Assist
Pricing
A penny a question. No plans, no seats, no per-page fees — and the first 250 answered questions every month are free.
Start free. Stay free if you're small.
Every account gets 250 answered questions free each month — plenty for a personal site, a blog, or a small product's docs. Search is unlimited and free on every tier, forever. No credit card required to sign up.
When you need more, usage is deducted hourly from the same prepaid balance as other Edge services, against a budget you set. The free tier is hard-capped: when it's used up the widget falls back to search — it never bills you.
Assist Free Allowance
The rate card
An answered question is the only unit you pay for. Everything else is a flat add-on or free.
| Resource | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Answered questions AI answers, grounded in your content | $0.01 per question | First 250/month free. $10 per 1,000. |
| Search Instant type-ahead results | Free | Unlimited on every tier |
| Content ingestion Site index or storage bucket, up to 10k documents | Free | Automatic re-ingestion included. Bucket ingestion & private access require pay-as-you-go |
| Extended conversations Longer threads with a deeper memory | 2× question rate | Optional per-site setting — deeper context costs more to produce |
| Cache pre-warming Answer the questions visitors are likely to ask, ahead of time | $0.01 per question | Paid feature — you choose the scale per run (e.g. 250 or 1,000 questions) |
| White-label Your assistant name & icon, no Edge branding | $29 per site / month | Badge removal alone is included with any paid usage |
| Overrides & answer cache Pinned facts, curated Q&As, cache purge | Free | Included on every tier |
What it actually costs
You pay for answered questions, nothing else. Here's what real sites cost.
| Site | Content | Questions | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal site / blog | 60 pages | 180 / month | $0.00 Within free allowance |
| SaaS docs site | 400 pages | 2,000 / month | $17.50/mo After 250 free questions |
| Help centre at scale | 3,000 documents | 20,000 / month | $197.50/mo After 250 free questions |
The first 250 answered questions each month are free; the rest are billed at $0.01 each. For example, the SaaS docs site: 2,000 − 250 = 1,750 billable questions = $17.50. Comparable dedicated AI-answer products start at $150–500+ per month before a single question is asked.
Pricing FAQ
Everything you need to know about how Assist billing works.
What counts as a question?
One AI-generated answer. Searches are free and unlimited — you only pay when Assist composes an answer. Follow-ups in a conversation each count as one question.
What about repeat questions?
Repeat questions are answered instantly from your site's answer cache. Cached answers still count as questions — the cache is a speed win for your visitors, and it means answer quality is consistent for your most-asked questions.
What is cache pre-warming?
A paid feature that reads your ingested content, generates the hundreds of questions visitors are likely to ask, and answers them all into your cache ahead of time — so your most-asked questions are instant from the first visitor. You review the generated list before it runs, each answered question meters at the normal rate, and it can re-warm automatically whenever your content changes.
What happens when I hit my free allowance?
The widget falls back to instant search — it keeps working, it just stops composing AI answers until the month resets. With a card on file, pay-as-you-go covers questions past the free tier automatically at $0.01 each; without one, the free tier can never bill you.
How does billing work?
Usage is metered and deducted hourly from the same prepaid balance you use for other Edge services, against a budget you set. No subscriptions, no seats, nothing to cancel.
Can Assist power a private, internal knowledge base?
Yes. Bucket-backed sites are private by default: anonymous requests are rejected, and access comes from per-site API keys and short-lived visitor tokens your server mints behind your own login. It's included with pay-as-you-go — no separate plan.
What if I have more than 10,000 documents?
Talk to our Expert Services team. Deployments beyond the self-serve cap get a dedicated design — access controls per prefix, and retrieval tuned to your corpus.
Can I remove the Edge Assist branding?
Any paid usage removes the "Powered by Edge Assist" badge. The white-label add-on ($29/site/month) goes further: your own assistant name and icon everywhere your visitors see it.
How Assist compares
Dedicated AI-answer products charge hundreds per month before a single question. Assist starts at zero and charges a penny a question.
| Feature | Edge Assist | Kapa.ai | Inkeep | Intercom Fin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per question | Annual contract | Plan tiers | Per resolution |
| Starting price | $0 (250 q/mo free) | ~$500+/mo | ~$150+/mo | $0.99/resolution |
| Free tier | | | | |
| Search included | | | | |
| Citations on answers | | | | |
| White-label option | | | | |
| Self-serve setup | | | | |
AI answers for a penny a question
250 answered questions free every month, unlimited search, and citations on everything. No credit card required.