ManyChat pricing in 2026: every plan, the free plan, and what drives the bill
ManyChat pricing runs $0 to $199 a month, plus a fee per contact over your plan. The free plan, free trial and Pro, checked 7 November 2026.
ManyChat costs nothing on its Free plan and $17 to $199 a month on its paid plans, or $14 to $139 a month if you pay yearly. Each plan includes a set number of "active contacts" a month, and every contact past that number is billed on top, which is why bills jump after a post goes viral.
We checked every figure on this page against ManyChat's pricing page on 7 November 2026. We first checked on 3 November, and nothing had changed. ManyChat says the price "is determined by the user's billing country" and excludes tax, so check what you'd pay on that page before you buy.
What is ManyChat?
ManyChat automates conversations on Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, TikTok, Telegram, SMS and email. On Instagram it replies when someone comments a keyword, replies to a story or sends you a DM. It's an official Meta Business Partner. What it can't do is start a conversation with someone who never contacted you.
ManyChat's own description says it helps you "automatically reply to comments and messages, turn engagement into real conversations, and convert followers into customers faster." Most Instagram users buy it for comment-to-DM. You post a reel and ask people to comment a word, and ManyChat sends each of them a link.
ManyChat pricing: every plan
ManyChat has five plans. The monthly price, the yearly price and the number of active contacts all go up together, and each extra contact costs less the higher you go. That is what the page showed on 7 November 2026.
| Plan | Monthly | Billed yearly | Active contacts a month | Each extra contact (monthly / yearly) | Channels | Users |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 25 | not available | 2 | 1 |
| Essential | $17 | $14/mo ($168 a year) | 250 | $0.10 / $0.082 | 2 | 2 |
| Pro | $39 | $29/mo ($348 a year) | 2,500 | $0.05 / $0.038 | 3 | 3 |
| Business | $99 | $69/mo ($828 a year) | 7,500 | $0.025 / $0.018 | All | 5 |
| Advanced | $199 | $139/mo ($1,668 a year) | 25,000 | $0.004 / $0.0028 | All | 10 |
The page lists the yearly saving as 18% on Essential, 25% on Pro and 30% on Business and Advanced. Paid plans need a card, and Essential and Pro come with a 14-day free trial. ManyChat says it will refund you if you cancel within 30 days of buying a plan.
Is ManyChat free? The ManyChat free plan
There's a free plan, but it's small: 25 active contacts a month, up to 4 live triggers, 2 channels, 1 user, and ManyChat branding on your messages. That covers testing one comment-to-DM flow. It won't cover running one on a post that takes off.
ManyChat's page doesn't offer overage on the Free plan, so 25 contacts is the ceiling. Signing up doesn't need a card. When you want more triggers, more contacts or no branding, you move to Essential at $17 a month.
Does ManyChat have a free trial?
Yes. ManyChat offers a 14-day free trial on Essential and Pro, and its page says you can cancel during it. Business and Advanced have no trial listed. Paid plans need a card, trials included. The Free plan doesn't. After the trial ends, ManyChat's page offers a refund if you cancel within 30 days of buying.
The trial is the cheapest way to test Pro features like broadcasts and Manychat AI on a real post. Set an overage threshold before it ends so a busy first month on the paid plan can't go past what you meant to spend.
ManyChat free vs Pro
ManyChat Free costs nothing and covers 25 active contacts, up to 4 live triggers, 2 channels and 1 user, with ManyChat branding on your messages. Pro costs $39 a month ($29 billed yearly) for 2,500 contacts, 3 channels, 3 users, broadcasting, AI-powered conversations and Manychat AI, with no branding and overage billing once you pass the allowance.
| Free | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $39/mo, or $29/mo billed yearly |
| Active contacts a month | 25 | 2,500 |
| Over the limit | No overage offered | $0.05 per extra contact (monthly) |
| Automations | Up to 4 live triggers | Advanced automations |
| Channels | 2 | 3 |
| Users | 1 | 3 |
| Broadcasts and Manychat AI | No | Yes |
| ManyChat branding | Yes | No |
Essential ($17) sits between the two. It has unlimited automations and no branding, but only 250 contacts and no Manychat AI.
The ManyChat Pro plan
Pro costs $39 a month, or $29 a month on yearly billing, for 2,500 active contacts, 3 channels and 3 users. It's the first plan with Manychat AI, which Business and Advanced also include.
On monthly billing, each contact past 2,500 costs $0.05. Business ($99, 7,500 contacts) adds unlimited channels, a multi-user inbox and priority support.
How much does ManyChat cost? What drives the bill
The plan price is the minimum. You pay for the plan plus every active contact over your allowance. An active contact is anyone your account interacts with through ManyChat that month, through automation, a broadcast, AI or the inbox. A busy month can cost more than the plan.
ManyChat defines it as "a real person you interact with during a monthly billing period", and "One person = one Active Contact for the month", however many messages you exchange. Yearly plans also list their contact allowance per month.
Take a viral reel. Say you're on Pro, paying monthly, and one post brings 6,000 people into your automation in a month. The arithmetic below is ours, worked from the page's numbers, not a quote from ManyChat:
| Pro, monthly | Business, monthly | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan price | $39 | $99 |
| Contacts included | 2,500 | 7,500 |
| Extra contacts | 3,500 × $0.05 = $175 | none |
| Total for that month | $214 | $99 |
In a month like that, the bigger plan comes out cheaper. ManyChat gives you two ways out. If you upgrade within the same billing cycle, it says "any overage fees incurred so far will be forgiven". You can also set an overage threshold, which caps how many extra contacts you'll pay for. Set one before you post anything you hope goes viral.
What Reddit says about ManyChat pricing
Reddit's complaint is that ManyChat is cheap until it isn't. People describe bills that started low and grew with their contact count, often after a post went viral. The reports come from different dates and possibly different pricing models. Read them as stories rather than prices.
The best-known one is the post that tops Google for "manychat alternative", in r/automation (September 2025). The original poster, u/indishmarketer in r/automation, wrote: "The base plan was $15/month just for 500 contacts." They say an AI add-on brought it to about $45 a month, and "By the third month we were paying $95" after some reels went viral. That was ManyChat's 2025 pricing. The current page above has no $15 plan and no 500-contact tier. The same poster links to their own blog post recommending a rival, so the report has a point of view.
In June 2026, u/DryAppointment8707 in r/WhatsappBusinessAPI wrote they had "built up 8000 contacts through CTAs. Was suprised at the bill being almost $100." On X, @brycent (235 likes, September 2026) put it more briefly: "Their pricing is absurd."
More of what Reddit says, including the safety and comment-to-DM threads, is on our ManyChat on Reddit page.
Cheaper ways to do the same job
If ManyChat's price is the problem, other inbound tools bill differently: by AI credits, by DMs sent, or at a flat fee. They all reply to comments and messages, so check how each one bills before you compare headline prices.
Each comparison below uses the vendor's own pricing page and shows the date we checked it:
- ManyChat vs Chatfuel: Chatfuel bills by AI credits, not contacts.
- LinkDM vs ManyChat: LinkDM caps the DMs you send each month instead of counting contacts.
- ManyChat alternatives: a short, dated table of the options.
- Chatfuel pricing: every Chatfuel plan, if AI credits suit your traffic better than contacts.
- SendPulse vs ManyChat and CreatorFlow vs ManyChat: a free chatbot plan priced by subscribers, and an Instagram-only tool billed by DMs sent.
If comment-to-DM is all you need, our comment-to-DM page covers how InstaReacher handles it.
Inbound and outbound: what ManyChat can't do
ManyChat is an inbound tool. It answers people who already commented, replied or messaged you. It can't send a first message to someone who has never contacted you, because Instagram's official API doesn't allow it. If nobody is messaging you yet, a cheaper ManyChat plan won't fix that.
Starting conversations is outbound work, and it runs differently. The tool has to send from your account the way you would: one message request per person, at a careful pace. That carries more risk than inbound automation, and Reddit says so.
Questions
Is ManyChat free for Instagram?
Yes. ManyChat's Free plan works on Instagram and covers 25 active contacts a month, with up to 4 live triggers and ManyChat branding. That's enough to test one comment-to-DM flow. For anything bigger, or a post that brings in more than 25 people in a month, you need a paid plan, starting at $17.
Do you have to pay for ManyChat?
Not to start. The Free plan needs no card. You pay once you need more than 25 active contacts a month, more than 4 live triggers, or no branding. Essential costs $17 a month, Pro $39, Business $99 and Advanced $199. Billed yearly, the range is $14 to $139 a month.
How much does ManyChat cost for Instagram DM automation?
ManyChat prices Instagram DM automation the same way as every other channel, by plan and active contacts. Most Instagram users running comment-to-DM on reels need Essential ($17, 250 contacts) or Pro ($39, 2,500 contacts). Add overage in any month a post brings in more people than the plan covers.
What is the ManyChat price per contact?
On monthly billing, each active contact over your plan's allowance costs $0.10 on Essential, $0.05 on Pro, $0.025 on Business and $0.004 on Advanced. Yearly billing is cheaper at $0.082, $0.038, $0.018 and $0.0028.
For free plans from other tools, see free Instagram DM automation compared. And if you hoped ManyChat could message new followers, read why you can't auto DM new followers on Instagram.