A Telegram bot for business: price, timelines and when a bot builder is enough

The short answer: a bot on a no-code builder costs you the subscription and an evening of setup, while a bot written for your company’s process and connected to Bitrix24 or 1C (the ERP/accounting system standard in Russia) costs 90,000 – 350,000 ₽ to develop and from 8,000 ₽/mo to support. The price difference is the difference in where the bot gets its answers: from pre-written buttons or from the live data in your systems.

Prices are indicative, not a public offer; the exact cost is fixed after the task review.

When a bot builder is enough

If the bot has to take requests, send a price list at the tap of a button or answer the same ten questions, there is nothing to develop. A button-menu bot can’t make a mistake by definition: it shows what was put into it. I’ll say so in the first conversation, because selling development where a menu would do is a short-sighted strategy.

A bot builder stops being enough in three cases: when the answer has to depend on data in the CRM or 1C, when the executive’s questions change every day, and when the bot has to report a problem on its own rather than wait for a command.

Three levels — three prices

A bot with rule-based checks — from 90,000 ₽. Example — the “Auditor”: every day it goes through Bitrix24, finds stalled deals, empty fields and unanswered leads, sends the people responsible targeted lists with links, and escalates repeat offences to the manager. There is no language model inside, which makes it the least expensive level: 90,000 – 180,000 ₽ to implement and 8,000 – 20,000 ₽/mo.

A bot with an LLM layer — from 150,000 ₽. Example — the “Production PM”: it tracks order deadlines by stage and standard times, notifies the people responsible and answers questions in plain words. The owner of a furniture factory asks from his phone the way he would ask a person and gets an answer in figures; the morning digest takes 20 seconds to read, and he learns about a missed deadline at eight in the morning. Packages are 150,000 – 350,000 ₽ and 15,000 – 30,000 ₽/mo; the Extended one includes 1C integration.

An autonomous agent — from 240,000 ₽. Here Telegram is only the interface: an autonomous LLM agent (Anthropic API) goes through 1C and the CRM on its own, assigns tasks to sales reps and sends digests. This is no longer a “bot” — it’s the AI Sales Employee.

What goes into the price

• Data sources. Bitrix24 only is cheaper; Bitrix24 and 1C together is more expensive, because the master data of two systems has to be matched.
• Rules or a model. Hard-coded checks cost less than an LLM layer that understands free-form questions.
• Roles and permissions. Each employee sees only their own items, the manager sees everything; the more roles and pipelines, the higher the package.
• Schedules and escalations. Morning digests, repeat reminders, hand-off to the manager on repeat violations.

Timelines and how we work

First, a task review: what the bot has to do, who uses it, where the data comes from; the scenarios are set down in writing. Then a prototype with one or two scenarios on your data — you get hands-on with it before full payment. The full version is tested over real working weeks, followed by documentation, training and support. Payment is in 40/30/30 milestones — here’s why.

You don’t need to install anything on your side: the bot lives on a separate server and reaches Bitrix24 or 1C via API; access to the accounting system is read-only.

What it looks like in action: the “Production PM” and “Auditor” case studies; results from specific projects, not a guarantee of similar outcomes. How a chatbot differs from an agent is covered in a separate insight. The service description is on the Telegram bots page.