Can AI answer questions in your Instagram comments?

Yes. An AI reply tool can answer customer questions in your comments from your own prices, hours and booking link, once you write those facts down for it. BetterSocials is best for owners who want those answers written in their own voice across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Manychat is best for keyword-triggered flows, and Meta Business Suite is the free option when one fixed template is enough.

The short answer for busy owners

BetterSocials, Manychat and Meta's own tools all live inside the same set of platform rules, and those rules decide more than any feature list does. This memo takes the rules angle: the limits, the windows and the counts that shape what an AI can answer, and when. We take each rule from Meta's developer docs or the vendor's own pages.

The term to know is AI rules. In BetterSocials, AI rules are plain sentences you write, such as "mention we are closed Mondays" or "send people to the booking link." The AI reads them before every draft and every automatic reply.

Our assumptions are simple. You run Instagram for a business that gets the same questions every week. You'd rather approve the odd reply by hand than let an AI guess a price.

Can an AI tool answer customer questions in my Instagram comments using my own prices, hours and booking link?

BetterSocials answers Instagram comment questions from your AI rules once you turn on two settings. The first is Reply in my voice, in Settings, then AI voice. The second is Answer questions too, an opt-in switch that only turns on once you've written at least one AI rule.

The timing rule is short. With Reply in my voice on, BetterSocials answers everyday comments under the comment 1 to 5 minutes after they land. Questions wait in Needs reply until you switch on Answer questions too.

The accuracy rule matters more. When your AI rules don't cover what someone asked, such as a price, a size or an order detail, the AI doesn't guess. The comment waits for you in Needs reply.

The voice comes from you. BetterSocials builds a voice profile from replies you've already written, and you can paste a few into the Your voice box. Facts like prices, links and delivery times go in the rules box just above it.

Links survive too. Every AI reply passes a filter before it sends, with banned phrases, length caps and links stripped where platforms punish them. Links you write into your own AI rules, like a booking link or a menu link, are kept.

Each AI reply or draft uses 1 AI credit. Creator includes 1,000 AI credits a month. When credits run out, the AI pauses and never charges more on its own.

Is there an AI comment reply tool I can give my own instructions or custom prompt?

BetterSocials takes your instructions as AI rules, and they apply to comments and DMs alike. In BetterSocials the custom prompt is those rules. AI replies has two sections, Comments and DMs, each with three settings: Off, Draft for me and Reply in my voice.

Good rules are facts and boundaries, one per sentence. These are the kinds of rules BetterSocials expects:

1. 1A price list in plain words, one service per line.
2. 2Your opening hours, and the day you're closed.
3. 3Your booking link, with the line "send people to the booking link."
4. 4A boundary, such as "never quote prices, send people to the booking link."
5. 5A hand-off, such as "anything about an existing order waits for me."

Draft for me is the cautious setting. Every new comment or DM gets a draft in your voice the moment it arrives, and nothing posts until you approve it. Comment drafts can go out one at a time from Needs reply, or together with Approve in bulk.

For DMs, BetterSocials answers Instagram, Facebook and TikTok messages about a minute after they arrive. After five AI replies in one conversation in a day, the rest wait for you. Story replies and voice notes get no AI reply.

How do keyword automations and AI answers differ?

Manychat and Meta Business Suite both run keyword automations, and the difference shows up in what happens to a question nobody predicted. A keyword automation answers the comments that contain a word you chose. An AI answer reads the question and replies from your rules.

Meta Business Suite includes a free comment-to-message automation, as of July 2026. It sends a fixed template you write yourself. Each keyword automation takes up to 5 case-sensitive keywords, can wait 15 minutes before sending, and is set up on desktop.

Manychat triggers replies from keywords or from its flow builder. Its AI Comments feature is Instagram only and in beta, and Manychat's AI sits on Pro and up.

Instagram is also rolling out AI Auto Replies, which answers messages from a knowledge base you assemble. Instagram's help center calls it "being gradually introduced," mobile-app only, and warns that "messages generated by AI may not be accurate or appropriate."

Keywords still have a job. In BetterSocials, a keyword in an Instagram or Facebook comment sends the person a DM with your link. On TikTok, YouTube, Threads and LinkedIn Company Pages, the keyword posts a public reply with the link instead.

What do the main tools charge for AI comment answers in 2026?

BetterSocials sits first in the table below because answering questions from your own facts is the job its AI rules were built for. Prices are as of October 2026 for BetterSocials and Manychat, July 2026 for Meta Business Suite and September 2026 for InstantDM.

Meta Business Suite is cheaper than everything here, at $0. Pick it if your questions arrive as one predictable keyword. InstantDM is also cheaper than BetterSocials, with 500 free credits a month, but its AI isn't trained on your past replies.

Manychat bills by active contacts. A Pro account ($39 a month, 2,500 active contacts included) that reaches 4,000 people in a month pays the $39 plus 1,500 extra contacts at $0.05 each, which comes to over a hundred dollars, billed monthly.

BetterSocials Creator is $29 a month, or $24 a month billed yearly, for four accounts and one login. Pro is $49 a month, or $39 billed yearly, for six accounts. Every plan has unlimited contacts, so a busy month costs the same as a quiet one. We compared contact-metered tools in more depth in Comment-to-DM tools in 2026, sorted by price band as your contacts grow.

What Instagram's rules allow for automated comment replies

Instagram's rules apply to BetterSocials, Manychat and every other tool on Meta's official API. The windows below decide whether an answer can go out at all.

• Public comment replies have no time limit.
• A private reply to a comment is one message, sent within 7 days of the comment, per Meta's private replies documentation.
• That private reply lands in the Inbox folder if the person follows you, and in their Request folder if they don't.
• A DM reply through any tool has to go out within 24 hours of the person's last message, and every new message from them restarts the clock.
• Meta caps private replies to comments at 750 calls per hour per Instagram professional account, as of July 2026.

Other platforms set their own windows. TikTok DMs are reply-only, with at most 10 replies within 48 hours of the person's last message, and the account must be a Business account. TikTok only lets apps answer DMs for accounts outside the UK and Europe. YouTube has no DM API for any tool, so answers there are public replies.

Past the 24-hour window, you can still answer from the Instagram app itself. That is why speed matters more than wording on a price question.

How BetterSocials does this

BetterSocials puts comments and DMs from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Threads and LinkedIn Company Pages in one Inbox, then answers from your AI rules in your voice. The setup is three steps.

1. 1Write your prices, hours and booking link as AI rules in Settings, then AI voice.
2. 2Turn on Reply in my voice, then Answer questions too, and read the first answers as they land.
3. 3Approve anything your rules don't cover from Needs reply, then add a rule so it's covered next time.

Every new comment and DM also gets a tag when it arrives, and Lead marks people asking about price, booking or availability. A new lead sends a push notification to your phone.

Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial, card required, and nothing is billed per contact. Team is $99 a month, or $79 billed yearly, for twelve accounts and unlimited teammates. Plans and the trial are on BetterSocials's pricing page.

What we would do is start on Draft for me for a week, fix the rules wherever a draft misses, then turn on Answer questions too. For the wider cost picture, see What a chatbot, a scheduler and an AI manager cost a small business in 2026.