Live chat software lets your team answer website visitors in real time, from quick pre-sale questions to support requests. Compare tools by chatbot features, routing, integrations and per-seat pricing.
Open-source customer engagement platform you can self-host
Best for: Technical teams that want an open-source, self-hosted support tool
Chatwoot is an open-source customer support platform that unifies live chat, email, social channels and messaging apps in one inbox. Because the Community Edition…
Affordable live chat and unified inbox for small businesses
Best for: Startups and small ecommerce teams wanting affordable live chat
Crisp provides live chat, a shared inbox, a chatbot, a knowledge base and a basic CRM in one product aimed at small businesses and…
Conversational marketing and chat platform, now part of Salesloft
Best for: B2B sales and marketing teams with high-intent web traffic and rep capacity to staff chat
B2B conversational marketing and chat platform, now part of Salesloft. Quote-based annual contracts.
Messaging platform with free plan, AI agent and WhatsApp, SMS and social channels
Best for: Teams already using Freshworks products, and startups that want a free start for chat
Messaging platform from Freshworks with a free plan, Freddy AI agent and WhatsApp, SMS and social channels.
Conversational support platform built around its Fin AI agent
Best for: SaaS and product-led teams that want support and messaging together
Intercom started as a website messenger and has grown into a customer service platform centred on conversations. Agents work a shared inbox, customers reach…
All-in-one help desk with live chat, call centre and ticketing
Best for: Teams that want ticketing, chat and calling in a single tool
LiveAgent is a help desk that combines ticketing, live chat, a call centre, social channels and a knowledge base in a single product. Agents…
Dedicated live chat software with ticketing, chatbots and AI reply tools
Best for: Support and sales teams that want a dedicated, reliable live chat with strong reporting
Dedicated live chat software with AI reply tools, visitor tracking and reporting. Plans from $19 per agent per month billed annually.
Straightforward live chat for sales and support with optional PowerUps
Best for: Small and mid-size businesses that want a dependable live chat without extra complexity
Simple live chat with modular PowerUps. Standard plans from about $29 per seat per month; Pro is quoted.
Free live chat with unlimited agents, ticketing and a hosted knowledge base
Best for: Small businesses and startups that want live chat without a monthly bill
Free live chat software with unlimited agents, ticketing, knowledge base and CRM. Optional paid add-ons.
Live chat and AI chatbot for small online businesses
Best for: Small online businesses wanting chat plus a chatbot quickly
Tidio combines a website live chat widget, chatbots and a lightweight inbox in one product. Small online businesses use it to answer visitor questions,…
Enterprise-grade support suite with ticketing, messaging and AI agents
Best for: Growing support teams that need many channels and deep automation
Zendesk is one of the longest-established customer service platforms. It turns email, chat, social and phone conversations into tickets that agents work from a…
Listings marked Sponsored are paid placements. Ratings come from user reviews, or from our editorial rating where no reviews exist yet.
Decide what the chat box is for. Answering support questions? Qualifying leads before a sales call? Helping shoppers check out? Each job wants a different tool. Support-led teams look at Freshchat, Zendesk and LiveAgent. Sales-led teams look at Drift. Small shops and sites on a budget look at Tidio, Tawk.to and Crisp.
Think about who answers and when. Chat only works if a person replies within a minute or two. If nobody can cover that on weekdays, plan for a chatbot to handle the first reply and hand over a clear summary. Check how each tool routes chats between agents, shows who's typing and sets office hours. A chat that goes unanswered for ten minutes is worse than no chat at all.
Look at the pricing unit. Some tools charge per agent, some per workspace and some by conversation volume. Per-agent pricing suits a stable team. Volume pricing suits a quiet site that gets a spike at launch. Work out which one fits your traffic before you compare numbers.
Check how it connects to the rest of your stack. Chats should land in your help desk or CRM with the conversation history attached. If agents have to copy and paste between tools, they'll stop doing it.
Test on your own site. Install the widget on a staging page and check how it looks on mobile, how fast it loads and whether your cookie banner and privacy policy cover it. A heavy chat script can slow your pages and cost you more than it earns.
Across the 11 live chat tools in our directory, 9 publish a starting price. Those run from free to $45 a month, with a median of $19. Drift and Tawk.to don't list a simple entry price. We checked figures on vendor pages in November 2026. Prices change, so confirm before you buy.
The free end is generous. Tawk.to offers unlimited agents and chat history for free, and earns money from paid add-ons such as branding removal. Freshchat's free plan covers up to 10 agents. Tidio, LiveAgent and Crisp have free plans with limits, and Chatwoot offers a free self-hosted edition. Olark's free plan allows one agent and 20 chats a month, so treat it as a trial.
Paid plans start around $15 to $29 per agent a month: LiveAgent's Ticket plan costs $15, Freshchat and LiveChat $19, Olark and Intercom $29. LiveChat's Team plan jumps to $49 per agent. Tidio prices by conversation volume instead, from $29 on Starter to $59 on Growth, then from $749 on Plus. Crisp charges $45 a month per workspace, so adding agents doesn't raise your bill.
Drift sits at the top of the range. Third-party estimates put its Premium plan at about $2,500 a month on an annual contract, with higher plans reaching $4,000 to $6,000. That's a sales platform priced for B2B teams, not a support widget.
Adding chat before you can staff it is the big one. Pick opening hours you can keep, and turn the widget off or switch to a chatbot outside them.
Ignoring page speed comes second. Test your site's load time with and without the widget.
Don't forget privacy. Chat tools collect names, emails and chat transcripts. Check where data is stored, how long it's kept and how visitors can ask for deletion.
Last: don't judge by a demo. Run a two-week trial, read real transcripts and see how many chats turn into customers or solved tickets.
Often yes, if you can answer quickly. Visitors with questions about price, delivery or setup are close to a decision, and a fast answer wins sales. A free plan lets you test that with no risk.
Live chat handles real-time conversations. A help desk tracks tickets across email, chat and other channels. Many tools do both. Browse our help desk category to compare.
For simple, repeated questions, a chatbot can handle the first answer. For billing disputes, complaints and complex setup, people still need a human. Choose tools that hand over smoothly.
No. Set office hours, use an offline contact form and let a bot collect details outside them.
Tawk.to, Tidio and Crisp offer simple setups and free plans. Install one, run it for a few weeks and see how your visitors use it.
Ready to compare? Put two or three tools side by side and price them at your real agent count.
