If you came looking for Mendable's AI chat product, note that Mendable has pivoted to Firecrawl — a developer scraping and crawling API — so the hosted website-chat experience is no longer the focus. AIML.chat is the natural alternative: a team of AI agents grounded in your content, with MCP tools and human approval, that you can ship to any site in minutes.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Agent mode | MCP tools |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mendable / Firecrawl | Scraping API for devs | $16/mo | No | No |
| AIML.chat | Agent team + MCP | Free → $19/mo | Yes | Yes |
| DocsBot | Managed docs bot | $49/mo | No | No |
1. AIML.chat — the best overall alternative
Mendable started as a docs-chat product and is now Firecrawl, a credit-based API for /scrape, /crawl, and /extract aimed at developers building their own RAG pipelines. That's powerful if you want raw infrastructure — but it isn't a finished website assistant. AIML.chat is the finished product: index your content (URL crawl, GitHub repo, PDFs, or an MCP source), and get a team of agents — Support, Sales, Technical — that answer with citations and act through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), pausing for human approval before any write.
You don't assemble a pipeline; you drop in one script tag. AIML.chat starts on a real free tier (100 messages a month, one website), Pro is $19/month for 2,000 messages, and you get an open-source widget under 30KB gzipped plus a one-line WordPress plugin. For the grounding model behind it, see what an AI documentation assistant is.
2. DocsBot AI
If you specifically want a managed docs bot rather than a scraping API, DocsBot is a closer match — see our DocsBot alternative.
3. Chatbase
Chatbase is a fast single-bot builder; reasonable if one RAG chatbot is enough. See our Chatbase alternative.
Who should use what
Building your own pipeline and want raw scraping infrastructure? Firecrawl (formerly Mendable) fits. Want a managed single docs bot? DocsBot. Want a finished team of agents that answer and act, with human approval and a free tier? AIML.chat.
Is Mendable still a chatbot?+
Mendable has pivoted to Firecrawl, a scraping/crawling API for developers. For a hosted website assistant, AIML.chat is the closer alternative.
Is there a free option?+
Yes. AIML.chat has a permanent free tier — 100 messages a month and one website. See pricing for higher limits.
What does AIML.chat give me over a scraping API?+
A finished product — indexing, a team of agents, cited answers, MCP tool actions with human approval, and a one-line embed — instead of infrastructure you assemble yourself.