Free Live Chat and Helpdesk Plans Compared
Ten support tools and chat widgets. Which free plans are permanent, which are time limited, and which have no free tier at all.
Support software splits cleanly in two. There are chat widgets you can leave running on a site for free indefinitely, and there are helpdesks where the free tier is a six-month programme or a startup giveaway rather than a plan.
The distinction that matters is permanence. A free tier that expires is a trial with a longer runway, and it should be judged as one. Check the date it ends before you build a support process on top of it.
All 10 reports in this category
- Chatwoot's Free Tier Is a Real Help Desk With a 30-Day Memory. Two agents, five hundred conversations, thirty days of history, and an open source escape hatch that no other tool in this category offers.
- Crisp's Free Plan Gives Two Seats and No Conversation Cap. Unlimited conversations at zero cost is rare in live chat. Crisp charges for the AI layer, the omnichannel inbox and the small branding line.
- Freshdesk's Free Plan Expires After Six Months. Every other free tier in this category is permanent. Freshdesk's is a six-month programme, which makes it a trial with a longer fuse.
- Intercom Has No Free Plan, Only a 14-Day Trial. Two meters run at once: a seat price and a charge every time the AI resolves something. Neither of them starts at zero.
- JivoChat Stays Free Up to Five Agents, With No Chat Cap. Five agents and one inbox for nothing. JivoChat sells marketing automation and telephony alongside the chat rather than the chat itself.
- Smartsupp's Free Plan: One Operator, 25 Chats a Month. Twenty-five conversations is enough to prove chat works on your site, and not enough to run support on it for a month.
- tawk.to Is Free Forever, and That Is the Whole Business Model. No conversation cap, no agent cap, no history limit. The company sells human staffing instead, and the software is the loss leader.
- Tidio's Free Plan Stops at 50 Conversations a Month. Ten seats and fifty conversations is an odd shape. The seat count suggests a team; the conversation cap suits a very small shop.
- Zendesk Has No Free Plan, but It Does Have a Startup Giveaway. No free tier, a 14-day trial, and a startup programme that hands out up to two years. The gap between those two facts is the whole story.
- Zoho Desk Free Gives Three Agents Forever, and Little Else. Three seats at zero cost with no expiry is rare in help desks. What sits underneath is a deliberately thin product.
How these were measured
Every report records the same fields: what the free plan includes, what it withholds, what the first paid tier costs, and the point at which paying starts to make sense. Figures are taken from the vendor's own pricing and documentation pages and carry the date they were checked. Plan terms change without notice, so treat each number as a dated snapshot.