LiveChat alternatives and what their AI costs

This page is about LiveChat, the live chat software from Text, Inc., rather than live chat in general. Founders usually go looking for a LiveChat alternative for one of four reasons. There’s no free plan, only a 14-day trial. It charges for every user account, from $25 a person a month on Starter, which takes one user. None of its plans include an AI agent that answers customers for you, because LiveChat’s pricing page sends you to Text, a separate product from the same company. And taking “Powered by LiveChat” off the widget is for Enterprise customers who ask.

Below are eight alternatives, with each one’s free plan, its first paid plan, the AI that answers for you and what it charges to take its badge off. We read every price on the vendor’s own pages on 23 September 2026, and each one links to where we read it.

Deacon comes first because it’s ours, and because it’s built for the founder who answers support alone. Live chat waits for someone to type back. Deacon is an AI customer support agent that answers your customers in seconds from your own docs, brings you only the chats that need a person, and shows you what customers are stuck on and asking for. The free plan needs no card and has no end date.

Eight LiveChat alternatives side by side

LiveChat is the last row, so you can hold each tool up against it.

What LiveChat charges, and what each plan leaves out

LiveChat prices every plan per person, and its pricing page opens on yearly billing. Here are its plans with both prices.

The per-person price is the one to plan around. LiveChat’s FAQ says it charges “for every user account created, regardless of whether the user is logged in or not.” So a founder who adds two teammates on Team pays $177 a month, or $147 a month billed yearly, by our arithmetic, before any AI. Starter is for one person only, and it keeps 60 days of chats.

The plans hold more than the chat window. Team adds Insights, which LiveChat describes as finding “the most popular questions and topics on your LiveChat® without having to read through thousands of chats”, along with basic reporting and full widget customisation. Business adds a work scheduler, staffing prediction, advanced reporting and Apple Messages for Business. Its card lists SMS too, though the comparison table puts SMS in the marketplace. WhatsApp, Instagram and email come from its marketplace, and it lists more than 200 integrations.

The AI in LiveChat’s plans works for your team, not your customers. Copilot, on every plan, is an assistant that answers your questions about LiveChat and Text’s other products and helps with daily tasks, and Team and Business suggest replies from 3 and 10 of your knowledge sources. The row for an AI Agent that answers customers reads “From $19/user/month · 14 days free” and links to Text.

Text, Inc. makes LiveChat, ChatBot.com and Text. Text puts live chat, tickets and the AI agent in one inbox, and it charges per user too. Essential is $25 a user a month, or $19 billed yearly, with 10 AI resolutions a month. Growth is $99, or $79 billed yearly, with 200. A resolution counts once per conversation, when the AI solves at least one question, and not when it passes the chat to a person without answering. Past the allowance, Text says “a refill package of 50 resolutions is automatically added for $49.50”. By our arithmetic, a founder alone on Essential month to month whose AI resolves 100 conversations pays $25 plus two packs, $124 for the month.

Deacon

Deacon is an AI customer support agent for founders who handle support themselves. LiveChat is built for people who sit in the chat. Deacon is built so you don’t have to. It answers your customers in seconds, day or night, from your help pages, files and pasted text, and in the language each visitor writes in. You add one script tag, and there are no flows to build before it starts.

It writes each answer from what your content says, and an answer taken from a page on your site usually links to it. When your content doesn’t cover a question, Deacon tells the visitor it doesn’t know instead of guessing, and asks for their email. You get an email when a visitor leaves their address or asks for a person. Type your reply in the dashboard and it appears in their chat under your name while they have it open, and Deacon stays out of that conversation until you hand it back. If they’ve left, and gave their address in that conversation, the reply reaches them by email.

Every question your docs didn’t cover waits in the dashboard with an Answer this button. Write the answer and press Save & check. Deacon asks itself the question again, shows you the reply it now gives and tells you how many other open questions your answer covers. So the more you answer, the better it gets, and the fewer chats need you.

It also shows you what your customers need, on every plan, the free one included. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group similar product questions, count the people who asked and label most of them as a feature ask, a bug report, a how-to and so on, so the customer feedback in your chats turns into a list of what to fix and what to build. Analytics › Widget shows how many people wrote in, the share Deacon answered and the languages they wrote in, and the same script counts your website’s visitors, sources, goals and funnels.

Every plan has every feature, and the plans differ only in answers, knowledge, crawled pages and seats, never by the person. Free gives you 50 answers a month and 1 seat, with room for about 67 pages of docs, no card, no end date and nothing deleted if you go 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.

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 that one right now and are asked for their email, unless they’ve already left it, and you can still read and reply to every conversation. There’s no “powered by” line on any plan.

Text

Text is the natural first stop if you like LiveChat and want its maker’s AI. It puts live chat, tickets and Text’s AI Agent in one inbox, and ChatBot.com now sells the same Essential and Growth plans.

Essential is $25 a user a month, or $19 billed yearly, with 1 AI agent, 10 AI resolutions a month and 60 days of history. Growth is $99, or $79 billed yearly, with 200 resolutions, chat topic insights, chat supervision and unlimited history. Ten resolutions is about one every three days, so on a busy site the $49.50 packs of 50, added automatically, are the real price. There’s no free plan, only a 14-day trial with no card, and removing “Powered by Text” is for Enterprise. There’s more in Deacon vs ChatBot.

tawk.to

tawk.to is the one to try if LiveChat’s per-person price is why you’re leaving. Its live chat, ticketing, knowledge base and CRM are free for unlimited team members, and it makes its money from add-ons, priced per site rather than per seat.

The AI is AI Assist, with a free Hobby tier of 100 message credits a month and paid plans from $29 a month, or $290 a year, for 1,000 credits. Each message the AI sends spends a credit. Handing a chat to your team starts on the $29 plan, and on Hobby the AI can’t escalate at all. Taking “Powered by tawk.to” off costs $29 a month for each site. There’s more in tawk.to alternatives.

Tidio

Tidio suits an online shop that wants live chat and every channel in one inbox, and it charges by conversations rather than seats. Its free plan covers 50 conversations a month with up to 10 seats, with email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger included.

Starter is $29 a month, or $24.17 billed yearly, for 100 conversations with your team. Lyro, its AI agent, is bought separately, from $39 a month for 50 AI conversations, or $32.50 billed yearly, and every account gets 50 Lyro conversations once. On a new project billed monthly, Tidio moves a package to its next level at 95% of its quota by default. The Tidio branding comes off with a $20 a month add-on on Growth, which starts at $59. There’s more in Tidio alternatives, and Tidio vs LiveChat sets the two side by side.

Crisp

Crisp charges per workspace rather than per person, which suits a small team that shares one inbox. Its free plan gives 2 seats, the shared inbox and the chat widget, with no AI.

Mini is $45 a month for the whole workspace, with 4 seats and Hugo, its AI agent, on $5 of credits, which Crisp puts at around 90 automated conversations. When the credits are spent, Hugo stops and chats go to your team unless you switch on Pay-As-You-Go. Essentials, at $95, adds WhatsApp, Instagram and routing, and the “We run on Crisp” watermark comes off on Plus, at $295 a month. There’s more in Crisp chat alternatives.

Freshchat

Freshchat is Freshworks’ live chat, and its free plan suits a team that answers chats itself, with up to 10 agents, a widget for your site and apps, a shared inbox and email.

Growth is $23 an agent a month, or $19 billed yearly, and brings Freddy AI Agent with 500 sessions included once, then $49 for each 100. A session covers what a visitor says to the AI within 24 hours. When the sessions run out, the AI agent stops and chats go to your live agents, unless you’ve switched on auto-recharge. Freshworks’ branding comes off the widget on any paid plan.

Intercom

Intercom is a full helpdesk, and Fin, its AI agent, answers in its Messenger on every plan. It suits a startup that already has a team working a shared inbox every day. There’s no free plan, only a 14-day trial with no card.

Essential is $19 or $29 a seat a month billed yearly, or $29 or $39 month to month, because Intercom is testing two prices on the same page. Fin costs $0.99 an outcome, and a customer who leaves without asking for more help counts as one. There’s no allowance to run out of, so unless you set a hard limit, the usage is billed at the end of the period. Intercom’s branding comes off on Advanced, at $99 a seat a month or $85 billed yearly. There’s more in Intercom alternatives and Intercom pricing.

HubSpot

HubSpot’s free plan puts live chat on your site for up to 2 users, beside its CRM, ticketing and bots that follow rules you set. The chat carries HubSpot’s branding until Starter, at $10 a seat a month, or $7 billed yearly, on an offer for new customers against a list price of $20.

Its AI that answers customers, Customer Agent, starts on Service Hub Professional, at $90 a seat a month billed yearly, plus a $1,500 onboarding fee, and each conversation it resolves costs $0.50. It makes sense if your sales and marketing already run on HubSpot.

Which one fits you

Start from who you want answering the chat. Chatbot vs live chat sets out what each covers and costs.

If you like LiveChat and want its AI in the same kind of inbox, Text is made by the same company. If the per-person price is the problem, tawk.to gives live chat away and Crisp charges for the workspace. If you sell online and want WhatsApp and Instagram in one inbox, Tidio includes them on every plan. If several of you answer chats and want a free start, Freshchat takes up to 10 agents. If a team already works a helpdesk every day, Intercom is built for that, and if your sales run on HubSpot, its chat sits beside your CRM.

If you answer support yourself, start with Deacon. It answers your customers from your docs in seconds with nobody watching the chat, brings you only the chats that need a person, and shows you what customers are stuck on and asking for. Every feature is on the free plan, and it needs no card.

Questions about LiveChat alternatives

Is there a free alternative to LiveChat?

Yes, several. For live chat that you answer, tawk.to is free for unlimited team members, Freshchat’s free plan takes up to 10 agents, Tidio’s covers 50 conversations a month with 10 seats, HubSpot’s takes 2 users and Crisp’s 2 seats. For an AI that answers for you, Deacon’s free plan gives you 50 answers a month with every feature and no card, and tawk.to’s free AI tier has 100 message credits a month. LiveChat has a 14-day trial rather than a free plan.

Are LiveChat, Text and ChatBot.com the same company?

Yes. Text, Inc. makes all three. LiveChat is its live chat app, priced per person, with AI that helps your team. Text puts live chat, tickets and an AI agent that answers customers in one inbox, and ChatBot.com now sells Text’s AI Agent on the same plans. LiveChat’s pricing page links its AI Agent row to Text.

Does LiveChat have an AI chatbot?

Not in its own plans. Every LiveChat plan includes Copilot, an assistant for your team, and Team and Business suggest replies from your knowledge sources. The AI Agent that answers customers is sold as Text, from $19 a user a month billed yearly, with a 14-day trial.

Can Deacon replace LiveChat for a support team?

For a founder or a small team, yes, up to your plan’s seats. Free has 1 seat, Starter 3 and Growth 10, and everyone on the team can read every conversation and reply from the dashboard. Deacon has no routing, chat transfer between teammates, work scheduler or rota, and it doesn’t answer by SMS, WhatsApp or Apple Messages. If a support desk works shifts in the chat all day, LiveChat is built for that.

Can I move from LiveChat to Deacon?

Yes, by adding your content again, since there’s no import from LiveChat. Point Deacon at your website or help centre and tick the pages it should learn from, add a single page by its link, or upload PDF, Word (.docx), Markdown, text, CSV or HTML files of up to 10 MB each. Your canned responses can go in as questions and answers with Add Q&A. Then swap LiveChat’s script for Deacon’s one tag. Your old chats stay in LiveChat.