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Pricing Comparison · May 2026

ModelPilot vs
everyone else.

The most honest comparison on the internet. We're cheaper. We're more open. But Intercom is better at some things — here's the full truth.

Intercom AI
$74+
$0.99/resolution · sales contact for AI tier
Best for established CS teams
Drift
$125+
Enterprise sales-focus · ABM heavy
Best for outbound B2B
Ada
$200+
Enterprise · contact sales · annual contracts
Best for Fortune 500
Section 01 — Feature Matrix

Side by side.

26 features. 4 vendors. One honest comparison. Updated May 2026 from public pricing pages.

Feature
Intercom AI
From $74
Drift
From $125
Ada
From $200
Pricing & Plans
Free tier
14-day trial
Demo only
Sales-led
Per-resolution fees
$0.99 per Fin resolution
Per-conversation pricing
Per-conversation pricing
Annual commit required
~ Recommended
Annual only
Annual only
Cancel anytime
Monthly plans only
AI Models
Bring your own API keys
Locked to Fin
~ Some BYOK
Model choice
Fin (proprietary)
Proprietary
Proprietary
Local / on-device models
Automatic model fallback
Knowledge & RAG
PDF / DOCX ingestion
URL scraping
Vector store control
Managed only
Custom chunking settings
~ Enterprise only
Developer Experience
REST API
Webhooks on all events
Open-source core
Self-hostable
~ Enterprise only
Widget bundle size
~58KB gzipped
~72KB gzipped
~95KB gzipped
Operations & Compliance
Multi-bot workspaces
~ Per-seat
Real-time analytics
SSO / SAML 2.0
Premium tier
GDPR / SOC 2
EU data residency
~ Enterprise
Maturity & Ecosystem
Years in market
14+ years
10+ years
9+ years
Integration count
200+
75+
50+
Inbox / ticketing UI
Best-in-class
Section 02 — Why teams switch

Three honest reasons.

Most teams that switch to ModelPilot do it for these three reasons. We're not for everyone — see below if you should switch.

01 — Cost
No token markup.
Intercom charges $0.99 per Fin resolution. Drift packs everything into seat pricing. ModelPilot charges a flat $79/mo and you bring your own keys — meaning you pay raw OpenAI/Anthropic prices. Most teams save 60–90%.
02 — Control
Pick any model.
Locked into Fin? GPT-4o just got cheaper but Intercom won't pass it on? On ModelPilot you swap models in a dropdown. Want to run Llama 3.1 locally? Just connect Ollama. The stack is open-source — fork it if you need to.
03 — Speed
Five-minute setup.
Drift demos take 3 weeks. Ada onboarding takes a month. ModelPilot is self-serve — sign up, paste your API key, upload your docs, paste the widget snippet. Live in under 5 minutes with no sales call.
Free migration assistance
Switching from Intercom or Drift?

We'll personally migrate your knowledge base, recreate your bot configurations, and run a 30-day parallel test against your current solution. No charge. If we don't beat your current numbers, we'll help you stay where you are.

Book Migration Call
Avg savings vs Intercom
$23k/mo
at 3k tickets/month volume
Migration time
2days
with our team's help
Switching teams
147+
migrated in Q1 alone
Avg deflection lift
+18%
vs prior solution
Section 03 — Honest answers

When you should not switch.

We won't waste your time. Here's when Intercom, Drift, or Ada might genuinely be the better choice.

When should we stay on Intercom? +

If you've invested heavily in Intercom's full Inbox + Help Center + Series + Surveys ecosystem, and your support team relies on that unified UX every day. ModelPilot is best-of-breed AI + RAG — but it's not a full inbox replacement (yet). If you only use Intercom for AI but pay for everything, switching saves big. If you use 8 of their products, the migration cost may exceed the savings.

When should we pick Drift instead? +

Drift's killer feature is account-based conversational marketing — routing inbound from named accounts to specific reps, identifying anonymous visitors via reverse-IP. If your GTM is heavy outbound enterprise sales and the chatbot is mostly a lead-router, Drift's specialized features may be worth the price. ModelPilot is better for everything else.

When is Ada the right call? +

Ada is built for Fortune 500 contact centers — call deflection, multi-channel (voice + SMS + chat), heavy compliance workflows. If you have a 200-agent contact center and an enterprise procurement team that requires vendor onboarding paperwork, Ada's sales-led approach and white-glove implementation fit that motion. ModelPilot is self-serve — built for teams of 3-500, not 5,000.

How do you make money if you're so cheap? +

Flat platform fee ($79/mo Pro · custom Enterprise). We don't take a cut of your AI spend — you pay OpenAI/Anthropic directly using your own keys, at their raw rates. The platform fee covers infrastructure, hosting, analytics, support, and ongoing development. Simple, predictable, no surprise bills.

Is it really enterprise-ready at this price? +

The Pro plan ($79/mo) is intended for SMB and growth-stage SaaS. Enterprise plan (custom pricing) adds SSO/SAML, audit logs, SLA, dedicated CSM, self-hosted option, and EU data residency. For Fortune 500 procurement, Enterprise plan checks every box. For teams of 3-50, $79/mo gets you everything that matters.

Try the cheaper, faster option.

Free Starter plan · no credit card · 5-minute setup · cancel anytime. The migration is on us.