Quick answer: Landbot is a no-code chatbot builder for websites, Messenger and WhatsApp, with a free-forever Sandbox plan, a 14-day all-features trial, and a verified official startup discount: 50% off for 12 months if you are under two years old, under 10 employees, under $10K monthly revenue and affiliated with an incubator or accelerator. The discount applies to monthly plans only and excludes WhatsApp.
What Landbot actually does
Landbot lets you build conversational flows — lead qualification bots, booking assistants, FAQ answerers, conversational forms — with a visual drag-and-drop builder, no code required. Flows can branch on conditions, score leads with formulas, write to Google Sheets or Airtable, fire webhooks, and hand off to a human via the built-in team inbox. The AI layer ("Landbot AI") adds LLM-powered chats metered separately from regular chats. Its standout is genuine WhatsApp depth: dedicated WhatsApp plans with opt-in tools, campaign broadcasts and a test environment you can use before your WhatsApp API approval lands — a real edge if your customers live on WhatsApp rather than your website.
Who it's for
Lead-gen focused teams get the fastest payback: replacing a static contact form with a qualifying bot is a weekend job that measurably lifts conversion data quality. Agencies build client bots on Pro. E-commerce and service businesses in WhatsApp-first markets (Southern Europe, LatAm, India) are the natural fit for the WhatsApp plans. If you want a support-first live-chat widget with a help desk behind it, though, you are shopping in the wrong aisle — that is Tidio territory.
Pricing reality
In USD: the Sandbox plan is free forever — 100 chats/month, one seat, basic integrations, enough to prove a concept. Starter is $45/month, or $36/month billed annually (20% off) — 500 chats, 100 AI chats, 2 seats. Pro is $110/month, or $88/month annually — 2,500 chats, 300 AI chats, 3 seats, plus the good stuff: formulas, lead scoring, HubSpot and Airtable integrations, webhooks. WhatsApp Pro is $220/month, or $176/month annually — 10,000 WhatsApp service messages, one business number included, 500 AI chats. Business tiers start around $400/month with managed services. Overages are where budgets leak: extra chats run roughly $0.05–0.25 each depending on type, extra AI chats about $0.10, extra seats $20–25/month, and an additional WhatsApp number is around $100/month. Annualised: Starter costs $540 monthly-billed versus $432 annually — a $108 saving; Pro is $1,320 versus $1,056, saving $264.
Costing a real bot honestly
Because pricing is usage-based, cost the bot on your traffic, not the sticker price. A landing page taking 2,000 visits a month with a 15% bot-engagement rate produces about 300 chats — comfortably inside Starter's 500. Push that to 5,000 visits and you are at roughly 750 chats: now you either pay overages on Starter or step up to Pro, where 2,500 chats give you headroom and the integrations you probably wanted anyway. If the bot leans on Landbot AI for open-ended answers, meter that separately — 100 AI chats on Starter is only a few days of an AI-first flow, and at roughly $0.10 per extra AI chat, an unbudgeted AI bot can quietly double its own invoice. The sane approach: launch rule-based, measure engagement for a month, then switch on AI for the steps where it demonstrably lifts conversion.
How the startup offer works
Landbot publishes its startup discount openly in its help centre: 50% off for 12 months, applied via a discount code after you apply through their startup application bot and pass review (about 7 business days). Eligibility is strict and cumulative: privately held, trading for no more than 2 years, fewer than 10 employees, under $10K monthly revenue, a live website with a public footprint, and association with an incubator or accelerator. Three catches worth underlining: it is monthly plans only (you cannot stack it on the 20% annual discount), WhatsApp plans and add-ons are excluded, and the code expires 30 days after issue. The maths still favours eligible startups: Starter at 50% off is $22.50/month for a year — cheaper than the $36/month annual rate with zero upfront commitment — and Pro drops to $55/month versus $88 annually. If you qualify, the startup route beats annual billing on both price and flexibility for year one.
WhatsApp economics, separately
Treat WhatsApp as its own business case. WhatsApp Pro at $220/month ($176 annually) includes one business number and 10,000 service messages — generous for a single-market service business, but each additional number runs about $100/month and the startup discount will not touch any of it. The compensating factor is the pre-approval test environment: you can build and rehearse the entire WhatsApp journey before Meta signs off your API access, which removes the usual dead fortnight between committing to the plan and shipping anything. If WhatsApp is your primary channel, trial the flow there before paying; if it is a nice-to-have, start on a website plan and add WhatsApp only once the web bot has proven the funnel.
Honest limitations
Chat-based pricing punishes success — a viral landing page can burn through Starter's 500 chats in days, and overage per-chat fees add up faster than a flat-rate tool would. The AI chat metering is separate and fairly tight (100 on Starter), so heavily AI-driven bots climb tiers quickly. WhatsApp, Landbot's biggest strength, is also its most expensive surface: $220/month entry plus per-number fees prices out very small teams, and it is precisely the surface the startup discount excludes. And after the 12-month startup discount lapses, you face full price — budget for the cliff.
How it compares
Against Tidio, the split is purpose: Tidio is live-chat-and-support first with bots attached, and it is the better pick for a support widget with a shared inbox and help-desk features; Landbot is flow-and-funnel first, better for structured lead capture, qualification and WhatsApp journeys. Against ManyChat, the battleground is channels: ManyChat owns Instagram DM and Messenger automation for creators and social commerce, while Landbot is stronger on website bots, WhatsApp business flows and integrations into a B2B stack. Plenty of teams run one of each because they solve different halves of the conversation problem.
Verdict
Buy — with a route map. Prove the concept on the free Sandbox, use the 14-day trial to test the Pro-tier integrations you will actually rely on, and if you meet the startup criteria, take the 50% monthly-plan discount rather than annual billing for year one. Established teams should model chat volumes honestly before committing, and WhatsApp-first businesses should price the dedicated plans with overages included, because that is where the real invoice lives.