unused credits do not carry over." The reset is calendar-based rather than anniversary-based — subscribe on 15 March and credits renew on 1 April. Auto-recharge credits, bought at $40 per 1,000, are the exception: those "do not expire and are always available."

How much does it cost to remove the Chatbase branding?

$99/month, or $1,188/year — exactly twelve times the monthly rate, because Chatbase's 20% annual discount applies to plans but not to add-ons. On top of Hobby that is $139/month month-to-month for an unbranded single-agent bot.

Chatbase vs Intercom: which one has a live chat inbox?

Intercom, on every plan — Essential at $39 per seat/month month-to-month includes a shared inbox and ticketing system. Chatbase lists a Helpdesk from Standard ($150/month month-to-month) up; on Free and Hobby there is no inbox, so a conversation the bot cannot handle has to be captured as an email or passed to an external tool.

Can I use Intercom Fin without buying Intercom?

Yes. Fin is sold standalone at $0.99 per outcome with "no seats required," set up on an existing helpdesk such as Salesforce, with no setup, integration or platform fees. A minimum monthly commitment applies — the published example is 50 outcomes.

What is the cheapest alternative to Chatbase and Intercom Fin?

For low, predictable volume a flat plan beats both meters. Wallu starts at $4.99/month flat for 350 AI replies across eight channels with human handover included, and steps up at $9.99, $19 and $49/month — all flat, all month-to-month. The trade-offs are real: no free tier, a smaller integration ecosystem than either incumbent, and no enterprise tooling. If you need SSO, SLAs or HIPAA, Intercom Expert at $139 per seat/month month-to-month is the honest answer.

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*Prices read 3 September 2026 from chatbase.co/pricing, intercom.com/pricing and wallu.ai/pricing. Vendors change pricing often — verify before you buy, and check which billing cycle the toggle is on.*