Most “best live chat software” lists are written by a vendor who puts themselves first and then pads the rest with whatever ranks on G2.
This one is written by a vendor too. EasyChatDesk is a good product for small and medium-sized businesses, and it’s at the top. The difference is we’ll show you the actual per-seat maths for a five-agent team on every tool, tell you where each one breaks, and say plainly which ones we’d pick over our own for specific jobs.
Quick context on how the market has moved: in 2024 you paid for chat seats. In 2026 you pay for seats plus AI resolutions, and that second line item is where budgets quietly double. Intercom charges $0.99 per Fin resolution on top of seats.
Tidio’s Lyro bot is a separate add-on. Zendesk’s AI copilot is around $50 per agent extra. Whatever list you read, look at the AI pricing before the seat pricing.
The short list
- Best overall for small and mid-size teams: EasyChatDesk
- Best free option: tawk.to
- Best for Shopify stores with heavy volume: Gorgias
- Best if you’re already on HubSpot: HubSpot Live Chat
- Best pure chat with the biggest integration marketplace: LiveChat
- Best for large enterprise support: Zendesk
- Best AI bot if money is no object: Intercom
How we compared them
We signed up for every tool with a trial or free plan, installed the widget on a test WooCommerce store, and scored on five things:
- Total monthly cost for 5 agents, including whatever AI add-on you’d realistically need
- Whether ticketing and a help desk are included or bolted on
- Setup time from signup to a working widget on WordPress or Shopify
- What happens when the AI bot doesn’t know the answer (handoff quality)
- GDPR posture: EU hosting, DPA, data export
We didn’t score on “ease of use” because every vendor scores themselves 5/5 on that and it means nothing.
Price comparison, 5 agents, 2026 pricing
| Tool | Entry price | 5 agents + AI, monthly | Free plan | Help desk built in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EasyChatDesk | $17/agent | $165 (Professional, AI included) | 15-day trial | Yes, all plans |
| tawk.to | Free | $0 (AI is a paid add-on) | Forever free | Basic ticketing |
| LiveChat | $19/agent | $95 + $52 for ChatBot.com | 14-day trial | Ticketing via HelpDesk add-on |
| Tidio | $24.17/mo | $24.17 + $32.50 Lyro | Yes, 50 convos/mo | Yes |
| Crisp | $45/workspace | $95 (Essentials, 10 seats) | Yes, 2 seats | Yes |
| Intercom | $29/seat | $145 + $0.99 per AI resolution | 14-day trial | Yes |
| Zendesk | $55/agent | $275 + ~$50/agent copilot | 14-day trial | Yes |
| HubSpot | Free | $0 to $100 depending on hub | Yes | Yes with Service Hub |
| Freshchat | $19/agent | $95 + Freddy AI | Yes, 10 agents | With Freshdesk |
| Gorgias | $10/mo (50 tickets) | Volume-based, ~$60 to $360 | 7-day trial | Yes |
Prices are annual-billing rates from each vendor’s pricing page as of September 2026. Monthly billing runs 20 to 25% higher on most of them.
1. EasyChatDesk
EasyChatDesk bundles four things that most competitors sell separately: a live chat widget, an AI chatbot trained on your own docs, a help desk with tickets and SLAs, and no-code lead capture forms. The pitch is that a 3 to 15 person support team shouldn’t need a chat tool plus a ticketing tool plus a chatbot subscription plus Zapier to glue them together.
What you get on the $33/agent Professional plan
- Unlimited chat history (Starter caps at 90 days)
- AI chatbot with 5,000 credits and one AI agent
- Ticketing system, macros, canned replies, internal notes
- Remove branding, full widget customisation
- iOS and Android apps with push notifications
- Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Slack, Zapier connectors, webhooks and API
Where it’s weaker than the big names
- The user base is small. The site says 65+ customers. Intercom has tens of thousands. If you want a tool your next support hire has already used, that’s not us yet.
- The jump from Professional ($33) to Business ($199 per agent) is steep. Business adds Apple iMessage, a second AI agent and the scheduler. Most teams won’t need it, but the gap is awkward.
- AI credits run out. 5,000 credits on Professional is fine for a store doing a few hundred chats a month. A high-volume site will hit the ceiling and need to upgrade.
- No Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp channel at the time of writing. If social inbox is the main reason you’re buying, look at Crisp or Tidio.
Who it’s right for
A WooCommerce or Shopify store, an agency handling client sites, or a SaaS with a small team that wants chat and tickets in one inbox and an AI bot that answers from the docs you already wrote. There’s a lifetime plan too, which is rare in this category and worth a look if you hate subscriptions.
Setup on our WordPress test site took under five minutes with the plugin. On Shopify it’s one snippet in theme.liquid.
2. tawk.to
Still free, still unlimited agents, still the most-installed chat widget on the web. If you have no budget, stop reading and install tawk.to.
The catches, and there are a few:
- The widget carries tawk.to branding unless you pay $19/month to remove it
- AI assist is a paid add-on
- Support for the tool itself is slow, because you’re not paying them
- The business model is selling you human chat agents for $1/hour, which is fine if that’s what you want but it’s why the software is free
It has basic ticketing and a knowledge base builder. For a solo consultant or a two-person shop, it does the job. Above that, you’ll outgrow it in a year and migrating chat history out is a pain.
3. LiveChat
LiveChat is the one that’s been around since 2002 and it shows in a good way: the widget is polished, the reporting is deep, and the integration marketplace is the largest in the category (200+).
- Starter at $19/agent gives you 60-day history and 100 tracked visitors
- Team at $49/agent unlocks unlimited history
- Business at $79/agent adds staffing prediction and work scheduling
The problem is that LiveChat is only chat. The chatbot is a separate product (ChatBot.com, from $52/month). The help desk is a separate product (HelpDesk, from $29/agent). By the time you’ve assembled the stack, a five-agent team is paying $95 for chat, $52 for the bot and $145 for tickets. That’s $292 a month for what EasyChatDesk or Crisp include in one bill.
Pick it if you want the best pure chat experience and already have a ticketing system you like.
4. Tidio
Tidio is the ecommerce favourite, especially on Shopify. The free plan gives you 50 conversations a month with up to 10 seats, which is generous.
Where it gets expensive is Lyro, the AI bot. It’s an add-on from $32.50/month for 50 AI conversations, and the price scales with volume. A store doing 2,000 conversations a month on the Growth plan is at about $49 base plus a Lyro bill that can run into the hundreds. Tidio’s pricing is per workspace and per conversation rather than per seat, so it favours small teams with lots of traffic and punishes big teams with low traffic.
Good for: Shopify stores with 1 to 3 support staff. Not great for: agencies or B2B teams.
5. Crisp
Crisp charges per workspace, not per seat. Mini is $45/month for 4 seats, Essentials is $95/month for 10 seats with omnichannel (WhatsApp, Messenger, email) and co-browsing bundled. Extra agents are $10 each.
- Best value for a 6 to 10 person team that needs social channels
- EU hosting option, which matters if you’re in Europe and your lawyer is paying attention
- The AI chatbot uses credits bundled by tier ($5 to $75 worth), then metered
The interface is busy. There’s a lot in there and the learning curve is real. But for the money it’s the strongest all-rounder outside our own product, and if you need WhatsApp we’d send you here.
6. Intercom
Intercom’s Fin AI agent is the best in the category at actually resolving tickets without a human. It’s also the most expensive way to run support in 2026.
- Essential at $29/seat, Advanced at $85/seat
- Fin costs $0.99 per resolution on top of seats
- A five-agent team resolving 1,000 tickets a month with Fin is at $145 plus $990, so roughly $1,135
Intercom has pulled back from small business. The product tours, the in-app messaging and the workflow builder are aimed at product-led SaaS with a growth team. If that’s you and you have the budget, Fin is worth it. If you’re a store or an agency, this will hurt.
7. Zendesk
Suite Team at $55/agent gets you omnichannel messaging, live chat and ticketing. Suite Professional at $115 adds SLAs. The AI copilot is around $50 per agent on top.
Zendesk is the safe enterprise choice. Every integration exists, every consultant knows it, and it will not fall over at 200 agents. For a team under 20 it’s overkill and the pricing tiers are structured to push you upward. SLAs being locked behind the $115 tier is the tell.
8. HubSpot Live Chat
Free if you’re on HubSpot CRM, and it stays free at the chat level. The chatbot builder on the free tier is rules-based, not AI. Service Hub Starter is $20/seat if you want tickets and basic automation.
- Zero setup if your contacts are already in HubSpot
- Every chat becomes a CRM record, which is the whole point
- Chat features are thin without upgrading the hub
If your sales team lives in HubSpot, use this and don’t overthink it. If you’re not on HubSpot, there’s no reason to start for the chat.
9. Freshchat
Free for up to 10 agents, then Growth at $19/agent. Freddy AI is the bot layer and it’s priced per session on top. Freshchat makes sense inside the Freshworks ecosystem (Freshdesk for tickets, Freshsales for CRM) and less sense on its own.
The free tier is a legitimate alternative to tawk.to for a small team, with a cleaner interface. Outside of that, you’d pick it because you’re already a Freshworks customer.
10. Gorgias
Gorgias is a Shopify help desk with chat attached, priced per ticket rather than per agent: $10/month for 50 tickets, scaling to $360 for 2,000. It pulls order data into every conversation, so agents can refund, edit or track a Shopify order from the chat window.
It’s brilliant for a DTC brand doing a few thousand tickets a month. It’s the wrong tool for anything that isn’t ecommerce, and WooCommerce support is second-class compared to Shopify.
What actually matters when you choose
Every tool on this list can put a chat bubble on your site. The decisions that will cost or save you money are these.
Seat pricing vs workspace pricing. Per-seat (EasyChatDesk, LiveChat, Zendesk, Intercom) is predictable and favours small teams. Per-workspace or per-conversation (Tidio, Crisp, Gorgias) favours small teams with high traffic. Do the maths for your actual headcount and volume before looking at feature lists.
AI is a second bill. Only EasyChatDesk (from Professional), Crisp (bundled credits) and Zendesk (agents included at Suite level) include some AI in the plan price. Everyone else charges separately. Get the AI number in writing.
Ticketing built in or not. If chat is your only channel, LiveChat or tawk.to is fine. The moment you also handle email, you want tickets in the same inbox. That rules out LiveChat without the HelpDesk add-on.
Data location. If you’re in the EU, Crisp and EasyChatDesk both offer EU hosting. Intercom and LiveChat don’t by default. Ask.
Our picks by situation
- Under 3 agents, no budget: tawk.to, then move to EasyChatDesk Starter at $17 when the branding bothers you
- 3 to 15 agents, want chat, tickets and AI in one bill: EasyChatDesk Professional
- Need WhatsApp and Messenger, 6 to 10 agents: Crisp Essentials
- Shopify store, 2,000+ tickets a month: Gorgias
- Already on HubSpot: HubSpot, free
- SaaS with 20+ agents and a real budget: Intercom with Fin
- Enterprise, 50+ agents, compliance team involved: Zendesk
Pick two, run the trial on your real site for a week, and count the AI bill at the end. That number decides it.
