How we make this list: we compare pricing pages, product documentation and public user reviews. Rankite is independent; if a vendor ever pays for a featured spot, that listing is clearly labeled Partner.
Key takeaways
- Intercom remains the reference point for AI-first support, with seats from $29/month plus $0.99 for each Fin AI resolution. It is the most complete, and the most expensive to run at scale.
- If your budget is zero, tawk.to is the only tool here that is genuinely free for unlimited agents and chats, while Freshchat gives up to 10 agents a real free plan.
- Pricing models are all over the map: per seat (Intercom, Freshchat, Olark), per workspace (Crisp), per conversation (Tidio), and sales-only quotes (Podium, Zendesk). Compare your team size against the model, not just the headline number.
- HubSpot is the obvious pick if you already live in HubSpot CRM; Freshchat is the obvious pick if you live in Freshworks. Matching your existing stack usually beats chasing features.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Free plan |
|---|
 Intercom | AI-first support teams | $29 per seat/month + $0.99 per AI resolution | Free trial (14 days) |
 Zendesk | Chat inside a full service platform | See website | Free trial (14 days) |
 LiveChat | Ecommerce teams tying chat to carts and sales | See website | Free trial (14 days) |
 Tidio | Small stores wanting free chat plus an AI agent | $29/mo | Yes |
 Crisp | Small teams wanting flat workspace pricing | $45 per workspace/month | Yes |
 Freshchat | Generous free tier inside the Freshworks suite | $19 per agent/month (billed annually) | Yes |
 Olark | Sales teams wanting an AI agent trained on their live site | $29 per agent/month | Free trial |
 tawk.to | Unlimited agents and chats for free | $0 | Yes |
 Podium | Local businesses wanting chat, texting, and reviews together | See website | No |
 HubSpot | Free live chat for teams already on HubSpot CRM | $0 | Yes |
Is your product missing or out of date?
We review this list regularly. Vendors can request a listing, send updated pricing or ask about featured placement.
The best online chatting software
Starting price$29 per seat/month + $0.99 per AI resolution
Free planFree trial (14 days)
Intercom is the product the rest of this category measures itself against. The pitch is a complete system for human and AI customer service: the helpdesk inbox, a shared knowledge hub, and Fin, its AI agent, all built on the same conversation record so every human reply improves what Fin can answer next. Intercom publishes a 76 percent average resolution rate for Fin across its customer base, and it is trusted by companies like Anthropic and Shopify-sized brands alongside mid-market teams.
That completeness is also the catch. Seats start at $29 a month, and then Fin bills $0.99 for each resolved conversation, so a high-volume support operation can see the bill climb fast even with a small team. If you want the most polished AI-plus-human support stack and your ticket volume justifies the cost, start here. If you mostly need a solid chat widget for a lean team, half this list will do the job for a fraction of the price.
What we like- Fin AI agent resolves a high share of conversations on its own
- Shared inbox, knowledge hub, and human tooling are built as one system
- Deep integrations with Slack, Shopify, Salesforce, and WhatsApp
Watch out for- Per-seat plus per-resolution pricing gets expensive as volume grows
- The breadth of the platform takes real time to set up well
Starting priceSee website
Free planFree trial (14 days)
Zendesk treats chat as one channel in a much larger customer service operation, which is exactly its appeal for companies that already plan to run email, voice, and self-service in the same place. Its AI agents plug into messaging conversations, learn from resolutions, and can be deployed inside Zendesk or on top of a service stack you already have. With tens of thousands of service teams on the platform, it is the safe enterprise-adjacent choice.
The honest tradeoff is scope and price. Zendesk does not publish simple starting prices for the configuration most teams actually buy, so expect a sales conversation before you know your number. For a small business that just wants to answer website visitors quickly, this is usually overkill. For a growing support org that needs chat, tickets, and reporting to live under one roof, few alternatives cover as much ground.
What we like- Chat and messaging sit inside a mature omnichannel suite with ticketing, voice, and knowledge base
- AI agents deploy across Zendesk or existing platforms
- Huge integration marketplace
Watch out for- Pricing is quote-heavy and hard to evaluate without a sales call
- The full suite is more than a small team needs
Starting priceSee website
Free planFree trial (14 days)
Few chat tools understand online selling as well as LiveChat. Agents can see what is in a visitor's cart, check order status from Shopify or WooCommerce mid-conversation, and attribute revenue back to individual chats, which turns the widget from a support cost into a sales instrument. The company has folded its products under the "Text by LiveChat" name, with an AI agent that handles routine questions and hands off to humans with tickets attached.
The friction is commercial rather than technical. LiveChat's site pushes hard toward a trial without showing clear plan prices, so you will need to start the trial to learn what your team size costs. If you run a store and want chat that directly feeds revenue, it is worth that extra step. If you want simple transparent pricing, look at Tidio or Crisp instead.
What we like- Live cart previews, order status lookups, and sales attribution built for stores
- Real-time visitor monitoring with proactive chat triggers
- 200+ ecommerce and CMS integrations
Watch out for- The rebrand to "Text by LiveChat" makes the product line confusing to research
- Published pricing is hard to pin down without signing up
#4
Tidio
Best for: Small stores wanting free chat plus an AI agent
Visit tidio.com
Starting price$29/mo
Free planYes
Tidio is the friendliest on-ramp in this category for small ecommerce teams. The free plan covers live chat, email, and basic automation, and the paid tiers add Lyro, an AI agent trained on your verified sources that can recommend products, recover abandoned carts, and hand tricky cases to your team with context. Pricing starts at $29 a month, and the company is upfront about what each conversation costs you.
Watch the metering. Tidio bills around billable conversations and AI usage, which is fair but means a traffic spike shows up on your invoice. For a store doing modest volume that wants AI-assisted chat without an enterprise contract, Tidio hits a sweet spot that neither the free-for-all of tawk.to nor the seat-based pricing of Intercom quite matches.
What we like- Free plan is genuinely usable
- Lyro AI agent answers from your own data and handles product recommendations and cart recovery
- Strong Shopify, WordPress, and Wix presence
Watch out for- Paid plans are metered by billable conversations, so costs rise with volume
- Advanced automation depth trails pricier platforms
Starting price$45 per workspace/month
Free planYes
Crisp is built for teams that are tired of per-seat pricing. Instead of charging per agent, it charges per workspace: $45 a month for 4 seats, $95 for 10, $295 for 20 or more, with AI credits bundled into each paid tier. The platform itself is a full customer messaging suite with a chat widget, shared inbox, knowledge base, CRM, and co-browsing, which is a lot of product for the money.
The catch is where the good stuff lives. The no-code chatbot builder and the heavier AI features require the Essentials tier and up, so a team that wants real automation starts at $95 a month, not $45. Still, for a small team that wants predictable billing and one inbox for every channel, Crisp is one of the easiest recommendations on this list.
What we like- Flat per-workspace pricing with bundled seats, no per-agent math
- Free plan covers 2 seats
- Shared inbox spans chat, email, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram
Watch out for- Serious automation and the AI agent sit on the $95+ tiers
- The free plan is limited to personal-scale use
Starting price$19 per agent/month (billed annually)
Free planYes
Freshchat's free plan is almost suspiciously generous: up to 10 agents get the chat widget, shared inbox, email connection, and roles and permissions for nothing. That makes it the cheapest credible entry point in the category for a team of any real size. Paid plans start at $19 per agent a month billed annually and add social messengers, text messaging, reporting, and the Freddy AI agent.
Read the fine print on AI. Freddy sessions cost $49 per 100 sessions on top of your subscription, so a bot-heavy operation needs to budget seats plus sessions. If you already use Freshdesk or Freshsales, the native integration makes Freshchat nearly automatic. If you need WhatsApp or Instagram on day one, note those channels are not on the free tier.
What we like- Free plan supports up to 10 agents, the most generous in this roundup
- Native fit with Freshdesk and the Freshworks ecosystem
- Freddy AI agent and Copilot available on paid tiers
Watch out for- AI sessions are metered separately and add up
- Messaging channels like WhatsApp require paid plans
#7
Olark
Best for: Sales teams wanting an AI agent trained on their live site
Visit olark.com
Starting price$29 per agent/month
Free planFree trial
Olark has reinvented itself around an idea worth taking seriously: an AI agent that reads your live site and documentation in real time, so if your pricing changed this morning, the agent gives this morning's answer. The human-only live chat plan remains at a flat $29 per agent per month with no conversation caps, and the company makes a point of arguing against token-based AI pricing on principle.
That principle comes at a price, though. The full AI Website Agent product is $400 a month billed annually, which positions Olark as a sales-funnel tool for companies with active pipelines rather than a casual chat widget. For a marketing team that wants chat to capture and qualify leads around the clock, the positioning makes sense. For basic support chat, the human-only plan is fine but no longer where the innovation is.
What we like- AI agent answers from your live website content, not stale training data
- Flat $29 per seat for human-only chat with no conversation limits
- Plain-English setup with no logic trees
Watch out for- The flagship AI Website Agent costs $400 a month, far beyond small-business budgets
- The classic chat product gets less of the company's attention now
#8
tawk.to
Best for: Unlimited agents and chats for free
Visit tawk.to
Starting price$0
Free planYes
No other tool on this list can match tawk.to on price, because the price is zero. Unlimited agents, unlimited chats, unlimited websites, plus a built-in ticketing system and knowledge base, all free. The company makes money on optional add-ons like badge removal ($29 a month per property), AI Assist, voice agents, and data enrichment, so the core product has stayed free for years.
You get what you pay for in polish. Reviewers consistently note a dated interface that gets cluttered at high volume, and the integrations bench is thinner than the paid competition. But for a startup, a side project, or any business that needs real live chat this week with no budget approval, tawk.to is not a compromise, it is the obvious answer.
What we like- Completely free with no limits on agents, chat volume, or websites
- Includes ticketing, knowledge base, and a mobile app
- Optional add-ons for white-labeling, AI, and voice
Watch out for- The interface feels dated next to modern competitors
- Advanced features and polish lag behind paid tools
#9
Podium
Best for: Local businesses wanting chat, texting, and reviews together
Visit podium.com
Starting priceSee website
Free planNo
Podium is the odd one out here, and deliberately so. It is a customer communication platform for local businesses, auto dealers, home services, medical spas, where webchat is one thread in a unified inbox alongside SMS, calls, payments, and Google review requests. Its AI Employee responds to leads in seconds, qualifies them, and books appointments overnight, which is exactly the job a local business needs done.
The commercial terms are the heaviest on this list: pricing runs through sales, plans start in the hundreds per month, and contracts run annually. If you run a single website and just want chat, stop reading and pick tawk.to or Crisp. If you run a business where missed calls and slow text replies cost you jobs, Podium's all-in-one approach can pay for itself.
What we like- One inbox for webchat, text messages, calls, and review requests
- AI Employee handles after-hours lead response and appointment booking
- Built for multi-location local businesses
Watch out for- Pricing is sales-only with annual contracts
- Overkill and overpriced if you only need website chat
#10
HubSpot
Best for: Free live chat for teams already on HubSpot CRM
Visit hubspot.com
Starting price$0
Free planYes
HubSpot's live chat is free because it is a doorway into HubSpot's CRM, and that is fine. You get a customizable chat widget, a no-code chatbot builder, targeted welcome messages, and a shared conversations inbox where every chat is automatically attached to the visitor's contact record. For a team already running marketing or sales in HubSpot, the context this creates is hard to beat.
As a chat product in isolation, it is solid rather than exceptional. The deepest routing, analytics, and AI features belong to paid Service Hub tiers, and teams that need chat-first innovation will find more of it at Intercom or Crisp. But if your CRM is HubSpot, adding its free live chat takes an afternoon and costs nothing, which makes it the default choice for a large share of small businesses.
What we like- Genuinely free live chat with chatbots, no credit card required
- Every conversation is logged against the contact record in HubSpot's free CRM
- Slack integration and mobile app included
Watch out for- Advanced automation and reporting sit behind paid HubSpot tiers
- Chat is a feature of the CRM, not a standalone best-in-class product
How we chose
We started from vendor pricing pages, product documentation, and each company's own feature descriptions, then cross-checked against public reviews on G2, Capterra, and community discussions on Reddit. We looked for tools that are actively sold and supported today, which is why Drift is absent: it now exists only inside Salesloft's revenue platform with no standalone plan to buy. We weighted fit for small and mid-size US companies, integration breadth, pricing transparency, and whether the free or trial tier is actually usable. We did not test these products hands-on; this ranking reflects public documentation, published pricing, and reviewer consensus, not lab testing.
Start with the pricing model, not the price. A $29-per-seat tool is cheap for a three-person team and punishing for a thirty-person one; a $95-per-workspace tool flips that math. Map your agent count and expected conversation volume against each vendor's model before you fall in love with a feature list.
Next, check where conversations land. Chat that dumps transcripts into an inbox nobody reads is decoration. Confirm the tool integrates with your helpdesk or CRM, or that its built-in inbox is somewhere your team will actually work. Trial the handoff too: trigger the bot, then ask for a human, and see how much context survives the transfer.
Finally, test the AI on your own content before you trust it. Point the trial at your pricing page, your docs, or your return policy, and ask the questions customers actually ask. An agent that quotes last quarter's pricing or invents an answer is worse than no agent at all. The tools on this list that train on your live site content have a real advantage here, but verify it yourself during the trial period.
The trial is the real pricing page
One pattern worth naming: several vendors in this category now treat their homepage as a brochure and their trial signup as the actual store. LiveChat, Zendesk, and Podium all push you toward a demo or trial before showing concrete numbers, which makes comparison shopping harder than it should be. Use the trial window deliberately. Put the widget on a staging page, run real conversations through it, and get the renewal quote in writing before the trial converts. The tools with transparent published pricing, Crisp, Freshchat, Tidio, and tawk.to, deserve credit for letting you do the math before you hand over an email address.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free online chatting software?
tawk.to is the most capable free option, with unlimited agents, chats, and websites at no cost. Freshchat's free plan is the most generous among the paid vendors, covering up to 10 agents. HubSpot offers genuinely free live chat if you use its CRM, and Crisp and Tidio both have usable free tiers for very small teams.
How much does live chat software cost?
It depends on the pricing model. Per-seat tools run $19 to $29 per agent per month before AI usage (Freshchat, Intercom, Olark). Workspace pricing like Crisp starts at $45 a month for a small team. Tidio starts at $29 a month metered by conversations, and tawk.to and HubSpot are free. Budget for AI resolution or session fees on top of seats where they apply.
Do I need a chatbot, or is live chat enough?
Live chat alone is enough if your team is online during the hours visitors actually message you. A chatbot or AI agent earns its keep when you get after-hours traffic, repetitive questions, or lead qualification work that does not need a human. Most tools on this list bundle both, so you can start with human chat and switch automation on later.
Which chat tool is best for ecommerce?
LiveChat and Tidio are built for stores, with cart previews, order lookups, and sales attribution. Tidio is the budget pick with a real free plan; LiveChat is the deeper sales instrument but requires a trial to see pricing. Gorgias-style deep Shopify integrations are a separate category worth a look if chat is your main support channel.
Can live chat software integrate with my CRM?
Yes, and it should be a deciding factor. HubSpot logs every chat to the contact record automatically, Freshchat does the same inside Freshworks, and Intercom, Zendesk, and Crisp all offer native or Zapier-based CRM sync. Confirm the specific integration exists for your CRM before you commit, since "integrations" pages sometimes list apps with only shallow connections.
Is tawk.to really free?
Yes, the core product is free with no limits on agents, chat volume, or sites. tawk.to charges only for optional add-ons billed per property, such as removing the "Powered by tawk.to" badge ($29 a month), AI Assist, voice agents, and data enrichment. For basic live chat, most businesses never pay anything.
Sources we checked (16)
- https://www.intercom.com/
- https://www.zendesk.com/
- https://www.livechat.com/
- https://www.tidio.com/
- https://crisp.chat/
- https://www.freshworks.com/live-chat-software/
- https://www.freshworks.com/live-chat-software/pricing/
- https://www.olark.com/
- https://www.tawk.to/
- https://www.podium.com/
- https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm/live-chat
- https://www.gleap.ai/blog/crisp-vs-intercom
- https://www.getmacha.com/blog/freshchat-ai-chatbot
- https://best-wordpress-plugins.com/olark-review/
- https://www.smscomparison.com/reviews/podium/
- https://www.getmacha.com/blog/tawk-to-review-and-alternatives
Is your product missing or out of date?
We review this list regularly. Vendors can request a listing, send updated pricing or ask about featured placement.
Shihab Mia · Founder, Rankite
Shihab has spent more than a decade helping SaaS and e-commerce brands grow through search. He writes Rankite's software buying guides from pricing pages, documentation and public user reviews. More about Shihab.