Chatfuel and ManyChat both reply to comments and DMs on Instagram and Facebook for you, and both run DMs on WhatsApp and TikTok. When it comes to Chatfuel vs ManyChat, the main difference is the pricing structure. ManyChat's price goes up with the number of people you message each month. Chatfuel's price goes up with the number of replies its AI writes, and you can message as many people as you want.
- ManyChat is the best for creators who want to build exact comment-to-DM flows. It starts at $17/mo, or $14/mo billed annually, for 250 contacts, and AI starts on Pro at $39/mo, or $29/mo billed annually, for 2,500 contacts.
- Chatfuel is the best for businesses that want an AI agent to answer questions, qualify leads and book appointments, or that send the same fixed message to a lot of people. It starts at $20/mo, or $18/mo billed annually, with no contact limit.
Quick comparison
Here's how the two tools compare on price, setup, channels and team seats.
| ManyChat | Chatfuel | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Active contacts per month | AI-usage credits; contacts unlimited |
| Starting price | $17/mo, or $14/mo billed annually (Essential, 250 contacts); AI from $39/mo (Pro) | $20/mo, or $18/mo billed annually (Business S, $20 of credits) |
| Free plan | Yes, 25 contacts a month | No; 7-day trial, card required |
| How you build | Flow builder and templates; AI from Pro | AI agent you set up by chatting; no flow builder |
| Instagram comment-to-DM | Yes | Yes |
| Ask to follow before sending a link | Yes | No |
| AI comment replies | Approve every reply (Instagram) | Sent automatically |
| TikTok | DMs only; not in the EU, UK or Switzerland | DMs and comment replies; no US-registered accounts |
| Pro and up | Every plan | |
| Team | 3 users and 2 Inbox seats on Pro ($25 per extra seat) | Unlimited teammates |
How ManyChat and Chatfuel charge you
ManyChat's bill grows with the number of people you talk to, and Chatfuel's bill grows with the number of replies its AI sends.
ManyChat counts an active contact as anyone who messages you, comments on your post, replies to your story or gets a message from one of your automations during the billing month. One Trustpilot reviewer wrote in September 2026 that contact numbers "get way out of control even with a medium sized page", because "Even someone reacting to a story counts as a contact".
ManyChat's current plans apply to accounts created on or after March 2, 2026.
- Free is $0 for 25 contacts a month.
- Essential is $17/mo, or $14/mo billed annually, for 250 contacts.
- Pro is $39/mo, or $29/mo billed annually, for 2,500 contacts.
- Business is $99/mo, or $69/mo billed annually, for 7,500 contacts.
- Advanced is $199/mo, or $139/mo billed annually, for 25,000 contacts.
Above your allowance, you pay for each extra contact. On monthly billing that runs from $0.10 on Essential down to $0.025 on Business. AI is included from Pro up at no extra cost, and the 14-day free trial covers Essential and Pro.
Chatfuel puts every channel, unlimited contacts and unlimited teammates on every plan. What you pay for is usage, drawn from a dollar balance of credits that comes with the plan. The main things that use credits are AI replies, at about $0.0093 each, and WhatsApp template messages, at Meta's rate plus 10%. A rule that replies with fixed text costs nothing, however many people comment.
- Business S is $20/mo, or $18/mo billed annually, with $20 of credits a month.
- Business M is $45/mo with $50 of credits.
- Business L is $90/mo with $100 of credits.
- Business XL is $170/mo with $200 of credits.
- Business XXL is $410/mo with $500 of credits.
Agency plans start at $100/mo for 3 companies. Credits reset every month and unused credits don't roll over. When they run out, the AI stops replying until you top up or move up a plan, though live chat keeps working so your team can answer people by hand.
There is no free plan. The 7-day trial needs a card and comes with $15 of credits. A Trustpilot reviewer in October 2026 signed up from an Instagram page that called comment replies "100% free" and found only Business S and Agency S behind the sign-in. Chatfuel replied that it was an older offer.
Let's say you send a link to 10,000 different people a month through comment-to-DM. Here's what that costs on each tool.
- On ManyChat, 10,000 active contacts puts you on Business plus overage, about $160/mo ($114/mo billed annually), or on Advanced at $199/mo. The AI can answer follow-up questions at no extra cost.
- On Chatfuel with a fixed-text DM, Business S at $20/mo covers it.
- On Chatfuel with the AI writing the DM and answering follow-ups, at about six replies per person, you'd use about $560 of credits. That puts you on Business XXL at $410/mo plus a top-up, about $470 a month.
Chatfuel is cheaper when your replies are fixed text or the AI sends a reply or two per person. Once the AI averages more than about two replies per person, ManyChat is cheaper, whatever the size of your audience.
Flows on ManyChat, an AI agent on Chatfuel
ManyChat is a flow builder that added AI, and Chatfuel replaced its flow builder with an AI agent. That's why ManyChat charges for the people your flows reach and Chatfuel charges for the replies its agent writes. It also decides who writes your messages, you or the AI.
On ManyChat you write every message, choose every trigger and branch, and add AI only where you want it. On Chatfuel you set what the agent knows, what it's trying to get done and when it hands off to a person, and the agent writes each reply. Fixed-text comment replies are the one place you write the words yourself on Chatfuel.
ManyChat lets you build from scratch or start from 60+ templates. On Instagram, ManyChat's AI runs alongside your flows and only steps in when no flow handles the message. AI Replies answer questions from a knowledge base you give it, and AI Comments reply to positive comments on your posts and Reels. An AI Step can also run inside a flow on Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, TikTok and Telegram.
On Chatfuel, you describe what you want to an in-product assistant called the AI Co-pilot, and the agent answers customers, qualifies leads, books appointments through your calendar and follows up when people go quiet. The agent runs on OpenAI's GPT-5.2.
Both tools hand a chat to a person. ManyChat pauses automations for 30 minutes when you reply from its Inbox. Chatfuel's AI stops when you take the chat, and picks it back up after a period of inactivity that you set.
Both tools do comment-to-DM on Instagram. ManyChat gives you more ways to start a DM and to grow your following with it, while Chatfuel's AI keeps the conversation going after the first DM.
On either tool, a comment with your keyword, or any comment at all, on a post or Reel gets a public reply, a DM, or both. Both tools handle story replies too. Instagram lets you send one DM to a new commenter until they reply, and that rule applies to both tools.
ManyChat adds a few things on top of that.
- Ask to follow. ManyChat checks whether the person follows you and asks them to follow before it sends the link, on Essential and up.
- More ways to start a DM. ManyChat can also start one from a keyword in an incoming DM, a story mention or a comment on an Instagram Live.
- AI Comments, on Pro and up. The AI replies to positive comments in your tone, and you approve every reply.
Chatfuel handles the same job differently.
- The AI agent writes the DM after a comment by default, then keeps answering the person's questions from your knowledge base for about a day.
- Keyword rules work on comments, story replies, ig.me links and ads, but not on plain DMs. Those go straight to the AI.
- There's no ask-to-follow step.
- Comment replies go out automatically.
If most of your Instagram automation is "comment LINK and I'll send it to you", ManyChat gives you more ways to run it. If the DM is the start of a sales conversation, Chatfuel's agent answers the follow-up questions, qualifies the lead and books the call.
TikTok
Both tools automate TikTok DMs, only Chatfuel replies to TikTok comments, and each tool is closed to a different region.
ManyChat does DMs only on TikTok, started by a DM, a link or a QR code. ManyChat lists comment-to-DM on TikTok as coming next. ManyChat's TikTok isn't available in the EU, the UK or Switzerland.
Chatfuel does DMs plus public replies to comments on your videos, on every plan. TikTok accounts signed up in the US can't connect to Chatfuel, and messages from EU-based TikTok users don't come through.
On both tools you need a TikTok Business account, and you can send up to 10 messages within 48 hours of the person's last message. Neither tool can send a DM from a TikTok comment, and Chatfuel says TikTok doesn't allow it. Keep in mind that ManyChat says links in TikTok DMs aren't clickable.
All this is to say, a TikTok account registered in the US can only use ManyChat. A European account can only connect to Chatfuel, and Chatfuel doesn't receive messages from EU-based users, so neither tool is much use for a European TikTok audience.
WhatsApp, Messenger and other channels
Chatfuel puts WhatsApp on every plan, while ManyChat starts it at Pro and covers more channels overall.
Both tools connect Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, and both pass Meta's WhatsApp message fees through from a prepaid balance.
- ManyChat has WhatsApp, SMS and email from Pro up, and Telegram on every plan.
- Chatfuel has WhatsApp on every plan and a website chat widget, with no Telegram, SMS or email.
Which one should you choose?
The choice comes down to whether you want to write the messages yourself or have an AI agent write them. As we mentioned earlier, if cost decides ManyChat vs Chatfuel for you, Chatfuel is cheaper until its AI averages about two replies per person, and ManyChat is cheaper after that.
ManyChat is the better choice if you want to write every message yourself
That fits creators who run their own Instagram automation. ManyChat can also ask people to follow you before it sends the link, which Chatfuel can't, and it's the only one of the two a US-registered TikTok account can connect to.
- Essential at $17/mo, or $14/mo billed annually, covers comment-to-DM with the follow prompt for 250 contacts.
- Pro at $39/mo, or $29/mo billed annually, adds AI and 2,500 contacts.
- If the AI is going to hold long conversations, ManyChat's price doesn't rise with them.
Chatfuel is the better choice if you want an AI agent to sell for you
That fits businesses that sell through DMs or WhatsApp and want the agent to answer questions, qualify leads and book appointments. Chatfuel also fits anyone sending the same fixed-text reply to a lot of people, a team that needs several people in the inbox without paying per seat, and an agency running bots for clients.
- Business S at $20/mo, or $18/mo billed annually, covers fixed-text comment-to-DM at any volume and includes WhatsApp.
- Once the AI is writing the replies, the plan you need depends on how many replies it sends, at about $0.0093 each.
- Agency plans start at $100/mo for 3 companies.
When to skip both
You should skip both once you're messaging more than about 50,000 people a month. At that volume, both tools cost more than a flat-rate plan.
- On ManyChat's monthly billing, 50,000 people a month is Advanced plus overage, about $300/mo, and the price keeps rising by about $4 for every 1,000 more people.
- On Chatfuel, $300 of credits covers about 32,000 AI replies a month, and every reply after that costs more.
Sociable AI Pro is $299/mo with unlimited DM and comment automation, so the price stays the same however many people you message. We send comment-to-DM and DM replies on Instagram and Facebook automatically, and we draft replies to the comments on your Instagram, Facebook and TikTok (in beta) posts for you to approve before they go up. Pro also includes 5 seats.
Try Sociable AI and stop paying more as you grow.
FAQ
How much does ManyChat cost a month?
ManyChat starts at $17/mo for 250 contacts on Essential, and Pro is $39/mo for 2,500 contacts. Annual plans are charged up front for the year, and you can't switch an annual plan to monthly until the term ends.
How much does Chatfuel cost?
Chatfuel starts at $20/mo, or $18/mo billed annually ($216 a year), with $20 of usage credits included each month. If you cancel or downgrade, Chatfuel refunds within 3 days of a monthly invoice or 30 days of an annual one.
Is ManyChat free?
Yes. ManyChat's free plan covers up to 25 contacts a month and 4 live automations, with a "Powered by Manychat" message on the first DM you send to each contact. ManyChat calls the free plan a tier for testing automation, not for ongoing business use.
I signed up for ManyChat before March 2026. Which prices apply to me?
Accounts created before March 2, 2026 stay on the older plans for now. On those plans, Pro starts at $15/mo for up to 500 contacts and rises as your contact list grows, and AI is a $29/mo add-on.
What is Chatfuel used for?
Chatfuel is used to answer customers, qualify leads and book appointments in DMs and on WhatsApp. Chatfuel pitches itself to service and lead-generation businesses, such as beauty, clinics, real estate and coaching, and to agencies that resell it to their clients.
Is there anything better than ManyChat?
It depends on the job. Chatfuel is the better pick if you want an AI agent to sell in DMs and on WhatsApp, or if you send the same fixed-text reply to a lot of people.
