10 Best Live Chat Software of 2026

Tidio is built for the business that wants a chat bubble on its site this afternoon and an AI agent later. The free plan already gives 10 seats and 50 billable conversations, and Starter, at $24.17 a month on annual billing, raises that to 100 conversations with live chat and ticketing, a live visitors list, operating hours and basic analytics. Growth, from $49.17, adds automatic chat assignment, advanced analytics, permissions, live typing preview, viewed pages history and macros. The Lyro AI Agent handles common questions with human handoff, and Tidio says its customers average a 75% resolution rate; it is sold separately from $32.50 a month after the first 50 free conversations. Flows, the no-code automation builder, is also its own add-on. The model works well at low volume, but costs climb as conversations grow, so check the calculator before you commit.

LiveChat has moved new customers to Text, which the vendor describes as the next product from the team behind LiveChat; existing LiveChat customers keep their plans. Essential, at $19 per user per month billed annually, covers the chat widget and an omnichannel inbox with ticketing, selling through Shopify, 50 tracked live visitors, three proactive campaigns, workflow automation and one AI Agent with 10 AI resolutions. Growth, at $79, adds chat supervision and takeover, shared canned responses, unlimited chat history, 400 tracked visitors, 30 campaigns, team reports, chat topic insights, 10 AI Agents and 200 resolutions. Extra resolutions cost $49.50 per 50. The product leans clearly toward sales, with revenue tracking and Shopify selling built in. The catch is cost: per-user pricing adds up, and the most useful team features sit on Growth.

Crisp prices by workspace, not by agent, which makes it cheap for teams of four to ten. The free plan covers the website widget, a shared inbox, mobile apps, contact forms and ecommerce integrations with Shopify, Adobe, WooCommerce and Prestashop for two seats. Mini, at $45 a month, adds a shared email inbox, four seats, $5 of AI credits, shortcuts, chat triggers, private notes and unlimited data retention. Essentials, at $95, is where most teams will land: 10 seats, $25 of AI credits, an omnichannel inbox with WhatsApp Business, Instagram DMs and SMS, a workflow builder, an AI chatbot, a knowledge base, analytics and routing rules. Plus, at $295, adds the AI-first suite, ticketing, 100+ integrations and white labelling. The flat pricing is the draw; the tradeoff is that AI usage runs on credits that a busy site can use up.

Freshchat has one of the most generous free plans here: up to 10 agents with a chat widget for web and mobile apps, a shared inbox, connected email and roles and permissions. Growth, at $19 per agent per month billed annually, adds social media messengers, text messaging, reporting and dashboards, and the Freddy AI Agent at $49 per 100 sessions. Pro, at $49, brings multilingual conversations, custom dashboards, intelligent routing, multiple SLA policies and an agent availability dashboard, with Freddy AI Copilot available for $29 per agent. Enterprise, at $79, adds skill-based routing and audit logs. Day passes from $2 help teams with part-time or seasonal agents. The weak spot is how costs stack: seats, AI sessions and Copilot are all billed separately, so a team using AI heavily should model the full bill rather than the seat price alone.

tawk.to gives its chat software away and charges for extras. The free product includes the widget, unlimited team members, smart triggers on URL, behavior or referrer, real-time visitor insight, auto-routing and departments, shortcuts and canned replies, file sharing, auto-translation and apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows. Setup is a single snippet or a one-click installer for Shopify, WordPress, Wix and more than 50 other platforms. The paid parts are clear: $29 a month removes the Powered by tawk.to branding, AI Assist starts at $29 a month and answers chats from your knowledge base and FAQs, and tawk.to will staff your chat with trained agents for $1 an hour. The free model suits small sites very well. Larger teams will miss the deeper reporting, SLA rules and AI controls of paid help desks, and some brands will not want the badge.

Intercom started as a chat widget and is now a full help desk, but the Messenger is still the center of it. Essential, at $29 per seat per month billed annually or $19 for new customers who get 35% off, includes Messenger live chat, a shared inbox and ticketing, pre-built reports, a public help center and basic automation. Advanced, at $85, adds the workflow automation builder, multiple team inboxes, round robin assignment, a multilingual help center and 20 free Lite seats. Expert, at $132, adds SSO, HIPAA support, SLAs and multibrand Messenger. The Fin AI Agent is billed at $0.99 per outcome on every plan, and it can also run on top of Salesforce, HubSpot or Freshdesk. The product depth is the best here. The cost is harder to predict: high-traffic sites pay both for seats and for every Fin resolution.

HubSpot's chat is the natural choice for teams whose sales and marketing already run on HubSpot. The live chat tool is integrated with a no-code chatbot builder that can qualify leads, book meetings and answer common questions, and it is available for free. Every conversation lands in a universal inbox on the free CRM, so agents see the contact's history and can take notes, send emails, make calls, schedule tasks and create tickets from the same screen. Targeted welcome messages can differ by page or segment, office hours tell visitors when someone is around, and email capture keeps missed chats from going cold. The free plan covers up to two users; Starter, Professional and Enterprise add seats, AI agents and the full help desk. The pricing page shows only euros from our location, so check the US price on HubSpot's site.

LiveAgent bundles live chat into a full help desk at prices well under the big platforms. Starter, at $15 per agent per month on annual billing (with an $11 offer price for trials started by November 22, 2026), covers up to five agents with email, live chat, contact forms, a knowledge base, AI answer drafts, an AI chatbot and SSO. Team, at $29, adds Facebook, Instagram, X, Viber, WhatsApp, Telegram and calls, plus agent, department, channel and SLA reports, CSAT surveys, SLA rules and custom roles. Business, at $49, adds more AI agents, an MCP server, branding removal and audit logs. AI runs on your own provider at its price, which LiveAgent puts at two to four cents a chat. The interface is dense compared with chat-first tools, and Starter leaves out social channels and reporting, so most teams will want Team.

Zendesk is the choice when chat is one channel among many in a large support operation. Messaging and live chat arrive with Suite Team, at $55 per agent per month paid yearly or $69 monthly; the cheaper Support Team plan is email and ticketing only. Suite Team also includes AI agents for web, in-app chat and social messaging, an AI Knowledge Base, the AI Action Builder, omnichannel routing and telephony, with five automated resolutions per agent each month. Suite Professional, at $115, adds skills-based routing, AI writing tools, AI quick reports and an admin copilot. Copilot for agents costs $50 per agent on top. The depth is real, and routing chats, calls and emails through one engine matters at scale. For a small team that only wants a website chat bubble, it is far more tool and far more cost than needed.

Olark has sold live chat since 2009 and keeps its pricing simple. Human-only live chat is $29 per agent per month and includes a shared console with visitor location, pages viewed and visit history, saved responses, agent groups, routing rules, chat limits, custom pre-chat and offline forms, chatbox branding and email follow-up. The Standard AI Website Agent costs $400 a month billed annually, includes one human seat and has no conversation cap; it trains on your site, qualifies leads in conversation and hands off to a person in the same thread. Proactive triggers can use pages viewed, time on site, scroll depth, return visits and UTM source. CRM integrations include HubSpot and Salesforce. The human tier is fairly basic next to Text or Crisp, and the jump to $400 for AI only pays off for sites with steady lead traffic.