Last updated: 2026-08-27
Sendbird is a chat and AI customer support platform founded in 2013 that carries more than 7 billion messages a month for 300 million monthly active users at DoorDash, Match Group, and PayPal. Its delight.ai AI Agent and Agent Steward, launched May 2026, take end-to-end ownership of support cases across chat, voice, SMS, and email.
About Sendbird
Sendbird is a San Mateo-based communications platform, founded in 2013 by CEO John S. Kim, that started as a chat API for mobile apps and has grown into an omnichannel AI customer support platform. The underlying messaging infrastructure now reaches 300 million monthly active users and handles a 7-billion-message monthly volume for customers including DoorDash, Match Group, Yahoo, PayPal, and Walgreens, and the company has raised over $220 million across five funding rounds, including a $100 million Series C in March 2021. On top of that chat and voice infrastructure, Sendbird sells an AI Agent product rebranded delight.ai, described as a branded AI concierge built on long-term memory. AI Agent Builder lets a business deploy a customer service AI chatbot across every major messaging surface in minutes, with Response Assistance features (context-aware draft replies, conversation summarization, tone adjustment) for the human agents working alongside it. In May 2026 Sendbird launched Agent Steward, a single AI agent designed to own a complex customer issue end to end, orchestrating sub-agents across systems and channels instead of handing a ticket between narrow bots, alongside Trust OS 2.0 for autonomous self-correction and Voice 2.0 for proactive, multilingual outbound calling. The platform fits enterprise CX and support teams that already need developer-grade messaging infrastructure and want to build a branded AI agent on top of it, rather than bolt AI onto an existing ticketing tool. It also serves engineering teams adding in-app chat or voice to a consumer or marketplace app from scratch, and procurement or security teams that need SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, or GDPR attestations before approving a vendor. The Chat API has a free trial for up to 1,000 monthly active users, then Starter 5K at $399 a month and Pro 5K at $599 a month (both covering 5,000 MAU, with annual-billing discounts), with custom Enterprise pricing beyond that. The delight.ai AI Agent and Agent Steward are priced separately on a usage basis and require a sales conversation; Sendbird publishes an official MCP server so external agent tools like Claude and Cursor can create and manage Sendbird bots and channels directly.
Pricing
Chat API: free trial up to 1,000 MAU with all Pro features, no credit card, no overages allowed. Starter 5K: $399/mo billed monthly or $349/mo billed annually, 5,000 MAU. Pro 5K: $599/mo billed monthly or $499/mo billed annually, 5,000 MAU, adds translation, data export, image moderation, and message search. Enterprise: custom pricing for millions of MAU with dedicated infrastructure. The delight.ai AI Agent and Agent Steward bill separately, usage-based per conversation, quote-only via sales; add-on modules (advanced moderation, translation, analytics, dedicated infrastructure) can add 20-50% to total contract value.
Key Features
- AI Agent Builder (delight.ai): Deploys a branded customer service AI agent across chat, WhatsApp, SMS, email, and social channels in minutes, built on long-term memory rather than a rules-based script.
- Agent Steward: Launched May 7, 2026, a single AI agent owns a complex customer case end to end, orchestrating sub-agents across backend systems and channels instead of routing between narrow bots.
- Omnichannel chat and voice core: The original Sendbird Chat API carries more than 7 billion messages a month for 300 million monthly active users at companies like DoorDash and Match Group.
- Response Assistance: Gives human agents AI-drafted context-aware replies, conversation summarization, tone adjustment, and note-to-reply expansion alongside the automated AI agent.
- Voice 2.0 and Trust OS 2.0: Adds proactive, multilingual outbound voice calling to the agent stack, paired with autonomous self-correction so the AI agent can catch and fix its own mistakes.
- Official MCP server: A published Model Context Protocol server lets external agent tools such as Claude and Cursor create bots, manage webhooks, and fetch channel details directly.
Pros
- Rated 4.6 out of 5 across 124 G2 reviews, with reviewers specifically calling out well-documented APIs and a 9.3/10 quality-of-support score.
- Enterprise compliance ships out of the box: SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and GDPR attestations, which cuts security-review time for regulated buyers.
- 13 years of chat infrastructure (founded 2013) already carries 7B+ messages a month at DoorDash and Match Group scale, so the AI agent layer sits on a platform proven under real enterprise traffic.
- Built-in simulation testing lets a team validate the AI agent's behaviour before it goes live, rather than discovering gaps in production.
Cons
- AI Agent (delight.ai) pricing is quote-only; a 2026 eesel AI review counted 'cost' complaints in 34 separate G2 reviews, more than any other complaint category.
- The per-conversation billing unit has no published definition (no stated session window, message threshold, or re-opening rule), which makes cost forecasting difficult before a sales call.
- Trustpilot rating sits at 3.2 out of 5, well below the G2 score, with reviewers citing OTP verification failures and slow credit restoration on the messaging side.
- Simulation testing runs against sample questions rather than a team's own historical ticket data, so it cannot fully predict real queue behaviour before launch.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Sendbird cost in 2026?
Sendbird's Chat API starts with a free trial for up to 1,000 monthly active users, then Starter 5K at $399 a month ($349 billed annually) and Pro 5K at $599 a month ($499 annually), both covering 5,000 MAU. Enterprise chat pricing is custom for larger MAU volumes. The delight.ai AI Agent and Agent Steward bill separately on a usage basis and require a sales quote, and add-on modules like advanced moderation and translation can add 20 to 50 percent to total contract value.
Does Sendbird have a free plan?
The Chat API has a free trial covering up to 1,000 monthly active users with all Pro features and no credit card required, though it does not allow usage overages. There is no published free tier for the delight.ai AI Agent itself; Sendbird lists Desk as free for teams already adopting AI-first support, but ongoing AI conversation volume is billed separately once you move past the trial.
What are the best alternatives to Sendbird?
Decagon and Sierra are purpose-built enterprise AI support agents without Sendbird's underlying chat-infrastructure layer, worth a look if you do not need to own the messaging rails yourself. Zendesk and Intercom suit teams that want AI features layered onto an existing ticketing or support-widget workflow rather than a developer-first chat and agent platform. Plivo is the closer fit if voice and SMS telephony matter more than in-app chat.
How does Sendbird compare to Zendesk in 2026?
Zendesk is a ticketing-first helpdesk with AI features layered onto an existing support workflow, while Sendbird is a chat and voice API that enterprises use to build a branded AI agent, delight.ai, from the ground up. Sendbird holds a 4.6-star G2 rating across 124 reviews, and unlike a ticket-first tool, its AI agent runs on the same infrastructure already carrying 7 billion messages a month for customers like DoorDash.
How do you get started with Sendbird?
Sign up for the free Chat API trial (up to 1,000 MAU, no credit card) directly on sendbird.com, then integrate the SDK into a web or mobile app to enable chat. To add the delight.ai AI Agent or Agent Steward, contact Sendbird sales for a consumption-based quote, since AI Agent Builder setup for enterprise deployments is typically done alongside a Sendbird solutions engineer.
Top Alternatives
- Zendesk: Pick Sendbird if you want to build a branded AI agent on chat infrastructure you own; pick Zendesk if you want AI added to an existing ticketing workflow.
- Intercom: Pick Sendbird for high-volume, developer-led messaging at consumer-app scale; pick Intercom for a faster-to-deploy support widget aimed at SaaS teams.
- Decagon: Pick Decagon for a pure-play enterprise AI support agent with no chat-infrastructure layer; pick Sendbird if you also need the underlying messaging rails.
- Sierra: Pick Sierra for a fully managed, outcome-priced AI agent; pick Sendbird if you want to build and host the agent on infrastructure you control.
- Plivo: Pick Plivo if voice and SMS telephony are the primary channel; pick Sendbird if in-app chat and omnichannel messaging come first.