ManyChat Pricing: Every Plan in USD, Overage Fees, and the Real Cost by Contact Tier

ManyChat's five plans run from $0 (Free, 25 active contacts a month) to $199 a month (Advanced, 25,000 contacts), with Pro at $39 a month ($29 billed yearly) as the first tier that adds AI replies, according to its official plan pages. Prices are in US dollars and do not include tax: the amount you pay depends on your billing country and shows up at checkout, and any contact past your plan's monthly cap is billed separately as overage. If you only automate Instagram, HookReply has a free plan and a paid tier at €12 a month with tax included, though ManyChat covers more channels. HookReply is opening through a waitlist while Meta reviews its app.

Updated October 21, 202614-minute read

How much does each ManyChat plan cost?

ManyChat publishes five plans today — Free, Essential, Pro, Business and Advanced — each with a monthly cap of active contacts, meaning distinct people you actually messaged that billing period, not your follower count. These are the prices on each plan's own page:

What else changes between plans, besides the contact cap:

A yearly subscription is charged in full up front, and moving from monthly to yearly applies right away (unused time is credited); going the other way, or down a tier, only takes effect once the current year ends. Upgrading mid-cycle is immediate and prorated. Each ManyChat account bills separately and connects a single Instagram account, so a second Instagram profile means a second subscription with its own contact cap.

Is ManyChat free?

ManyChat has a Free plan that needs no card, but it only covers 25 active contacts a month; past that, its lowest-priced paid tier, Essential, starts at $17 a month. What the Free plan includes: 1 user with 1 inbox seat, up to 2 channels among Instagram, TikTok, Messenger and Telegram (no WhatsApp, SMS or email), and 4 live automations running at the same time, enough for a comment-to-DM flow plus a welcome message. What it leaves out: collecting an email or phone number inside the chat, checking whether someone follows you, AI replies, and advanced branching logic (Actions & Conditions), all of which start at Essential or Pro. The first automated message to each new contact also carries a "Powered by Manychat" footnote that only a paid plan removes.

If Instagram is your only channel, HookReply's own free plan covers 100 active contacts a month and already lets you require a follow and collect an email or phone number before a paid upgrade, at the cost of a single Instagram account, 3 automations, no AI, and its own automated-reply footnote on every message.

What counts as an active contact?

An active contact, in ManyChat's own definition, is anyone who interacted with you through ManyChat during your current billing period; people on your contact list who didn't message you that period don't count, no matter how many you've accumulated over time. The details that move the bill most:

• It counts people, not messages. Someone who writes to you thirty times in a month is still one active contact for that month.
• Automations, AI replies, broadcasts and manual Inbox messages all count. Replying to someone by hand from ManyChat's Inbox makes that person active too.
• The count resets every billing period, even on a yearly plan, and any overage is still billed month by month.
• Imported contacts (from a CSV, for instance) don't count until they send or receive a message through one of those channels.
• The same person can count twice across channels, unless ManyChat recognizes them by a shared phone number or email.

ManyChat suggests estimating your contact volume as followers times engagement rate, which is only an approximation; what actually counts is the distinct number of people who message or comment a keyword in your busiest month, so size your plan against that month, not an average one.

What happens if you go over your contact limit?

ManyChat keeps responding to everyone past your plan's cap and adds each extra active contact to your next invoice at your plan's overage rate; it warns you at 70%, 90% and 100% of the cap, and gives you three ways to handle it: set a hard contact limit in billing settings (automations then only keep serving people already active that period), upgrade on the spot with a prorated charge, or simply let the overage bill. ManyChat notes that automations can eventually pause if an account grows well past its cap without upgrading.

From the published overage rates, here is the contact count at which switching plans costs less than paying overage:

Worked example: a creator on Essential who talks to 1,100 people in a launch month pays 17 + 850 × 0.10 = $102; on Pro, the same month is a flat $39, with AI included and no overage math to do.

Does ManyChat charge tax?

ManyChat's published prices do not include tax: its pricing page states that the price is determined by the user's billing country and that the final amount appears on the purchase screen before you confirm, and its terms of service add that all prices and fees are in US dollars (Brazil's real is the one exception) and are listed before any applicable tax. In practice, that means two sellers in different countries can see different totals for the same plan, and neither total is printed anywhere on the pricing page itself, only at checkout. ManyChat bills through Stripe and its billing help states it does not accept PayPal.

What costs extra, beyond the monthly plan?

Three things are billed separately from a ManyChat subscription, and one commonly assumed add-on isn't:

• WhatsApp messages. Every billable WhatsApp message is deducted from a prepaid balance (the Manychat Wallet) at a per-message rate that varies by the recipient's country, published in ManyChat's WhatsApp pricing guide; that balance only covers WhatsApp and email sending, not the subscription itself.
• Extra inbox seats. Beyond the number included in your plan, each additional seat for answering conversations by hand costs $25 a month, available from Pro up.
• Contact overage, at the per-plan rates above.
• AI is not a paid add-on. It's bundled into the Pro, Business and Advanced plans at no extra charge, with no separate usage quota published; it simply isn't available at all on Free or Essential.

Instagram itself has no per-message cost on either tool: Meta doesn't charge for DMs, and what actually limits automated replies is the 24-hour messaging window, which auto-reply to Instagram comments covers for comment-to-DM flows specifically.

What would 500, 2,500, or 10,000 contacts cost a month?

Using the same unit, active contacts per month, here is the lowest-cost ManyChat plan at each volume (paying overage only when it beats the next tier up), next to what HookReply would charge for Instagram-only automation at the same volume:

At 500 contacts, Essential plus overage would run $42 a month (17 + 250 × 0.10), so Pro's flat $39 is the cheaper ManyChat tier even though most of its 2,500-contact cap goes unused. At 10,000 contacts, staying on Business and paying overage (99 + 2,500 × 0.025 = $161.50) beats jumping to Advanced's flat $199. The two tools aren't priced in the same currency and ManyChat covers WhatsApp, Messenger, TikTok, Telegram, SMS and email on top of Instagram, so read this as what each billing model costs at that volume, not as one tool being cheaper than the other.

Where does HookReply fit in, if you only automate Instagram?

HookReply is an Instagram-only automation tool: comment-to-DM with a randomized public reply, DM keywords, story-reply and story-mention automations, a welcome message, follow-gating, email/phone capture, an AI chatbot and broadcasts to people who already messaged you, all from its Pro plan up. It bills in euros with tax included and charges no overage: once a plan's monthly active-contact quota is used up, people who already talked to you that month keep getting replies, but new contacts get none until the next billing cycle or an upgrade, and there is also a daily cap on automated sends. ManyChat, by contrast, keeps responding past the cap and simply adds the overage to your bill, and covers far more channels than Instagram alone.

Contacts are counted per HookReply account, across every Instagram profile connected to it, the same total-user logic ManyChat uses per ManyChat account. Refunds follow a 14-day window. If turning comments into DMs is all you need and you'd rather not pay for any platform yet, free comment-to-DM tools for Instagram covers what Meta already does at no cost and where that falls short; and if ManyChat's own feature set across tools is what you're weighing, ManyChat alternatives compares it against other options on verifiable criteria.

Verdict: so, how much does ManyChat cost?

ManyChat is free only to try, capped at 25 active contacts a month; a business actually messaging customers on Instagram pays, in practice, from $17 a month on Essential, or $39 on Pro once AI or WhatsApp matter, plus whatever tax its billing country adds and any contact overage, as published on October 21, 2026. If you only need Instagram and would rather pay a flat amount in euros with tax already included, HookReply runs €12 a month for 350 contacts or €25 for 2,500, with the trade-off that new contacts wait until the next month once a plan's quota fills and that there's a daily cap on automated sends; for WhatsApp, Messenger, TikTok or any other channel, ManyChat is the one that covers it.

Frequently asked questions

ManyChat is a trademark of Manychat, Inc. HookReply is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Manychat, Inc. Page made by HookReply, an interested party. Prices and terms checked on 21-10-2026 on ManyChat's and HookReply's own sites; they may change, so check them before you buy.

Keep reading

• ManyChat alternativesOther Instagram and multichannel tools, compared on verifiable criteria.
• Free comment-to-DM toolsWhat Meta already gives you for free, and where it falls short.
• Auto-reply to Instagram commentsHow comment-to-DM automation works within Meta's 24-hour window.