Intercom alternatives for startups, what the bill actually looks like

Intercom is the tool every other tool gets compared against, and it is the one most startups end up leaving.

The reason is the shape of the bill rather than the price on the card. There are two meters running. You pay for seats, and then you pay again for every question the AI settles.

This page works that bill out at the prices Intercom publishes, then goes through what a small team buys instead. Every figure was read from the vendor’s own pages on 17 September 2026, and each section links the page it came from.

What an Intercom seat costs

Essential is $29 a seat a month on annual billing. Intercom’s own pricing FAQs work their monthly example at $39 a seat, so the number on the card is the discounted one. The pricing page also lists Advanced at $85 a seat and Expert at $132, without saying in its text which billing period those are.

There is no free plan. The trial is fourteen days and takes no card. Copilot, which is the assistant for your own agents rather than for your customers, is another $29 an agent a month on annual billing and $35 billed monthly.

Figures from intercom.com/pricing and Intercom’s pricing FAQs.

What Fin costs

Fin is $0.99 an outcome on top of the seat. Read the definition of an outcome carefully.

Intercom counts one when a customer confirms their issue is resolved, or when they do not ask for more help after Fin responds, or when Fin completes a workflow, handoffs included. That middle case is doing a lot of work. A visitor who reads the answer, decides it is useless and closes the tab has just cost you 99 cents, and so has one who was helped. You cannot tell the two apart from the invoice.

To be fair to Intercom, it is stated plainly on their own page, and you can set usage reminders and hard limits so the bill cannot run away from you. Figures from Intercom’s Fin pricing article and fin.ai/pricing.

The Early Stage programme

If you qualify, this changes the arithmetic completely for a year.

Year one is $33 a month for two Advanced seats and 300 Fin outcomes a month, which Intercom describes as a 93% discount. Extra Advanced seats are $6.90 a month. Then it steps up. Year two is $233 a month with 150 outcomes, and year three is $350 a month with 75. Outcomes past the allowance are charged at list price.

To be eligible you must have raised up to $10 million, have fewer than 15 employees, and are not already an Intercom customer. That last condition is the one that catches people, so apply before you sign up rather than after. Figures from intercom.com/early-stage.

A thousand questions a month

Take a site getting a thousand questions a month with one founder behind it, at the prices above.

One Essential seat is $29 a month on annual billing. If every one of those thousand questions ended as an outcome, that is $990 of Fin on top of the $29 seat, so $1,019 a month. Treat that as the top of the range rather than your bill. Intercom bills an outcome no more than once a conversation, and puts Fin’s average resolution rate at 76%, so a real month comes in lower.

The shape of it is what matters here. Your bill moves with how many questions your customers ask, and that is not something you control.

On Early Stage in year one it is much better. $33 for the two seats, 300 outcomes included, and $693 for the other 700, so $726 a month. In year two the allowance halves to 150 outcomes and the seats go to $233.

On Deacon it is one flat price with the seats included, so a thousand questions cost the same as a hundred up to the plan’s allowance.

Fin on a helpdesk you already run

You do not have to buy Intercom to buy Fin. It runs on Zendesk, Salesforce or HubSpot at $0.99 an outcome with a 50-outcome monthly minimum and no seat to buy at all.

If you already pay for a helpdesk and you only want the answering, this is how it becomes an AI helpdesk without the seat. Figures from fin.ai/pricing.

Gorgias

Gorgias is only worth a look if you sell on Shopify. Gorgias calls itself the Conversational Commerce platform for Shopify brands, and it is never priced per agent.

Starter is $40 a month billed monthly, which is $10 of helpdesk plus $30 of AI Agent, with 50 tickets and 30 automated interactions. Read the channel list before you get excited, because Starter is email only. The cheapest plan with a chat widget on your site is Basic at $90 a month, or $77 billed annually, with 300 tickets.

The AI is metered at $1.00 an automated interaction on Starter, and $1.50 for every one past the limit. Tickets past the limit are $0.40 each. Figures from gorgias.com/pricing.

Crisp

Crisp charges per workspace rather than per seat. For a small team that is a kinder shape. The free plan has two seats and no AI credits, so the AI does not answer on it. Mini is $45 a month per workspace with four seats and $5 of AI credits, which Crisp puts at around 90 automated conversations. There is no per-resolution charge. Figures from crisp.chat/en/pricing.

Tidio

Ten seats on the free, Starter and Growth plans, which is unusually generous. Starter is $24.17 a month billed annually. The AI agent, Lyro, is a separate add-on from $32.50 a month for 50 conversations, or $0.50 each, so the AI is the part that scales with you rather than the seats. Figures from tidio.com/pricing.

Chatling

Free on one seat and $25 a month on Starter, with live chat and human handover on both. The free plan is 200 AI credits a month, and a reply costs between 0.5 and 25 credits depending on the model. Figures from chatling.ai/pricing.

Chatbase

$40 a month for 700 message credits on Hobby, and free on one member with 50 credits. Handing a conversation to a person is an AI Action and the free plan has none, so the free tier answers and stops there. Its own helpdesk starts on Standard at $150 a month. Figures from chatbase.co/pricing.

Gleap

Gleap charges per workspace, with no per-seat fee from Team upwards. There is no free plan at all. Starter is $59 a month, or $49 billed annually, with the AI usage charged on top by tokens and put at roughly $0.17 a conversation. The trial is fourteen days with $25 of AI credit and a card at checkout. Figures from gleap.io/pricing.

Deacon

Ours. A widget that answers from your documentation, with a dashboard behind it and nothing to staff.

There is one meter on it, and it counts Deacon’s answers. Nobody is charged per seat, per outcome or per credit. Answering more questions does not cost more until you cross the plan’s allowance.

The free plan is 50 answers a month on one seat, with no card. Above it there is one flat price a month with the team’s seats included, and the figures are on the pricing page.

When Deacon cannot answer, it says so, takes the visitor’s email and hands you the conversation.

Everything it said on your behalf is on record, with the question, the answer and the source it used.

What to check before you switch

Per seat, per outcome, per conversation and per message are four different bills. The ones that count outcomes and conversations go up every time a customer asks something, whether or not you hired anybody that month.

Intercom counts an outcome when a visitor simply stops replying. It says so on its own page. Read that row before you treat $0.99 as your unit cost.

If you are applying for Early Stage, look at year two now. The discount shrinks each year and the allowance shrinks with it, so plan for the second bill as well as the first.

And decide whether you want an inbox at all. Most of what a helpdesk costs is the inbox and the seats around it. Count how many people will sit in it every day before you pay for it.