Botpress alternative
The best Botpress alternative for small businesses
Botpress is a platform for building agents. Kelma is the agent, already built — at a fraction of the per-conversation cost.
If you're weighing up Botpress and want to know whether there's something that does the same job for less, Kelma is worth a look. It trains an AI agent on your website, help docs and files, then answers customers on your site and across WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, Slack and SMS — with pricing built for a small business rather than an enterprise seat count.
Botpress is a genuinely powerful agent-building platform — a visual studio, an SDK, and total control for developers who want to construct custom conversational systems. It prices accordingly: the Plus plan is $150/month (billed annually) including 250 conversations, with extra conversations at $0.65 each; Team is $750/month for 1,500. Figures from botpress.com/pricing as of July 2026.
If what you actually need is "an agent that knows my business and answers customers", building it is the overhead. Kelma is that agent out of the box: crawl your site, upload documents, paste one line of embed code. €15/month for 5M message tokens — roughly 1,500–2,500 AI replies — which at Botpress's $0.65-per-conversation rate would cost over $1,000.
Kelma vs Botpress at a glance
| Feature | Kelma | Botpress |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Ready-made AI support agent | Agent-building platform (studio + SDK) |
| Entry paid plan | Starter — €15/mo | Plus — $150/mo (billed annually) |
| Conversations included | ~1,500–2,500 replies (5M tokens) | 250, then $0.65 each ($65/100) |
| Setup | Minutes — crawl site, paste embed line | Build flows/agents in the studio |
| Custom logic | Instructions + custom actions/tools | Full visual builder + code — far deeper |
| Channels | Web, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, Slack, SMS, email | Web, WhatsApp + many via integrations |
| Human takeover inbox | Included — presence, routing, live replies | Available on paid tiers |
| Developer API | REST API + webhooks on paid plans | Extensive SDK/APIs — the core product |
| Free plan | 1 agent, 50K tokens/mo, never deleted | Pay-as-you-go $0 + usage |
| Currency & VAT | EUR, no VAT added | USD + VAT where applicable |
Botpress figures from botpress.com/pricing, checked July 2026: Plus $150/mo billed annually (250 conversations included, packs of 100 for $65), Team $750/mo (1,500 conversations, packs $50/100), AI spend bundled into conversation allotments; pay-as-you-go tier $0 + usage with a $5 monthly AI credit. A conversation = any exchange of 2+ messages in the billing month.
Why switch to Kelma
- ~1,500–2,500 conversations for €15/month — Botpress Plus includes 250 for $150/month, then $0.65 per conversation.
- Nothing to build: knowledge ingestion, persona, channels, inbox, lead capture and analytics are already wired together.
- Custom actions and tool calls cover the common automation needs (webhooks, APIs, bookings) without a studio.
- Human takeover inbox with presence and routing included — on Botpress, support tooling is largely yours to assemble.
- EUR pricing, no VAT added, and a free plan that's never deleted.
When Botpress is the better pick
- You're a developer or agency building custom conversational apps — Botpress's studio, SDK and control surface are the point.
- You need complex multi-step workflows, custom code in the flow, or agents that are a product feature rather than customer support.
- You have the budget and engineering time for a platform, not a tool.
See it on your own content in minutes
Paste your website address, watch Kelma learn it, and ask it your customers' hardest questions — free, no card, and your agent is never deleted.
Frequently asked questions
Both, honestly. If you were evaluating Botpress to build a customer-facing support/sales agent for a website, Kelma replaces that project with a finished product at a much lower cost. If you were evaluating Botpress to build bespoke conversational software, Kelma isn't that — it's deliberately not a builder platform.
Botpress Plus is $150/month for 250 conversations — about $0.60–0.65 each, with extra packs at $0.65. Kelma Starter is €15/month for roughly 1,500–2,500 replies — around a cent each. For support volume, that's not a close call.
For the common cases, yes: custom actions let your agent call your APIs and webhooks mid-conversation (check an order, create a booking, file a ticket), driven by plain-language tool instructions. What Kelma doesn't offer is arbitrary flow programming — if you need that, Botpress is the right tool.
Other alternatives
Competitor names and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Figures reflect each vendor's public pricing pages as of July 2026 and may have changed — always confirm on their site. Spotted something outdated? Tell us via the chat widget and we'll fix it.