Most businesses ask the same two questions before adding a chatbot: what will it cost to build, and what will it cost every month after that? Here are realistic ranges for India in 2026, what moves the price, and how to keep the running bill small.
AI chatbot cost at a glance
All figures are indicative ranges, not a quote. They come from the same model as our website cost calculator and app cost calculator.
| What you build | What it includes | Indicative build cost | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website FAQ or lead bot | Chat widget on your existing site, answers from your FAQs, captures name and phone, sends leads to email or CRM | ₹15,000 – ₹60,000 | 1–2 weeks |
| WhatsApp chatbot | Bot on the WhatsApp Business API with menus, AI answers and hand-off to a person | ₹15,000 – ₹60,000, plus Meta's fees | 1–2 weeks |
| Custom chatbot portal | Bot trained on your documents, with logins, chat history, an admin panel and reports | ₹65,000 – ₹1.6 lakh | 3–5 weeks |
| AI assistant inside a mobile app | Chat, recommendations or support built into your Android and iOS app | Adds ₹2 – ₹6 lakh to the app | With the app build |
Most small and mid-sized businesses start with a website or WhatsApp bot that answers the top 20 questions and passes everything else to a person. That alone can take a large share of repeat queries off your team.
What changes the price
- Where the bot lives. One channel is cheapest. Website plus WhatsApp plus app means more testing and more hand-off rules.
- Scripted or AI. A menu-based bot is simple. An AI bot that reads your documents needs a knowledge base, retrieval and guardrails so it does not invent answers.
- Actions, not just answers. Checking an order, booking an appointment or creating a CRM lead means connecting to your systems, and each integration adds cost. See what API integration involves.
- Languages. Hindi plus English, or regional languages, adds content and testing time.
- Human hand-off. Routing a chat to a live agent with the full conversation is worth it, but it adds a dashboard and notification logic.
- Reports. Tracking resolved chats, missed questions and leads helps you improve the bot every month.
Running costs after launch
Plan for these from day one, because they recur every month:
- AI usage. AI models bill per amount of text processed, so the cost scales with the number and length of chats. A bot that answers short FAQs costs far less than one that reads long documents for every reply.
- WhatsApp fees. Meta charges per conversation or template message for business messaging. Our guide to WhatsApp Business API pricing in India explains the current model.
- Hosting for the chatbot backend, knowledge base and chat history.
- Maintenance. Prices, policies and FAQs change, and the bot's answers must change with them. For a web build we estimate maintenance at roughly 10–20% of the build cost a year.
Ready-made chatbot tool or custom build?
| Option | Upfront cost | Monthly cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ready-made chatbot tool | Low | Subscription per seat or per chat | Testing a simple FAQ bot quickly |
| Custom chatbot | Higher | AI usage and hosting only | Your own data, your own rules, deep integrations, no per-seat fee |
A ready-made tool is a fair way to test whether customers use a bot at all. A custom build makes sense once the bot has to act on your own systems, follow your business rules, or handle enough chats that per-seat pricing gets expensive.
How to keep the cost down
- Start with one channel and one job, such as answering FAQs or capturing leads.
- Write down your top 20 questions and answers before development starts; good content does more for answer quality than any feature.
- Add a human hand-off from day one instead of trying to automate every edge case.
- Agree a fixed price for a fixed scope. Read fixed price vs time and materials to choose the model.
For use cases and a safe rollout plan, read our AI chatbot guide for business, and for the build steps, how to build a chatbot for your website.
Get a written quote
We build website, WhatsApp and in-app chatbots as part of our AI and automation services. Tell us what you want the bot to do and we will send a free, written quote with the scope, timeline and price.
