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What Is The Best AI Chatbot? 21Top Picks of 2025
Monday January 6, 2025. 10:30 PM , from eWeek
Top AI Chatbot Software Comparison The following chart shows at a glance how the top AI chatbot software we evaluated compares on features, query limit, language model, and price—as well as whether the vendor provides a Chrome extension to improve ease of use—to help you determine the best option for your needs. Best For Use Case Query Limit Language Model(s) Vendor Chrome Extension Starting Price Freshchat Automating self-service 500 Freshbots sessions Freddy AI, Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service No $23 per agent, per month Crisp Chatbot Lead nurturing Unlimited Proprietary LLM model No $25 per month, per workspace ChatGPT Versatility and advanced generative AI chat features 50 messages every three hours for GPT-4 model GPT-3.5, GPT-4 No $20 per month Kommunicate e-Commerce businesses N/A GPT-4 No $100 per month Claude Long conversation memory 45 messages every five hours Claude 3 No Free ChatSpot HubSpot customers N/A GPT-3, GPT-4 No Free Intercom Handling support queries Unlimited; charges per resolution GPT-4 No $39 per seat, per month Google Gemini Brainstorming ideas Unlimited exchanges per conversation Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2) No Free Jasper Marketing and sales teams Word limit depends on the plan GPT-3.5, GPT-4 Yes $49 per month Tidio Small and medium businesses Word limit depends on the plan Claude (Anthropic AI) No $25 per user, per month Perplexity AI Finding information on the internet Five copilot searches every four hours for free users GPT-3.5, Claude 2, GPT-4, Yes $20 per month LivePerson Conversation analytics N/A Unknown No Available upon request Chatsonic Individuals in creative fields Word limit depends on the plan GPT-3.5, GPT-4 Yes $20 per month Poe Testing multiple AI chatbots 2,000 requests per hour GPT-4, Gemini, Claude 3, Llama 2 No Free Drift Businesses that rely on B2B sales and marketing Unlimited GPT No $2,500 per month, billed annually Ada Customer service automation N/A Unknown No Available upon request YouChat Students and researchers Unlimited GPT-3, GPT-4 Yes $6.99 per month HuggingChat Developers Unlimited Llama 2 No $9 per month Replika Personal use 500 messages per month or about 17 per day GPT-3, GPT-4 No $19.99 per month Bing Chat Enterprise Organizations in the Microsoft ecosystem 30 responses per conversation GPT-4 No $5 per month OpenAI Playground Customizability 200 requests per day for free users GPT-3.5, GPT-4 No $0.0015 per 1K tokens TABLE OF CONTENTS ToggleTop AI Chatbot Software ComparisonFreshchat: Best for Automating Self-ServiceCrisp Chatbot: Best for Lead NurturingChatGPT: Best Chatbot for Versatility and Advanced Generative AI Chat FeaturesKommunicate: Best for e-Commerce BusinessesClaude: Best Chatbot for Long Conversational MemoryChatSpot: Best for HubSpot CustomersIntercom: Best for Handling Support QueriesGoogle Gemini: Best Chatbot for Brainstorming IdeasJasper: Best Chatbot for Marketing and Sales TeamsTidio: Best for Small and Medium-Sized BusinessesPerplexity AI: Best Chatbot for Finding Information on the InternetLivePerson: Best for Conversation AnalyticsChatsonic: Best Chatbot for Individuals in the Creative IndustriesPoe: Best Chatbot for Testing Multiple AI ChatbotsDrift: Best for Businesses that Rely on B2B Sales and MarketingAda: Best for Customer Service AutomationYouChat: Best Chatbot for StudentsHuggingChat: Best Chatbot for DevelopersReplika: Best for Personal UseBing Chat Enterprise: Best Chatbot for Organizations in the Microsoft EcosystemOpenAI Playground: Best Chatbot for CustomizabilityKey Features of AI Chatbots?How to Choose the Best AI Chatbot For Your BusinessAI Chatbots: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)How We Evaluated the Best AI ChatbotsBottom Line: Today’s Top AI Chatbots Take Highly Varied Approaches Freshchat: Best for Automating Self-Service Overall Rating: 4.6 Freshchat enables businesses to automate customer interactions through chatbots and also offers live chat capabilities for real-time customer support. It allows companies to manage and streamline customer conversations across various channels and an array of integrated apps. Freshchat provides features like customizable chat widgets, agent collaboration, customer context, and analytics to track chat performance and customer satisfaction. What distinguishes Freshchat is that it enables sales and marketing—and even support teams—to not only reach customers but to scale those interactions so that the expertise of each live company staffer can be used to converse with many customers. It does this using its unified agent workspace—which holds a full menu of past conversations—as well as responses from sales, marketing, and support, which an agent can quickly and easily share with an interested customer. What I found most interesting was that the app has a “Freddy Insights” tool that provides key trends and insights that can be fed into a conversation at opportune moments to prompt a faster decision. Pricing Free: Up to 10 agents Growth: $23 per agent, per month, or $228 per agent billed annually Pro: $59 per agent, per month, or $588 per agent billed annually Enterprise: $95 per agent, per month, or $948 billed annually Pros and Cons Pros Cons Load balanced auto-assignment based on team member skill Some users report occasional bugs Team performance and agent availability report The notification system could be improved Why I Chose Freshchat I chose Freshchat because of its chatbot analytics and canned responses, which make it an intuitive chatbot that can be easily used. Its customer satisfaction survey and report make it easier for users to create data analytics and reports. In addition, its multi-channel communication can be integrated with other applications, such as CRM applications, email accounts, and payment channels. Visit Freshchat Crisp Chatbot: Best for Lead Nurturing Overall Rating: 4.6 Crisp Chatbot uses artificial intelligence to understand user queries and provide relevant responses. It can handle basic inquiries, provide product information, schedule appointments, and collect customer feedback. In a growing trend across the AI chatbot sector, the Crisp Chatbot can be customized to match a business’s branding and tone. This is increasingly important in crowded markets where a number of companies are seeking to create a distinct brand to cut through the clutter. In my conversations with Crispchat, I found the bot extremely helpful in answering my questions. When I asked whether it was good for small businesses, it answered in the affirmative and gave me two salient reasons why—24/7 support and ease of use—while also explaining the positive impact these would have on my company’s customer experience. Pricing Free: 14-day trial Basic: Free forever for two seats Pro: $25 per month, per workspace for up to four seats Unlimited: $95 per month, per workspace for up to 20 seats Enterprise: Contact for a custom quote Pros and Cons Pros Cons Responsive customer service team The free plan lacks integration with email, Slack, and Messenger Website chat widget Basic and Pro plans offer limited chatbot capabilities Why I Chose Crisp ChatBot Crisp ChatBot made it to my list because of its integration with popular social media messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, and Instagram. Sending multilingual messages improves contact with a worldwide audience and its conversation rerouting features guarantee effective management of client inquiries. The MagicReply feature streamlines customer interactions by providing AI-powered suggested responses in several languages across numerous channels. Visit Crisp Chatbot ChatGPT: Best Chatbot for Versatility and Advanced Generative AI Chat Features Overall Rating: 4.5 Developed by OpenAI as part of the GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) series of models, ChatGPT is more than just another natural language processing (NLP) tool designed to engage in human-quality conversations with users. The fact that it was developed by OpenAI means this generative AI app benefits from the pioneering work done by this leading AI company. ChatGPT was the first generative AI app to come to market, launching in November of 2022. The OpenAI platform can perform NLP tasks such as answering questions, providing recommendations, summarizing text, and translating languages. Aside from content generation, developers can also use ChatGPT to assist with coding tasks, including code generation, debugging help, and programming-related question responses. I have used ChatGPT for various tasks, from summarizing long articles for research purposes to brainstorming business plans and customer pain points. The output is almost always satisfactory, in-depth, and surprisingly nuanced. OpenAI has received significant funding from Microsoft and will likely be a leader in the years ahead, both in terms of advanced functionality (depth and versatility of toolset) and its ability to offer technology that’s ahead of the curve. Pricing Free: Access to limited features ChatGPT Plus: $20 per month Enterprise: Contact OpenAI for a custom quote Pros and Cons Pros Cons Data encryption at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+) Free plan is limited to GPT-3.5 Can assist in completing sentences or paragraphs for users Platform knowledge is limited to less than current information Why I Chose ChatGPT ChatGPT is one of the most popular chatbots that are accessible and have been offering excellent generative resources. It can understand and generate text in multiple languages and at the same time offers contextual understanding of an extended conversation. Visit ChatGPT Kommunicate: Best for e-Commerce Businesses Overall Rating: 4.5 Kommunicate is a generative AI-powered chatbot designed to help businesses optimize customer support and improve the customer experience. One of its chief goals is assisting and completing sales for e-commerce vendors, though it also handles support and the full range of customer queries. The app provides automated conversational capabilities through chatbots, live chat, and omnichannel customer support. Kommunicate can be integrated into websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms, allowing businesses to engage with customers in real time and provide instant assistance regarding any issue that involves a sale or service. To assist with this, it offers a FAQ bot to lessen the load of simple, repetitive customer queries. The app’s feature set is far more robust due to a long list of integrations, including OpenAI, IBM Watson, Zapier, and Shopify. It enables easy, seamless hand-off from chatbot to a human operator for those interactions that call for it. Pricing Free: 30-day trial Lite: $100 month-to-month, or $1,000 billed annually, for up to two teammates; $20 per month for each additional teammate Advanced: $200 month-to-month, or $2,000 billed annually, for up to five teammates; $30 per month for each additional teammate Enterprise: Custom pricing Pros and Cons Pros Cons Omnichannel Users report inconsistent integrations Multilingual bots Lite plan lacks advanced analytics and reporting features Why I chose Kommunicate Kommunicate is on this list because of its omnichannel communication abilities. It also has a CSAT rating, a method that is used to identify how satisfied customers are with a company’s products or services, making it trustworthy. Also, it can connect with other apps using a third-party service such as Zapier, making it a versatile chatbot. In addition, Kommunicate can manage customer conversations through bots, live chat, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and Line. Visit Kommunicate Claude: Best Chatbot for Long Conversational Memory Overall Rating: 4.4 Claude is Anthropic’s free AI chatbot. It runs Claude 3, a powerful LLM known for its large context window of 200,000 tokens per prompt, or around 150,000 words. This gives it one of the best conversational memories around. To put that in perspective, you can be at the tail end of a conversation the size of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Claude will still remember everything that was said, taking your previous questions, file uploads, and responses into account when it responds to your newest prompts. Its ability to analyze and summarize long documents is excellent, and its answers tend to be more straightforward than those of ChatGPT. When trying Claude, I was constantly surprised at how concise its answers were to my questions. It felt like I was messaging a true human expert rather than someone going out and finding the answers and regurgitating them back to me. All of this makes Claude a valuable research assistant and creative collaborator. Pricing Free: Unlimited access to Claude.ai chat Claude Pro: $20 per month Pros and Cons Pros Cons Extremely large context window Can’t generate new images Feels like talking to a human Has trouble with numerical questions Why I Chose Claude I chose Claude because of its remarkable 200,000-token context window, which is perfect for summarizing and analyzing large documents. It can accommodate the equivalent of 500 pages of text without any hassle. Its responses are simple and easy to understand and its seamless integration with more than 600 apps through Zapier increases its utility and adaptability. Visit Claude ChatSpot: Best for HubSpot Customers Overall Rating: 4.4 ChatSpot combines the capabilities of ChatGPT and HubSpot CRM into one solution. With this tool, you can draft blog posts and tweets and also create AI-generated images, or you can feed it a prompt to enable you to get specific data from your HubSpot CRM. ChatSpot allows you to perform many functions, including adding contacts and creating tasks and notes. You can also ask it to summarize your CRM data or generate a bar chart of results to understand your company’s performance. If you’re a HubSpot customer, this chatbot app can be a useful choice, given that Hubspot offers so many ways to connect with third party tools—literally hundreds of business apps. And HubSpot, as its users are well aware, is a platform that offers great functionality for sales reps. This chatbot will likely remain a top candidate for sales and marketing professionals who need improved functionality for customer sales and service. Pricing ChatSpot is free Pros and Cons Pros Cons Easy to use Limited scope SEO expertise Support could be improved Why I chose Chatspot I selected ChotSpot to be on this list because it uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4 to deliver sophisticated AI features. It offers prompt templates and a library to improve efficiency and optimize workflows and it interacts easily with programs like ChatGPT, HubSpot, DALL-E, and Google Docs. Visit ChatSpot Intercom: Best for Handling Support Queries Overall Rating: 4.3 Intercom AI’s chatbot, Fin, powered by large language models from OpenAI, aims to improve customer experience, automate support processes, and enhance user engagement. The fact that OpenAI (with all of its deep funding and vast expertise) provides Intercom’s underlying engine is clearly a plus. Intercom can engage in realistic conversations with customers, helping to resolve common issues, answer questions, and initiate actions. It’s an app aimed clearly at the lucrative call center sector. In trying Intercom while acting as a customer seeking assistance, I found that its answers to my questions were helpful and quick. It also felt like there was a human on the other end of the chatbox. So, what distinguishes it? It has gained wide adoption in the industry and is used by companies ranging from Amazon to Microsoft to Meta. It also offers a “plug and play” chatbot architecture to make setup relatively easy. And Intercom’s “Composer AI” feature enables a call center rep to rephrase a message with one click, turning a single phrase into a longer, more detailed response. It can easily summarize entire conversations with one click. Pricing Free: 14-day trial Fin AI Chatbot: Usage measured in resolutions; $0.99 per resolution. Essential: $39 per seat, per month Advanced: $99 per seat, per month Expert: $139 per seat, per month Pros and Cons Pros Cons Omnichannel: email, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger Advanced features cost extra Instant answers from multiple sources May be pricey for small businesses Why I Chose Intercom I chose Intercom because it is perfect for international communication as it supports up to 43 languages. It can connect with social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, uses support content to respond to consumer inquiries, and even recommends pertinent articles to improve interaction and customer service. Visit Intercom Google Gemini: Best Chatbot for Brainstorming Ideas Overall Rating: 4.3 Formerly known as Bard, Google Gemini is an AI-powered LLM chatbot built on the PaLM2 (Pathways Language Model, version 2) AI model. You can export your Google Gemini conversation to Google Docs or Draft in Gmail, and the platform allows you to create a shareable public link you can send to a third party, making it useful in collaborative workflows for professional work environments. It’s a major plus for this app that it’s developed and supported by Google. Admittedly, this app had some difficulties when it was first rolled out. Apparently scrambling to keep up with the phenomenal success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google didn’t iron out all the bugs first. However, Gemini is being actively developed and will benefit greatly from Google’s deep resources and legions of top AI developers. An important benefit of using Google Gemini is that its supporting knowledge base is as large as any chatbot’s—it’s created and updated by Google. So if your team is looking to brainstorm ideas or check an existing plan against a huge database, the Gemini app can be very useful due to its deep and constantly updated reservoir of data. Pricing Free to use Pros and Cons Pros Cons Vast knowledgebase Users report slow response to complex questions Cites sources of information. Can sometimes give inaccurate or incomplete information Why I Chose Gemini I added Gemini to this list because of its ability to export conversations in document form. It also has a “Google it” function that directs you to the search engine to provide more information. In addition, it can generate code in 20 different programming languages, making it ideal for developers to speed up their coding tasks. Visit Google Gemini For an in-depth comparison of two leading chatbots, read our guide: Gemini vs ChatGPT 4: The Winning AI Revealed Jasper: Best Chatbot for Marketing and Sales Teams Overall Rating: 4.2 The Jasper generative AI chatbot can be trained on your brand voice to interact with your customers in a personalized manner. Jasper partners with OpenAI and uses GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 language models and their proprietary AI engine. The company also sources from other models such as Neo X, T5, and Bloom. Jasper’s strongest upside is its brand voice functionality, which allows teams and organizations to create highly specific, on-brand content. This capability is invaluable for marketing and sales teams that need to ensure that all chatbot communications are created with an accurate brand identity. Out of the box, Jasper offers more than 50 templates—you won’t need to create a chatbot persona from scratch. The wide array of models that Jasper accesses and its focus on customizing for brand identity means this is a choice that marketing teams should at least audition before they make any final selections for an AI chatbot. Pricing Creator: $49 per month billed monthly, or $468 billed annually Pro: $69 per month billed monthly, or $708 billed annually Business: Custom quotes Pros and Cons Pros Cons Provides up-to-date information and cites sources Can be expensive More than 50 built-in templates Focus mode can generate incomplete sentences Why I Chose Jasper Jasper made it to this list because of its ability to learn from your training data to generate your company’s brand voice. It can support up to 30 languages, and with its browser extensions, it allows you to access it on any website that you are on. In addition, it integrates with Zapier, Webflow, Make, Google Sheets, and other tools for improved productivity and collaboration capabilities. Visit Jasper For a full portrait of today’s generative AI leaders, see our guide: Generative AI Companies: Top 12 Leaders Tidio: Best for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Overall Rating: 4.2 SMBs looking for an easy-to-use AI chatbot to scale their support capacity may find Tidio to be a suitable solution. Tidio Lyro lets businesses automate customer support processes, reduce response times, and handle tasks such as answering frequently asked questions. You can also use Tidio Lyro to answer customer inquiries, provide automated responses, and assist with basic analytics, allowing you to manage customer support efficiently. Tidio fits the SMB market because it offers solid functionality at a reasonable price. SMBs are under pressure to offer basic customer service at a low cost; to address this, Tidio allows the creation of a wide array of prewritten responses for simple questions that customers ask again and again. Tidio also offers add-ons at no extra cost, including sales templates to save time with setup. Additionally, the quality of Tidio’s output was ranked highly in our research, so even as the AI chatbot focuses on affordability, it offers a quality toolset. Pricing Free: Up to 50 live chat conversations Lyro AI: Starts at $39 per month for up to 200 conversations Tidio+: Starts at $499 per month Pros and Cons Pros Cons AI Reply Assistant to speed up your response time Add-ons cost extra FAQ and sales chatbot templates Analytics limited to Communicator and Tidio+ plans Why I Chose Tidio Tidio can be connected with popular eCommerce platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, and Wix so that it will be easier for you to interact with your customers when the need arises. It offers live chat capability and it can be integrated with Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and email services. With its multi-language support, it can offer canned responses that offer optimum support to your customers. Visit Tidio Perplexity AI: Best Chatbot for Finding Information on the Internet Overall Rating: 4.2 Perplexity AI is a generative AI chatbot, search, and answer engine that allows users to express queries in natural language and provides answers based on information gathered from various sources on the web. When you ask a question of Perplexity AI, it does more than provide the answer to your query—it also suggests related follow-up questions. In response, you can either select from the suggested related questions or type your own in the text field. Perplexity AI’s Copilot feature can guide users through the search process with interactive multiple searches and summarized results. This capability is helpful when exploring complex topics. However, it’s limited to five searches every four hours for free plan users and up to 300 searches for paid users. Perplexity AI’s strength in searching the internet means this tool is ideal for advanced researchers, from academics to small businesses to large enterprises, including companies that want to explore how they’re viewed on the web. Because AI enables it to understand your search query at a multi-dimensional level, the app can guide you in directions you might not have thought of, making it a “serious researcher’s best friend.” Pricing Free: Limited features Pro: $20 per month, or $200 per year Pros and Cons Pros Cons Cites information sources File upload limited to three per day for free users iOS and Android mobile app Customer support could be improved Why I Chose Perplexity Perplexity is an AI chatbot that is known to summarize the information of a SERP based on our inquiry on its chatbox. The reason why it made it to my list is because it supports Claude 3, Llama 3, and GPT-4, making it a versatile chatbot with incredible abilities. In addition, it can analyze uploaded documents in PDF or text files so that it will be easier for users to summarize or analyze any documents they need. Visit Perplexity LivePerson: Best for Conversation Analytics Overall Rating: 4.1 The LivePerson AI chatbot can simulate human conversation and interact with users in a natural, conversational manner. Its goal is to discover customer intent—the core of most successful sales interactions—using analytics. To this end, LivePerson offers what it calls a “meaningful automated conversation score,” a metric that attempts to quantify whether a given bot-human interaction was successful in terms of company branding and service. Additionally, the platform enables you to convert webpages, PDFs, and FAQs into interactive AI chatbot experiences that use natural human language to showcase your brand’s expertise. The bot’s entire strategy is based on making as much content as possible available in a conversational format. LivePerson can be deployed on various digital channels, such as websites and messaging apps, to automate customer interactions, provide instant responses to inquiries, assist with transactions, and offer personalized recommendations. Significantly, LivePerson is also geared to be embedded in social media platforms, so it certainly aims to reach a large consumer base. Pricing Conversational Cloud: Pay-as–you-go, per resolution Generative AI: Pay-as-you-go, per resolution Pros and Cons Pros Cons Bot analytics Does not publish pricing info Meaningful automated conversation scores (MACS) Conversational cloud plan lacks generative AI capability Why I Chose LivePerson LivePerson is an excellent choice for conversation analysis because it can develop and build conversations like typing in a dialog. It offers an administrative function that includes the ability to create and manage users and skills while supporting 19 messaging channels. Visit LivePerson Chatsonic: Best Chatbot for Individuals in the Creative Industries Overall Rating: 4 Trained and powered by Google Search to converse with users based on current events, Chatsonic positions itself as a ChatGPT alternative. The AI chatbot is a product of Writesonic, an AI platform geared for content creation. Chatsonic lets you toggle on the “Include latest Google data” button while using the chatbot to add real-time trending information. The benefit of this “latest data” approach is that it helps individuals in creative fields like advertising and marketing stay up to date on current trends. In contrast, some of the more advanced chatbots use large language models that are updated infrequently, so those looking for this week’s information won’t find what they need. This current events approach makes the Chatsonic app very useful for a company that wants to consistently
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