Top 7 WhatsApp Chatbots in 2026 (+ Step-by-Step Video Tutorial)

Have you ever used a WhatsApp chatbot?

In 2025, WhatsApp ranked as the world’s most popular messaging platform and the 4th most popular social media app. With over 2 billion users, it’s a prime channel to deploy an AI chatbot.

Our company has helped businesses deploy over 750,000 chatbots over the past few years.

And our most popular pre-built integration? It’s WhatsApp by a mile.

The best user experiences meet users where they’re at — which is why more and more companies are using WhatsApp to directly connect with their customers.

From experience, I can say that building a WhatsApp chatbot is as complicated — or simple — as the tools you use. And there’s a lot of WhatsApp chatbot tools on the market.

That’s why I put together this article: to give you 5 user friendly chatbot tools that’ll help you have AI conversations over WhatsApp.

And I’ll explain everything you need to know about WhatsApp bots: why they’re popular, how they work, and how you can build your own for free.

What is a WhatsApp chatbot?

A WhatsApp chatbot is an automated software that interacts with users in real time over the WhatsApp messaging platform.

WhatsApp chatbots can be used to answer questions, recommend products, or send content — and they have the advantage of reaching users where they already are: on WhatsApp.

WhatsApp chatbots leverage natural language processing (NLP) and AI to simulate the experience of a real conversation, automating tasks like customer support, form filling, and even monetary transactions.

Why should I use a WhatsApp AI chatbot?

Direct contact with users

WhatsApp has become the leading communication channel worldwide. If you want to keep up with competitors, you need to offer communication services directly to your customers.

It’s becoming increasingly common for organizations to offer conversational AI support — from customer service chatbots to lead gen bots to hospitality booking systems. So it makes sense to offer these digital services on easy-access channels like WhatsApp.

24/7 access

With an AI chatbot, you can send automated messages from your WhatsApp number, update an order status for a customer, or host a conversation with a user at any time of day. It's far easier to engage with international users and fully automate the bulk of interactions.

Multilingual support

The cost of providing professional multilingual assistance to users used to be astronomical. But with AI, multilingual support is free.

Chatbot translation involves intercepting messages from users, identifying their language, and translating these messages to and from the bot's operating language. This allows a seamless chatbot experience in your users’ native languages.

For companies with international presence, aiming to expand globally, or in areas with diverse language demographics (like India and the United States), WhatsApp chatbots are a necessity.

What are the most common use cases for WhatsApp chatbots?

There are a wide variety of chatbots you can deploy to WhatsApp — they can handle marketing campaigns, excel at answering questions, and can connect with a human agent when needed.

Their wide range of capabilities means there’s limitless ways to use WhatsApp chatbot tools to scale your business or automate your communications with chatbot conversations.

The most popular types of WhatsApp chatbots include:

Customer Service Bots

One of the most common types of WhatsApp chatbot is a customer service chatbot.

Customer service chatbots offer easy scalability and consistent service. If you want to prepare your company for increasing volume without similarly rising costs, a customer service chatbot allows you to handle far more queries than live agents alone.

Once they’re integrated with your core documents (data, policies, or your entire website), they can provide up-to-date information for your customers — allowing your customer service reps to spend their time on high-impact conversations.

Booking and Reservation Bots

WhatsApp is the tool of choice for thousands of booking services worldwide. Booking chatbots are a popular choice due to the repetitive nature of bookings — customers can easily pick a time or select a room with a chatbot.

WhatsApp is the most common channel when deploying chatbots for hotels, since employees and guests alike use the messaging service.

A reservation chatbot is especially useful for international services, like hotels, tourism, and hospitality. Tourists usually make bookings before arriving at their destination — by making your booking system available on WhatsApp, you can reach customers anywhere in the world.

One of our partners, hostifAI, found that hotels with WhatsApp chatbots were able to provide faster and more reliable services for their guests. As CEO Badr Lemkhente explains:

“Last week, our Virtual Butler received a request from a guest who needed to order room service and had a special request for an additional bathroom towel. The Virtual Butler effectively guided the guest through the room service options . . . and promptly transmitted the requests to the appropriate staff. What's notable is that both needs were handled within the same conversation, even though they had to be processed by two different teams.”

HR Bots

While we often think of company-to-customer chatbots, internal chatbots are increasingly common across industries. They can be used to communicate HR policies, book meetings, and distribute company information to employees.

The main appeal of internal AI bots is that they can be trained on internal company documents. If you want a chatbot to communicate HR policies, you don’t need to program an old-fashioned rule-based chatbot — with the right chatbot tools, you can train your chatbot to answer questions based on specific documents.

If an employee has an HR question, they can easily send a message to the company’s WhatsApp chatbot for HR as a precursor to in-person conversations.

Lead Generation Bots

Most of the chatbots deployed on our platform are used for AI lead generation — guiding users, collecting their information, and qualifying leads.

Most enterprise chatbots have a workflow that includes using chatbots to suggest products or facilitate purchases.

But there are plenty of ways to use AI for sales, including personalized outreach.

What are the top 7 WhatsApp chatbot tools?

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When selecting a WhatsApp chatbot platform, it’s important to take into consideration:

• The purpose of your WhatsApp bot
• Your level of coding expertise

I looked at all the major players in the chatbot space that offer a WhatsApp integration and tried out their products to see a) how easy it was to integrate with WhatsApp, b) the quality of the features and UX offered in each platform, and c) gave special attention to features that enhance a bot's performance on WhatsApp specifically (features like handing off to a human, frontend configuration, etc).

So allow me to present the findings of my research: the top 7 platforms for building WhatsApp chatbots.

1. Botpress

Best for: Effective, human-like bots out-of-the-box, with high potential for customization and third-party integrations.

Botpress is powered by the latest LLMs from all major providers. It has one-click automatic configuration with WhatsApp and an onboarding flow that builds the preliminary chatbot for you.

And in a lot of cases, that starter bot is enough.

That’s thanks to Botpress’ core feature: the autonomous node — a self-contained unit for conversation, decision-making, and tool use. This lets you increase the agentive functionality of a bot while maintaining a relatively simple flow.

There are over 190 integrations to connect with CRMs, calendars, and search the web, to name a few. Users can build new integrations, and with the ability to run JavaScript code, bots have theoretically limitless capability.

The platform can be a little daunting– highly customized bots come with a learning curve, so be prepared to invest time in more involved projects.

That said, I’m in the camp of choosing slight complexity over a simpler but limiter platform. So if you’re like me, the uptake time is a small price to pay.

On the bright side, the Discord community and thorough documentation (complete with a chatbot to assist!) make the platform accessible to anyone with moderate technical skills.

That said, simple, single-node flows work great out of the box. In most cases, a single autonomous node hooked up to a knowledge base covers most — if not all — of your needs.

Pros:

• Unlimited customizability
• Easy to create effective bots
• Lots of integrations

Cons:

• Slight learning curve
• AI spend can add up

Pricing:

• Free Plan: Includes core builder, 1 bot, and $5 AI credit
• Plus: $89/month — flow testing, routing, human handoff
• Team: $495/month — SSO, collaboration, shared usage tracking
• Enterprise: $2000/month — for custom setups, high volume, or compliance controls

2. ChatBase

Best for: Quick setup and hands-off deployment, and won’t need a high degree of customization.

Chatbase is a platform for building customer support agents. It’s designed for ease of use, particularly for getting simple, high-performing chatbots set-up quickly.

It handles basic conversations and autonomous responses without special configuration. The platform is especially useful for quick deployments on channels like WhatsApp.

However, this simplicity comes at a cost.

The free tier only gives access to the fast (but limited) models, and upgrading gets pricey at $150 per pro seat. There is some third party integration support, but it’s limited.

Like with all the out-of-the-box platforms, you won’t get the same customizability that Botpress and n8n offer.

You can embed a bot almost instantly, but if you want something with rich workflows or deep system interactivity, you’ll hit the ceiling fast.

Pros:

• Very conversational with little maintenance
• Some third party integration

Cons:

• Little customizability
• Only fast models available at the free tier
• Upgrades are expensive

Pricing:

• Free: 1 agent, 100 messages, 10 links, and access to fast models.
• Hobby: $40/month — 2K messages, 33MB, external integrations, and access to all models
• Standard: $150/month — 12K messages, 2 agents, 3 members
• Pro: $500/month — 40K messages, 3 agents, analytics
• Enterprise: Custom — high volume, support, service level agreement (SLAs)

3. ManyChat

Best for: Quick-and-easy lead-capture triggered by social media actions, without the need for human-like conversation.

ManyChat positions itself as a platform marketing chatbots, first and foremost. It integrates easily into social media apps, like WhatsApp and Instagram, with built-in functionality to respond to social media behavior.

Building and deploying is incredibly simple, and it has advanced features out-of-the-box for responding to social media triggers like comments, likes, and keyword filters.

This is great if you want to engage or qualify leads, and don’t mind a more transactional conversation – you know, like canned answers, sending marketing materials, etc.

ManyChat makes it easy to initiate chatbot conversations and capture all the necessary information. Just keep in mind that it’ll be more of a question-answer flow than an actual conversation.

The use of AI for intelligent conversation and decision making is limited; their AI step can be programmed and tuned, but it’s used mostly to redirect users to a predetermined form, or to answer predefined questions.

ManyChat has limited integration with other tools, so don’t expect complex workflows, but for broad reach and lead qualification at a low price, this can be a formidable solution.

Pros:

• Easiest to integrate with social media triggers
• Relatively simple setup
• Low cost

Cons:

• Fewer options for human-like conversation
• Useful features only available at Pro tier.

Pricing:

• Free: Up to 1K contacts, basic features
• Pro: $15+/month — all features, scales with contacts
• Elite: Custom — tailored features, premium support

4. n8n

Best for: Triggering complex workflows that integrate third parties, and developers who don’t mind investing some time into building.

N8n is designed to build AI agents that integrate easily with external tools and deploy across platforms. It’s primarily marketed for building automations, but it can be used for chat functionality as well.

It’s also open source, if you’re into that.

If you’re looking to execute customized workflows that call external tools, they offer over 400 integrations and an intuitive visual builder.

It’s definitely a tinkerer’s tool. Steps in a workflow have to be meticulously defined. Want to respond to the user? Send an email? Log data to Hubspot? You’ll need nodes to classify the intent and call the tool at each step in the conversation.

n8n has the opposite problem of most other platforms: it’s highly customizable, but building something simpler, covering the majority of customer support and marketing, is still relatively complex.

You can capture user input and offer AI-generated responses, but building a flow for a fluid conversation with session memory and autonomous decision making will take some time.

Pros:

• Open-source
• Lots of online tutorials
• Lots of integrations
• Highly customizable

Cons:

• Cost
• Steep learning curve

Pricing:

• Starter: €20/month — 2.5K workflow executions, 5 workflows, 1 project
• Pro: €50–120/month — up to 50K workflow executions, 3 projects
• Enterprise: Custom — unlimited workflows, SSO, support, Git, environments

5. Jotform

Best for: Super quick deployment for a conventional business running standard customer support or lead capture operations.

Jotform positions itself as a platform for creating dynamic forms with a drag-and-drop interface.

They recently added a service for AI agents, and it’s perfect for teams needing a no-code chatbot that handles form submissions and FAQs with minimal setup.

It’s great if you want a simple chatbot with limited setup that spares you the technicalities. They have hundreds of templates built for different combinations of use-cases and industries. These all make it easy to access knowledge and fill forms.

The templates cover all the basics of FAQs and customer support, and lead qualification. But custom use cases, and more agentic functions aren’t available.
A chatbot can answer a policy question or determine a customer’s support needs, but for anything transactional, you’ll be escalating to a live agent.

This is perfect if you want a professional, sleek interface for little uptake work, and have the infrastructure to deal with incoming requests once users get past the basic flow.

Pros:

• Very easy setup
• Low cost
• Works well with predefined templates

Cons:

• Not customizable
• No option to choose your model

Pricing:

• Free: 1 seat, 2 assistants, 500 messages/month
• Pro: $50/month — 3 seats, 10 assistants, analytics, API
• Team: $150/month — 10 seats, roles, permissions, workflows
• Enterprise: Custom — SSO, SOC2, advanced governance, premium support

6. Tidio

Best for: Easy setup and simple analytics, to integrate with an e-commerce platform and/or CRM with a supported Tidio integration.

Tidio offers tools to build and deploy live chatbots for customer support and e-commerce.

It has tools for gathering and analyzing metrics. As of writing, it has a total of 37 integrations, letting you not communicate with common tools, and deploy on all major channels.

That means, for example, you can integrate easily with Shopify, Salesforce, and Google Analytics to track and update metrics about user habits.

The downside is that customization is limited. Only basic analytics are supported, and connecting to third party apps via APIs, or implementing complex flow logic aren’t options.

Pros:

• Simple setup
• Integration with most popular apps and platforms
• Automatically creates customer support analytics

Cons:

• Not customizable
• Limited free tier
• Upgrades are pricey

Pricing:

• Starter: $24/month — 100 conversations, analytics, AI Copilot
  Growth: $149/month — 1,000 conversations, permissions, advanced analytics
• Plus: $749/month — custom usage, manager, branding, multisite
  Premium: $2,999/month — managed AI, SLAs, priority support

7. Wati

Best for: Team collaboration and running e-commerce operations directly through whatsapp.

Wati is a WhatsApp-focused platform. It’s for building chatbots, but it goes beyond that

Wati treats WhatsApp as a shopping platform in-and-of-itself– it includes interfaces for browsing product catalogues and processing transactions, all within WhatsApp.

It was originally only deployable on WhatsApp, but has since introduced support for Instagram and Messenger.

It also boasts 13 integrations, which is nothing crazy, but just enough to cover the bases: Zoho, Shopify, HubSpot, Zapier, and others.

On that note, its application-like wrapper makes the experience more application-like than conversational. AI functionality is limited, and smooth, human-like conversational flows aren’t available with Wati.

Pros:

• Very easy to set up
• Most extensive in-app functionality on WhatsApp
• Tools for managing a shared inbox across teams

Cons:

• Limited AI functionality
• No free tier

Pricing:

• Growth – $69/month: 3 users, 15K broadcasts, Shopify tools
• Pro – $149/month: 5 users, AI, analytics, 200K API calls

Business – $349/month: Advanced workflows, 20M API, CSM, integrations

How to Build a WhatsApp Chatbot

You can check out my full tutorial for building WhatsApp chatbots, or you can watch my YouTube tutorial above!

I'm obsessed with making it as easy as possible for people to build WhatsApp chatbots, so you can let me know how either of those work for you.

How do WhatsApp Business API and Meta API work?

If you're building a WhatsApp chatbot, you’ll need to use WhatsApp Business API to connect your business WhatsApp to your chatbot platform.

Since WhatsApp is owned by Meta (the parent company for Facebook and Instagram), you’ll need a Facebook Business account to get started.

This is easier for some companies than others. Creating a Meta business portfolio can be a hassle, so I made a video explaining how to create your Meta business portfolio, so that no one would make the same mistakes I did.

It’s important to note that all WhatsApp chatbot tools will require you to register a business account with Meta before you can deploy a bot to WhatsApp.

‍Once you set up your chatbot, all incoming messages will be sent to your WhatsApp phone numbers.

(And by the way, don’t sleep on the WhatsApp Business app. It helps you track marketing and sales data from your WhatsApp bot.)

How do WhatsApp chatbots work?

WhatsApp chatbots are powered by artificial intelligence (AI). They use natural language processing (NLP) to interpret and respond to user input – like customer queries.

Wrangling together all the different tools and systems to create a human-like answer in real time takes a surprising amount of finesse.

1. The bot processes user input

A chatbot reads an incoming message and determines which action to take depending on the contents of the message.

Whether it plans on capturing information, answering questions, executing a domino trail of complex workflows, or just chatting with a lonely user, the bot has to figure out which of those actions it needs to perform.

That’s where NLP comes in. It takes human input, something like “what’s on tap”, and classifies that as “list beers, where beer.isDraft = true.”

This is why AI is important; there’s no trivial, rule-based way of predicting all possible requests and translating them to all of the bot’s possible actions.

2. The bot executes an action

In all likelihood, the chatbot isn’t just there to chat.

Once the user’s intent is determined, the chatbot has to execute a task accordingly. This is the step where customizations and third-party tools come in.

Some possible tasks include:

• Checking documents in the knowledge base to answer an FAQ
• Updating information in a lead-capture form
• Handing the conversation off to a live agent
• Processing a purchase and payment via a Stripe integration)

3. The bot responds to the user

Again, AI and NLP are key here: the bot has to come up with text that’s conditioned on:

1. The user’s request
2. the action it’s just executed
3. The information it gathered from that

So, for example, say you ask “can I return something 3 weeks after delivery?” The bot checks the FAQ document and finds the Returns section. It can answer by regurgitating the whole section, but realistically, on WhatsApp, you’re looking for a direct answer to your question.

That means, using NLP, it composes an answer based on the contents of the Returns section with, ideally, a link to the relevant section for you to read about it yourself.

4. Rinse and repeat

The process of input-action-response repeats until the user or bot ends the conversation.

What makes a good WhatsApp chatbot?

The best WhatsApp chatbots are powered by the top LLMs, integrated with other software and services, equipped with security and compliance features, and are both customizable and scalable.

Powered by LLMs

When we think of the simple chatbots of yesteryear, we’re usually picturing a rule-based chatbot. But these days, most companies use AI driven chatbots.

A rule-based chatbot operates on a predefined set of rules. They can only respond to the specific questions that they have been designed to understand. They follow a simple logic based on ‘if-then’ programming.

While these bots are suitable for simple FAQs, they’re unable to fully engage users. If they run into a new input from a user, they get stuck. Using a rule-based system will allow you to create only a simple WhatsApp chatbot.

WhatsApp chatbots need to be powered by LLMs – like OpenAI’s GPT or Google’s Gemini – in order to properly perform basic tasks. You’re unlikely to make any gains in customer satisfaction from a rule-based chatbot.

The right WhatsApp chatbot tools will automatically connect you to the latest LLMs, so that your chatbot can deliver personalized interactions, send human-like messages, and even generate images.

Integration capabilities

The top chatbot software will allow you to easily connect to pre-built integrations (like WhatsApp), as well as internal data sources (like CRMs).

The best WhatsApp chatbots can connect to:

• Documents, tables, and websites, so they can provide up-to-date, accurate information to users
• Other channels and platforms, so they can update information

First-rate WhatsApp chatbot tools will allow you to connect your bot to other sources of documentation, like an HR policy document, a table that lists which retail items you have in stock, or your website.

Once your bot is connected to these external sources, it can use the data to provide accurate responses. If potential customers ask to book a tour group, the bot can immediately see whether there are sufficient spaces for the day and time they request.

Integrations with other platforms allow you to have your bot make changes after receiving a message from a user, like resetting a password.

If you connect to integrations, you can create an AI agent that takes actions independently from a human agent. Adding pre-built integrations is the fastest way to level up your AI agent.

Customization

If you’re deploying a chatbot, it should be customized to your specific business offering.

Even when using WhatsApp, your chatbot can be customized visually and linguistically – maybe your HR chatbot should always speak in a friendly and formal tone. Or maybe your hotel chatbot uses traditional phrases in its messages to guests.

As a central communication checkpoint of your customer experience, you should ensure your chatbot is reflective of your brand, messaging, and positioning.

Scalability

A major highlight of using an AI WhatsApp chatbot is its ability to scale.

Unlike a human, a chatbot can chat with several people in tandem and facilitate conversations 24/7. Automating these business processes is necessary for scaling your operation.

The best chatbot tools will allow you to scale your bot to handle growing numbers of customers, users, guests, or employees.

A WhatsApp chatbot – depending on your business needs – will likely be your first channel deployment. But as you scale, you can make your chatbot available across multiple channels, like your website, Facebook Messenger, or responding to text messages.

Security and compliance features

If you’ll be handling personal data from users, you should ensure you take all necessary precautions regarding data privacy.

If you build your own chatbot, you’ll need to build within the security and privacy regulations of your country (and in some cases, the countries of your users). This will also require being up to date on all necessary data protection regulations for your users.

If you build with a chatbot software platform, you should pick one that provides robust security measures.

If you’ll be handling personal data (including telephone numbers, addresses, or account numbers) from individuals in the EU, you’ll need to comply with GDPR regulations. You can read more about how to make your WhatsApp chatbot GDPR compliant here.

Start building a WhatsApp chatbot today

WhatsApp is the best way to directly connect with users. Botpress makes this connection as easy as possible – we provide plenty of pre-built integrations, including WhatsApp.

Our flexible studio offers both low-code and highly customizable and extensible building options. On Botpress, you can build whatever you want.

If you’re looking for extra help building your bot, you can find how-to resources on:

• Botpress Academy: our expert-curated courses, guides and tutorials
• Our YouTube channel: videos with step-by-step explanations for bot building

‍Start building today. It’s free.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a WhatsApp chatbot cost?

You can build a WhatsApp chatbot for free on platforms like Botpress and Tidio. However, once you deploy your WhatsApp chatbot, you’ll have to pay a small cost to call an LLM’s API. The cost of this ‘AI spend’ will vary from platform to platform. Some companies will sell AI spend at cost for no markup.

Should I get a WhatsApp chatbot?

If your audience usesWith over 2 billion users, WhatsApp chatbots allow you to reach your customers directly. They’re low-cost, easy to build, available 24/7, and lead to communication savings. WhatsApp chatbots are especially useful for companies with international customers or multilingual users.

What’s the best WhatsApp chatbot?

The best WhatsApp chatbot is one that allows for easy integration. Look for a bot-building software that allows for customizability, integrations, and security. Our top choices are Botpress, ManyChat, Tidio, and Jotform.

‍How do I use WhatsApp Business API?

You can get a WhatsApp Business API by creating a Meta business portfolio, including a Facebook Business account. This is a necessary step in you want to deploy a chatbot on WhatsApp.

Can I build a WhatsApp chatbot for free?

Yes, many WhatsApp chatbot tools allow you to build free models. Platforms like Botpress provide a drag-and-drop studio and a free built-in WhatsApp integration.

Is it hard to build a WhatsApp chatbot?

If you’re using a bot-building platform, it’s easy to set up a WhatsApp bot. You can pick a low-code option if you don’t want to code. A platform with a pre-built WhatsApp integration will allow you to connect automatically, rather than building an integration yourself.

Does WhatsApp offer chatbots?

Meta introduced Meta AI for its messaging platforms. You can ask it questions; however, this chatbot is not customizable.