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The best generative AI chatbots represent a major step forward in conversational AI, using large language models (LLMs) to create human-quality text, translate languages, and provide informative answers to user questions. An ever-growing number of generative AI chatbots are now entering the market, but not all chatbots are created equal.
We evaluated the best generative AI chatbots on the market to see how they compare on cost, feature set, ease of use, quality of output, and support to help you determine the best bot for your business. Here are our picks for the top 21 generative AI chatbots for 2024.
Top Generative AI Chatbot Software
The following chart shows at a glance how the top generative 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 |
Freshchat
Best for Automating Self-Service
Overall Rating: 4.6
- Cost: 5
- Feature Set: 5
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 2.5
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.
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 |
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
Features
- Chatbot analytics
- Canned responses
- Customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey and report
- Analytics and reporting
- Multi-channel communication
Crisp Chatbot
Best for Lead Nurturing
Overall Rating: 4.6
- Cost: 5
- Feature Set: 3.5
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 5
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 at 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.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Responsive customer service team | Free plan lacks integration with email, Slack, and Messenger |
| Website chat widget | Basic and Pro plans offer limited chatbot capabilities |
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 custom quote
Features
- Integrations with social apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, and Instagram
- Conversation routing capability
- Capable of sending multilingual messages
- MagicReply feature provides suggested AI-powered chatbot answers on multiple channels, in several languages
ChatGPT
Best Chatbot for Versatility and Advanced Generative AI Chat Features
Overall Rating: 4.5
- Cost: 4.2
- Feature Set: 4.4
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 3.8
- Support: 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.
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 |
Pricing
- Free: Access to limited features
- ChatGPT Plus: $20 per month
- Enterprise: Contact OpenAI for a custom quote
Features
- Analytics dashboard for enterprise users
- Can understand and generate text in multiple languages
- Offers contextual understanding of extended conversation
Kommunicate
Best for e-Commerce Businesses
Overall Rating: 4.5
- Cost: 3.3
- Feature Set: 5
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 4
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.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Omnichannel | Users report inconsistent integrations |
| Multilingual bots | Lite plan lacks advanced analytics and reporting features |
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
Features
- Omnichannel—web, mobile, and social media
- CSAT rating
- Integrations with third-party services
- Can manage customer conversations through bots, live chat, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Line
Claude
Best Chatbot for Long Conversational Memory
Overall Rating: 4.4
- Cost: 5
- Feature Set: 3.5
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 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 Chat-GPT. 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
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 |
Pricing
- Free: Unlimited access to Claude.ai chat
- Claude Pro: $20 per month
Features
- 200,000 token context window (around 500 pages)
- Document summarization and analysis
- Straightforward, clear responses
- Integrates with 600 apps through Zapier
ChatSpot
Best for HubSpot Customers
Overall Rating: 4.4
- Cost: 5
- Feature Set:5
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 1
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.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy to use | Limited scope |
| SEO expertise | Support could be improved |
Pricing
Features
- Uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4
- Integration with ChatGPT, HubSpot, DALL-E, and Google Docs
- Prompt templates and library
Intercom
Best for Handling Support Queries
Overall Rating: 4.3
- Cost: 2.3
- Feature Set: 5
- Ease of Use: 4.5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 5
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 longer, more detailed response. It can easily summarize entire conversations with one click.
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 |
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
Features
- Supports up to 43 languages
- Integrates with Facebook and Instagram
- Answers customer questions based on support content
- Makes article suggestions
Google Gemini
Best Chatbot for Brainstorming Ideas
Overall Rating: 4.3
- Cost: 5
- Feature Set: 5
- Ease of Use: 4.5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 1
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.
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 |
Pricing
Features
- Can export conversations
- “Google it” function directs you to search engine to provide more information
- Can generate code in 20 programming languages
For an in-depth comparison of two leading chatbots, read our guide: ChatGPT vs. Google Bard: Generative AI Comparison
Jasper
Best Chatbot for Marketing and Sales Teams
Overall Rating: 4.2
- Cost: 2.7
- Feature Set: 5
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 3
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.
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 |
Pricing
- Creator: $49 per month billed monthly, or $468 billed annually
- Pro: $69 per month billed monthly, or $708 billed annually
- Business: Custom quotes
Features
- Browser extension available
- Supports up to 30 languages.
- Integrates with Zapier, Webflow, Make, Google Sheets, and other tools
- Collaboration capability
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
- Cost: 4.1
- Feature Set: 3.5
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 4
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.
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 |
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
Features
- Live chat capability
- Integration with Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and email services
- Multi-language support
- Canned responses
Perplexity AI
Best Chatbot for Finding Information on the Internet
Overall Rating: 4.2
- Cost: 4.2
- Feature Set: 4.4
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 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 academic to small business to large enterprise, 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 “serious researcher’s best friend.”
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 |
Pricing
- Free: Limited features
- Pro: $20 per month, or $200 per year
Features
- Supports Claude 3, Llama 3, and GPT-4
- Supports 30 languages, including English, Bengali, and Danish
- Text and PDF file upload capability
LivePerson
Best for Conversation Analytics
Overall Rating: 4.1
- Cost: 0.6
- Feature Set: 5
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 5
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.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Bot analytics | Does not publish pricing info |
| Meaningful automated conversation scores (MACS) | Conversational cloud plan lacks generative AI capability |
Pricing
- Conversational Cloud: Pay-as–you-go, per resolution
- Generative AI: Pay-as-you-go, per resolution
Features
- Conversation builder and orchestrator
- Administrative function includes the ability to create and manage users and skills
- Supports 19 messaging channels, including Facebook, Instagram, X and WhatsApp.
- Reporting and analytics
Chatsonic
Best Chatbot for Individuals in the Creative Industries
Overall Rating: 4
- Cost: 4.6
- Feature Set: 4.4
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 2.5
- Support: 2
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 monitor any comments or concerns about its products based on current news coverage. Some companies will use this app in combination with other AI chatbot apps with the Chatsonic chatbot reserved specifically to perform a broad and deep brand response monitoring function.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Support for 25 languages | Priority support limited to business and enterprise plan users |
| Landing page generator capability | Free plan lacks email support |
Pricing
- Free: Up to 10,000 words per month
- Unlimited: $20 per month billed monthly, or $192 billed annually for one user
- Business: $19 per month billed monthly, or $152 billed annually for one user; up to 200,000 words for GPT 3.5 or 33,333 words for GPT 4.0; add words and users for additional cost
- Enterprise: Custom quote
Features
- Google Docs-like Sonic Editor
- Integration with third-party apps
- More than 100 AI templates
Poe
Best Chatbot for Testing Multiple AI Chatbots
Overall Rating: 3.9
- Cost: 5
- Feature Set: 2.8
- Ease of Use: 4.5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 3.9
Poe is a chatbot tool that allows you to try out different AI models—including GPT-4, Gemini, Playground, and others listed in this article—in a single interface. This is helpful for people who want to pit them against each other to decide which tool to purchase. It’s also great for those who plan to use multiple LLM models and unlock their various strengths for a low price of $16.67 per month when paid annually.
For example, if you plan to use Claude 3 for conversational chat and GPT 4 for content generation—their respective specialties—you can get both by subscribing to Poe rather than paying for each separately, which would cost $40 per month. Developers can also use Poe to build their own chatbots using one of the popular models as the foundation, streamlining the process.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Access to multiple advanced LLMs for a low monthly price | Higher cost for access to newer chatbots like GPT-4 and Claude-3-Opus |
| Can easily test various chatbots against each other | Doesn’t actually have its own chatbot |
Pricing
- Free: Limited access
- Poe Subscription: Starts at $16.67 per month; includes unlimited daily messages and access to exclusive bots like GPT 4 and Claude-3-Opus
Features
- Test and compare multiple popular AI chatbots
- Access multiple AI chatbots like GPT-4 and Claude-3-Opus for low price
- Free version available
- Streamlines building your own AI chatbot using a top LLM as your model
Drift
Best for Businesses that Rely on B2B Sales and Marketing
Overall Rating: 3.8
- Cost: 1.8
- Feature Set: 5
- Ease of Use: 4.5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 2
Drift’s AI is trained on more than 100 million B2B sales and marketing conversations, enabling it to understand and respond to B2B customer inquiries in the conversational manner that’s expected in this market sector—including multi-language support.
The Drift AI chatbot is designed to handle different types of conversations, including lead nurturing, customer support, and sales assistance. It can engage with website visitors and provide relevant information or route inquiries to the appropriate human representative.
Drift can be custom-trained for your B2B business in fine detail, allowing it to learn your brand’s voice and respond in a manner similar to your in-house reps. The B2B market is a specific use case for AI chatbots, and Drift’s focus on this market means that a B2B company can set up a highly functional chatbot that will evolve with the B2B market over time with less work.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Multi-language support | Expensive |
| Prospector and AI engagement score | Premium plan lacks advanced routing |
Pricing
- Premium: $30,000 billed annually
- Advanced: Available upon request
- Enterprise: Custom quote
Features
- User administration with role-based access control
- Live chat, custom chatbots, and AI-powered chatbots
- Meeting scheduler with Google, Office 365, and Teams integration
- Conversation and conversion reporting capability
Ada
Best for Customer Service Automation
Overall Rating: 3.8
- Cost: 0.6
- Feature Set: 5
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 2.5
Ada is an AI-powered customer service automation platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to automate customer service tasks. It is designed to help resolve customer issues, allowing businesses to streamline customer service operations and enhance the customer experience.
There are two ways to use Ada. You can either connect it to your knowledgebase and use generative AI to answer questions grounded in your existing content, or build a hard-coded chatbot using Ada’s natural language understanding and its drag-and-drop platform for a pre-scripted easy and fast setup.
In either case, Ada enables you to monitor and measure your bot KPI metrics across digital and voice channels—for example, automated resolution rate, average handle time, containment rate, CSAT, and handoff rate. It also offers predictive suggestions for answers, allowing the app to stay ahead of customer interactions. Ada’s user interface is intuitive and easy to use, which creates a faster onboarding process for customer service reps.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Customize chatbot personas | Lacks transparent pricing |
| Support for more than 50 languages | No free plan |
Pricing
- Generative: Contact Ada’s sales team for quote
- Scripted: Contact Ada’s sales team for quote
Features
- Integrations with third-party apps like Shopify, Marketo, and Clearbit
- Automated resolution measurement
- Advanced branding including additional customizations
YouChat
Best Chatbot for Students
Overall Rating: 3.6
- Cost: 5
- Feature Set: 2.9
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 3.8
- Support: 1
Designed by You.com, YouChat is an AI-powered generative chatbot that can summarize text, write code, suggest ideas, compose emails, and answer general questions based on information available on the web.
It also cites its information source, making it easy to fact-check the chatbot’s answers to your queries. YouChat combines various elements in search results, including images, videos, news, maps, social, code, and search engine results on the subject.
In essence, YouChat is a lighter weight tool with an affordable price plan that performs a wide array of tasks—particularly those needed by students. YouChat offers an easy user interface that will appeal to a busy user base that wants to jump right in without undergoing a lot of technical training.
The upside of this kind of easy-to-use app is that, as generative AI advances, today’s fairly lightweight tools will likely offer an enormous level of functionality. So any student or SMB user who starts with it now will probably reap greater benefits in the months and years ahead.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Available Chrome extension | Contextual understanding could be improved |
| Interactive search results with various elements | Sometimes displays outdated links or information |
Pricing
- Free: Up to 10 AI writing generations
- YouPro: $14.99 per month
- YouPro for Education: $6.99 per month
Features
- Code generator
- Multimodal search capability
- Support for social media profiles
HuggingChat
Best Chatbot for Developers
Overall Rating: 3.3
- Cost: 5
- Feature Set: 2.9
- Ease of Use: 4.8
- Quality of Output: 1.3
- Support: 1
Developed by Hugging Face, HuggingChat is a chatbot based on the Open Assistant Conversational AI Model. It uses NLP and ML algorithms to interact with users and can generate answers to questions, write essays, write code, translate text, and construct emails. The platform has been trained on a large dataset of diverse conversations and can learn from new interactions.
Hugging Face has a large and enthusiastic following among developers—it’s something of a favorite in the development community. Its platform is set up as an ideal environment to mix and match chatbot elements, including datasets ranging from Berkeley’s Nectar to Wikipedia/Wikimedia, and the AI models available range from Anthropic to Playground AI.
Many of these resources may not mean much to the SMB owner or enterprise manager, but they mean a great deal to developers with the expertise to use a deep resource base to customize an AI chatbot. Given that HuggingChat offers such a rich developer-centric platform, users can expect it to grow rapidly as AI chatbots are still gaining more adoption.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy to use | Knowledgebase not up to date |
| Highly customizable; lets developers create custom intents, entities, and actions | Sometimes provides an incomplete answer |
Pricing
- Free: Limited access
- Pro: $9 per month; gives early access to new features
- Enterprise Hub: $20 per user, per month
Features
- Web search functionality complements response with web content
- Multilingual support
- Can debug and write code and create Excel formulas
Replika
Best for Personal Use
Overall Rating: 3.2
- Cost: 5
- Feature Set: 0.6
- Ease of Use: 5
- Quality of Output: 5
- Support: 1.5
Replika is an artificial intelligence chatbot designed to have meaningful and empathetic-seeming conversations with users. It’s focused more on entertaining and engaging personal interaction rather than straightforward business purposes.
To support its goal, Replika uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to understand and respond to text-based conversations. Replika aims to be a virtual friend or companion that learns from and adapts to your personality and preferences.
To better engage, the platform learns your texting style and mimics it. Of course, this means that the longer you interface with the app, the more accurately Replika can mimic your style.
Its motto is “My AI Friend,” and the vendor claims that it can offer dialogue geared for emotional support. To that end, it can engage in a wide variety of topics or even help you learn new things.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| iOS and Android mobile apps available | Limited free plan |
| Offers emotional support | User interface could be improved |
| Availability and convenience. |
Pricing
- Free: Limited access
- Month-to-Month: $19.99
- Annual: $69.96.
- Lifetime: $299.99
Features
- Role-playing activities
- Communication through text, pictures, voice calls, and video calls
- Can engage in conversations about a wide range of topics, from personal interests to general knowledge
- Guides users through specific conversation topics such as mindfulness, stress management, or self-care
Bing Chat Enterprise
Best Chatbot for Organizations in the Microsoft Ecosystem
Overall Rating: 3.1
- Cost: 4
- Feature Set: 3.5
- Ease of Use: 1.8
- Quality of Output: 2.5
- Support: 4
Microsoft generative AI tool Bing Chat Enterprise uses GPT-4, which includes a top large language model, to generate natural language responses to user queries. Bing Chat Enterprise has three conversation styles: creative, balanced, and precise. These styles help you set the tone for the expected response to your query.
Bing Chat Enterprise is available in 160 regions. Users can also access it via the Windows Copilot Sidebar, making this app easily accessible. Microsoft is incorporating AI across its product portfolio, so this chat app will likely show up in a number of applications. If your company uses Microsoft, this chat app is a good choice.
The greatest strong point for the Bing Chat tool is that it’s produced by Microsoft, arguably the leader in AI today. The company’s deep resources and dominant technical expertise in AI software should support this chat app very well in the years ahead.
Microsoft is also skilled at serving both the consumer and the business market, so this chat app can be configured for a variety of levels of performance. It has the depth of features needed to serve the SMB market and large enterprise.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Bing’s citations can help you continue research on your own | Limited usage in browsers other than Microsoft Edge |
| User interface is visually appealing and easy to navigate | Limited to 30 responses per conversation |
Pricing
- Free: Available to customers licensed for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, Business Premium, or A3 or A5 for faculty
- Standalone: $5 per user, per month
Features
- Versatile mix of conversation styles for different enterprise AI use cases
- Citation capability lets you fact-check output
- Lets users upload images or can generate images
OpenAI Playground
Best Chatbot for Customizability
Overall rating: 3.0
- Cost: 4.15
- Feature Set: 5
- Ease of Use: 0.55
- Quality of Output: 2.5
- Support: 2
OpenAI Playground was designed by the same generative AI company that created ChatGPT (see above). As such, it is well funded and is continuously improved by some of the best developers in the AI industry. Expect it to stay ahead of the curve in terms of feature set.
The platform is a web-based environment allowing users to experiment with different OpenAI models, including GPT-4, GPT-3.5 Turbo, and others. OpenAI Playground is suitable for advanced users looking for a customizable generative AI chatbot model that they can fine-tune to suit their business needs. This advanced platform enables a vast level of choices and approaches in an AI chatbot.
OpenAI Playground’s focus on customizability means that it is ideal for companies that need a very specific focus to their chatbot. For instance, a sophisticated branding effort or an approach that requires a very proprietary large language model, like finance or healthcare. Given that this app needs true developer expertise to be fully customizable, it is not the best choice for small businesses or companies on a tight budget.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Access via Web or Android and iOS app. | Limited creativity |
| Highly customizable | Privacy concerns |
Pricing
Priced per 1,000 tokens, about 750 words; varies by model choice. New users get $5 in free credit to use for their first three months.
- GPT-4 Models: Input costs $0.03, output costs $0.06 for 8,000 context; input costs $0.06, output costs $0.12 for 32,000 context
- GPT-3.5 Turbo: Input costs $0.0015, output costs $0.002 for 4,000 context; input costs $0.003, output costs $0.004 for 16,000 context
Features
- Text and completion summarization
- Multiple options for model selection
- Language translation
- Sentiment analysis
Key Features of Generative AI Chatbots
Generative AI chatbots require a number of advanced features to accomplish their many tasks, ranging from context understanding to personalization.
Natural Language Processing
Natural language processing is a critical feature of a generative AI chatbot. NLP enables the AI chatbot to understand and interpret casual conversational input from users, allowing you to have more human-like conversations. With NLP capabilities, generative AI chatbots can recognize context, intent, and entities within the conversation.
Context Understanding
Context understanding is a chatbot’s ability to comprehend and retain context during conversations—this enables a more seamless and human-like conversation flow. A high-quality artificial intelligence chatbot can maintain context and remember previous interactions, providing more personalized and relevant responses based on the conversation history. This enables chatbots to provide more coherent and relevant replies.
Personalization
When shopping for generative AI chatbot software, customization and personalization capabilities are important factors to consider as they enable the tool to tailor responses based on user preferences and history. ChatGPT, for instance, allows businesses to train and fine-tune chatbots to align with their brand, industry-specific terminology, and user preferences.
Multilingual Support
An AI chatbot’s ability to communicate in multiple languages makes it appealing to global audiences. This functionality also allows the chatbot to translate text from one language to another.
How to Choose the Best Generative AI Chatbot For Your Business
The best generative AI chatbot for your company serves your business’s needs and balances quality service with moderately expensive or lower cost pricing based on what works with your budget. Additionally, you’ll need to ensure it has all the necessary AI features you need for your operations, and that these features will be supported going forward.
Organizations in the Microsoft ecosystem may find Bing Chat Enterprise beneficial, as it works better on the Edge browser. ChatGPT does not cite its data sources, but it is one of the most versatile and creative AI chatbots. Google Bard cites data sources and provides up-to-date information, but its response time is sometimes slow. Chatsonic can generate AI images as part of the answer to your query.
What appear to be positives to you may be negatives to another user, and vice versa. The best tool for your business is unique to you—conduct your own research to fully understand the chatbot market, identify your overall AI goals, and shop for a chatbot tool that offers features and capabilities that meet your requirements.
How We Evaluated the Best Generative AI Chatbots
We evaluated today’s leading AI chatbots with a rubric that balanced factors like cost, feature set, quality of output, and support.
Feature Set | 30 percent
Features carry the most weight in our evaluation process. We evaluated various capabilities offered by each generative AI software, including multi-language support, the ability to accept spoken word input, the programmability of the solution, the kind of users it is built for, and customization options.
Ease of Use | 25 percent
We assessed each generative AI software’s user interface and overall user experience. This included evaluating the ease of installation, setup process, and navigation within the platform. A well-designed and intuitive interface with clear documentation, support materials, and the AI chatbot response time contributed to a higher score in this category.
Cost | 20 percent
We reviewed each AI chatbot pricing model and available plans, plus the availability of a free trial to test out the platform. Our research found that some platforms are completely free, while some offer both free and paid plans—a tool like Google Bard gives you access to all its features for free, ChatGPT has a free plan with access to GPT 3.5 capabilities, while GPT 4 requires a monthly subscription. On the other hand, Jasper is a paid chatbot offering a seven-day free trial.
Support | 15 percent
Our analysis also considered the level of support provided by the AI software provider. We assessed the availability and responsiveness of customer support, including customer service hours, email support, live chat support and knowledge base.
Quality of Output | 10 percent
To determine the output quality generated by the AI chatbot software, we analyzed the accuracy of responses, coherence in conversation flow, and ability to understand and respond appropriately to user inputs. We selected our top solutions based on their ability to produce high-quality and contextually relevant responses consistently.
AI Chatbots: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Below, we provide answers to the most commonly asked questions about AI chatbots.
What Features Should Businesses Look for in AI Chatbots?
Key features to look for in AI chatbots include NLP capabilities, contextual understanding, multi-language support, pre-trained knowledge and conversation flow management. It is also important to look for a tool with a high accuracy rating, even if the questions asked are complex or open-ended.
Why are AI Chatbots Important for Businesses?
AI chatbots are important to businesses because they enhance customer experience and provide various operational benefits, such as improved customer experience, personalized experiences, cost reduction, and increased productivity. Most important: they provide customer service at a far lower cost.
How Can AI Chatbots Enhance Customer Support and Engagement?
AI chatbots can boost customer support by providing 24/7 support, answering common questions, and personalizing interaction based on customer preferences. (For instance, multilingual AI chatbots can communicate in multiple languages, enabling businesses to assist customers from different regions).
What are Traditional Chatbot Builders?
Traditional chatbot builders are tools that help you build conventional rule-based chatbots that stick to a prewritten script. Compared to AI chatbots, they lack natural language processing abilities and feel far less human-like.
Bottom Line: Today’s Top AI Chatbots Take Highly Varied Approaches
Determining the “best” generative AI chatbot software can be subjective, as it largely depends on a business’s specific needs and objectives. Chatbot software is enormously varied and continuously evolving, and new chatbot entrants may offer innovative features and improvements over existing solutions. The best chatbot for your business will vary based on factors such as industry, use case, budget, desired features, and your own experience with AI. There is no “one size fits all” chatbot solution.
For a full portrait of today’s top AI companies, read our guide: 150+ Top AI Companies
