Fin AI alternatives, and what Fin bills as an outcome

Intercom renamed itself Fin this year, and on 10 September 2026 Salesforce said it had completed buying the company. Ten days later, on 20 September 2026, the AI agent was still $0.99 an outcome, on Intercom’s helpdesk or on somebody else’s. A helpdesk is a support team’s shared inbox, and an AI helpdesk is one with an agent like Fin answering in it.

We make Deacon, which answers your visitors from your own pages for a flat price, with the first 50 answers a month free. Intercom’s seat prices and its Early Stage offer for startups are worked through in Intercom alternatives for startups.

An outcome includes a customer who leaves

The FAQ on Fin’s pricing page prices a resolution, a handoff that a Procedure makes and a disqualified lead at $0.99 each. A Procedure is a workflow you write for Fin to follow. A handoff passes the conversation to a person, and a lead is a sales prospect. A qualified lead is $9.99. Intercom’s article on Fin outcomes adds a self-serve qualification at $0.99.

A resolution is counted two ways, the same article says. Either the customer confirms the answer was satisfactory, or the customer leaves without asking for more help, which the article calls an assumed resolution.

Fin charges at most once a conversation, even when it answers several questions. A handoff Fin makes under your workspace rules is free, and a handoff you wrote into a Procedure is billed.

With no limit set, the bill comes after the period ends

Fin’s usage has no cap unless you set one. Usage without a limit is pay-as-you-go and billed at the end of the period, Intercom’s article on managing usage says.

A hard limit switches Fin off for the rest of the billing period, and new conversations go straight to the handoff steps you set up. A limit cannot be set during the trial. It cannot go below a contracted minimum either, and you are billed for that minimum even with a lower limit set.

If you stay with Fin, set a hard limit the day your trial ends, because none can be set before then.

Without Intercom’s helpdesk, Fin has a minimum of 50 outcomes

Fin is also sold on top of a helpdesk you already use, at the same $0.99 with a minimum of 50 outcomes a month. Our arithmetic makes that $49.50 a month. Intercom’s pricing FAQs say a self-serve trial of this version exists for Freshdesk, Freshchat and HubSpot, and that Salesforce and other platforms go through sales.

With Intercom’s helpdesk, the seat was $19 or $29 depending on the load

Buying Fin with Intercom’s helpdesk means paying for a full seat as well, which is a login for one teammate. Intercom’s pricing page was running a price test when we read it. Of 21 loads that day, 17 showed Essential at $19 a seat a month on annual billing and 4 showed $29. Fin’s own pricing page switched between the same two figures. The pricing FAQs say $29.

The trial is 14 days with no card, and when it ends Fin stops until you subscribe. No free plan sits below it.

Deacon

Deacon bills for each answer it writes. An answer costs the same whether or not the visitor writes back. Fin’s minimum on another helpdesk is 50 outcomes a month, billed whether or not you use them. On Deacon’s free plan you get 50 answers a month on one seat. Nothing is billed past a plan’s answers.

The paid plans on Deacon’s pricing page are a flat monthly or yearly price with a fixed number of answers. When a month’s answers are used, Deacon tells the visitor it cannot help right now and asks for an email address.

Deacon has no helpdesk and no voice agent. Seats come with the plan, so there is no per-seat charge.

Billing by something other than the outcome

Those are the self-serve plans, and Tidio’s Premium plan lists pay-per-resolution billing. Tidio and Crisp come with a shared inbox, as Intercom does. Chatling has a live chat inbox too, and Chatbase lists a helpdesk from its Standard plan. We found no inbox on DocsBot’s pages.