HubSpot vs Intercom, a helpdesk on a CRM or one with Fin built in

Service Hub is HubSpot’s customer service software, and it runs on the same platform as HubSpot’s CRM, marketing and sales tools. Intercom sells a helpdesk with Fin, its AI agent, built in, and puts its Messenger live chat on every plan. The real gap is where the AI starts. HubSpot keeps Customer Agent for Professional and up, from $90 a seat a month billed yearly, while Intercom bills Fin from the first seat at $0.99 an outcome. Beside them we’ve put Deacon, our AI customer support agent for founders who don’t have a support team. Deacon has a free plan that needs no card.

Prices read on hubspot.com/pricing/service and intercom.com/pricing on 9 October 2026

Customer Agent and Fin, priced and counted

HubSpot spends credits when Customer Agent resolves a chat

Customer Agent is HubSpot’s AI agent, and it comes with Professional and Enterprise, not the free tools or Starter. Service Hub Professional is $90 a seat a month billed yearly, plus a one-time onboarding fee of $1,500. The agent uses 50 HubSpot Credits, or $0.50, for each conversation it resolves, and Professional includes 3,000 credits a month, which is 60 resolutions if nothing else spends them. HubSpot counts a resolution when the agent shared a content source or took an action, and the visitor didn’t ask for a person, or use a handoff phrase you set, within 72 hours of their last message. A teammate stepping in by hand doesn’t undo it. Credits past the included ones are $0.010 each, bought in packs of 1,000 for $10 or charged as you go.

Intercom charges $0.99 for each Fin outcome

Fin is on every Intercom plan, Essential included, so the AI comes with the first seat you buy. Each outcome is $0.99. Intercom counts one when a customer confirms their issue is resolved, when they don’t ask for more help after Fin replies, or when Fin completes a Procedure you built, including one that ends in a handoff. It charges at most once a conversation and refunds the charge if the conversation reopens. If Fin can’t answer, fails an action or the customer asks for a person, nothing is charged.

The figures in these cards come from hubspot.com/pricing/service, HubSpot’s Customer Agent guide, intercom.com/pricing and Intercom’s article on Fin outcomes, all read on 9 October 2026.

Take one person billed yearly, with the AI settling 100 conversations a month. On HubSpot Professional that’s $90 for the seat and 5,000 credits, 2,000 more than the plan includes, so $20 extra, $110 a month if nothing else uses credits. On Intercom Essential it’s $29 for the seat and $99 in outcomes, $128 a month, or $118 on the lower Essential price. The sums are ours.

The month favours HubSpot, and the gap widens as the AI does more. At 300 a month it’s $210 against $326. The first year doesn’t, because of HubSpot’s $1,500 onboarding fee. At 100 a month, a year comes to $2,820 on HubSpot and $1,536 on Intercom. And the results being priced aren’t the same thing. HubSpot bills a conversation where the agent shared an article and the visitor left without asking for a person, once 72 hours have passed. Intercom bills one where the customer didn’t ask for more help after Fin’s reply, and refunds it if the conversation reopens.

HubSpot, Intercom and Deacon in one table

Free plan

HubSpot
Free tools for 2 users at most, and no card needed. Live chat shows HubSpot’s branding, bots have limited features, and there’s no AI agent
Intercom
None. A 14-day trial with no card, with every feature, Fin and the add-ons
Deacon
50 answers a month on one seat, with every feature, no card and no end date

Lowest paid seat

HubSpot
Service Hub Starter, $7 a seat a month billed yearly, or $10 monthly, marked down from a $20 list price
Intercom
Essential, $29 a seat a month billed yearly, or $39 monthly. Two of our four loads of the pricing page showed $19 billed yearly instead
Deacon
Starter, $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers on three seats

First plan with the AI agent

HubSpot
Professional, $90 a seat a month billed yearly, or its $100 list price billed monthly on a yearly commitment, plus a required one-time onboarding fee of $1,500
Intercom
Essential. Fin is on every plan
Deacon
Free. Every plan answers with the same model

What one AI result costs

HubSpot
50 HubSpot Credits, or $0.50, for each conversation Customer Agent resolves. Professional includes 3,000 credits a month, and more are $0.010 each
Intercom
$0.99 an outcome, paid as you go
Deacon
Nothing extra. Each reply Deacon writes on your live site is one of the plan’s answers

When the AI is charged

HubSpot
When the agent shared a content source or took an action, and the visitor didn’t ask for a person within 72 hours of their last message. A lead marked qualified, partly qualified or not qualified counts too
Intercom
When the customer confirms it’s resolved, doesn’t ask for more help after Fin replies, or Fin completes a Procedure, handoffs included. At most once a conversation, and refunded if it reopens
Deacon
Never judged. Chats in the Playground and on localhost don’t count

Keeping the AI bill down

HubSpot
Credit limits for each feature, alerts and a pause switch. Included credits reset monthly and don’t roll over
Intercom
Spending limits and alerts. Fin also comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee
Deacon
Nothing is billed past a plan’s answers, and no plan upgrades itself

Trying the AI

HubSpot
14 days of Customer Agent free, once you buy at least one Professional or Enterprise seat
Intercom
The 14-day trial, with no card
Deacon
The free plan, for as long as you like

Removing their branding

HubSpot
From live chat, on Starter and above
Intercom
From the Messenger, outbound emails and the help centre, on Advanced and Expert
Deacon
No plan shows a “powered by” line, so there’s nothing to remove

Help articles

HubSpot
A knowledge base from Professional, with up to 2,000 articles
Intercom
A public help centre on Essential, and a private, multilingual one from Advanced
Deacon
None of its own. It answers from your site, files, pasted text and the answers you write

Channels

HubSpot
Live chat and Facebook Messenger on the free tools, calling from Starter and WhatsApp from Professional. Customer Agent answers on chat, email, forms and calls
Intercom
The Messenger and support email on every plan. WhatsApp, SMS, phone and email campaigns are billed by use
Deacon
A chat widget on your website, nothing else

Seats

HubSpot
Priced per seat on every paid plan, Core Seats on Starter and Service Seats above it. View-only seats are free
Intercom
A full seat for each teammate who replies, 1 at least. Advanced adds 20 free Lite seats and Expert 50
Deacon
one seat on Free, three seats on Starter

For startups

HubSpot
HubSpot for Startups, up to 90% off year one of a new Professional or Enterprise product, then 50% and 25%, from pre-seed to Series A with verified funding or an approved partner
Intercom
Early Stage, 93% off year one, from $65 a month with 300 Fin outcomes a month, for up to $10M raised and fewer than 15 employees
Deacon
No programme to qualify for. The free plan has every feature

HubSpot’s prices are from hubspot.com/pricing/service and its credit prices from its credits page. Intercom’s are from intercom.com/pricing, where the monthly prices sit in the page’s own data, and its branding rule is from its workspace settings article. All were read in US dollars on 9 October 2026, and the other pages used are listed at the end.

When HubSpot fits, and when Intercom does

Pick HubSpot when support belongs with the rest of the customer record. If marketing and sales already work in HubSpot, Service Hub gives support the same view of each customer, on the same platform. Two people can start on the free tools, and Starter adds calling and takes HubSpot’s branding off chat for $7 a seat billed yearly. The AI agent waits for Professional, which also brings a knowledge base and WhatsApp. A startup from pre-seed to Series A, with verified funding or an approved partner, can get up to 90% off the first year of a new Professional or Enterprise product from HubSpot for Startups.

Pick Intercom when customers mostly reach you in chat, on your site or in your app, and you want AI answering from day one. Essential already has the Messenger, a shared inbox, ticketing, a public help centre and Fin. Advanced adds the workflow builder, team inboxes and round robin assignment. With up to $10M raised and fewer than 15 employees, Early Stage takes 93% off the first year, from $65 a month, with 300 Fin outcomes a month included.

Either way you’re buying a support platform for a team, priced by the seat, with the AI billed on top.

Deacon, for a founder with no helpdesk to run

Deacon’s AI is on the free plan. There’s no Professional seat or onboarding fee to buy before it answers anyone, and no meter on each result. Each reply Deacon writes on your live site counts as one of your plan’s answers, with nobody judging whether a conversation was resolved, and when the answers run out nothing more is billed. Every feature is on every plan, and no plan shows a “powered by” line.

It answers the questions you keep getting, in seconds and at any hour, from your own docs and in the language the customer writes in. You don’t build flows or Procedures. If your docs don’t cover something, Deacon tells the visitor it doesn’t know, rather than guessing, and asks for their email. When they leave it or ask for a person, you see it in your dashboard straight away, and your reply appears in their chat under your first name while it’s still open.

It learns from you, too. A question your docs missed comes with an Answer this button, and the answer you write is something Deacon can use for the next person. Save & check asks the question again and shows the reply Deacon now gives. When Deacon answers it, Save & check also lists any similar open questions your answer covers.

And it tells you what customers are asking for. Deacon keeps every conversation, and you can search them by the visitor’s question. Topics group the questions, count the people behind each one, and give a topic a type, such as a feature ask, a bug report or a how-to, when one kind of question leads it. That’s on every plan. Intercom sells its trend-spotting in the Pro add-on, from $100 a month. The same script tag counts your visitors, sources, goals and funnels, so you don’t add a second one.

Questions about HubSpot and Intercom

For a seat, yes. Service Hub Starter is $7 a seat a month billed yearly, against $29 for Intercom’s Essential, or $19 on some loads of its page. For the AI it’s closer. HubSpot’s agent needs Professional, at $90 a seat billed yearly and $1,500 for onboarding, while Fin comes on Essential. Each AI result then costs $0.50 on HubSpot and $0.99 on Intercom, though the two count a result differently.

HubSpot does. Its free tools cover up to 2 users with no card, and include live chat with HubSpot’s branding and bots with limited features, but not Customer Agent. Intercom has none. Its pricing FAQs say there’s no free plan, and its pricing page offers a 14-day trial with no card instead.

Yes. Intercom sells Fin on its own for an existing helpdesk such as Salesforce, HubSpot or Freshdesk, at $0.99 an outcome with a minimum monthly commitment and no seat costs. So a team that stays on HubSpot can still buy Fin. Fin AI pricing works out what that costs.

Salesforce. It completed its purchase of Fin, formerly Intercom, on 10 September 2026. Intercom’s pricing page still sells the Intercom helpdesk with Fin built in, at the prices on this page.

It can sit on the same site, but it doesn’t connect to either. Deacon has no integrations or webhooks, so its conversations, and any email address a visitor leaves, stay in Deacon’s dashboard. Nothing turns into a HubSpot contact or an Intercom ticket. If another chat runs on the same pages, turn one off so visitors see a single chat button.

When a team shares the work. Both give you a shared inbox, tickets, email, phone and WhatsApp, and their AI agents can take actions you set up. HubSpot puts support on one platform with its marketing and sales tools, and Intercom sells product tours and surveys as an add-on. Deacon does none of that. It’s a chat widget that answers on your website, and it never starts a conversation or acts in another system.

The pages behind each figure

Every figure above was read on 9 October 2026, from these pages.

Try Deacon for free

Deacon answers your customers from your own docs in seconds, says so when it doesn’t know, and shows you what they keep asking for. The AI is on the free plan, and the free plan needs no card.

Zendesk vs HubSpot sets Service Hub against Zendesk, and HubSpot chatbot pricing covers HubSpot’s free rule-based bot and how to add a chatbot to a HubSpot site. Intercom is also set against Help Scout, Zendesk and Crisp. Intercom pricing adds up a bill for a team of one to three, Fin AI pricing prices Fin on HubSpot and other helpdesks, Intercom alternatives for startups compares nine more tools, and Deacon’s plans are on the pricing page.

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