AI Chatbot / Support Bot project cost estimator.

Your bot's brain and its biggest recurring cost — every conversation burns tokens. Chatbots multiply this: long system prompts (your knowledge base) get re-sent with every single message, so context caching matters as much as headline token prices.

Where your documents' embeddings live so the bot can cite YOUR content instead of improvising. Small datasets (under ~100k vectors) fit comfortably in free tiers — don't reach for dedicated vector databases before you've outgrown Postgres.

Runs the bot's backend (chat endpoint, embedding jobs) and, if embedded, serves the widget script. Streaming chat responses favor platforms with edge/serverless function support.

Public-facing site bots usually need NO auth at all — skip this category entirely if that's you. Add it when the bot is gated behind a login (internal tools, paid communities) or you need per-user chat history.

Chatbots fail differently than normal apps: silently, by giving confident wrong answers. You need conversation logs and feedback signals (thumbs up/down) more than pageview counts — review transcripts weekly to catch drift.

Skip this entirely for internal/support bots. It applies when the bot itself is the product people subscribe to — then the merchant-of-record question (who handles sales tax?) matters exactly as much as it does for full SaaS.