Decagon alternatives, sorted by team size

Which Decagon alternative fits depends on the size of your support team. For a large company buying through a sales team, as you would with Decagon, look at Sierra and Parloa. For a team already in a helpdesk, Fin charges $0.99 an outcome and Zendesk’s AI agents $1.50 or $2.00 an automated resolution past the ones your seats include. To buy without talking to anyone, eesel AI starts at $299 a month and Chatbase at $40 a month. We read every vendor’s own pages on 10 November 2026, in US dollars, and each figure links to where we read it.

Deacon, which we make, is for the smallest team of all, a founder with nobody else on support. It’s an AI chatbot for your website that starts from the pages you already have. Give it your site’s address and it can answer from them within a minute or so, then it shows you which questions keep coming back. There’s a free plan with no card, and nothing to book before you start.

Decagon alternatives in one table

The rows run from the biggest support teams down to a founder on their own, and Decagon comes last for comparison.

Why teams look past Decagon

Decagon’s own site is written for large enterprises. The homepage pitches “concierge experiences for the world’s leading enterprises”, and the customers its About page names are Avis Budget Group, Chime, Oura Health, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM and Hunter Douglas.

You can’t see a price before you talk to sales. When we tried decagon.ai/pricing on 10 November 2026 it came back as a missing page, and the site’s buttons lead to Sign in or Get a demo. The demo form won’t send until you pick your monthly support tickets, and the smallest choice is “Less than 9,999”. A founder with 200 tickets a month ticks the same box as a team with 9,000.

Decagon does publish how it charges. Its post on pricing AI agents, from December 2024, offers a fixed rate for every conversation or a higher one for each conversation its AI resolves, and says most of its customers choose per conversation. It gives no figure for either. Decagon pricing goes through both models and what each does to a bill.

Decagon also assumes your team already has a helpdesk. Its integrations page is about syncing tickets and customer data from Salesforce, Intercom, Zendesk and others, and handing escalations back to your people there. You build its agents from Agent Operating Procedures, workflows written in plain language that your team then tests and refines. That suits a company with a support department, and it’s a lot to take on if you answer support yourself.

Sierra and Parloa, for large companies

These two are the like-for-like swaps. Both sell through their own teams and publish no rate, so they differ from Decagon mainly in what each one counts. Ada is sold the same way, but its pricing page only offered to book a 30-minute demo call when we read it, with nothing on how it charges, so we’ve left it out.

Sierra, priced by the outcome

Sierra builds AI agents for large companies, and its homepage says one agent can run across chat, SMS, WhatsApp, email, voice and ChatGPT. Its Ghostwriter tool builds an agent from your SOPs, transcripts and recordings, or from a goal you describe in plain English. Its customer stories include Rocket Mortgage, SoFi, CarMax and SiriusXM.

Where Decagon’s customers mostly pay per conversation, Sierra bills by outcome. Its post on outcome-based pricing gives a resolved support conversation and a saved cancellation as examples, and says an unresolved or escalated conversation costs nothing “in most cases”. You agree the criteria for each outcome up front. Where outcome pricing doesn’t suit, such as a conversation that only routes the customer to the right place, the post says paying per conversation can fit better.

The site offers Learn more and Sign in, with no sign-up and no rate, so as with Decagon you have no figure to plan with until its team quotes one. Pick Sierra if you’re a large company that wants to pay for results, on terms you settle before launch.

Parloa, for contact centres where the phone comes first

Parloa sells to enterprise contact centres. Its homepage lists IVR replacement first among its solutions, which means putting an AI agent where your press-1-for-billing phone menu was. Its calculator starts from your monthly call volume. It charges “per minute for voice and per interaction for chat”, its pricing page says, with rates that depend on how complex each use case is. You commit to a volume package and use it across use cases, and outcome-based pricing is offered “when it makes sense”.

The same page links a post by Parloa’s CRO titled “Outcome-Based Pricing: The Most Expensive Myth In Enterprise AI”, so Parloa leans the other way from Sierra. The rate itself still comes from its team, after it has studied your contact centre’s volume and use cases. Parloa is the one to call if most of your support arrives by phone, and if you’d rather buy from a company that describes itself as “Born in the EU”.

Fin and Zendesk’s AI agents, for teams already in a helpdesk

If your team already answers customers in a helpdesk, the AI that helpdesk sells is the nearest thing to Decagon with a price on the page. Both bill their AI by the conversations it settles, and both let you start a trial without talking to anyone.

Fin, $0.99 an outcome on any helpdesk

Fin is Intercom’s AI agent. It runs on Intercom’s own helpdesk or alongside another, such as Zendesk, Freshdesk or Salesforce. Its pricing page charges $0.99 an outcome, at most once a conversation. On Intercom’s helpdesk you also pay for a seat for each teammate, from $19 a month. On another helpdesk there are no seats, and there’s a minimum of 50 outcomes a month. The 14-day trial needs no card, and startups can apply to the Early Stage Program for a year of Fin and 93% off Intercom.

Fin’s page counts a resolution when the customer doesn’t ask for more help after Fin’s last answer, and a handoff when Fin completes a Procedure you’ve built to end in one. A conversation that simply passes to your team costs nothing. Decagon’s pricing post raises that first case, a frustrated customer who stops replying and gets counted as resolved, as a reason most of its customers pay per conversation instead.

Fin suits you if your team is on Intercom, or on a helpdesk Fin connects to, and you want a price you can work out before you start. Fin AI pricing has the sums for each helpdesk, and Fin AI alternatives has the tools people move to from it.

Zendesk’s AI agents, for a team that lives in Zendesk

Zendesk puts AI agents in every Suite and Support plan and bills them by the automated resolution, which its pricing page describes as a request the AI resolved “without any escalation to a human agent”. Support Team and Suite Team include 5 a month for each agent and Suite Professional 10, up to 10,000 a year. Past that, each one costs $1.50 committed in advance or $2.00 pay as you go. An AI agent that answers chat on your site needs messaging, which starts on Suite Team at $55 an agent a month billed yearly, or $69 monthly. The 14-day trial opens on Suite Professional.

Zendesk’s help centre describes a different model, so check before you budget. Its article on upgrading to resolution allowances says new accounts opened during its transition see resolution tiers instead, with tier pricing “negotiated” with sales. Those tiers are paid from an allowance in dollars, which its allowances article sets at $2 an agent seat a month on Suite Team. Ask Zendesk which of the two models your account will be on.

The bill has two parts, seats for your people and resolutions for the AI, and the included resolutions grow with seats, so a small team gets few. Two agents on Suite Team get 10 a month between them. Choose Zendesk’s AI agents when your team already works in Zendesk and wants the AI in the same place. Zendesk AI pricing prices it at several volumes, and Fin for Zendesk is the one to price it against.

eesel AI and Chatbase, which you can start yourself

Both put their prices on the page and sell plans you can buy without a call. One works inside the helpdesk you already have, and the other is an agent you build and run on its own.

eesel AI, a fixed monthly batch inside your helpdesk

eesel AI works inside the helpdesk you already use, such as Zendesk or Freshdesk, and also answers in Slack, in a chat bubble on your site and by email. Its pricing page sells a monthly batch of credits with no seat price, from $299 for 500 to $1,749 for 5,000. A ticket or a chat is 1 credit however long it runs, and only the ones its agent works on count. When the month’s credits run out the agents pause, unless you switch on overage at $0.80 a credit up to a cap you set. You start on a 7-day trial with 100 credits and no card.

You know the bill before the month starts, with no sales call, but a credit goes on every ticket the agent works on, solved or not, and the smallest batch is $299. eesel fits a few people working a helpdesk who want an AI agent there at a fixed monthly cost.

Chatbase, an agent you build and tune yourself

Chatbase lets you build an AI agent from your own content and put it on your site, with AI Actions that let it do things such as check a calendar. Its pricing page starts at Hobby, $40 a month or $32 billed yearly, with 700 message credits and 2 members. Basic is $150 for 4,000 credits and adds a Chatbase Helpdesk inbox and voice, and Business is $500 for 15,000. There’s no free plan, only a 7-day trial on each paid plan.

Chatbase’s FAQ prices each reply at 1 to 5 credits depending on the model, and the pricing page says an Action can make one answer cost two requests to the model. Removing “Powered By Chatbase” is an add-on at $99 a month. Chatbase is for you if you want to shape an agent yourself and wire it to your own tools. Chatbase alternatives looks at it from the other side.

What a month costs on the tools that publish a rate

Outcomes, resolutions and credits are hard to compare in your head, so here are two months worked through. In both, the AI resolves 60% of conversations by itself and each conversation takes 2 AI replies. The sums are ours, from the prices above.

If Decagon quotes you a rate per conversation, you can test it against these. Multiply an outcome price by the share of conversations you expect the AI to resolve. At Fin’s $0.99 and a 60% resolution rate, that comes to about 59 cents, so a per-conversation rate below that costs less than Fin’s outcomes at any volume, and one above it costs more.

Deacon’s plans each come with a set number of answers, one for each reply it writes on your live site, and a conversation takes about 2 of them, so you can size a plan from your monthly chats on the pricing page.

Deacon, for a founder with no support team

Every tool above assumes that someone’s job is support. Deacon is for the founder who answers customers in between building the product, with nobody else to hand them to.

Deacon is an AI customer support agent that lives in a chat on your website. You give it your site and any PDFs or notes you have, then add one script tag, or hand your coding agent the prompt Deacon gives you and it adds the tag and checks it’s live. From then on it answers in seconds, in whatever language each visitor writes in. Where Decagon has your team write Agent Operating Procedures, Deacon has nothing to build first. If you want a say in its tone, a few plain sentences in Instructions will do it.

When your content doesn’t cover a question, Deacon says it doesn’t have the answer rather than making something up, names what the visitor asked as the thing your team will get back to them about, and offers a box for their email. A visitor who asks for a person hears that your team has been told and will reply right there in the chat, and the conversation is in your dashboard at once. Your reply takes the chat over from Deacon and shows in the visitor’s window under your name, and Hand back to Deacon lets it answer again once you’re done. Decagon passes this escalation to a helpdesk, and Deacon keeps it in one place, as human handoff walks through.

Instead of writing procedures before launch, you write an answer only when a real customer asks something your content missed. That question waits in Conversations with Answer this beside it. Type the fix the way you’d reply, press Save, and Deacon files it in your help document, answers from it at once and checks similar open questions, listing the ones the same fix also answered. A fix about how Deacon should behave goes into your Instructions instead. So it needs you less over time. Topics count how many people asked about each thing, and Analytics › Widget says how many conversations Deacon handled alone, meaning every question answered, no email left and nobody asking for a person. Your bill doesn’t depend on that count, as it would with the outcomes above.

The free plan has every feature the paid ones have, needs no card and has no end date. No plan puts a “powered by” line on your chat, so there’s nothing to pay to take one off. You’ll find the plans on the pricing page.

What Decagon and the rest do that Deacon doesn’t

Check these before you pick Deacon, because one of them may be why you looked at Decagon in the first place.

• Decagon, Sierra, Parloa, Fin and Zendesk’s AI agents can all answer the phone, and Chatbase lists voice from its Basic plan. Deacon answers in the chat on your website only, with no phone line, email inbox, WhatsApp or SMS.
• Decagon’s integrations let its agent fetch data and take action in your CRM and helpdesk, and Zendesk’s AI agents can read and write in external systems too. Deacon takes no actions in other systems, so it won’t issue a refund or look up an order.
• Deacon always declines a question about a visitor’s own account, invoice or data, whatever your content says, because it can’t see them.
• Deacon isn’t a helpdesk and connects to none, so there’s no ticket queue or routing. Its webhooks can tell your own code when a visitor asks for a person, so passing a chat into Zendesk is yours to build.
• Decagon sells live A/B testing and simulations at scale for changing an agent safely. Deacon has the Playground, the real widget in front of your own site, for trying questions before your customers do.

Which Decagon alternative to pick

The right one follows from who answers your customers now.

If you run a large support operation and want what Decagon sells, ask Sierra and Parloa for quotes too, so you have three to compare. Sierra fits if you want to pay by outcome on criteria agreed before launch, and Parloa if most of your volume comes by phone. Get each of them to tell you what it counts, the rate and the volume you’d commit to, and run any per-conversation quote through the test above.

A team that already works in a helpdesk should try the AI it sells first. On Intercom that’s Fin. On Zendesk, price Zendesk’s own AI agents against Fin for Zendesk at your volume with the table above, since one charges seats and resolutions and the other only outcomes.

Without a sales call, eesel AI gives a helpdesk team a fixed monthly bill from $299 a month, and Chatbase lets you build an agent and connect it to your own tools from $40 a month. The best AI agents for customer service compares more of them, Decagon and Sierra included, by what each can act on.

If support is just you, and your customers ask their questions on your website, start on Deacon’s free plan. It answers them from your docs and passes you only the conversations that need you, and Topics show you what they keep asking about. You can start today, with no demo to book.

Questions about Decagon alternatives

Does Decagon have a free trial or a public price?

Not that its own site shows. On 10 November 2026 decagon.ai had no pricing page and no sign-up, only Sign in and Get a demo. Of the alternatives here, Fin and Zendesk give 14-day trials, eesel AI and Chatbase give 7 days, and Deacon has a free plan with no end date.

Which Decagon alternatives work with Zendesk?

Most of them. Fin runs on Zendesk at $0.99 an outcome, with a 50-outcome monthly minimum and no seats. Zendesk’s own AI agents come with its plans, billed by the automated resolution. eesel AI connects to Zendesk and charges a monthly batch of credits. Chatbase includes a Zendesk integration from its Basic plan, and Parloa lists Zendesk among the connectors on its integrations page. Decagon itself works alongside Zendesk too, syncing its tickets, according to its integrations page.

Is Deacon the same company as Decagon?

No. They’re separate companies with similar names. Decagon sells AI agents for chat, email and voice to large enterprises through its sales team. Deacon is an AI support agent for founders, in a chat on your website, that you set up yourself on the free plan. Deacon vs Decagon sets the two side by side.