The difference, side by side
| What changes | Menu chatbot | AI agent |
|---|---|---|
| How it works | Buttons and lists lead the customer down a script someone wrote. | It reads the message, looks things up with its tools and writes an answer. |
| What customers can say | What the menu offers. | Anything, in their own words. |
| Where answers come from | The script. | Your catalog, documents and systems, with the source of each answer. |
| When it doesn't know | It sends the customer back to the menu. | It hands the chat to a person, with the context. |
| How you test it | Click through every branch. | Evals: graded cases with a pass threshold. |
| What it costs to run | Meta's messaging fees. | Meta's messaging fees, plus model usage. |
When a menu chatbot is enough
- Customers ask a handful of questions, and you can list them all.
- The answers rarely change.
- The job is a fixed flow: choose an option, choose a time, confirm.
- You'd rather every answer be one you wrote word for word.
WhatsApp supports this well. Reply buttons and list messages let a customer pick instead of type.
When you need an agent
- Customers write in their own words, and the questions vary.
- The answers depend on live data: stock, prices, order status, a calendar.
- The menu keeps growing, and customers still ask for a person.
- Customers write in more than one language.
An agent can only do what its tools allow, and it hands off when a question is out of scope. Those limits are written down before the build and tested by its evals, which is what makes it safe to let it answer in its own words.
Using both
They aren't exclusive. Buttons work well for the fixed steps, like choosing a store or confirming an order, and the agent handles everything a customer types. The agent can send buttons too, when a choice is clearer than a question.
What each costs
Both pay Meta's messaging fees, on your own account (Meta's pricing). An agent also pays for model usage, and it needs evals and a console for hand-offs, which is what our AI Agent engagement includes, from $8,000.
If a menu would serve your customers, we'll say so. If you want an agent, How to build a WhatsApp AI agent walks through how we build one.