The best live chat software of 2026

LiveChat suits a business where answering chats is someone's main job. New accounts are now sold under the name Text, "from the team behind LiveChat", at the same prices; existing LiveChat customers keep their plan, price and login. Agents work from one inbox that holds chats, tickets and hand-offs from LiveChat's AI Agent, and routing rules send each chat to the right team based on the page, topic or channel the visitor came from. Canned responses sit behind keyboard shortcuts, so a common answer takes a couple of keystrokes instead of a paragraph of typing.

The Traffic tab shows who is on your site right now, which pages they have viewed and how long they have stayed, so a sales agent can open a chat with someone who keeps returning to the pricing page. The AI toolkit suggests replies, summarizes long chats and proposes tags, and the AI Agent answers common questions before passing harder ones to a person. LiveChat lists more than 200 integrations, and agents can work from the web or from apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.

The drawback is price. Essential costs $19 per agent a month billed yearly ($25 month to month), and Growth jumps to $79 billed yearly ($99 monthly), so five agents on Growth cost $395 a month even on a yearly plan. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial with no card. If one person answers chats between other jobs, a cheaper tool further down this list will cover you.

Tidio is aimed squarely at ecommerce. It installs on Shopify, WordPress and Wix, and inside a chat your agent can check a shopper's order history, preview their cart and offer a discount without leaving the conversation. Lyro, Tidio's AI agent, answers from your own content and live product catalog, says "I don't know" when it can't find an answer, and hands the chat to a person with the context attached. Tidio says its customers average a 75% resolution rate with Lyro. That is the vendor's own figure, so run your ten most common questions through Lyro during the trial and count how many it gets right.

For human agents, live typing preview shows what a visitor is typing before they press send, and the live visitor list lets you start a chat with someone who looks about to leave without buying.

The free plan covers 50 billable conversations a month for up to 10 seats, with live chat, ticketing and basic analytics, plus 50 Lyro conversations that are given once and don't refresh. Starter costs $29 a month, or $24.17 a month billed yearly, for 100 conversations. Growth starts at $59 a month ($49.17 billed yearly) for 250 conversations and rises with volume, and Plus starts at $300 a month plus usage. Because Tidio charges by conversation, a busy store pays more as traffic grows even if the team stays the same size. The paid trial lasts 7 days, and the account moves to the free plan afterward.

tawk.to gives away the core product. The chat widget, unlimited team members, visitor monitoring and native apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows cost nothing, and you can see who is on your site, what they are reading and what they typed before they pressed send. The same inbox also takes conversations from WhatsApp and email. For a small business that wants a chat box on the site this afternoon without asking anyone for budget, nothing else in this guide costs less.

tawk.to makes its money from add-ons. Removing the "Powered by tawk.to" line from the widget costs $29 a month. AI Assist, its chatbot, starts at $29 a month, with a free tier for sites that get few chats. If nobody on your team can cover the chat, tawk.to will supply trained agents to answer for you at $1 an hour, which is an unusual option for a business that wants chat covered in the evenings.

The features page concentrates on chat, the shared inbox and AI, with little about routing rules or reporting. A large team that needs to assign chats by skill or measure each agent closely should test those parts before committing, or look at LiveChat. For everyone else, you lose nothing by starting here and moving later if you outgrow it.

Intercom puts its Fin AI Agent at the front of support and keeps people behind it for the questions Fin can't handle. Fin costs $0.99 per outcome, and you can run it without buying any Intercom seats, so a company already on another help desk can try Fin there first. With seats, the Essential plan gives you the Messenger live chat widget, a shared inbox with ticketing, pre-built reports, a public help center and basic automation. Advanced adds a workflow builder, multiple team inboxes, round-robin assignment and 20 free Lite seats for colleagues who only need occasional access.

Intercom also sells in-app messages, product tours, surveys and mobile push as an add-on, which is why it suits software companies that want to reach users inside the product as well as on the marketing site.

Seat prices on the pricing page are billed yearly. Essential lists at $29 a seat a month, and new customers get 35% off, which brings it to $19. Advanced is $85 and Expert $132. Copilot, the AI assistant for your agents, costs $29 per agent a month billed yearly or $35 monthly. Budget for Fin on top of seats: if Fin resolves 1,000 conversations a month, that adds $990. The trial lasts 14 days with no card. Startups with under $10 million raised and 15 or fewer employees can apply to its Early Stage program for a bigger discount.

Crisp charges per workspace rather than per agent, which changes the math for a team of four to ten people. Mini costs $45 a month with 4 seats, Essentials $95 a month with 10 seats and Plus $295 a month with 20 or more. Ten agents on LiveChat's Essential plan would cost $190 a month even billed yearly; the same ten on Crisp Essentials cost $95. Crisp's prices exclude VAT.

The shared inbox pulls in the website chat widget, email, WhatsApp and Messenger, plus eight more channels. Each paid plan includes AI credits ($5 on Mini, $25 on Essentials and $75 on Plus) that pay for smart replies, conversation summaries, writing tools and AI agents you build in a no-code editor from templates.

The free plan gives 2 seats, the chat widget, the shared inbox, mobile apps, a contact form and ecommerce integrations, capped at 100 customer profiles. Paid plans come with a 14-day trial. Keep an eye on AI usage in the first month: Mini's $5 of credits covers about 90 automated conversations, according to Crisp's own estimate, so a busy site will need more credits or a bigger plan. Extra agents are listed at $10 a month.

Zoho SalesIQ treats visitor tracking as part of live chat rather than an extra. Even the free plan includes visitor insights for 10,000 visitors a month, alongside 3 operator licenses and 100 chat sessions, so a small sales team can see who is browsing and open a chat with a likely buyer.

Paid plans charge per operator and are among the cheapest in this guide. Basic costs $7 an operator a month billed yearly, or $10 monthly, and covers 50,000 visitors, 1,000 chat sessions (chatbot conversations included) and one chatbot. Professional, at $12.75 billed yearly or $17 monthly, removes the cap on chat sessions, raises the visitor allowance to 100,000 and allows 5 chatbots with 50,000 chatbot conversations a month. Enterprise is $20 billed yearly or $25 monthly, with 200,000 visitors and 10 chatbots.

Three operators on Professional cost about $38 a month billed yearly, which is less than a single Growth seat on LiveChat. The free plan's 100 chat sessions will run out quickly on a busy site, so treat it as a test rather than a long-term home. The trial on paid plans lasts 15 days with no card.

HubSpot's live chat and chatbot builder are free with no credit card, and every chat lands in a shared inbox on HubSpot's free CRM. The chat history sits on the contact's record next to their emails, form fills and deals, so whoever replies can see who they are talking to. The free tools cover up to 2 users, and the free chat widget carries HubSpot branding.

The chatbot builder needs no code, and you can use it to qualify leads or answer simple questions before a person picks up. HubSpot's free edition also includes basic ticketing, so a chat that needs follow-up can become a ticket in the same system.

Costs climb once you want more than the basics. Service Hub Starter lists at $20 a seat a month, with a new-customer offer from $7, and adds automations and simple metrics. Professional costs $90 to $100 a seat a month plus a $1,500 onboarding fee, and Enterprise is $150 a seat plus $3,500 onboarding.

HubSpot is the right start if you also want marketing and sales on the same contact records. If all you want is a chat box on your site, tawk.to is simpler and has no user limit.

LiveAgent is a help desk with live chat built in, so chats, emails, phone calls and messages from Facebook, X and WhatsApp all become tickets you can assign, tag and track in one place. It adds call menus (IVR) and call routing, a knowledge base, and a customer portal where people can read help articles, post in a feedback forum and submit tickets. The interface is available in 43 languages.

Pricing is per agent. At regular prices, Starter (up to 5 agents) is $15 an agent a month billed yearly or $19 monthly, Team (up to 15 agents) is $29 or $35, and Business is $49 or $59. Until November 22, 2026, LiveAgent is running an offer that lowers those to $11, $22 and $38 billed yearly, and if you start a trial before that date you keep the offer price for as long as you stay on the plan. There is no free plan, but the trial lasts 30 days with no card, the longest in this guide.

Choose LiveAgent if you want chat and phone support in one tool at a lower price than Zendesk. If you only need a chat box, you will pay for ticketing and call center features you never open.