There are four real exits from the cost per contact: the automation already included in a scheduler you pay for, a competitor with a flat price, the automated replies the platform itself gives you at no extra charge, and a tool that stops counting contacts once you leave the entry tier. Each one costs something different and none of them is free.
How a contact gets counted
ManyChat changed its model in March 2026, and the change matters more than any price rise. Contacts used to be counted cumulatively, everyone who had ever written; now they are counted as Active Contacts, meaning the people you actually spoke to during that month. It is a fairer model, and it is still the one that pushes people to look elsewhere, because an automation that works produces new active contacts every day.
| Item | Published price | Active contacts |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | $0 | 25 a month |
| Pro plan, billed monthly | $39 a month | Up to 2,500 |
| Pro plan, billed annually | $29 a month | Up to 2,500 |
| Contact above the ceiling | $0.05 monthly or $0.038 annual | One by one |
| Extra inbox seat | $25 | Not applicable |
Prices checked on 6 September 2026: ManyChat, ManyChat Help.
Do the arithmetic with your own numbers before either getting annoyed or staying put. A reel that lands well can bring 4,000 comments carrying the keyword in a week. That is 4,000 active contacts that month, which leaves the entry plan 1,500 short and bills the excess one by one. It is not a hidden charge, it is printed on their site, but it surprises anyone who budgeted using the first month's volume.
A note on InstaChamp, which usually turns up in lists like this one: as of today its own domain does not serve a product page or publish a rate, so it cannot be compared with the others without inventing a figure. When a tool stops publishing its price, the prudent move is to treat it as "ask us" rather than as cheap.
The four exits and what each one costs
The four have one thing in common worth saying up front: none of them is ManyChat under a different name. Each gives something up, and the useful question is not which is cheapest but what you can afford to give up. There is also a difference in shape that decides a lot: two of the four are automation tools and the other two are features inside something you already use. Switching to a tool adds a subscription and a password; turning on a feature adds neither, but ties you to whatever contains it.
| Exit | Published price | How it is counted |
|---|---|---|
| Metricool Flows | From 16 € a month, billed yearly | Per brand, inside the plan |
| Chatfuel Light | $0 | Free, with usage limits |
| Chatfuel AI Pro | $49 a month | Flat, with usage limits |
| Built in platform replies | No extra charge | Not counted |
| Auto DM in GoFeed | See the pricing page | No meter outside the entry tier |
Prices checked on 6 September 2026: Metricool, Chatfuel.
Flows, if you already pay for a scheduler
Metricool includes Flows from its Starter plan, which begins at 16 € a month billed yearly for five brands. It works the way you would expect: you pick a post that has already gone out or one that is scheduled, define the keyword, and decide what whoever writes it gets back, a comment, a private message or both. It takes up to three different replies for the same flow, which is a small detail and enough to stop it sounding like a robot.
What you are buying here is the disappearance of the meter. The price goes with the brand and with the plan, so a reel that takes off does not change that month's invoice. What you give up is depth: no branches, no conditions, no tags, no custom fields and no inbox with agents. It is keyword automation, done well, rather than a conversation builder.
It is the most logical exit if you already pay for that scheduler. If you do not, you are swapping one subscription for another and the sums have to be done in full, including the fact that its free plan does not include Flows.
Chatfuel, if you want a flat price
Chatfuel is the most direct alternative as a product, because it started out doing the same job. Its Light tier is free and includes Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp automations, a shared inbox, automated replies, a flow builder, contact management and templates. The paid tier, AI Pro, costs $49 a month billed monthly and 29 % less billed yearly, and it adds the AI layer, broadcasts and lead qualification funnels.
The virtue is obvious: it is a flat price, not a meter. So is the small print, and it is on their own page, which warns that usage limits apply without printing what they are. Before moving a whole flow across it is worth asking about those limits with your real volume in hand, because an unpublished ceiling is exactly the same risk as a meter, except that you do not see it coming.
The automations the platform already gives you
This exit appears in no comparison because nobody sells it, and for plenty of accounts it is enough. The platform's own tools include instant replies, frequently asked questions and keyword based automated replies from the business inbox, at no extra charge and with nothing external connected.
What you give up is most of what makes an automation genuinely useful: no short links of your own to measure how many people opened what you sent, no per flow statistics, no follower gate, no several brands on one screen and no way to split the work across a team. If your operation is one account, one keyword and one link, it is hard to justify paying anything above that. It is also the only exit here that survives a month with no budget, which is a real argument for a young account.
Everything in this article happens in one place in GoFeed.
Try it freeAuto DM, if you would rather stop counting contacts
In GoFeed, Auto DM is one more module in the same place where scheduling and replying happen, and contacts reached are the only soft quota among the five a workspace carries. On the working plans that quota has no ceiling: the automation reaches whoever it needs to reach and the invoice does not move. The one place a ceiling survives is the entry tier, and even there it blocks nothing. The difference from a pure meter is not one of degree, it is that outside the first tier there is no meter.
It works on Instagram and Facebook, and only those two. The triggers are the comment, the story reply, which exists on Instagram only, and the direct message. There is one substantial difference in the follower gate worth understanding: the platform is not asked whether somebody follows you, the person is asked in the thread itself and their answer is read before the link goes out. It is a conversational step rather than an automatic check, so the question has to be written carefully. The short links are your own and are served from the same domain as the public site, so measurement does not depend on a third party shortener.
There is an advantage to sitting in the same place that shows up on no pricing table. The post that triggers the flow was scheduled there, the comments that arrive land in the same inbox as private messages and reviews, and the link the automation sends is measured next to the rest of that brand's content. When the automation lives outside, those three things are three tabs and a spreadsheet the day somebody asks how much Tuesday's reel sold. The module is described on the Auto DM page.
What is not there: WhatsApp, Telegram, conditional branches and custom fields. How it is built underneath is in the Instagram Auto DM guide, and the head to head is in GoFeed versus ManyChat. The current figures for the module are read on the pricing page, which renders the live catalogue.
What you lose by leaving ManyChat
Four things, and none of them is small.
The first is channels. ManyChat covers WhatsApp and Telegram as well as Instagram and Facebook, and for many operations in Spain WhatsApp is not one channel among several, it is the channel. None of the four exits in this article covers it fully.
The second is the builder. Branches, conditions, delays, tags, custom fields, sequences and tests: if your flow has more than two steps you will miss it on day one, and there is no elegant way to pretend otherwise.
The third is the inbox with agents. Being able to hand an automated conversation to a person without leaving the tool is half a sales operation, and it is exactly what costs $25 per extra seat on their rate card.
The fourth is the ecosystem: integrations with shops and payment gateways, ready made templates, training, and a large community that answers at two in the morning. A younger product competes on the pricing model and on being where the rest of your work already is, not on that. The comparison of the three pure automation tools, with us out of the way, is in ManyChat versus Chatfuel.