Guide
The best AI chatbot plugins for WordPress in 2026, compared on the facts
Almost every “best WordPress chatbot” list is written by a chatbot company that puts itself first, and several repeat out-of-date prices and install counts. We make one of these plugins too. So this comparison sticks to what each plugin’s own WordPress.org page, documentation and pricing page say, re-checked on 8 October 2026, and tells you where others are the better pick.
Maqsood R.Founder, HolaReply · Updated · 15 min read
We make HolaReply. We did not install the other plugins; every fact about them comes from their own official pages, listed at the end with the date we checked.
The short answer
- The best AI chatbot plugin for WordPress depends on the job. For a chatbot that answers only from your own content and hands every lead to your team, choose HolaReply.
- For an all-in-one AI toolkit with many AI providers, AI Engine. For free answers from your content with local storage, MxChat or Hyve Lite.
- For live chat with an AI add-on, Tidio or Chatway. For a free CRM with chat, HubSpot.
- Check how each charges for AI: your own key usually costs a few dollars a month; per-resolution pricing is often $0.50 per answer.
The short list
| Plugin | Best for | Answers from your content | How you pay for AI | Paid plans from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HolaReply | Accurate answers + leads to your team | ✓ Free, index in your database | Your own key (Gemini, OpenAI or Claude) or HolaReply AI credits | Pro from $79, paid once |
| AI Engine | All-in-one AI toolkit | Pro, needs a vector database | Your own key, many providers | $79/yr |
| Tidio | Live chat with an AI add-on | With Lyro, from your support content | Per Lyro conversation | $24.17/mo (annual) |
| Chatway | Live chat, pay AI per resolution | ✓ Trained on your site | $0.50 per resolved conversation, or your own AI | $31/mo (annual) |
| WPBot | Rule-based + AI, lifetime licences | Paid (per its FAQ) | Your own key | $39/yr |
| MxChat | Free answers from your content | ✓ Free, local vectors | Your own key, many providers | $69.97 once |
| Hyve Lite | Free answers from your content, OpenAI | ✓ Free (about 300 posts) | Hosted credits or your OpenAI key | $79 lifetime |
| AI Puffer | AI toolkit on a budget | ✓ Free, in your database | Your own key or AI Puffer Cloud credits | $7.99/mo (annual) |
| HubSpot | Free CRM with chat | AI agent needs Service Hub Pro | $0.50 per resolution | Service Hub Pro |
| Chatbase | Hosted AI agent, many integrations | ✓ On chatbase.co | Message credits | $40/mo |
Full details, sources and the caveats for each plugin are below.
How we compared them
We looked at the questions that decide whether a chatbot helps or hurts a business website, and that most reviews skip:
- Does it answer from your own content, and is that free or paid?
- Does it admit when it doesn’t know, or can it make things up?
- What happens to a lead it can’t answer, and when the AI fails?
- What does the AI really cost at around 1,000 questions a month?
- Where does the data go, and what reaches the AI provider?
Numbers such as installs and ratings come from WordPress.org on 8 October 2026.
The plugins in detail
1. HolaReply: best for accurate answers and leads
HolaReply is an AI sales assistant rather than a general AI toolkit. The free version indexes your pages, posts and WooCommerce products into your own WordPress database, answers only from them, shows the source under each answer and says when it doesn’t know. Topics you lock, such as prices or quotes, always go to your team, and questions it can’t answer become enquiries with the whole conversation. Names, emails and phone numbers are removed before anything is sent to the AI.
- Strengths: accurate by design, lead handover on the free plan, a Sales Desk for your team in Pro, no per-message fees on your own key.
- Limitations: on WordPress it doesn’t look up orders or add to cart (Hyve Pro, MxChat’s WooCommerce add-on and WPBot Pro list order status); new on WordPress.org, so there is no install count or review history to judge it by yet.
- Price: Free; Pro from $79 and Business from $129, paid once, by number of sites (founding prices from $59 and $99 for the first 200 licences).
straight from the growers.
Trade packs for kitchens, bakeries and shops. Order by the kilo or by the pallet.
Shop wholesaleView product
HolaReply answering from the site’s own product page, with the source shown.
2. AI Engine: best all-in-one AI toolkit
The most popular AI plugin in this list, with 90,000+ active installs and a 4.9 rating from 870 reviews. It does far more than chat: content and image tools, AI forms, an MCP server, and support for OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, xAI, Perplexity, OpenRouter, Azure and local models.
- Strengths: breadth, provider choice, very active development, no markup on AI usage.
- Limitations: answering from your own content (“Embeddings & Content Aware”) is Pro and uses a vector database: Pinecone, Qdrant, Chroma or OpenAI Vector Store. Its own FAQ says you can’t completely block the model’s built-in knowledge, only steer it. No built-in lead capture or human handover on its official feature lists.
- Price: Free; Pro $79 a year (1 site), $99 (5 sites), $179 (20 sites); lifetime from $499 (5 sites).
More in our HolaReply vs AI Engine comparison.
3. Tidio: best live chat with an AI add-on
A hosted customer service platform with 70,000+ installs and a 4.8 rating from 395 reviews. The plugin connects your site to a Tidio account. Live chat, a shared inbox, mobile apps and Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp are included even on the free plan; the AI agent, Lyro, answers from your support content and forwards what it can’t answer to a person.
- Strengths: a mature live chat and helpdesk; human handover built in.
- Limitations: AI is billed separately: the free plan includes 50 Lyro conversations once, not per month. Conversations are stored on Tidio’s servers.
- Price: Starter $24.17 a month billed annually ($29 monthly); Lyro from $39 a month for 50 AI conversations ($32.50 billed annually), $700 a month for 1,000 on monthly billing. The widget itself comes in six languages.
4. Chatway: best if you only want to pay when the AI solves it
A hosted live chat with 30,000+ installs and a 5.0 rating from 762 reviews. Its AI agent is trained on your website and knowledge base and is available on every plan, including free; you can also connect your own AI (ChatGPT, Claude and others).
- Strengths: excellent reviews; you pay $0.50 only when the AI resolves a conversation, with the first 10 free.
- Limitations: the free plan has one seat, 30 days of history and 50 conversations a month; costs grow with every resolved conversation.
- Price: Business $31 a month billed annually ($39 monthly) for 2 seats and 200 conversations; Plus $159 ($199) for 10 seats and 1,000.
5. WPBot: best for rule-based flows plus AI, with lifetime licences
A long-running plugin with 5,000+ installs and a 4.7 rating from 124 reviews. It works without AI at all (button menus, FAQs, site search) and can connect to OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter or Dialogflow.
- Strengths: free built-in features, lifetime licences, data stays on your server.
- Limitations: its FAQ says training on your site content needs a paid licence (its pricing page lists a basic RAG knowledge base from Starter). Human live chat is through Slack on the Master plan only.
- Price: Starter $39 a year (1 site), Professional $99 (2 sites), Master $189 (5 sites); lifetime from $149 (5 sites).
6. MxChat: best free answers from your content, many providers
A smaller plugin (2,000+ installs, 5.0 from 30 reviews) with a generous free version: it trains on your website content, WooCommerce products, sitemaps, PDFs, URLs and YouTube videos with unlimited local vector storage in your WordPress database, and supports OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek and OpenRouter.
- Strengths: free local answers from your content, free email capture, many providers.
- Limitations: a small user base; WooCommerce shopping help, theme customisation and forms are paid add-ons.
- Price: Pro $69.97, paid once; its page doesn’t say how many sites one licence covers, so ask before buying for several.
7. Hyve Lite: best free option if you use OpenAI
From Themeisle, with 7,000+ installs. The free version answers from your posts, pages and products, re-reads a page when you edit it, cites its sources, and says so when the answer isn’t in your content, which is exactly the behaviour you want. It runs on Themeisle’s hosted AI with free monthly credits, or on your own OpenAI key.
- Strengths: content-only answers with sources on the free plan.
- Limitations: OpenAI only; lead capture, PDF and website imports, webhooks and WooCommerce order look-up are Pro; the free plan covers about 300 posts (1,000 chunks) and shows only your three latest conversations.
- Price: lifetime licences: Personal $79 (1 site), Growth $149 (5 sites), Agency $279 (50 sites).
8. AI Puffer (formerly AI Power): best budget AI toolkit
An AI content and chatbot plugin with 10,000+ installs and a 4.6 rating. It runs on AI Puffer’s own Cloud credits or your own key for OpenAI, Gemini, Azure, OpenRouter, DeepSeek, xAI and more (local Ollama models in Pro).
- Strengths: low price; can sell AI credits to your visitors through WooCommerce.
- Limitations: a toolkit first: the chatbot sits beside a content writer, forms and images. The free knowledge base reads posts, pages and products (stored in your database or an external vector store); files and background re-indexing are Pro.
- Price: Pro from $7.99 a month billed annually ($9.99 monthly); lifetime $289.99.
9. HubSpot: best if you want a free CRM
The most installed plugin here (200,000+). The free plugin includes live chat, forms, a CRM and rule-based chatbot templates.
- Strengths: a complete free CRM and chat bundle.
- Limitations: the generative AI Customer Agent needs Service Hub Professional or Enterprise, and is charged per resolution ($0.50). The plugin is tested only up to WordPress 6.9.10.
- Price: seat prices vary by country; check HubSpot’s pricing page for yours.
10. Chatbase: best hosted AI agent with many integrations
A hosted platform: you build an agent on chatbase.co and embed it with its WordPress plugin.
- Strengths: many integrations (Zendesk, Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, WhatsApp) and a choice of models.
- Limitations: the WordPress plugin was last updated in March 2025 and is rated 3.4; plans are metered in message credits; removing “Powered by Chatbase” costs $99 a month; free agents are deleted after 14 days of inactivity.
- Price: Hobby $40 a month (700 credits), Standard $150 (4,000), Pro $500 (15,000).
The best free AI chatbot plugins for WordPress
“Free” means different things. Some plugins are free but need a paid plan for the AI to read your site; some include a small, one-off AI allowance. These free versions answer from your own content without a paid plan:
| Plugin | What the free version includes | What you still pay for |
|---|---|---|
| HolaReply | Answers from pages, posts and products, sources, locked topics, lead capture | AI usage on your own Gemini, OpenAI or Claude key (Google’s free tier for testing), or HolaReply AI credits |
| MxChat | Answers from your content with local vector storage, email capture | AI usage on your own key |
| Hyve Lite | Answers from your content with sources, about 300 posts | Nothing within its free monthly hosted credits; above them, OpenAI usage on your key |
| AI Puffer | A knowledge base of posts, pages and products, stored in your database | AI usage on your own key, or AI Puffer Cloud credits |
| Chatway | AI agent trained on your site, live chat for 1 seat | $0.50 per resolved conversation after the first 10; 50 conversations a month on the free plan |
Tidio’s free plan includes 50 Lyro AI conversations once; Chatbase’s free plan has 50 credits a month and deletes agents after 14 days of inactivity; AI Engine and WPBot need a paid plan to answer from your content.
What each plugin learns from, and in which languages
A chatbot can only answer from what it has read. Two things decide how much setup it needs: which sources it can read on the plan you pay for, and whether it notices when you edit a page. The table below comes from each plugin’s WordPress.org page on 8 October 2026; the hosted services (Tidio, Chatbase, HubSpot) read your site from their own platforms.
| Plugin | Free version reads | Paid adds | Keeps up with edits | Replies in the visitor’s language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HolaReply | Published pages, posts, WooCommerce products and your own Q&A answers | Same sources; Pro adds the team tools | ✓ Re-reads an edited page about a minute later | ✓ Stated |
| AI Engine | Not listed as a feature | Your content and PDFs, through a vector database | Automatic synchronisation (Pro) | Depends on the model; test your language |
| WPBot | FAQs and button menus you write | Pages, posts, custom post types, sitemaps; PDF, XML, CSV and JSON files | Not listed as a feature | Any language you translate it into; multilingual is Pro |
| MxChat | Website content, products, sitemaps, PDFs, URLs, YouTube videos | WooCommerce shopping help (add-on) | Product auto-sync | Not listed as a feature |
| Hyve Lite | Posts, pages, products, custom post types | PDF, Word, Markdown, text and CSV files; any URL or sitemap | ✓ Re-indexes on save | Not listed as a feature |
| AI Puffer | Posts, pages, products, custom post types, Q&A pairs | PDF, DOCX, TXT, MD, CSV and JSON files | Background re-indexing (Pro) | Not listed as a feature |
| Chatway | Your website and knowledge base (hosted) | More conversations and seats | Not listed as a feature | ✓ Stated |
“Not listed as a feature” means the plugin’s own page doesn’t say; it may still work, so test it. Most modern AI models can reply in many languages; what matters is whether the plugin lets them, and whether your “I don’t know” and handover messages follow the visitor’s language too (see how HolaReply handles it).
What “free” really costs
A free plugin is not a free chatbot. The AI has to be paid for somewhere, in one of four ways (more in our guide to what an AI chatbot costs per month):
| Model | Examples | Roughly, for 1,000 questions |
|---|---|---|
| Your own AI key | HolaReply, AI Engine, WPBot, MxChat, AI Puffer | A few dollars to your AI provider: about $3 for a typical chatbot on Gemini 3.8 Flash, about $1.70 measured on HolaReply, at October 2026 prices. Google doubles 3.8 Flash prices on 1 January 2027. |
| Credits from the plugin maker | HolaReply AI, AI Puffer Cloud, Hyve Connect | HolaReply AI: $12 ($10 each from 5,000), no AI account needed. AI Puffer and Hyve include free monthly credits; their paid credits vary by model |
| Per resolution | Chatway, HubSpot Customer Agent | Up to $500 if every question is resolved ($0.50 each) |
| Per conversation or credit | Tidio Lyro, Chatbase | Tidio Lyro: $700/mo for 1,000 AI conversations (monthly billing). Chatbase: Standard, $150/mo |
Per-resolution and per-conversation services include hosting, dashboards and support that you don’t get from an AI key alone. Compare total cost against what you need.
The test most reviews skip: does it admit it doesn’t know?
An AI chatbot that answers everything will eventually answer something wrong about your business. In 2024 a Canadian tribunal held Air Canada to a refund policy its chatbot had invented. Look for these in a plugin’s documentation: answers only from your content, sources shown, a clear “I don’t know”, and topics it will never answer. Among the plugins above, HolaReply and Hyve Lite state this behaviour explicitly; AI Engine’s own FAQ says the model’s general knowledge can be steered but not completely blocked.
What happens when the AI fails
AI services run out of credit, hit rate limits and go down. Ask what your visitors see then. Chatbase shows “This AI Agent is currently unavailable” when credits run out; WPBot’s FAQ describes the bot “loading” when OpenAI credit is exhausted. HolaReply keeps taking enquiries when the AI is unavailable, so the lead still reaches you.
Privacy: what reaches the AI provider
- Hosted services store conversations on their own servers: Chatbase on AWS in the US (us-east-1); Tidio mainly in the EEA, as a US company.
- WordPress-native plugins keep conversations in your database, but still send questions to the AI provider.
- Personal details: HolaReply removes names, email addresses, phone numbers and company names before any question leaves your site.
How to set up an AI chatbot plugin on WordPress
Whichever plugin you pick, the setup that avoids wrong answers is the same. The full walk-through, with screenshots, is in our guide to adding an AI chatbot to WordPress.
Install it from WordPress.org
Plugins > Add New, search its name, Install and Activate. Hosted services also need an account on their site.
Connect the AI
Paste your own key from Gemini, OpenAI or Claude, or choose the plugin’s own credits. Turn on billing with the AI provider before going live; free tiers hit rate limits.
Choose what it may read
Pages, posts and products that are published and up to date. Leave out drafts, old offers and anything private.
Set the fallbacks
What it says when it doesn’t know, which topics always go to a person, and where enquiries are sent.
Test it before visitors do
Ask five questions your site answers, two it doesn’t, and one locked topic, on your phone. Then check that the enquiry reached your inbox.
How to choose
- You sell, and a wrong answer would cost you: HolaReply (or Hyve Lite if you use OpenAI and don’t need lead handover free).
- You want AI for content, images and chat in one plugin: AI Engine.
- You need human live chat and social inboxes first: Tidio or Chatway (see HolaReply vs Tidio).
- You want a free CRM: HubSpot.
- You like building button flows and want a lifetime licence: WPBot.
- You run WooCommerce: see our WooCommerce AI chatbot guide.
Test the behaviour yourself. The chat on this page is HolaReply. Ask it something this site covers, then something it doesn’t, and see whether it guesses.
“Is HolaReply free?”“What is the weather in Paris?”
Open the chatQuestions people ask
What is the best free AI chatbot plugin for WordPress?
For answers from your own content on a free plan: HolaReply (Gemini, OpenAI or Claude), MxChat (many providers, local storage) or Hyve Lite (OpenAI). You still pay your AI provider, usually a few dollars a month.
Which WordPress chatbot plugin is most popular?
Among AI plugins, AI Engine has the most active installs (90,000+). HubSpot has more (200,000+), but its generative AI agent needs a paid Service Hub plan.
Do AI chatbot plugins slow down WordPress?
Good ones load after the page. Test a page in PageSpeed Insights before and after installing, and avoid plugins that load large scripts in the page head.
Can I use ChatGPT as a WordPress chatbot?
Several plugins connect to OpenAI’s models. The important part is that the plugin makes the model answer from your content only and shows sources, otherwise it answers from general knowledge.
Can an AI chatbot replace human support?
Not fully, and it shouldn’t try. A good one answers the routine questions your website already covers, at any hour, and hands the rest to a person with the whole conversation: quotes, complaints, anything it can’t find in your content. Check that the plugin you choose has that handover, not just a contact link.
How do I test a chatbot before it goes live?
Ask it questions your site answers, questions it doesn’t (it should say it doesn’t know, not guess), a topic you have locked, and the same question in another language. Then switch off or exhaust the AI key and check that visitors can still leave a message.
Which chatbot plugin is best for WooCommerce?
It depends on whether you need order look-up and add-to-cart. See our WooCommerce AI chatbot guide for a comparison with prices.
Sources
Checked on 8 October 2026. Prices and features change; tell us in the chat if something here is out of date and we will fix it.
- AI Engine on WordPress.org
- AI Engine Pro pricing
- Tidio on WordPress.org
- Tidio pricing
- Chatway on WordPress.org
- Chatway pricing
- WPBot on WordPress.org
- WPBot pricing
- MxChat on WordPress.org
- Hyve Lite on WordPress.org
- Hyve pricing (Themeisle)
- AI Puffer on WordPress.org
- AI Puffer pricing
- HubSpot on WordPress.org
- HubSpot Customer Agent
- Chatbase on WordPress.org
- MxChat Pro (pricing)
- Chatbase pricing
- Chatbase security (hosting region)
- Tidio privacy policy
- Gemini API pricing
- Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149: summary by the American Bar Association
Founder of HolaReply. He builds AI assistants that answer only from a business’s own website, and checks every fact in these guides against the products’ own pages.
More by Maqsood R. →Pick a chatbot that never makes things up.
Free for WordPress, on WordPress.org. No per-message fees on your own Gemini, OpenAI or Claude key (about $1.70 per 1,000 answers on Gemini Flash), or optional HolaReply AI credits.