Chatfuel SDK vs respond.io
respond.io pricing is a plan, a fee for each extra user, and a price that climbs with the contacts you talk to. Chatfuel SDK hands you the app: your brand, no seat fee, no contact meter.
Side by side
| Feature | respond.io | Chatfuel SDK |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | ||
What it is | An account on their platform | The application itself, handed over |
Source you can read and change | ||
Licence | A subscription to a hosted service | MIT |
Where it runs | Their cloud, at app.respond.io | Vercel, your own server or Docker |
What leaves with you | Contacts, conversations and messages as an export, 365 days at a time | The app, its source, and the deployment you already control |
| Getting a number live | ||
How the number connects | Through respond.io, an official WhatsApp Business Solution Provider | Meta’s embedded signup, through Chatfuel — an official Meta partner and WhatsApp BSP |
Trying it first | 7 days, no card: Growth for 5 users and 1,000 contacts, without broadcasts | A trial the wizard opens, and promo code SDK worth $100 of credits |
| What a month costs | ||
Published price | $99, $199 or $349 a month; $79, $159 or $279 billed yearly | $20 for one bot, $100 to $2,050 for an agency |
People answering the inbox | 5 on Starter, 10 on Growth and Advanced, then $15, $25 or $30 a user a month | No seat charge |
Contacts you talk to in a month | Unlimited on Starter; 1,000 on Growth and Advanced, then the plan steps up | Not metered |
Growth at 1,000, 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000 contacts | $199, $299, $399 or $559 a month; “Custom” past 10,000 | Business, $20 |
Past the contacts in the plan | $12 per 100 on Growth, $15 per 100 on Advanced | Not metered |
A team of five answering by hand | Starter, $99 | Business, $20 |
A team of fifteen with automation, 5,000 contacts | Growth at 5,000 contacts: $399 plus 5 × $25 = $524 | Business, $20 |
On top of Meta’s per-message rate | +5.5%, on every top-up of the WhatsApp balance | 10%, from 1 October 2026 |
What messages are paid from | A WhatsApp balance you top up | The same balance the AI draws on |
What the AI is billed in | Credits: 5,000 to 40,000 a month by plan, then $15 per 1,000 | Tokens: $2.75 in and $16.50 out per million tokens |
Channels on a plan | All of theirs on every plan; a custom channel on Advanced | All five, on every plan |
API and webhooks | The developer API from Growth; webhooks on Advanced | The API is what the app is built on, on every plan |
What is metered | Users, contacts talked to, AI credits and WhatsApp fees | AI tokens, and a cent a conversion event, from the plan’s balance |
| The inbox | ||
Shared inbox with human takeover | ||
Assigning a conversation | To a user, a team or an AI agent; round robin by workflow, from Growth | To a person, to the AI, or to nobody |
Notes on a contact | Comments and closing notes | |
WhatsApp’s 24-hour window | Template messages from the inbox | Checked before you type; an approved template is the way back |
Roles | Owner, Manager and Agent | Owner, admin and member, with per-bot grants |
Saved replies | Snippets | Kept per person |
Tags on a chat | ||
A mobile app for the inbox | ||
Operator reports | ||
Phone number masking | On Advanced | |
Single sign-on | SAML, on Advanced | |
| Automation and AI | ||
A visual flow builder | Workflows, from Growth; 150 to a workspace | |
An AI agent that answers customers | From Growth, out of AI credits: 2 to 5 a reply | On every plan and all five channels; tokens come off the balance |
How the AI is set | An agent by role: receptionist, support, sales or custom | Per entry point: fifteen settings across seventeen sources |
What the AI answers from | Files and links as knowledge sources, 100 files to a workspace | A knowledge base: profile, FAQ, products, and gaps found in handed-over chats |
A bookings calendar the AI books into | Booking links for Cal.com and Calendly, from Growth | |
A sales pipeline | Lifecycle stages on a contact | A deals board, a table and a forecast |
Conversions from click-to-chat ads | From Growth | |
A Shopify integration | Through Zapier, from Growth | Free, with your own app |
| Broadcasts | ||
Campaigns on approved templates | From Growth | |
Choosing who receives it | Segments built from contact filters | Conditions on contact fields, with a live recipient count |
When it goes | Now or scheduled, on a calendar | Now, later, or on a repeat in the bot’s timezone |
How it did | Broadcast analytics, from Growth | Contacts reached; delivery and read rates are in WhatsApp Manager |
| Channels | ||
Where a conversation can come in | WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, TikTok, Telegram, Viber, LINE, WeChat, SMS, email and web chat | Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok and the web widget |
Telegram, Viber, LINE, WeChat, SMS, email and calls | ||
| Your brand | ||
The address your client signs in at | app.respond.io | Yours, on your domain |
White label | The app carries your name and your logo, and nothing of ours | |
Your own sign-up and your own price | Their plans, resold at a margin | The auth module, on any plan |
What you keep on a sale | A reseller’s “15% to 40% lifetime commissions” | The price you set, in full |
Running several clients | Multiple workspaces, on Advanced | Client bots in one workspace, on one balance |
When to choose which
Choose respond.io if
- Customers write on Telegram, Viber, LINE, WeChat, SMS or email, or call. We have five channels, and not those.
- Your team answers from a phone. They ship a mobile inbox app; we do not.
- Sign-in has to run through your company’s SAML provider. Advanced has it; our sign-in is email and password.
- HubSpot or Salesforce has to sit beside the conversation without you writing the integration.
- Campaign figures decide your next send, or the agent has to answer a phone call.
Choose Chatfuel SDK if
- The app your clients sign in to should carry your name, on your domain, down to the source.
- The team is growing. An eleventh person in the inbox costs nothing here, and $25 a month on Growth.
- The audience is growing. Ten thousand contacts a month is the same $20 here, and $559 on Growth.
- You run numbers for several clients and want them on one balance, at a price you set.
- Bookings and a deals board should come with the inbox, not through a third calendar.
Move a number over
One command scaffolds the app and writes only the modules you pick. Templates Meta has approved on the connected WhatsApp Business Account appear in the broadcasts catalog.
- Run the wizard, pick the modules, give it your name and your logo.
- Connect the number from inside your app, through Chatfuel, an official Meta partner.
- Set the AI per entry point: a direct message, an ad click, a click from a post.
- Deploy on your own domain, and add the auth module when clients sign in to you.
Questions
respond.io pricing on 21 September 2026, in US dollars and billed monthly: Starter $99, Growth $199 and Advanced $349 a month, or $79, $159 or $279 billed yearly. Starter holds five users, Growth and Advanced ten, and an extra user is $15, $25 or $30 a month. Growth and Advanced start at 1,000 contacts talked to in a month and step up with them: Growth is $199, $299, $399 or $559 at 1,000, 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000. Past that their page prints “Custom”.
Pricing