Best AI agents for customer service, with prices

The best AI agent for customer service is the one that does what your customers actually need. If they mostly need answers, pick an agent that answers from your own docs, says when it doesn’t know and gets them to a person. If they need things changed, such as a refund, a cancelled order or a new address, you need an agent connected to your billing or your store, and you’ll usually pay by the conversation or by what it settles. AI agent vs chatbot explains where that line sits.

Below are nine AI agents for customer service, by who they suit. Deacon suits a founder who answers support alone. Tidio Lyro and Gorgias suit online shops, Chatbase suits a team that wants to build its own, Fin and Zendesk’s AI agents suit a support team on a helpdesk, Agentforce suits a company on Salesforce, and Decagon and Sierra are sold to large companies. Every price was read on the vendor’s own pages on 25 September 2026, and each one links there.

We’ve put Deacon first. It’s our product, an AI customer support agent made for founders who still answer support themselves. It answers your customers in seconds from your own docs, says so when they don’t cover a question and brings you the conversations that need a person, on every plan. It also shows you what customers are stuck on and what they want next. There’s a free plan with no card and no end date.

Nine AI agents for customer service compared

The first column is what separates an agent from a chatbot, so read it against what your customers ask for most.

Deacon

Deacon is for the founder who answers support alone, with no helpdesk and no support team, and whose customers mostly need an answer rather than a change to their account. You add your website, files, pasted text or written answers, then paste one script tag on your site or hand a prompt to Claude Code, Cursor or Codex. From then on it answers your customers in seconds, at any hour, in whatever language they write in.

It answers only from your content. When that doesn’t cover a question, it says it doesn’t know instead of guessing, and offers the visitor a box for their email. When a question is too vague to answer, it asks one question back rather than picking one of two answers and hoping.

It takes no actions in other systems. It won’t refund an order, cancel a subscription or change an address, and it always declines a question about a visitor’s own account, invoice or data, so the visitor gets a way to reach you instead of a guess. The owners on your team get an email when a visitor leaves an address or asks for a person, and your reply from the dashboard appears in the visitor’s chat while it’s open. Deacon stays out of that conversation until you hand it back.

It gets better the more you answer. A question your docs didn’t cover waits in Conversations with an Answer this button, and Save & check shows you the reply Deacon now gives and how many other open questions your answer covers. Topics group similar questions, count the people who asked and label most of them as a how-to, a bug report, a feature ask and so on, so you hear from everyone who writes in and not just the loudest few.

Every feature is on every plan, the free one included. Free gives you 50 answers a month and 1 seat, with no card and no end date. Starter is $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers a month and 3 seats. Growth is $150 a month, or $120 a month billed yearly, for 4,000 answers a month and 10 seats. Nothing is billed past a plan’s answers, and no plan upgrades itself, so the price you see is the price you pay.

Tidio Lyro

Tidio is live chat with an AI agent, Lyro, built in, and it suits a small online shop that wants its team and the AI in one chat window. Tidio’s pricing page says Lyro “uses solely your support content to generate personalized responses”, learned from your FAQs and website, and lists human handoff among its features.

Lyro can act as well as answer. Tidio says it “can perform actions across your apps and services via API calls”, and its AI agent page says Lyro can “automate order updates or lead qualification without human assistance”. Your first Action is free, and full access needs a paid Lyro plan.

Every account gets 50 Lyro conversations once, and they don’t renew. After that Lyro is $39 a month for 50 conversations, or $32.50 a month billed yearly, and a Lyro conversation is any customer interaction with at least one reply from Lyro. The live chat has a free plan of its own and paid plans from $24.17 a month billed yearly. Tidio pricing works through both meters, and Tidio alternatives compares it with other tools.

Gorgias AI Agent

Gorgias is a helpdesk built for online shops, and its AI Agent suits a Shopify store that wants orders changed, not just talked about. Its AI Agent page says it “takes action directly in Shopify and the rest of your stack”. The actions it lists include issuing a full or partial refund, cancelling an order that’s still eligible, swapping items, updating an address before fulfilment, starting a return with a prepaid label and applying a discount. You teach it your brand voice, policies and workflows, and connect your help centre, Shopify store and docs.

The AI Agent is bought on top of the helpdesk. On Starter, the helpdesk is $10 a month for 50 tickets and the AI Agent is $30 a month for 30 automated interactions, on monthly billing only. Each automated interaction past the 30 is $1.50. Gorgias’s pricing FAQ counts one when a customer request “gets fully resolved without agent involvement”, and charges it only as a helpdesk ticket if the shopper still ends up talking to your team within 72 hours. The plan comparison lists actions such as cancelling and discounts from Basic, which is $90 a month with the AI Agent, or $77 a month billed yearly. Gorgias pricing sets out every tier.

Chatbase

Chatbase is a platform for building your own AI agent, and it suits a team that’s happy to set up the actions itself. Its product overview says you write out a task’s steps “the way you’d write them for a person, and call an action inline wherever it needs to look something up or make a change”. Its examples are looking up an order in Shopify, pulling an invoice from Stripe and finding a slot in Cal. Its Shopify actions can also update a shopper’s cart and create a return, and its Stripe actions show a customer their subscription status and invoices.

The free plan gives you 50 message credits a month and 1 member, with no AI Actions, and Chatbase deletes a free agent after 14 days without use. Hobby is $40 a month for 700 message credits, 2 members and 5 AI Actions per agent. Standard, at $150 a month, adds a Helpdesk and what its card calls “Advanced integrations (Stripe, Zendesk, and more)”. Chatbase pricing explains how the credits are spent, and Chatbase alternatives compares it with other builders.

Fin

Fin is the AI agent from the company formerly called Intercom, which Salesforce finished buying on 10 September 2026, and Intercom is now the name of its helpdesk. Fin suits a support team that already works in a helpdesk and wants an agent that acts across its systems. Its home page says it “updates accounts, processes payments and refunds, troubleshoots technical issues, and much more”, connecting to your systems to pull in customer data and take actions through APIs. Its pricing page lists tickets, cases, emails, live chat, WhatsApp and SMS among what it handles.

Fin charges $0.99 an outcome in support, and only one a conversation, even if it takes several actions in it. A resolution counts as an outcome, and so does a handoff at the end of a procedure you’ve built, while a conversation simply passed to your team without an outcome isn’t charged. On Intercom’s own helpdesk you pay for seats too, from $19 or $29 a seat a month billed yearly, depending on which side of a price test you land. On another helpdesk, such as Salesforce or HubSpot, there are no seat costs, but there’s a minimum of 50 outcomes a month. There’s a 14-day free trial with no card. Fin AI pricing works through what counts as an outcome, and Fin AI alternatives lists what else to consider.

Zendesk AI agents

Zendesk’s AI agents suit a team that already runs support in Zendesk. Its AI agents page says they “understand intent, ask clarifying questions, and take action across systems”, and that you can “give AI agents access to your tools and systems to take action and resolve requests independently”. They start from “your existing knowledge and policies”.

The AI agents come with every Suite and Support plan and are billed by the automated resolution, which the pricing page defines as a customer request “successfully resolved by the AI agent, without any escalation to a human agent”. The cheapest plan with messaging and live chat on your site is Suite Team, at $55 an agent a month billed yearly, which also adds AI Action Builder. The pricing page’s plan table includes 5 automated resolutions an agent a month on Suite Team, and $2.00 for each one past that on pay as you go. Zendesk’s help centre also describes a newer allowance, “a flexible currency pool used to pay for the cost of automated resolutions”, and Zendesk AI pricing sets out both.

Salesforce Agentforce

Agentforce is Salesforce’s AI agent, and it suits a company whose customer records already live in Salesforce. Salesforce’s Agentforce page says it can “reason through complex requests, safely retrieve accurate knowledge about your business, take action on your behalf”. You build its actions from Salesforce’s own tools, such as Flows, MuleSoft API connectors and Apex code. Since buying Fin, Salesforce sells two AI agents for customer service.

Its pricing page offers two meters for agents that talk to customers. Conversations are $2 each. Flex Credits are $500 per 100,000, and each action uses 20 of them, which the page’s own example prices at $0.10. An action there includes answering a product question as well as updating a record, so answers are metered too. The page also offers Salesforce Foundations as a free way to start, and both paid meters are bought by contacting Salesforce. Zendesk vs Salesforce covers the Salesforce plans Agentforce sits on.

Decagon

Decagon calls itself “The AI concierge for every customer”, and sells AI agents for chat, email and voice to large companies. Its integrations page says integrations connect your agent to your CRMs, help desks, call centres and knowledge bases, so it “can retrieve data, take action, and handle escalations” across those channels. You describe each workflow in plain language, as what Decagon calls an Agent Operating Procedure.

Decagon publishes no price, and its site offers a demo instead. Decagon pricing has more on how it’s sold.

Sierra

Sierra builds AI agents for large companies, and says 40% of the Fortune 50 partner with it. Its product page says your agent can connect to your systems of record, such as order management and CRM, “so your agent can handle tasks for your customers from start to finish, like processing an insurance claim, returning an order, or originating a mortgage”. One agent can run across chat, SMS, WhatsApp, email, voice and ChatGPT.

Sierra charges by outcome and publishes no rate. Its post on outcome-based pricing names outcomes such as “a resolved support conversation, a saved cancellation, an upsell, a cross-sell”, and says that when a conversation is unresolved, “in most cases, there’s no charge”. It sells the agent with a development team of its own, and says agents deploy in weeks.

How to choose an AI agent for customer service

Start from what your customers ask for, not from what the agent can do.

1. Sort last month’s questions into two piles, the ones an answer settled and the ones that needed something changed. If the first pile is most of it, an agent that answers from your docs and hands over is what you need, and actions can wait.
2. Find the request that repeats. If one change, such as cancelling an order or updating an address, turns up many times a week and follows a rule you could write down, it’s worth an agent that acts. Check which plan includes actions, since Gorgias starts them on Basic and Chatbase on Hobby, while Tidio gives you one free and the rest with a paid Lyro plan.
3. Price a good month, not an average one. An agent billed by the outcome, resolution or conversation costs more the more it settles, so work out the bill at the volume you’re hoping for.
4. Ask it something your docs don’t cover. A good agent says it doesn’t know and offers a way to reach you. A careless one invents an answer, which is why support bots make things up.
5. Test the actions before your customers do. Ask it to cancel an order that has already shipped, to refund someone it can’t identify and to do something no rule covers. It should refuse, or pass you the conversation.
6. Ask for a person. Whatever it can do, the way to you should work the first time a customer asks.

If you’re still weighing an AI chatbot against an agent, the best AI chatbots for customer service ranks nine for small teams by when a person can take over.

Questions about AI agents for customer service

What is the best AI agent for customer service?

It depends on what your customers need done. For a founder whose customers mostly need answers, Deacon answers from your docs and hands you the rest, starting on a free plan. For an online shop that needs orders changed, Gorgias acts in Shopify, and Tidio’s Lyro can update orders, with one action free and more on a paid plan. For a support team on a helpdesk, Fin and Zendesk’s AI agents act across your systems and bill by the outcome or the resolution.

What is an AI agent for customer service?

It’s software that answers your customers in a chat, by email or on the phone and can also take actions for them, such as refunding an order or changing an address in your other systems. It’s a kind of conversational AI, and what sets it apart from an AI chatbot is the connection to your billing, orders or CRM.

Is there a free AI agent for customer service?

A few have a free way in. Deacon’s free plan gives you 50 answers a month with every feature, no card and no end date, though it takes no actions. Tidio gives every account 50 Lyro conversations once. Chatbase’s free plan has 50 message credits a month but no AI Actions, and deletes an agent after 14 days without use. Fin has a 14-day trial, and Salesforce offers a free start through Salesforce Foundations.

How much does an AI agent for customer service cost?

Most agents that take actions are billed by the conversation, the action or what they settle. Fin charges $0.99 an outcome in support, Zendesk $2.00 an automated resolution past its allowance and Agentforce $2 a conversation, while Decagon and Sierra publish no rates. On a helpdesk you also pay for the seats. AI help desks sets out how each helpdesk bills its AI.

Can Deacon take actions, such as refunds or order changes?

No. Deacon answers questions and hands conversations to you, and it takes no actions in other systems. It always declines questions about a visitor’s own account, invoice or data, so a question about a customer’s own bill gets a way to reach you instead of a guess. Your site can pass it details such as the visitor’s plan, which it takes into account when it answers. If you need an agent that acts, Gorgias, Fin, Chatbase and Agentforce are built for it.

Do I still need live chat with an AI agent?

You need a way for a person to take over, and whether that’s called live chat matters less. Most agents here hand over to a helpdesk inbox, and Deacon lets you reply in the visitor’s chat from its dashboard. Chatbot vs live chat covers the setup where the AI answers first and you step in.

Will AI agents replace customer service staff?

Not the whole job. They take the questions your docs answer and the requests you’ve written rules for, at any hour, and pass the rest to a person. Exceptions, judgement calls and upset customers still need someone. Will AI replace customer service? looks at what changes.