comparison / 18 — updated may 2026

Intercom vs Crisp vs Help Scout vs Chatwoot vs Plain

Want an open-source or free Intercom alternative? Chatwoot leads — MIT-licensed, self-hostable, with a free hosted tier. Plus the genuinely free options (Tawk.to, Crisp), cheaper hosted desks (Help Scout), and the OSS picks listicles skip: Rocket.Chat, Zammad, FreeScout.

cheapstack editorialMethodologyPrices verified May 2026

free tier

Intercom14-day trial only

Crispfree · 2 seats · unlimited chats

Help Scout14-day trial only

Chatwootfree OSS self-host · cloud 14-day trial

Plain14-day trial · no free

entry paid

Intercom$29/seat Essential (annual)

Crisp$45/mo Mini (per workspace, 4 seats)

Help Scout$25/agent Standard (annual)

Chatwootfree OSS · $19/agent Cloud Startups

Plain$35/seat Foundation

open source

Intercomno

Crispno

Help Scoutno

Chatwootyes · MIT

Plainno

updated

May 2026

Skip to verdict See pricing →

verdict.txt — comparisons/intercom-alternatives.mdhonest

$cat verdict.txt

For open source: Chatwoot is the clear pick — MIT-licensed, self-hostable for unlimited agents free, with a hosted free tier (2 agents, 500 conversations/mo) if you'd rather not run it. Rocket.Chat (MIT) suits teams that also want internal chat; Zammad and FreeScout (both AGPL-3.0) are free self-hosted help desks. For genuinely free hosted: Tawk.to (free forever, closed-source) or Crisp's free 2-seat plan. Of the paid hosted desks, Help Scout matches Intercom-grade B2B support at $25/agent. Intercom still wins only if you need its Fin AI agent ecosystem and accept $99+/seat.

Updated May 2026read the full reasoning →

scoreboard / at a glance

At a glance

One row per dimension, the values side-by-side. The olive dot marks the clear winner for that dimension when there is one — most rows are a wash, and that’s the point.

Intercom Inc.

Intercom

The incumbent. Essential $29-39/seat unlocks the core inbox; Advanced $85-99/seat adds workflows + AI. Fin AI Agent at $0.99/resolution stacks on top. Premium positioning, premium price.

Crisp

Per-workspace pricing — not per-seat. Free 2 seats, Mini $45/mo (4 seats), Essentials $95/mo (10 seats). European, GDPR-native, multi-channel inbox bundled.

Help Scout

B2B-shaped customer support. Standard $25/agent unlocks inbox + Docs + reporting. Plus $45 adds workflows + CRM integrations. Email-first, customer-friendly UI.

Chatwoot Inc.

Chatwoot

MIT-licensed open-source support platform. Self-host free; Cloud Startups $19/agent, Business $39, Enterprise $99. The open-source Intercom alternative.

Plain

Developer-shaped B2B support. Foundation $35/seat with Slack, email, live chat, in-app forms, Linear + Jira integrations. Horizon $89 adds AI suggestions + Help Center.

Free tierChatwoot's MIT-licensed self-host is genuinely free forever. Crisp's lifetime-free 2-seat plan is the only credible hosted free tier. Intercom, Help Scout, and Plain are all trial-only.

no · 14-day trial only

yes · 2 seats · lifetime free

no · 14-day trial only

yes · self-host MIT free forever

no · 14-day trial only

Cheapest paid tierChatwoot Cloud Startups at $19/agent is the cheapest hosted paid tier. Help Scout Standard $25 is close. Crisp Mini at $45/mo (per workspace, 4 seats included) is $11.25/seat effectively — cheapest if you have ≥4 agents. Intercom Essential $29 and Plain Foundation $35 sit mid-range.

$29/seat Essential (annual)

$45/mo Mini · 4 seats included

$25/agent Standard (annual)

$19/agent Cloud Startups

$35/seat Foundation

Pricing modelCrisp's per-workspace model is unique — Mini at $45/mo includes 4 seats whether you use 1 or 4. Plain offers free viewer (read-only) seats on all plans. Intercom and Help Scout are traditional per-seat. Chatwoot bills per agent on cloud.

per-seat + per-AI-resolution

per-workspace · seats included

per-agent

per-agent (cloud) · free self-host

per-seat + free viewer seats

Open sourceChatwoot is the only genuinely open-source option (MIT license, code on GitHub). Self-host is free; cloud pricing reflects managed-hosting overhead. The other four are proprietary SaaS.

no · proprietary

yes · MIT

no · proprietary

Self-hostableChatwoot is the only self-hostable option. For teams with compliance, privacy, or cost-control reasons to need on-prem support, Chatwoot is the answer.

no · enterprise on-prem only

yes · MIT · full self-host

AI agents / automationIntercom's Fin AI Agent is the most-deployed AI support agent in the industry — billed per resolution at $0.99 each. Help Scout, Chatwoot, and Plain all have AI features at lower price points. Crisp bundles AI into its tiers.

Fin AI · $0.99/resolution · best-in-class

AI in Mini ($5 credits) and Essentials

AI Drafts · $0.75/AI Answer

AI on cloud plans · API access

AI suggestions on Horizon · $89/seat

Best for shapeEach tool fits a different shape. Intercom for B2C with bundled marketing. Crisp for small indie teams. Help Scout for B2B email support. Chatwoot for self-host. Plain for developer-shaped B2B SaaS workflows.

B2C SaaS · marketing + sales + support

small teams · indie SaaS · GDPR-shape

B2B SaaS · email-first support · simple pricing

self-host · privacy-first · cost-conscious

developer-shape B2B · Slack-native · Linear/Jira integrations

pricing / three scenarios

Pricing at three scales

Three receipts, three scales. The line items are the same; the prices move. Every number is from the public May 2026 pricing page — we round to the nearest dollar but don’t invent.

solo founder.txt — 1-2 users · early support inboxmonthly

LINE ITEMIntercomCrispHelp ScoutChatwootPlain

Support$29 Essential × 1 (or $39 monthly)$29Free · 2 seatsfree$25 Standard × 1$25Self-host free · or $19 Cloudfree$35 Foundation × 1$35

TOTAL · monthly$29/mofree$25/mofree$35/mo

>Solo founders get Crisp and Chatwoot self-host for $0. Help Scout $25 and Intercom $29 are roughly equivalent paid options. Plain at $35 is the most expensive entry tier — developer-shape B2B SaaS pricing.

open-source vs SaaS

Intercom

Cloud-only; no self-host.

Crisp

Cloud-only — but EU-hosted (Netherlands/Germany), a French company, GDPR-native.

Help Scout

Cloud-only; no on-prem option.

Chatwoot

The only self-hostable one — MIT-licensed Community Edition, free, with full data ownership on your own infrastructure.

Plain

Cloud-only and API-first; no documented self-host.

Honest tradeoff

Chatwoot is the only genuinely open-source, self-hostable, fully-data-owned option; the rest are SaaS (Crisp at least guarantees EU residency).

verdict / pick one

When to pick which

pick / intercom

Pick Intercom if…

Fin AI Agent is the deciding feature — best-in-class AI deflection at $0.99 per resolution.
B2C SaaS with marketing + sales + support unified — Intercom is built for this shape.
Outbound campaigns (in-app messaging, email sequences) are part of your product workflow.
Mobile SDKs matter — Intercom's iOS/Android SDKs are the most mature for in-app support.
You're funded enough that $29-99/seat doesn't dominate infrastructure costs.

pick / crisp

Pick Crisp if…

Per-workspace pricing fits your shape — Mini at $45/mo includes 4 seats whether you use 1 or 4.
Small indie team with 2 agents — Crisp's lifetime-free 2-seat plan is genuinely usable.
GDPR + European data residency matters — Crisp is French, hosted in EU.
Multi-channel inbox is the deciding feature — email, live chat, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, SMS in one inbox.
Budget-constrained — Crisp's workspace-based pricing is the cheapest for teams of 3-10 agents.

pick / help scout

Pick Help Scout if…

B2B email-first support is your shape — Help Scout doesn't try to be marketing or in-app messaging.
Customer-friendly UI matters — Help Scout's inbox looks like email to customers, no chat-widget overhead.
Knowledge base + Docs sites are core — Help Scout's Docs is built-in, not a separate product.
Simple per-seat pricing without enterprise tiers — Standard $25 unlocks most features, Plus $45 adds workflows.
You want Intercom-equivalent B2B SaaS support at roughly half the price.

pick / chatwoot

Pick Chatwoot if…

Open-source is non-negotiable — MIT license, code on GitHub, fully forkable for any use case.
Self-host is the deciding feature — full control, on-prem deployment, no vendor lock-in.
Cost-conscious at scale — Cloud Startups at $19/agent is the cheapest per-agent hosted option.
Privacy-first — your customer data stays on your infrastructure if you self-host.
Multi-channel (email, live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, SMS) all in one inbox.

pick / plain

Pick Plain if…

Developer-shape B2B SaaS support is your context — Linear + Jira integrations are first-class.
Slack-native workflows — Plain treats Slack as a first-class support channel, not an afterthought.
API-first — Plain's API and webhooks are designed for engineering teams to build custom workflows.
Customer Cards feature — surface user data, billing context, recent product activity inline.
Free viewer seats matter — your engineers can access conversations read-only without paying for full seats.

gotchas / observed

Gotchas, both directions

Common pitfalls visible in public docs and community discussion. None of these will stop you shipping; all of them will cost you an afternoon if you don’t know about them.

Intercom / $0.99 per AI resolution
Fin AI Agent fees stack on top of seat costs
Intercom's Fin AI Agent — the deflection AI that often does the heavy lifting in modern support — is billed at $0.99 per resolution on top of your per-seat plan. For a team with 5 agents on Advanced ($85 × 5 = $425/mo) handling 1,000 monthly AI deflections, that's an additional $990/mo. Total bill scales aggressively with AI usage.
Intercom / Lite seat costs vary by plan
Read-only seats are free on Advanced+ but cost extra on Essential
Intercom's Advanced plan includes 20 Lite Seats (read-only access) free; Expert includes 50; Essential charges for them. For teams with many engineers who occasionally view conversations, this affects total cost meaningfully. Compare against Plain's free viewer seats which are unlimited on all plans.
Crisp / Plus plan is workspace-priced too
$295/mo Plus tier is per-workspace, not per-seat
Crisp's Plus plan at $295/mo gets you ticketing, white-labeling, advanced analytics, and unlimited AI — but it's $295 per workspace. For a team with 30 agents who'd otherwise pay $29-85/seat on Intercom, $295/mo is dramatically cheaper. The workspace-pricing model is Crisp's main differentiator and biggest gotcha for teams used to per-seat thinking.
Help Scout / 25-agent ceiling on Standard
Adding your 26th agent forces upgrade from $25 to $45/seat
Help Scout's Standard plan ($25/seat) supports up to 25 agents. Adding the 26th agent forces upgrade to Plus ($45/seat) for the entire team — an 80% per-seat increase. For teams approaching 25 agents, plan the upgrade as a budget event, not a single-seat addition.
Chatwoot / Free OSS but limited official support
Self-host gets community support only
Chatwoot's open-source MIT version is fully featured but you get community support only — no SLA, no priority response, no white-glove onboarding. For mission-critical support tooling, this matters. Cloud plans include support; self-host plus paid maintenance ($19-99/agent) is the middle path.
Plain / no free tier
14-day trial then mandatory $35+/seat paid
Plain doesn't offer a free tier like Crisp or Chatwoot self-host. The 14-day trial gives full access but you must subscribe to Foundation ($35/seat) to continue. For pure cost-minimization this rules out Plain; the developer-shape B2B positioning is the tradeoff.

migration / observed patterns

Migrating between them

Editorial framing only — we have not migrated either way ourselves. What follows is the pattern visible in public post-mortems, GitHub issue threads, and conference talks. Take it as observed-pattern, not lived experience.

Intercom ━▶ Help Scout

Common B2B migration when Intercom's $85+/seat Advanced tier becomes the dominant infrastructure cost. Help Scout has a built-in Intercom importer for conversations, contacts, custom attributes, and tags. Plan 1-2 weeks for non-trivial workspaces; the harder part is re-routing inbound channels (forwarding email addresses, updating Intercom-hosted chat widget code).

The biggest mental shift: Help Scout is email-first while Intercom is chat-first. Some teams find this clarifying (email is async, no agent-on-a-chair pressure); others miss the live-chat immediacy. Most B2B SaaS teams find Help Scout matches their support shape better — Intercom's chat-first model was built for B2C.

Intercom ━▶ Chatwoot (cost path)

Migration for teams wanting either open-source values, dramatic cost savings, or on-prem control. Chatwoot Cloud has Intercom import; self-host requires manual migration but the SQL schema is documented.

Plan 2-4 weeks. Self-host setup is real DevOps work (Postgres, Redis, Sidekiq, ActionCable for real-time, email infrastructure). For teams without Linux ops experience, Cloud Startups at $19/agent is the easier path — still 70-80% cheaper than Intercom Advanced.

Intercom ━▶ Plain (developer shape)

Migration for B2B SaaS teams whose support workflow is increasingly developer-centric — engineers triaging tickets, Linear/Jira integration mattering more than marketing campaigns. Plain has a built-in Intercom importer.

Plan 2-3 weeks. The migration is mostly about workflow redesign — Plain encourages Slack-native triage, Linear-issue creation from tickets, and developer-friendly Customer Cards. Teams that complete this migration often report higher engineering team engagement with support, since Plain's UX is designed for them.

faq / common questions

Frequently asked

What's the best open-source Intercom alternative?

Chatwoot. It's MIT-licensed, actively maintained (v4.x shipped May 2026), self-hostable for unlimited agents, and the rare option with a free hosted tier too (2 agents, 500 conversations/mo) if you'd rather not run it — the closest open-source match to Intercom's omnichannel inbox. Other genuinely-maintained open-source picks: Rocket.Chat (MIT) if you also want internal team chat, and Zammad or FreeScout (both AGPL-3.0) for a free self-hosted help desk. Skip the names you'll still see in old listicles — Papercups (in maintenance mode since 2020) and Chaskiq (no releases since 2023) are no longer safe bets.

Is there a free Intercom alternative?

Yes — but free and open source aren't the same thing. Genuinely free hosted (closed-source): Tawk.to is free forever with unlimited agents (it monetizes via $29/mo branding removal), and Crisp's free plan covers 2 seats with unlimited conversations. Free and open source: Chatwoot's hosted Hacker plan is free for 2 agents and 500 conversations a month, and self-hosting Chatwoot's MIT community edition is unlimited-agents free — you pay only ~$10-25/mo for a VPS. Help Scout also has a limited free plan (5 users, 1 inbox). Tawk.to and Crisp are the easiest zero-effort free options; Chatwoot is the best free one you can also own and self-host.

What's the cheapest Intercom alternative?

By absolute cost: Chatwoot self-host (MIT license, free forever, you pay only VPS hosting ~$10-25/mo). By cheapest hosted: Chatwoot Cloud Startups at $19/agent. By per-team pricing: Crisp Mini at $45/mo covers 4 agents (effectively $11/seat) — the cheapest if you have 3-4 agents. Help Scout Standard at $25/agent is solid mid-range.

Can I self-host an Intercom alternative?

Yes — several. Chatwoot (MIT) is the most mature and most Intercom-like, but it's not the only one: Rocket.Chat (MIT) adds team chat, and Zammad and FreeScout (both AGPL-3.0) are solid self-hosted help desks. Chatwoot self-host needs Postgres, Redis, Sidekiq, and ActionCable for real-time — more DevOps than a single-binary tool, but well documented; budget a $10-25/mo VPS plus engineer time. FreeScout is the lightest to host (PHP/Laravel, runs on shared hosting).

Is Help Scout actually cheaper than Intercom?

Yes, meaningfully. Help Scout Standard at $25/agent is roughly half of Intercom Advanced at $85/agent (annual). For a 10-agent team: Help Scout $250/mo vs Intercom $850/mo — a $600/mo savings ($7,200/year). Help Scout doesn't include Intercom-equivalent AI deflection by default, but its AI Drafts feature at $0.75/AI Answer is cheaper than Intercom's $0.99/Fin resolution.

Does Crisp really have a free tier?

Yes. Crisp's free plan supports 2 seats, unlimited conversations, website chat widget, shared inbox, and basic customer data — no credit card required. For 2-person teams it's a genuinely usable lifetime-free option. Paid tiers start at Mini ($45/mo, 4 seats) and use per-workspace pricing rather than per-seat — uniquely cost-effective for teams of 3-10 agents.

What does Plain offer that Intercom doesn't?

Plain is designed specifically for developer-shape B2B SaaS support. Key differentiators: native Linear and Jira integrations (create issues from tickets seamlessly), Slack-native triage (your engineering Slack is a first-class support channel), Customer Cards (surface user data inline), and free viewer seats (engineers can view conversations without paying for full seats). For B2B SaaS where engineers do triage, Plain's UX matches the workflow better than Intercom's.

How much does Intercom Fin AI actually cost?

Fin AI Agent is billed at $0.99 per resolution on top of your per-seat plan. A 'resolution' is when Fin successfully answers a customer query without human escalation. For teams with high AI deflection rates this can dramatically increase costs — e.g., 1,000 monthly resolutions = $990/mo on top of seat costs. Budget accordingly when comparing total cost vs alternatives like Help Scout AI Drafts ($0.75/Answer) or Chatwoot AI on cloud plans.

Can I migrate from Intercom and keep my conversation history?

Yes — Help Scout, Chatwoot Cloud, and Plain all have built-in Intercom importers that transfer conversations, contacts, custom attributes, and tags. Tag mappings sometimes need cleanup post-migration. Plan 1-3 weeks for a thorough migration including testing import quality, retraining the team on the new UI, and updating embedded widgets/chat scripts on your website. The conversation data transfers losslessly; the workflow muscle memory is the longer adjustment.

more / head-to-heads

Intercom vs Crisp vs Help Scout vs Chatwoot vs Plain

At a glance

Intercom

Crisp

Help Scout

Chatwoot

Plain

Pricing at three scales

Feature by feature

When to pick which

Pick Intercom if…

Pick Crisp if…

Pick Help Scout if…

Pick Chatwoot if…

Pick Plain if…

Gotchas, both directions

Fin AI Agent fees stack on top of seat costs

Read-only seats are free on Advanced+ but cost extra on Essential

$295/mo Plus tier is per-workspace, not per-seat

Adding your 26th agent forces upgrade from $25 to $45/seat

Self-host gets community support only

14-day trial then mandatory $35+/seat paid

Migrating between them

Frequently asked

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