By SupportHQ Team · September 29, 2026 · Getting started
Chatbase vs SupportHQ: Which One Should a Support Team Pick?
Chatbase and SupportHQ look similar from the outside. Both train an AI on your files and your website, both put a chat widget on your site, and both answer customer questions around the clock.
The difference is where each product starts. Chatbase starts from the bot and adds support features on higher plans. SupportHQ starts from the support workflow: the agent, the shared inbox, and handoff to a person are all in the first plan. That one difference decides most of the comparison below.
This post is the decision walkthrough. If you want the full feature table, it is on our Chatbase alternative page. Chatbase prices below are from chatbase.co/pricing as of September 13, 2026.
The short answer
Pick Chatbase if your customers write to you on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, or in Slack today, you want to swap models and tune prompts yourself, or you want a free bot on a low-traffic site with no human inbox behind it.
Pick SupportHQ if you run a support team, you need human handoff on the cheapest plan, your customers are on Telegram or Discord as well as your website, or you want a bill that stays the same in a busy month.
If neither line describes you, the worked pricing example below is the fastest way to decide.
What each one is built around
Chatbase is a chatbot builder. You create an agent, feed it content, pick a model, and deploy it to a channel. The helpdesk, where AI and humans work the same conversation, is a feature of the Standard plan. Voice, telephony, and outbound campaigns arrive on the same tier. The design goal is a capable bot that can be extended into a support tool.
SupportHQ is an AI support agent with an inbox attached. Every conversation from the widget, Telegram, and Discord lands in one unified inbox. The agent answers what it can from approved content, and when it should not answer, it escalates on its own with a written reason, an urgency level, and a summary of the thread. A person picks it up with the full context, and the agent goes quiet the moment a human replies. The design goal is a support workflow that happens to be mostly automated.
Our post on AI agents versus chatbots explains that split in more depth. For this comparison, the practical result is: on Chatbase, the support workflow is something you build up to. On SupportHQ, it is the starting point.
Pricing at real volume: a worked example
Pricing pages show the entry price. Support teams pay for the plan they actually need. Here is a concrete example:
- About 1,500 customer conversations a month, most of them on the website
- 4 people who need to see and answer conversations
- Human handoff required, because billing and account questions cannot be left to the bot
On Chatbase. Handoff needs the helpdesk, which is on Standard ($150/month) or above. Standard includes 3 seats. The pricing page we checked on September 13, 2026 sells add-ons for extra credits, extra AI agents, and branding removal, but not extra seats, so a fourth person in the inbox means Pro ($500/month, 5 seats). Confirm that with Chatbase before you budget, because the $500 figure depends on it. Message credits are the second meter. If the bot sends about 3 replies per conversation and each reply costs 1 credit, 1,500 conversations use about 4,500 credits. That is more than the 4,000 on Standard, and auto-recharge sells 1,000 more for $40. Premium models cost more credits per reply, so the real number can be higher.
On SupportHQ. Starter is $29/month. It includes 2,000 conversations a month, counted per conversation regardless of message count or model, and unlimited team members. Handoff is included. The 4-person team fits with room to grow.
| Chatbase | SupportHQ | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan that includes handoff | Standard, $150/mo | Starter, $29/mo |
| Plan that fits 4 people | Pro, $500/mo | Starter, $29/mo |
| Usage included | 4,000 credits (Standard) or 15,000 (Pro) | 2,000 conversations |
| Estimated usage at 1,500 conversations | About 4,500 credits at 1 credit per reply | 1,500 conversations |
| Overage | $40 per 1,000 credits (on Standard) | None within 2,000 |
| Monthly total for this team | $500 on Pro, or $190 on Standard with one person left out | $29 |
On annual billing, Chatbase Standard is $120 a month and Pro is $400 a month. SupportHQ Starter is $290 a year, about $24 a month.
Three honest caveats. First, if your team is 2 people and your bot sends short replies on an economy model, Standard at $150 covers you on Chatbase and the gap is $121 a month, not $471. Second, Pro is not only a fourth seat. It also raises credits from 4,000 to 15,000 and training content from 20 MB to 40 MB, so a team that expects to grow into that volume is buying headroom, not just a seat. Third, SupportHQ Starter caps at 2,000 conversations and 5 projects. Above either, Growth is $49/month for 3,000 conversations and unlimited projects, and higher volumes are a custom plan. Our AI support pricing page has the full breakdown.
The pattern holds at most sizes: the Chatbase bill moves with seats, message count, and model choice. The SupportHQ bill moves only with conversation count, in two steps.
Human handoff
Both products can get a person into a conversation. They do it differently.
Chatbase. The helpdesk on Standard and above lets an agent take over a conversation. Takeover is person-initiated: someone on your team watches the inbox and steps in. On Free and Hobby, there is no built-in handoff.
SupportHQ. The agent decides. When a question is outside its content or needs a person, it escalates on its own and writes down why, how urgent it is, and what has been said so far. Your team gets notified by email, Telegram, or SMS. Anyone on the team can reply, and the agent stops answering in that thread as soon as a person does.
Handoff that depends on someone watching a screen works during business hours and fails at 2 a.m. Handoff that the agent triggers works whenever the question arrives. We wrote a longer piece on human handoff workflows, and the human handoff page shows what the escalation looks like in the inbox.
Channels
Chatbase covers more channels than SupportHQ.
Chatbase deploys to the website, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, Slack, and email, with voice and telephony on Standard and above. If your customers write to you on Meta channels or your internal users live in Slack, Chatbase covers it today.
SupportHQ covers the website widget, Telegram, and Discord. Telegram and Discord are native: the agent works in direct chats, in groups, and in servers, and you can give it plain-English rules for when to stay quiet in a busy channel. WhatsApp is coming soon and is not available today. There is no Messenger, Instagram, or Slack.
So the channel question is simple. Meta channels or Slack: Chatbase. Telegram or Discord: SupportHQ. Website only: either, and the rest of this post decides. Our guide to running an AI support agent on Telegram shows what the Telegram setup looks like.
Knowledge and grounding
Both products answer from your content rather than from general internet knowledge, and both let you upload files and sync a website.
Chatbase caps training content by plan: 1 MB on Free, 10 MB on Hobby, 20 MB on Standard, 40 MB on Pro. That is enough for most FAQ sets and thin for a large documentation site. You choose the model per agent, and premium models cost more credits per reply.
SupportHQ takes files, a synced website, articles you write directly, and past conversations your team has answered. The last source is the one Chatbase does not have: when a person resolves a question the agent could not, that answer can become knowledge for next time. A snapshot of the system instructions is stored with every reply, so the exact instruction set behind any answer is on record. The agent is set to say “I do not know” and escalate rather than guess. Our post on preventing AI hallucinations in support covers why that default matters.
If you want to pick and tune models yourself, Chatbase gives you more knobs. If you want the agent to be safe by default and learn from your team’s answers, SupportHQ is built for that.
Free plan and trial
Chatbase has a free plan: 50 message credits a month, 1 agent, 1 seat. Agents on the free plan are deleted after 14 days of inactivity, so it works as a test, not as a parked bot. Hobby and Standard offer a 7-day trial.
SupportHQ has no free plan. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial, a card is required, and you are not charged if you cancel before the trial ends. A 14-day refund window applies after that.
If you want to leave a bot running for free at very low volume, Chatbase is the only option of the two.
Where SupportHQ fits
Chatbase is a good chatbot builder, and for a bot on WhatsApp or Messenger with no team behind it, it is the right pick. SupportHQ is for the other case: a small team that needs the agent, the inbox, and handoff with context from day one, on the website, Telegram, and Discord, at a price that does not move with message count.
The full feature table is on the Chatbase alternative page, and our list of Chatbase alternatives covers six other tools in detail if neither of these fits. Check pricing, or start your free trial and run your last 50 real questions through it this week.