Drift vs OpenAI API

On March 6, 2026, Clari and Salesloft announced the gradual sunset of Drift's conversational marketing solution, with 1mind named as its exclusive AI successor. Drift remains available but its future is limited.

API inputs and outputs are not used for training by default, which differs from the consumer product. Retention periods and enterprise terms change, so read the current data usage policy rather than trusting a summary.

Drift pricing starts around $2,500/month ($30,000/year) for Premium chat-only capabilities, with Enterprise plans exceeding $80,000/year. Drift is bundled within Salesloft and billed annually only.

No. The weights are not distributed. If self-hosting is a requirement, you are looking at open-weight models instead, with the operational and quality trade-offs that implies.

Premium plans include live chat widget, custom chatbot flows, meeting scheduling with calendar integration, basic playbooks, email sequences, and standard integrations.

Per token, with input and output priced differently and each model priced differently. Batch processing and cached input prefixes reduce it. The practical consequence is that your bill is a function of prompt design, not just of request count.

No, Drift no longer publicly advertises a free plan as of 2026. All plans require annual billing through Salesloft.

The same model family delivered by Microsoft under an Azure contract, with Azure identity, networking and regional controls, and a different release cadence for new models. Enterprises with an Azure agreement often choose it for procurement and data residency reasons rather than technical ones.

Cap input length, cache repeated prefixes, route easy requests to smaller models, use the batch path where latency does not matter, and set per-user limits before launch rather than after the first surprising invoice.