9 Best Live Chat Software of 2026

Intercom treats live chat as a place where the AI answers first. Fin replies inside the Messenger widget on your site or app as soon as a customer writes, uses your approved knowledge, shows sources, and follows up if the visitor goes quiet. When a person is needed, the chat lands in the Intercom inbox with the history already there, and Fin can also stop partway through a procedure to get a teammate's decision without giving up the whole conversation. Intercom says Fin resolves 76% of conversations on average. Every plan includes unlimited live chat, support email and in-app chats, while SMS, WhatsApp and phone are billed as you use them. The Essential plan is $19 per seat for new customers, and each Fin outcome costs $0.99. Higher plans add workflows, round robin assignment, SSO and HIPAA support, but seat prices jump to $85 and $132, and add-ons such as Copilot and Pro are billed separately.

Freshchat is the easiest way in for a team that wants proper live chat without paying on day one. The free plan covers up to 10 agents and includes the chat widget for websites and mobile apps, a shared inbox, a connected email address and roles. Growth, at $19 per agent per month billed annually, adds the Freddy AI Agent at $49 per 100 sessions, plus Facebook, Instagram, SMS, WhatsApp, Line and Google Business Messages, so a chat that starts on one channel can continue on another. Pro at $49 adds translation in over 45 languages, intelligent routing, SLA policies and an agent availability dashboard, and Enterprise at $79 brings skill-based routing and audit logs. Freshworks also offers Freddy AI Copilot at $29 per agent and day passes for temporary staff. The trade-off is that AI deflection is never bundled: each block of sessions is a separate purchase, so high-volume sites should model that cost early.

Tidio is built for owners who want chat live on their site in minutes. The inbox gathers live chat, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger messages, and Flows send proactive messages, collect leads and catch chats that come in while nobody is online. The Lyro AI Agent answers from your knowledge, follows a tone you set and hands off to a person when needed; Tidio says customers average a 75% resolution rate. Pricing is based on billable conversations rather than seats. The free plan covers 50 a month with up to 10 seats, Starter at $24.17 a month raises that to 100 and adds a one-off 50 Lyro conversations, and Growth from $49.17 adds automatic chat assignment, viewed pages history and macros. Ongoing AI volume comes from Lyro plans starting at $32.50 a month. The model is cheap at low volume, but costs climb with traffic, and team features such as departments sit on the Plus plan from $300.

LiveChat now markets its chat product as Text, from the team behind LiveChat, HelpDesk and ChatBot, and it leans hard toward selling. Agents can see who is on the site, which pages they view and what sits in their cart, then start a chat or trigger a proactive campaign. The AI Agent answers with custom skills and a set tone, works in several languages and supports human takeover with conversation history. Essential costs $19 per user per month billed annually and includes one AI Agent, 10 AI resolutions a month, the omnichannel inbox and ticketing. Growth at $79 adds 10 AI Agents, 200 resolutions a month, chat supervision and unlimited history, and extra resolutions cost $49.50 per 50. Channels include website, in-app, a hosted chat page, Messenger, Shopify and SMS through Twilio. The weak spots are the small AI allowance and 60-day history on the entry plan, which push growing teams toward the much pricier Growth tier.

Crisp prices by workspace, which suits a small team that does not want a bill that grows with every hire. The free plan gives 2 seats, the website chat widget, a shared inbox and mobile apps. Mini at $45 a month adds a shared email inbox, 4 seats and $5 of AI credits, which Crisp puts at about 90 automated conversations. Essentials at $95 includes 10 seats, about 450 automated conversations and the omnichannel inbox with WhatsApp Business, Instagram, SMS, Line and Viber, while Plus at $295 adds AI agent tasks that connect to third-party tools. The Hugo AI agent answers routine questions, and when it cannot, customers move to a support agent in the same thread; if they leave the site, the conversation continues by email. Extra agents cost $10 a month. The catch is that the free plan has no AI at all and the channel list most teams want sits on Essentials.

tawk.to gives its chat software away and earns money from extras, which makes it the default answer for a site with no budget. You paste one snippet, and the widget is live with an inbox, CRM, knowledge base and native apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows. The company says it keeps the core free and charges for add-ons: $29 a month removes the small Powered by tawk.to label, and AI Assist, a bot that answers from your knowledge base and shortcut FAQs around the clock, starts at $29 a month. Its newer AI agents can be trained on your data and tone, hand chats to a human, and run event-based workflows. If nobody can staff the chat, tawk.to offers hired agents at $1 an hour. The limits show in depth: the pricing page says little about AI tiers above the entry price, and routing and reporting are less documented than in Zendesk or Intercom.

Zendesk is the pick when live chat has to sit inside a complete service operation. Messaging and live chat arrive with the Suite plans, alongside AI agents, an AI knowledge base, an action builder, omnichannel routing and telephony, so a chat can become a ticket or a call without leaving the platform. AI agents answer across web, in-app and social messaging, and Zendesk bills them per automated resolution, counting only requests closed without escalation to a human. Each Suite Team and Professional plan includes 5 automated resolutions per agent a month. Suite Team costs $55 per agent per month billed annually, or $69 monthly, and Suite Professional at $115 adds skills-based routing, IVR and AI quick reports. The marketplace lists more than 1,800 apps, partners and integrations. For a team that only wants a chat widget, though, this is a lot of platform: the cheapest plan with live chat costs nearly three times the entry price of chat-first tools.

HubSpot's live chat is free and lives inside the CRM, which is its main draw for sales teams. Chats can route to the right owner, chat automation and an integrated chatbot builder handle common questions, and you can set different welcome messages for different pages or audience segments. Because every conversation lands on a contact record, marketing and sales see what a lead asked before the next call. The free plan covers up to 2 users and Starter up to 10. AI deflection comes from the customer agent, which HubSpot lists on Professional and Enterprise and which runs on HubSpot Credits; plans include 5,000 to 15,000 credits a month. The pricing page showed euros from our location, so we could not confirm USD seat prices. For a support-first team, the jump to Professional for real AI answers makes HubSpot a weaker value than chat-first tools.

Olark has sold website chat since 2009 and now puts an AI agent in front of it with a pricing model unlike anyone else here. Human-only live chat costs $29 per agent per month. The Standard AI Website Agent costs $400 a month billed annually and includes unlimited conversations, one human seat and no token limits or overages, with more seats at $29 each. The agent trains on your website in about a minute, keeps its knowledge updated, captures and qualifies leads, uses behavior such as UTM source and return visits for proactive messages, and hands off to a real person in the same thread. Olark syncs leads to HubSpot, Salesforce and ActiveCampaign. The model rewards high traffic, but $4,800 a year is steep for a small site, and Olark documents only website chat, not WhatsApp or social inboxes.