Botpress is a cloud platform for building AI agents: a visual Studio, LLM-driven steps the docs call Autonomous Nodes, a code SDK and, since May 2026, its own helpdesk called Desk. It is built for support teams that have someone technical on hand. Workspaces created after May 14, 2026 pay a flat plan fee for a monthly conversation allowance, and extra conversations are bought automatically in packs of 100.
Bottom line
- Best for: Support teams with a developer on hand that want agent building and a helpdesk in one tool
- Not for: Small sites on a tight budget, and anyone who needs self-hosting or EU data hosting without an Enterprise contract
- Paid plans from: US$150 per month
- The catch: On paid plans you cannot switch off overage: at 95% of your allowance Botpress buys a pack of 100 conversations for you, and that pack stays on the bill every month until you remove it.
Score breakdown
Botpress scores 8.0 out of 10 on rubric v1.0. The rubric rates what can be verified from public documentation, not how well a bot built on it performs.
Plan prices and allowances are public and the metered unit is defined in writing, but one material part of the bill (AI usage, overage or a required add-on) is priced only on request or passed through at a variable cost.
A permanent free plan, but it cannot run a live bot in practice (no publishing, no AI, or a cap too low for a small site).
Everything in level 3, plus custom code or an SDK, a test emulator and versioning or environments.
Website, WhatsApp and at least one Meta channel, with a built-in inbox or documented help-desk handoff.
A DPA, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, a public sub-processor list and named-customer case studies with figures.
Key facts
- Vendor
- Botpress Technologies Inc. · Montreal, Canada
- Type of tool
- Agent-building platform
- Pricing model
- Plan plus usage meter
- Paid plans from
- US$150 per month
- What the bill grows with
- conversations
- Free plan
- Yes
- Free trial
- No
- Self-serve sign-up
- Yes
- Visual flow builder
- Yes
- Extensible with code
- Yes
- Choose or bring your own AI model
- Partly
- Bot export
- Partly
- Self-hosting
- No
- Built-in inbox for human handoff
- Yes
- Channels
- Website widget, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, SMS, Email, Slack, Voice
- Languages
- Not documented · German: Partly · Spanish: Partly
- EU data hosting
- Partly
- Compliance
- SOC 2 Type II, GDPR DPA, HIPAA BAA (Enterprise), EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, KPMG penetration test
- Integrations
- Zendesk, Intercom, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, Slack, Google Sheets, Notion
- Named customers
- Super Dispatch, Extendly, VR Bank, Waiver Group, hostifAI, Fromages d'ici
What the documentation supports
- The pricing page defines a conversation in writing and prints the pack price for each paid plan, so the cost beyond the allowance can be worked out in advance.
- AI usage is bundled into new plans: each included conversation carries US$0.10 of LLM cost, which adds up to US$25 on Plus and US$150 on Team.
- The documentation describes a visual Studio plus JavaScript, an SDK, a code-first framework called ADK and REST APIs, so a developer is not boxed in by the flow editor.
- New workspaces get Botpress Desk, a built-in helpdesk, so handing a chat to a person does not need a second tool.
- Paid plans are never cut off at the limit, and Team includes unlimited seats.
What to watch
- The entry paid plan costs US$150 a month on annual billing for 250 conversations; the legacy Plus plan was US$89 a month plus AI usage.
- Conversation packs are bought automatically, cannot be turned off and recur monthly, and unused pack conversations expire at month end.
- Test conversations in the emulator count towards the billed allowance, according to the pricing page.
- Botpress is no longer open source or self-hostable: the documentation says v12 and all self-hosted versions are sunset.
- Data is processed in the United States unless otherwise stated, and custom data residency, voice, audit logs and agent import and export all sit in the Enterprise column of the plan table.
What you can build
Botpress Studio is a visual flow builder, and the documentation adds Autonomous Nodes, which are steps where an LLM decides what to do next. Knowledge bases can be filled from websites, with scheduled re-crawls, from documents of up to 50 MB each, and from tables. For code, the docs describe JavaScript inside Studio, an SDK for custom integrations, a code-first framework called ADK, REST APIs and webhooks. There is a test emulator, and versions are saved manually and on every publish; the docs still quote the legacy limits of 3 saved versions on pay-as-you-go and 15 on Team. Model choice is partly documented: connecting your own LLM through the SDK is an Enterprise feature, and the public list of supported models could not be read from the vendor's page. Export is where the pages disagree. The documentation describes exporting a whole bot from Studio as a .bpz archive, a Botpress-only format that is not meant to be opened or edited, with imports limited to 120 MB and bots of around 3 GB or more not exportable. The current plan table, however, lists importing and exporting agents between workspaces under Enterprise only. For handoff to a person, new workspaces use Botpress Desk, the built-in helpdesk, which can also connect to Zendesk or Intercom. Legacy workspaces keep the older HITL integration, which the docs say needs Plus or higher. Self-hosting is gone; if that is a requirement, see open-source and developer tools.
Pricing
Botpress changed its pricing on May 14, 2026, and the announcement says the new prices apply only to workspaces created after that date. The pricing page lists four plans. Free costs US$0 and includes 25 conversations, 3 seats and 3 AI agents. Plus is US$150 a month billed annually, with 250 conversations a month, 3 seats and US$25 of AI usage. Team is US$750 a month billed annually, with 1,500 conversations a month, unlimited seats and US$150 of AI usage. Enterprise is a custom quote. These are annual-billing prices: the page advertises a 20% saving for paying annually, but the monthly-billing prices sit behind a toggle that could not be read, so every table on this site uses the annual-billing figure for Botpress. Extra conversations come in packs of 100: US$65 on Plus, which the page works out as US$0.65 per conversation, and US$50 on Team, or US$0.50 per conversation. A storage add-on costs US$40 a month on Plus and Team. A managed service called Built For You was announced at US$1,650 a month, but the live page now says only "Contact us". Workspaces created on or before May 14, 2026 keep the legacy price book, which bills incoming messages instead of conversations: a free pay-as-you-go tier with 500 incoming messages and events a month, Plus at US$89 a month (US$79 billed annually) with 5,000, and Team at US$495 a month (US$445 billed annually) with 50,000, each plus AI usage at provider cost. For how this compares with other vendors, see chatbot pricing models.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | Included each month | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | US$0 per month | US$0 per month | 25 conversations | Source |
| Plus | US$150 per month | US$150 per month | 250 conversations | Source |
| Team | US$750 per month | US$750 per month | 1,500 conversations | Source |
| Enterprise | Custom quote | — | — | — |
Botpress pricing explained · What counts as a conversation in chatbot pricing?
What the free plan really allows
The Free plan is permanent and the home page says no credit card is required. The pricing page lists 25 conversations, 3 seats, 3 AI agents, 1,000 table rows, 100 MB of vector storage and 100 MB of file storage, with webchat and WhatsApp shown as channels on every plan. Botpress's own pages disagree on the allowance: the May 2026 announcement lists 100 conversations for Free, while the live pricing page lists 25. We use the pricing-page figure. The Free plan excludes conversation packs and top-ups, AI credit grants, storage add-ons, white-label webchat and live-chat support. Because emulator tests count as conversations, the pricing-page allowance is enough to try the builder but too small to run a bot on a live site for a month.
Claims and who backs them
| Figure | Source | Who says so |
|---|---|---|
| 66% | Super Dispatch | Named customer |
| 30% | Extendly | Named customer |
| 75% | hostifAI | Named customer |
Botpress does not publish a headline resolution-rate promise. Its marketing claims are about scale: 750,000 AI agents built, and more than 1,000,000 users in over 180 countries. The home page also carries a cost calculator that puts Botpress at US$9,000 a year against US$34,500 for Zendesk and US$25,500 for Intercom; that is the vendor's own arithmetic and nothing independent confirms it. The named-customer figures come from case studies that Botpress publishes itself. Super Dispatch reports its AI resolution rate rising from 21% to 66%, more than 7,300 conversations in the first 90 days, a satisfaction score of 89.5% and a cost of US$0.67 per resolution. Extendly reports going from 5% of chats resolved by AI to more than 30%, with human-handled chat volume down 30%. hostifAI reports that 75% of conversations end without a transfer to a person. Each customer defines its own metric, so the numbers are not comparable with each other; containment rate explained covers why. We found no independent measurement of Botpress's performance.
Verdict
Pick Botpress if you have a developer, want to build agents that call your own systems, and like the idea of the helpdesk living in the same product. The billing unit is defined clearly, but the entry price is high for the volume included, and the automatic, recurring conversation packs mean the bill needs watching. Small sites should look elsewhere: the Free plan on the pricing page is too small to run live, and the first paid step is US$150 a month on annual billing. Teams that chose Botpress because it was open source should know that option no longer exists, and teams that need EU data hosting will have to negotiate it on Enterprise.
Related pages
- Botpress pricing explainedpricing
- The best Botpress alternativesalternatives
- Botpress vs Voiceflowvs
- Botpress vs Typebotvs
Frequently asked questions
Is Botpress free?
Botpress has a permanent Free plan that needs no credit card. The pricing page lists 25 conversations a month, 3 seats and 3 AI agents, with no top-ups once the allowance is used. Botpress's May 2026 announcement lists 100 conversations instead, so the vendor's own pages disagree. Test conversations in the emulator count towards the allowance.
How much does Botpress cost?
For workspaces created after May 14, 2026, Botpress Plus costs US$150 a month billed annually with 250 conversations, and Team costs US$750 a month billed annually with 1,500 conversations. Extra conversations are bought automatically in packs of 100, at US$65 on Plus and US$50 on Team, and this cannot be switched off. Enterprise is a custom quote. Older workspaces keep the legacy message-based prices. The full breakdown is on our Botpress pricing page.
Is Botpress still open source, and can I self-host it?
No. The Botpress documentation says v12 and all self-hosted versions have been sunset and are no longer available for download, purchase or new deployments. New users are directed to Botpress Cloud. Articles that list Botpress as an open-source chatbot builder are out of date.
Does Botpress host data in the EU?
Not by default. The Botpress Data Processing Agreement says all data is processed in the United States unless otherwise stated, and we found no published EU hosting region. The plan table lists custom data retention and residency policies as an Enterprise-only feature, so EU residency would have to be agreed with sales. Botpress states that it participates in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
Can I export my bot from Botpress?
Botpress's pages disagree on this. The documentation describes exporting a whole bot from Studio as a .bpz archive, a Botpress-specific format that is not meant to be opened or edited. The current plan table lists importing and exporting agents between workspaces as Enterprise-only. Either way, the export is only useful for moving a bot into another Botpress workspace, not into a different tool.
Sources
- Botpress pricing — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Pricing update, May 2026 — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Botpress pricing (archived 10 April 2026) — Botpress, via the Internet Archive · 18 September 2026
- Botpress home page — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Botpress Desk — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Botpress Enterprise — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Configure your workspace — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Botpress Academy: AI Spend — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Use your own LLM — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Knowledge Base: add sources — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Versions — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Import and export bots — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Human handoff — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- HITL integration: introduction — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Translator Agent — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Botpress documentation index (llms.txt) — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Botpress v12 sunset notice — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Data Processing Agreement — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Privacy statement — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Customer story: Super Dispatch — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Customer story: Extendly — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Customer story: hostifAI — Botpress · 18 September 2026
- Botpress Raises $25M Series B to Scale AI Agent Infrastructure — Botpress, via GlobeNewswire · 18 September 2026
Researched and drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed on this page. We have not built or tested bots on these platforms yet. Method: How we review