How much does an AI sales agent cost?

An AI sales agent costs two separate amounts. The software is USD 7 to USD 150 a month depending on the vendor and your team size, and the messages are billed on top by Meta or your carrier at their own rates. The spread in the software half is not a quality difference. It is three different billing models: per seat, per AI resolution, and one price for the whole company.

What are you actually paying for?

Two bills, from two companies, and vendors quote the first one loudly and the second one quietly.

The first is the software: the inbox, the routing, the agent, the reporting. That is what a pricing page shows.

The second is the message itself. WhatsApp, SMS and voice all cost money per message or per minute, and that money goes to Meta or to a carrier. Since 1 July 2025 Meta prices WhatsApp per template message rather than per 24 hour conversation, in marketing, utility and authentication categories, with India rates varying by category and volume. Free-form replies you send inside an open customer service window still cost nothing.

Whether that second bill arrives at your desk or inside your vendor's invoice is the single biggest variable in what you end up paying. Connect your own Meta and Twilio accounts and you pay Meta's rate at cost, you can read the line items, and the number stays yours if you leave. Buy messages bundled into a per-message rate from a vendor and you are paying a margin you cannot audit on a bill you cannot see.

What do the main vendors charge?

Prices below were read off each vendor's own pricing page or pricing document in September 2026. Check them before quoting them; every one of these companies changes them.

• Zoho SalesIQ is per operator. Basic is USD 7 per operator per month billed annually, or USD 10 billed monthly. Professional is USD 12.75 annually, USD 17 monthly. Enterprise is USD 20 annually, USD 25 monthly. Each paid plan includes one operator license.
• Wati starts at USD 29 a month with three users included, and no further users can be added to that plan at all. The USD 99 Pro plan includes five and charges USD 24 for each one after that.
• Interakt charges USD 55 for Growth and USD 69 for Advanced, both with unlimited seats, and sells WhatsApp AI Agents as a USD 74.99 add-on that includes 100 AI messages a month and charges USD 0.011 for each one beyond that.
• Apavin is USD 49 for the company every 30 days plus USD 15 for each additional employee, with the AI included rather than metered.

Why does per-resolution pricing get expensive?

Because the bill moves with the thing you were trying to increase.

A per-resolution or per-AI-message model prices success. The month your campaign works, your customers ask more questions, the agent answers more of them, and your software bill goes up in proportion. Interakt's add-on is the clearest example of the shape: 100 AI messages included, then a charge per message after that. At a thousand AI messages in a busy month that add-on is USD 74.99 plus roughly USD 9.90, which is fine. At twenty thousand it is a different conversation, and it is a conversation you have after the month has already happened.

The practical test is not which model is cheaper today. It is which model you can forecast. A flat company price costs the same in a quiet month and a busy one, which makes next quarter's number a decision rather than a surprise.

How do you work out your own number?

Four figures, and you can get all four in an afternoon.

1. Seats. Count everyone who needs to open the inbox, not just the people who answer. Managers, the person who covers Sunday, the founder who reads everything.
2. The seat curve. Work out the monthly cost at your current headcount and at the headcount you expect in a year. Per-operator pricing that looks cheap at two people is the same arithmetic at twelve, which is where teams get caught.
3. Message volume. Pull last month's outbound template count from your WhatsApp account, split by category. That number times Meta's rate for your country is the second bill, and it does not change whichever vendor you pick.
4. AI volume, if it is metered. Count inbound customer messages, not conversations. One conversation is often eight messages.

A five person team is a useful check on any pricing page. On SalesIQ Professional that is five operators at USD 12.75 billed annually, so USD 63.75 a month for website chat. On Apavin it is USD 49 plus four employees at USD 15, so USD 109 a month, for twelve channels with the agent included. Those are not competing numbers. They are answers to different questions, and the point of running the arithmetic is to find out which question you are asking.

What does Apavin cost?

USD 49 per company every 30 days, plus USD 15 for each additional employee. All twelve channels, unlimited conversations, and the AI agent included rather than metered per resolution or per message. Prices are set in US dollars; Indian businesses pay the rupee equivalent at the live rate by UPI, card, netbanking or wallet, and the exact amount is shown before you confirm. Nothing renews automatically.

The trial is seven days of the entire product with no card and no invite code. There is no permanently free tier, which is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight: a free tier that never converts is a support cost every existing customer pays for.

The takeaway

Get the second bill out of the vendor before you compare the first one. Ask who Meta invoices, ask what happens to your number if you leave, and ask what the same month costs if your message volume triples. The vendors worth using answer all three without a call.