Credits vs active contacts: the unit you pay for

A credit measures agent work. An active contact measures people who interacted during the cycle. A seat measures members of your team. A conversation measures threads, and every vendor defines it differently. Comparing prices without comparing units produces a budget that does not resemble the invoice.

The useful question before signing is not what the plan costs but what makes the bill grow. If the number of people writing to you grows, an active-contact model grows with it. If what grows is how much the agent does for each person, a credit model grows with that. If what grows is your team, a per-paid-user model grows with payroll.

No unit is honest or dishonest by itself. All four are published by their vendors, and all four can be budgeted once you know what each one counts and when its counter resets.

In Eva, the agent's work consumes credits: the turns where it replies, every follow-up that fires even when the agent decides to write nothing, and minutes of a call. Messages your team writes by hand and messages customers write are not what the credit meter measures.

Plan credits renew every month of your billing period, including on annual contracts. Credits you buy separately never expire and are spent after the plan's credits, so a top-up is not lost when the month rolls over. On Essential the plan includes 5,000 credits and 5 users.

Consumption shows in a single meter, worded identically on your plan page and your usage page: credits used in your period out of the total included, with the dates. Eva never presents usage as unlimited.

Eva notifies the account owner by email and in the app before they run out, and again when little is left. When there is nothing left to spend, the conversation moves to the inbox for a person to answer rather than going unanswered, and a top-up hands it back to the agent.

A reserve within the period is kept for replies only. Campaigns cannot touch it, so a broadcast can never consume the credits that keep your customers' conversations answered.

Topping up is optional and you control it: you can authorise automatic top-ups with the threshold and cap you approve at checkout, or buy packs when you need them. The published top-up is one thousand credits for $49 USD.

Beyond the subscription come extra seats and agents, the voice number, any top-ups you authorise, the tax of your billing country, and what Meta charges separately for template messages and the payment processor charges for collections. No vendor in this guide includes Meta's charges in its headline price.

In Eva, Essential is $191 USD per month on an annual plan or $229 USD month to month. An extra user is $17 USD per month, and an extra agent with its own personality and catalog is $59 USD per month. These figures are read from the pricing catalog and move when that catalog moves; the full list lives on the pricing page.

In the other models, read the overage before the entry price. Manychat publishes Essential at $17 USD and Pro at $39 USD per month, with an Active Contacts allowance per tier and a published per-extra-contact rate; Kommo publishes Básico at $20 USD per paid user per month for new customers since 1 September 2026 (customers who bought earlier keep fifteen dollars while they stay on their plan), with AI credits included per user plus separate credit packages; Kosmo publishes Starter at $4,497 MXN per month with a conversation allowance. Manychat prices verified on September 29, 2026; Kosmo and Kommo on September 24, 2026.

Take one real month and count three things separately: how many distinct people wrote to you, how many times the agent had to answer each of them, and how many people on your team need access. With those three numbers, every model can be budgeted without guessing.

Then read what the headline price excludes: tax by billing country, Meta template messages, extra seats, and the overage rate once you pass the allowance. Confirm which model your current account is on, because Manychat publishes that availability depends on region and on when the account was created.

If your activity is seasonal, ask what happens in the month of the big campaign. If your team grows faster than your conversations, the per-user cost matters more than any allowance.