Chatvia vs Botsonic: a full agent, no credits#

Botsonic is the no-code chatbot from Writesonic. You feed it your files and links, it answers from them, and you pay for the answers in credits. Chatvia is the self-hosted AI agent platform I built. It is free, it runs on your server, and nothing in it counts credits. That one difference shapes most of what follows.

If you only read one paragraph#

Botsonic makes sense if you already pay Writesonic and want a simple bot on your website from the same company. I would pick Chatvia if you care where your data sits, which AI model answers, how many places the agent can live, and whether a busy month means a bigger bill.

What Botsonic is#

Writesonic is the AI writing company, and Botsonic is its chatbot builder. No code to write. You give it your files and links, it builds a bot, and you put that bot on your website with a widget. It connects to a few other apps too. Everything runs on Writesonic's servers.

You buy a plan, and the plan comes with credits. The AI use of your bot is billed against them. The prices are hard to pin down from the outside, so check Botsonic's current plans before you compare.

What Chatvia is#

Chatvia is a free platform for AI chat agents that you install on your own server with one command. An agent answers from your files, your websites and your Q&A pairs, and it works on your website, in Slack, Teams, WhatsApp and more.

You get the full source code. You can read it, change it and run it.

Credits are a meter#

The more people chat with your bot, the more credits it uses, and the more you buy. A good month for your business is a more expensive month for your bot.

Chatvia has no meter. The software is free. You pay your AI provider for what the model uses, at the provider's own price, with nothing added by me. A typical answer from a fast model costs a fraction of a cent. Run an open-weight model on your own hardware and the AI cost can be zero.

You can still set a cap. Message limits set how many messages a workspace, or one single chatter, may send each month. The difference is who sets the cap: you, not a price plan.

There is no limit on agents, teams or replies, with or without a key. A Pro license key costs $199 a year. It adds more workspaces, the API, capabilities and forms and hides the "Powered by Chatvia" line.

Where your files go#

With Botsonic, your files, your links and every chat sit on Writesonic's servers. For many companies that is fine. For health care, finance or government it is often a hard no.

Chatvia runs where you say: your cloud account, your data center, or a machine in your office. Chats and documents stay on that server. Nothing leaves unless you send it to the AI provider you picked.

Knowledge#

Both products answer from your own content. Chatvia goes further.

It reads many kinds of files: PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, CSV, EPUB, Markdown and images. Audio and video get turned into text. Website imports refresh daily, weekly or monthly, so answers stay current. Hybrid search and a reranker pick the best passages, and every answer shows the sources it came from.

When an answer is weak, you fix it from the chat log, and the fix becomes a Q&A pair. Nothing clever. But it is how an agent gets better week by week.

Which model answers#

Botsonic decides which models you can use.

In Chatvia you choose any model: OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, Groq, OpenRouter, or your own server with Ollama or vLLM. Each agent can have a different model, and you can switch whenever you like.

Channels#

Botsonic gives you a website widget and a few apps.

Chatvia gives you ten places: a chat widget, a hosted chat page, voice chats, Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram and a REST API. It is one agent in every place, with the same knowledge and the same rules.

Beyond answering#

Botsonic is built to answer questions. Its tools, its handoff and its guardrails are limited or basic.

In Chatvia an agent can act:

• Tools. 24 ready-made connectors, like GitHub, HubSpot, Salesforce and Zendesk, or any MCP server. For each tool you choose: it runs, it waits for a person's OK, or it never runs. Every call is logged.
• Guardrails. On from the start. They catch prompt injection, mask personal data like card numbers, keep the agent on topic, and stop abusive language.
• Handoff. Your team takes over a widget chat live when a person should answer.
• Leads. Show a form inside the chat and store each answer as a lead.

When I would pick Botsonic#

If you already pay for Writesonic and want everything from one company, Botsonic is the easy path. The same if all you need is a simple bot on your website, or if you never want to run a server.

My verdict#

Botsonic is an easy way to put a simple bot on a website. Chatvia is a full AI agent: it answers from your knowledge, uses your tools, follows your guardrails and hands over to a person, in ten channels. Your data stays home, you pick the model, and there are no credits to run out of.

Install Chatvia takes a few minutes. Build one agent, give it a few files, and see.

Details are from Botsonic's pages and public reviews in October 2026. Check its current prices before you choose.