Intercom pricing plans, seats and the Fin bill

Intercom pricing starts with a seat for every teammate who answers customers. Essential is $19 or $29 a seat a month billed yearly, depending on which side of a price test Intercom’s page puts you, or $29 or $39 month to month. Advanced is $85 a seat billed yearly or $99 monthly, and Expert $132 billed yearly. Fin, the AI agent on every plan, adds $0.99 for each outcome, and Copilot, Pro and Proactive Support Plus are add-ons on top. There’s no free plan, only a 14-day trial. We read every figure on Intercom’s pricing page and help centre on 23 September 2026.

Intercom is no longer the company’s name, either. It renamed itself Fin in May 2026, and Intercom is now the name of its helpdesk. The last section before the questions explains how the two are sold today.

Deacon is ours. It’s an AI customer support agent for startups where a founder still answers support, with no seats to buy per person and no charge per outcome. It answers your customers in seconds from your own docs and shows you what they’re stuck on and what they want next. There’s a free plan, and it needs no card.

Intercom pricing plans

Every plan includes the Messenger, a shared inbox, tickets, a help centre and Fin. The plan sets the seat price and which team features you get.

The features are from Intercom’s plans article, and the branding from its workspace settings article, which says Advanced and Expert can remove Intercom’s branding from the Messenger, outbound emails and the help centre. Every plan includes unlimited live chat, support email, in-app chats, banners and tooltips. Email campaigns, SMS, WhatsApp and phone are paid as you use them.

The Essential price Intercom is testing

Intercom is showing two prices for the same Essential seat. We loaded its pricing page several times on 23 September 2026, in the same way each time. Some loads showed $19 a seat a month with yearly billing selected, and others showed $29.

The page’s own code names the test and sets its price at $19 a seat billed yearly and $29 monthly, against $29 and $39 for everyone else. Fin’s pricing page shows the same split, as $19 or $29 “per helpdesk seat”. Intercom’s help centre gives only the higher pair. Its pricing FAQs say Essential “starts at $29/seat/month on annual billing”, and price three monthly seats as “$39 x 3 = $117”.

We can’t tell from outside which price an account is billed at, so budget for the higher one and treat the lower as a bonus. Advanced and Expert didn’t change between reads.

How Intercom bills a seat

Intercom’s seats article and pricing FAQs set out the rules that decide how many seats you pay for.

• Every teammate who talks to customers needs a full seat. Only full seats can send messages.
• Lite seats are free, 20 on Advanced and 50 on Expert, for colleagues who only need to look in. A Lite seat can’t be assigned a conversation, search the inbox or use Copilot.
• A seat counts once the teammate accepts your invitation, and seats are billed ahead for the next billing period.
• One seat is the minimum, and there’s no maximum. If your workspace already has teammates when you subscribe to Essential, you’re shown a seat for each, and you delete teammates to buy fewer.
• Monthly billing is open to Essential and Advanced. Expert is yearly, or a contract through sales.
• Downgrades usually take effect at renewal. A failed payment is retried four times over 28 days, and the account is frozen on the 28th day.

You’re not charged for full seats during the trial. If a seat for every teammate is the sticking point, Crisp vs Intercom sets Intercom against a plan priced per workspace, and Tidio vs Intercom against one priced by conversation.

Fin on the Intercom bill

Fin comes with every Intercom plan and costs $0.99 an outcome, at most one a conversation. An outcome counts when a customer confirms Fin’s answer helped, when they don’t ask for more help after it, or when Fin finishes a Procedure you set up, including one that hands the conversation over. Nothing is charged when a customer asks for a person, with one exception in Intercom’s outcomes article. If Fin is set to collect their details before handing over and they go quiet without giving them, the conversation is billed as a resolution.

There’s no allowance on Intercom’s plans, outside the Early Stage programme below. Fin is paid as you go and billed at the end of the period, unless you set a hard limit that switches it off for the rest of the billing period. Fin AI pricing goes through what counts as an outcome and what Fin costs on other helpdesks. Fin Voice, for phone calls, is priced through sales.

Add-ons and pay-as-you-go channels

The trial includes all three add-ons, and on a paid plan you can add or remove them at any time.

Pro counts each chat or email conversation once, when your team, a workflow or Fin replies. Past 1,000 a month it moves up in tiers, to $0.12 a conversation up to 5,000, $0.10 up to 50,000 and $0.06 up to 100,000, by Intercom’s Pro article. Operator stops at its 2,000 credits unless you opt in to paying $0.01 a credit beyond them.

The channels are billed by use. Replying to a customer’s email from the inbox is included. SMS is charged per segment from the first one, at $0.06 a segment in the US on the first tier, with a default limit of 10,000 segments a month, and WhatsApp conversations customers start are free, while bulk WhatsApp messages you send are charged, by Intercom’s channels article. Email campaigns are charged per bulk email, and phone by use.

Early Stage, Intercom’s startup programme

Intercom’s Early Stage programme swaps the seat prices for a discounted bundle. Its programme page asks for up to $10M in funding, fewer than 15 employees and a startup that isn’t already an Intercom customer. A startup that has started a trial can still apply, and it can join only once.

The bundle is the Advanced plan with 2 full seats, 2 Copilot seats, 20 Lite seats, Proactive Support Plus and Pro. Year 1 costs $33 a month, which Intercom’s help article calls a 93% discount off a list price of $466, and includes 300 Fin outcomes and 15 sales qualifications a month. Year 2 is $233 a month with 150 outcomes, and year 3 is $350 with 75. Outcomes past those are $0.99.

You can add seats, but not drop below two. An extra Advanced seat is $6.90 a month in year 1 and an extra Copilot seat $2.50, and the help article prices the bundle by how many pairs you have.

The discount doesn’t reach everything. SMS, WhatsApp and phone are charged at list price, and so are Operator credits past 2,000. The bundle’s add-ons can’t be removed. Expert features, Fin Voice and regional hosting aren’t available, and nor is Fin on another helpdesk. Leave the programme for Essential and you pay $39 a seat monthly or $29 yearly, and you can’t come back. These terms cover startups that joined from 29 June 2026. Zendesk, HubSpot and Crisp run startup programmes too, compared in customer support for startups.

What Intercom costs a team of one to three

These months give each person 100 Fin outcomes. Where Intercom is testing two Essential prices, both are shown, and the sums are ours. None include SMS, WhatsApp, phone or email campaigns.

Fin is the line that grows. For one person, 100 outcomes cost more than the seat on any Essential row. The three-person team on Advanced is there because removing Intercom’s branding and building workflows both need that plan.

Early Stage comes out cheapest for two in year 1, and it includes Copilot, Pro and Proactive Support Plus as well. By year 3 the same two people pay $473.75 for 200 outcomes, against $314 on Essential billed yearly with Copilot, at the $29 seat Intercom quotes for startups leaving the programme. So a startup that doesn’t need Pro or Proactive Support Plus by then may do better on Essential.

Intercom vs Fin, and how each is sold now

Intercom and Fin are one company, which sells a helpdesk and an AI agent. On 12 May 2026 its chief executive, Eoghan McCabe, announced that Intercom was becoming Fin. The company took the name of its AI agent, and Intercom lives on as the name of its customer service platform, which it had just rebuilt as Intercom 2. On 10 September 2026 Salesforce completed its purchase of Fin, “formerly Intercom”, and said Fin will continue to serve its customers from within Salesforce.

So “Intercom vs Fin” isn’t a choice between rivals. It’s a choice between two ways of buying the same AI agent.

• Intercom with Fin is the helpdesk and the AI together. You pay a seat for each teammate and $0.99 for each Fin outcome. Fin for Sales and the Early Stage programme come only this way.
• Fin on its own is the AI agent for a helpdesk you already run, such as Zendesk, Salesforce, HubSpot or Freshdesk. There are no seats, and Fin’s help centre sets a $49 monthly base fee that includes 50 resolutions, with $0.99 for each one after. Fin’s pricing page gives the floor as a 50-outcome minimum at $0.99 instead, which is $49.50.

Both are priced on intercom.com and fin.ai, and both bill only in US dollars. If you need a helpdesk as well as an AI agent, it’s the first. If your team already works in another helpdesk, it’s the second, and Fin AI pricing covers it helpdesk by helpdesk. If the helpdesk you run is Zendesk, Zendesk AI pricing shows what its own AI agent costs instead, and Intercom vs Zendesk sets the two helpdesks side by side.

Deacon, for a startup where the founder still answers

Intercom’s price is built around a support team, with a seat for each person and a meter on the AI. Early on, that team is usually a founder with the Messenger open in a spare tab. What you need then is the repeat questions answered well, the rest brought to you, and a clear view of what customers keep asking. That’s what Deacon does.

You add one script tag and point Deacon at your docs, and its widget answers your customers in seconds, at any hour and in their own language, matched to your site’s colours and position. It answers only from your content. When the content doesn’t cover a question, it says it doesn’t know instead of guessing and asks for the visitor’s email. If they leave it or ask for a person, you get an email, and you reply from Deacon’s dashboard, where your words appear in their chat while it’s open, under your first name and your company’s.

Each question your docs missed gets an Answer this button. Write the answer once, and Save & check shows the reply Deacon now gives and how many other open questions your answer covers. Every answer becomes part of what Deacon knows, so the more you answer, the less it needs you.

Deacon also shows you what customers need, on every plan and with no add-on to buy. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group the questions, count the people asking and label most of them as a feature ask, a bug report, a how-to and so on, so you know what to fix and what to build next. The same script counts your visitors, sources, goals and funnels.

The plans include their seats, and there’s nothing to qualify for. Every feature is on every plan, the free one included, and the plans differ only in answers, knowledge, crawled pages and seats. Free is 50 answers a month and 1 seat, with no card, no end date and nothing deleted if your account goes quiet. 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.

There’s no charge per outcome, nothing is billed past your plan’s answers and no plan upgrades itself. If a month’s answers run out, visitors get a short reply saying Deacon can’t look into it right now and are asked for their email, unless they’ve already left it, and you can still reply to every conversation. There’s no “powered by” line on any plan.

Questions about Intercom pricing

Does Intercom have a free plan?

No. Intercom’s pricing FAQs say “There is no free plan available.” The 14-day trial needs no card and includes every feature, Fin and the add-ons, and some cardless trials are offered a 7-day extension from day 13. When a trial ends, you can’t use Intercom or Fin until you subscribe.

How much does Intercom cost for one person?

One Essential seat is $19 or $29 a month billed yearly, or $29 or $39 monthly, depending on the price Intercom’s page shows you. Fin then adds $0.99 an outcome, so a month with 100 outcomes comes to between $118 and $138. An eligible startup can have two Advanced seats on Early Stage for $33 a month in year 1.

Can I pay for Intercom monthly?

Yes, on Essential and Advanced, with no contract. Expert is sold yearly, or on a contract through Intercom’s sales team. Early Stage is billed monthly.

Is there an Intercom pricing calculator?

Yes. Intercom’s pricing page links to a calculator that estimates a bill from your team size and expected Fin outcomes, and to a second one that estimates what Fin could save you.

How do I remove Intercom branding?

Move to Advanced or Expert. Intercom’s workspace settings article says both can remove its branding from the Messenger, outbound emails and the help centre. Essential can’t.

Can Deacon replace Intercom for a small startup?

If your support is mostly customers asking what your docs already answer, yes. Deacon answers them on your site and brings you the conversations that need a person. It isn’t a helpdesk, though. It has no shared inbox for email, no tickets, no WhatsApp, SMS or phone, and no integrations. It never starts a conversation, so there are no product tours, banners or campaigns, and it always declines questions about a visitor’s own account. Intercom alternatives for startups compares nine other tools, and Deacon vs Fin AI sets Deacon beside Fin.