Is Kawl Now a Chatbase alternative for SaaS voice support?

How do Chatbase and Kawl Now compare?

Both put an AI agent on your website. Chatbase’s voice launch note says “the same agent you deploy on your website, email or messaging channels can now answer calls”. Kawl Now is for spoken conversations in the visitor’s browser.

What does a visitor see in each widget?

Kawl Now adds a button to the bottom right of your pages, labelled Talk to us by default. The visitor types what they want to talk about and sees: “By starting, you agree to microphone use and a saved transcript. You’re speaking with AI. Up to 10 minutes.” Then they allow the microphone and talk, with mute, end call and live captions they can show or hide. There is no typed chat.

Chatbase’s recommended website embed is a floating chat bubble, which you can align left or right. Its settings add voice calling for the channel, a dictation button that turns speech into text, and an option to type during a voice call. If most of your visitors would rather type, start with Chatbase.

Should new content reach the agent at once or after a review?

Chatbase puts new content to work quickly: “Add a source and the AI agent picks it up within seconds. There is no retrain button.” It accepts files such as PDFs and Word documents, website crawls, text, Q&A and Notion pages. Its Standard and Pro plans can also re-read websites, Notion pages and tickets every week. Its Backstage assistant, covered in Chatbase’s changelog on 7 October 2026, adds or removes sources when you ask it in conversation, and it applies nothing until you approve its plan.

Kawl Now adds a review step to every source. Each one stays unapproved, marked Needs review, until someone approves it, whether you add it in the dashboard, over MCP or through the REST API. Each agent searches only the approved sources for its own channel. Support uses FAQs and selected GitHub files, and every GitHub refresh needs approval again. Sales uses its own notes, so paste in any website content you want it to use, because website import is switched off.

Approval controls what the agent can use, so you still need to test its answers. If your knowledge lives in PDFs, Notion or a help centre you want crawled, Chatbase accepts those directly.

Which voice options do Chatbase and Kawl Now offer?

Chatbase agents can take voice calls in the chat bubble, answer inbound phone calls on a Twilio number or your own SIP trunk, and run in your own web interface through its Voice SDK. Its voice settings include a multilingual transcriber, a choice of voices including custom ones, optional call recording and a maximum call length, 15 minutes by default. A Transfer to phone number action can pass a phone call to a person.

Kawl Now handles voice in the browser only, with no phone number for customers to call. You choose Marin or Cedar as the voice. The agent is set up to greet callers in English and tell them it is an AI, and every call ends at 10 minutes. You get a text transcript, and no audio is recorded. Kawl Now’s human handover is an early release: once your team verifies a UK or US phone number and turns handover on, a caller can choose Talk to a human, and your team hears a private briefing first. Customer routing is still being tested, so keep your usual contact options.

If you need a phone line, a choice of languages or a way to transfer phone calls to your team, Chatbase is the better fit.

What can each agent do besides answering questions?

Chatbase agents can act in other systems. Its docs describe Stripe actions that show a customer’s subscription and invoices or change their plan, custom actions that call your own API, and a Zendesk integration that can open a ticket when a chat needs a person. Its pricing page also lists a helpdesk, outbound campaigns, API access and integrations such as HubSpot, Calendly and Slack, and it offers a CLI and an MCP server. Its campaign docs name WhatsApp as the only campaign channel so far.

Kawl Now answers from approved knowledge and, when a caller asks, records a bug report or feature request on the conversation. It has no account access and no CRM, calendar or helpdesk connections. Like Chatbase, it has an MCP server. Developers and trusted AI agents can use it or the REST API to add knowledge, approve sources, update agent settings and read conversations. Adding a source never approves it, in the dashboard, over MCP or over REST, so approval is always a separate step you can keep with a person.

What do Chatbase and Kawl Now cost?

Kawl Now counts conversations. You join the waitlist with your work email, and no card is asked for. Each workspace gets its first 50 conversations free, once, shared by support, sales and test calls. Paid calls aren’t available yet, so no payment is collected and new calls stop when the allowance is used. If you need more volume now, Chatbase’s paid plans offer it.

Chatbase counts message credits. These are its monthly prices as listed on 8 October 2026. Yearly billing is 20% off. Hobby, Standard and Pro offer a 7-day trial, and Enterprise is priced on request.

• Free: $0, with 50 message credits a month and one member. Chatbase deletes agents on this plan after 14 days of inactivity.
• Hobby: $40 a month, with 700 message credits and two members.
• Standard: $150 a month, with 4,000 message credits and three members. It is the first plan that lists Voice and Telephony.
• Pro: $500 a month, with 15,000 message credits and five members.
• Voice: 6 message credits a minute, plus credits for each AI request. Chatbase’s example, a 10-minute call with 15 requests on a 1-credit model, uses 75 credits.
• Extra credits: $40 per 1,000 through auto-recharge.

When should you use Chatbase, Kawl Now or both?

Start from what your customers need to do, then test each option with the same real questions. We checked Chatbase’s official pages on 8 October 2026, and features and prices can change.

• Choose Chatbase for typed chat, email and messaging, inbound phone calls, actions such as billing lookups, or a paid plan with more volume today.
• Choose Kawl Now to let visitors talk through setup, feature and pricing questions in the browser, with separate support and sales agents that search only approved sources.
• Use both to offer Chatbase for typing and Kawl Now for speaking. Align the Chatbase bubble to the left, since the Kawl Now button sits bottom right, keep both sets of knowledge current and test the page before you switch on customer calls.

Common questions