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 who answers chats, from $25 a user a month on Essential. Its AI agent comes with only 10 AI resolutions a month on Essential, and each 50 more cost $49.50. And taking “Powered by Text” off the widget needs Enterprise.

Below are eight alternatives, compared on the AI that answers for you and what each charges to take its badge off. We read every price on the vendor’s own pages on 23 September 2026, LiveChat’s and Text’s again on 13 October 2026, and each one links to where we read it. We read tawk.to’s AI credits again on 21 October 2026, and its badge price on 26 October 2026.

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’s pricing page now sells new customers Text plans. LiveChat calls Text “the next product from the team behind LiveChat”, with live chat, a shared inbox, ticketing and an AI agent in one workspace. Every plan is priced per user, and the page opens on yearly billing. Here are the plans with both prices.

The per-user price is the one to plan around. LiveChat’s FAQ says “every user who logs in to answer chats or tickets needs a seat”. There’s no minimum team size, so a founder can start alone on Essential. Three people on Growth pay $297 a month, or $237 a month billed yearly, by LiveChat’s own example.

The AI agent answers customers on every plan, and LiveChat counts it in AI resolutions. Its FAQ says a resolution is when “the AI directly solved a customer question”, and several questions in the same chat count as one. Essential includes 10 a month and Growth 200, and each package of 50 more costs $49.50. By our arithmetic, a founder alone on Essential month to month whose AI resolves 100 chats pays $25 plus two packages, $124 for the month.

Essential leaves several things to Growth. Chat topic insights, a weekly report of your customers’ top questions and trending topics, start on Growth, along with chat supervision, team performance reports and unlimited chat history. Taking “Powered by Text” off the widget needs Enterprise, whose list also holds SSO and SLAs. Website chat, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS and email come into the same inbox on every plan.

If you’re already a LiveChat customer, your plan and price stay as they are. LiveChat says the features on its Text pricing page, the AI agent among them, aren’t part of LiveChat plans, legacy ones included, so getting the AI agent means moving to a Text plan. Its older plans are still listed for current customers. Starter is $25 a person a month, or $19 billed yearly, for one user, Team $59 or $49 and Business $89 or $79, and that page’s FAQ says LiveChat charges “for every user account created, regardless of whether the user is logged in or not.”

Text, Inc. makes LiveChat, ChatBot.com and Text, and Text’s own pricing page lists the same Essential and Growth plans.

Deacon

Deacon is an AI customer support agent for founders who handle support themselves. LiveChat is built for a team that works the chat, with an AI agent beside them. Deacon is built for the founder with nobody in the chat, and answers your customers itself, in seconds, day or night, from your help pages, files and pasted text. A visitor can show it a screenshot or a document too, and Deacon reads it to answer what they’re showing it. You add one script tag, and there are no flows to build before it starts.

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, with a red count on the chat button if they’ve closed it. If they haven’t read it there a minute later, and gave their address in that conversation, the reply reaches them by email too.

LiveChat keeps chat topic insights, its weekly report of top customer questions, for Growth and up. Deacon shows you what your customers need on every plan, the free one included. 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. Each question your content didn’t cover also waits with an Answer this button, and every answer you write becomes part of what Deacon knows.

The plans differ only in answers, knowledge, pages from your website and seats, never by the person. Free gives you 50 answers a month and 1 seat, with no card and no end date. 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 there’s no “powered by” line on any plan.

Text

Text is the move LiveChat itself suggests if you’re on a LiveChat plan and want an AI agent that answers customers. 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. A reply costs 3 credits on Auto, the model new AI agents start on, so the free 100 cover about 33 replies, or 100 on a 1-credit model such as Gemini Flash, by tawk.to’s model guide. 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 $39 a month for each site, or $29 a month billed yearly. There’s more in tawk.to alternatives.

Tidio

Tidio charges by conversations rather than seats, so its bill follows how many conversations you have. Starter is $29 a month, or $24.17 billed yearly, for 100 conversations with your team, and the free plan covers 50 conversations a month with up to 10 seats. Email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger come into the same inbox, which suits an online shop.

Tidio sells its AI agent apart from the chat, where LiveChat puts one in every plan. Lyro 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, so check that setting if you pay month to month. The Tidio branding comes off with a $20 a month add-on on Growth, which starts at $59, rather than waiting for an Enterprise plan. There’s more in Tidio alternatives, and Tidio vs LiveChat sets the two side by side.

Crisp

Crisp is the most direct answer to LiveChat’s per-person bill, because it prices the whole workspace. Mini is $45 a month for the workspace with 4 seats, where LiveChat charges for every user who answers chats. That suits a small team that shares one inbox.

Mini also brings Crisp’s AI agent. Hugo answers on $5 of credits, which Crisp puts at around 90 automated conversations, and when the credits are spent, Hugo stops and chats go to your team unless you switch on Pay-As-You-Go. The free plan gives 2 seats, the shared inbox and the chat widget, with no AI. 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 still charges by the agent, as LiveChat does, but it starts with a free plan. That plan takes up to 10 agents, with a widget for your site and apps, a shared inbox and email, which suits a team that answers chats itself.

The paid plan adds its AI agent. 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, where LiveChat keeps its badge for Enterprise. There’s more in Freshchat pricing and Freshchat alternatives.

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 makes sense if your sales and marketing already run on it, because its chat sits beside your CRM. The free plan puts live chat on your site for up to 2 users, with ticketing and bots that follow rules you set. Like LiveChat, it then charges by the seat, and the chat carries HubSpot’s branding until Starter, at $10 a seat a month, or $7 billed yearly, marked down from $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.

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’re on a LiveChat plan and want its maker’s AI agent, LiveChat points you to Text, from the same company. If the per-person price is the problem, tawk.to gives live chat away and Crisp charges for the workspace. Tidio includes WhatsApp and Instagram in one inbox on every plan, which suits a shop selling online. Several of you answering chats can start free on Freshchat, which takes up to 10 agents. Intercom is built for a team that already works a helpdesk every day, and if your sales run on HubSpot, its chat sits beside your CRM. If it’s Drift you’re replacing rather than LiveChat, Drift alternatives covers what to move to, and if it’s Kayako’s helpdesk, Kayako alternatives prices six tools against its AI agent billed by the resolved ticket. If you’re choosing a first live chat tool rather than leaving LiveChat, live chat software for a small business website ranks eight for a small team.

If you answer support yourself and nobody can watch the chat all day, start with Deacon. It answers for you, and its plans aren’t priced by the person.

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’s pricing page now sells new customers Text plans, and calls Text the next product from the team behind LiveChat, with live chat, tickets and an AI agent in one workspace. Customers already on a LiveChat plan keep it. ChatBot.com now sells Text’s AI Agent on the same plans.

Does LiveChat have an AI chatbot?

Yes, for new customers. Every Text plan on LiveChat’s pricing page includes an AI agent that answers customers, from $25 a user a month on Essential, or $19 billed yearly, with 10 AI resolutions a month and a 14-day trial. Customers on an older LiveChat plan keep it, and LiveChat says getting the AI agent means moving to a Text plan.

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. Deacon takes your home page and main pages, such as pricing and help, from the website you sign up with, and learns from them by itself. You can untick any it picked, add a single page by its link, or upload PDF, Word (.docx), Markdown, text, CSV or HTML files of up to 10 MB each. Use Add section to turn each canned response into a section of your help document, with a title and its answer. Then swap LiveChat’s script for Deacon’s one tag. Your old chats stay in LiveChat.