Free tawk.to alternatives, compared on their AI

tawk.to gives its live chat away, so founders rarely leave it over price. They leave because free live chat still needs someone at the keyboard, and a founder can’t sit there all day. tawk.to’s answer is AI Assist, an add-on. Its free Hobby tier gives you 100 message credits a month, and every message the AI sends spends one. On Hobby the AI can’t escalate a chat to your team, since that starts on Growth at $29 a month. And the “Powered by tawk.to” badge costs another $29 a month for each site to take off.

So this list is about AI that answers on a free plan. Every alternative below has a free plan, and for each one we show what that plan’s AI does, whether it can bring a chat to you and what the badge costs. We read every figure on the vendor’s own pages on 23 September 2026, and each price links to where we read it.

Deacon comes first because it’s ours, and because it was made for the founder who answers support alone. It’s an AI customer support agent, so on the free plan the AI does the answering, 24/7 and in seconds, from your own docs. It hands you 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 free tawk.to alternatives

tawk.to is the last row, with its free AI tier beside the live chat.

What tawk.to gives away, and what its AI costs

tawk.to’s free plan is generous. Live chat, Chat Pages, a hosted knowledge base, ticketing and a CRM cost nothing, for as many teammates as you like, and its add-ons page says “99% of businesses use tawk.to entirely for free.” Its add-ons are priced per property, meaning per site, rather than per seat.

The AI is AI Assist, and tawk.to’s billing article lists four plans.

The AI answers visitors itself, from your knowledge base, your uploaded documents and pages it crawls. A credit is one message, and the same billing article says credits are spent “whenever it sends a message through channels, including Smart Reply and AI Commands”. A chat where the AI writes five times spends five. Testing it in AI Assist’s settings spends nothing.

Here’s where the free tier stops. tawk.to’s escalation guide says escalations come with paid AI Assist plans only, so the free AI can’t hand a visitor who needs you to your team. Running out works like this, from tawk.to’s article on message credits, which lists Hobby beside the paid plans. The AI finishes the conversations it’s already in, counts those messages as excess usage and takes them off your next balance, and it joins no new conversations until you buy more or the month resets. More credits cost $30 for every 1,000 and don’t expire, but only paid plans can buy them, and the article doesn’t say what that leaves Hobby to do. Automatic top-ups exist, but you have to switch them on.

The badge is the other cost. Whitelabel is $29 a month for each site, and it also puts your Chat Page and knowledge base on your own domain and sends ticket emails from your own address. Two more add-ons are on a waitlist, voice agents from $49 a month plus usage and data enrichment from $59 a month. tawk.to’s Why is tawk.to free? page also offers trained human agents at $1 an hour, though the add-ons page doesn’t list them.

Deacon

Deacon is an AI customer support agent for founders who answer support themselves. Free live chat asks you to be there when a visitor writes. Deacon answers them in seconds, at any hour, from your help pages, files and pasted text, and in whatever language they write in. You add one script tag, or give the install prompt to a coding agent such as Claude Code or Cursor, and there are no flows to build.

Each answer is written from what your content says, rather than from what the model picked up elsewhere. When your content doesn’t cover a question, Deacon says it doesn’t know instead of guessing, and asks for the visitor’s email. When a visitor leaves an address or asks for a person, you get an email. Reply from the dashboard, and if they still have the chat open, your reply appears there under your name. Deacon then stays out of that conversation until you hand it back.

The questions your docs didn’t cover are listed for you, each with an Answer this button. Write the answer once 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 every answer you write teaches it, and it needs you a little less each time.

It also turns your chats into customer insights. 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 bug report, a feature ask, a how-to and so on, so you can see what to fix and what to build next. The same script runs your website analytics, with visitors, sources, goals and funnels.

Every feature is on every plan, the free one included, and the plans differ only in answers, knowledge, crawled pages and seats. 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. At about two answers a conversation, that’s around 25 conversations a month. 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 reply to every conversation. There’s no “powered by” line on any plan, so there’s nothing to pay to remove.

Chatling

Chatling is the closest to what tawk.to’s free plan lacks, an AI that answers and live chat you can step into, both on the free plan. Free gives you 200 AI credits a month and one seat. A reply costs 0.5 to 25 credits depending on the model, and the free plan’s models cost 2.5 to 5, so 200 credits is 40 to 80 replies. Its handoff action ships switched off, so turn it on when you set up.

Starter is $25 a month, or $21 billed yearly, for 1,750 credits and 2 seats, and it adds WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. When the credits run out, visitors see an “Insufficient AI credits” error until you top up. Removing “Powered by Chatling” is a $35 a month add-on. It suits a founder who wants a little AI and a live chat in one free widget. There’s more in Chatling alternatives and Chatling pricing.

Tidio

Tidio is the nearest like-for-like swap for tawk.to’s live chat. Its free plan covers 50 conversations a month with 10 seats, and brings email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger into the same inbox.

The AI is Lyro, and the free plan gets 50 Lyro conversations once for the life of the account. After those, Lyro stops. Lyro on its own is $39 a month for 50 conversations, or $32.50 billed yearly, and Starter, for 100 conversations with your team, is $29 a month or $24.17 billed yearly. At the monthly limit, Tidio’s help centre says you can no longer respond to incoming messages until the quota resets or you upgrade. There’s more in Tidio alternatives, and Tidio vs tawk.to sets Lyro’s conversations against AI Assist’s message credits.

Chatbase

Chatbase suits you if you want the AI and don’t need live chat at all. It’s an AI agent builder, and its free plan answers from your content with 50 message credits a month for one member. A reply costs 1 to 6 credits depending on the model.

The free plan has limits worth knowing. Chatbase deletes a free agent after 14 days without use, and a handoff is an AI Action, which Free has none of. A live handover runs through its Helpdesk, which the pricing page lists from Standard at $150 a month. Hobby is $40 a month, or $32 billed yearly, for 700 credits, and removing “Powered By Chatbase” is a $99 a month add-on. There’s more in Chatbase alternatives.

Crisp

Crisp is a shared inbox with a chat widget, and its free plan is live chat for 2 seats with no AI credits. Hugo, its AI agent, starts on Mini at $45 a month for the whole workspace, with 4 seats and $5 of AI credits, which Crisp puts at around 90 automated conversations. Once the credits are spent, Hugo stops and chats go to your team, unless you switch on Pay-As-You-Go. The “We run on Crisp” watermark comes off on Plus, at $295 a month. It suits a small team that wants a tidy shared inbox first and some AI later. There’s more in Crisp chat alternatives.

Freshchat

Freshchat is the live chat from Freshworks, and its free plan takes up to 10 agents, with a widget for your site and apps, a shared inbox and email. There’s no AI on it. Freddy AI Agent starts on Growth, at $23 an agent a month or $19 billed yearly, with 500 sessions included once and then $49 for each 100. A session covers what a visitor says to the AI within 24 hours. Freshworks’ branding comes off the widget on any paid plan. It suits a team of several people answering chats who might add AI later.

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, such as creating a ticket or booking a meeting. 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, with a $1,500 onboarding fee, and costs $0.50 for each conversation it resolves. It makes sense if your sales already run on HubSpot.

Chatwoot

Chatwoot is the open source option, the one to look at if you searched for a tawk.to alternative you can host yourself. Its Community Edition is free to run on your own server, without Captain, its AI, and without custom branding. Its hosted Hacker plan is free for 2 agents and 500 conversations a month, on live chat only, and keeps your data for 30 days.

Captain AI starts on the hosted Startups plan, at $19 an agent a month, with 300 credits a month, and more cost $20 for each 1,000. Captain answers customers, drafts replies for your team and finds questions your help centre doesn’t answer yet. On the hosted plans, removing Chatwoot’s branding waits for Enterprise, at $99 an agent a month.

Which one fits you

Start from who you want answering the chat when you’re not there. Chatbot vs live chat weighs the two, and the setup in between.

If you want a free AI and a live chat to step into, Chatling has both on its free plan. If you want a busier free live chat with WhatsApp and Instagram in the inbox, Tidio is the closest swap. If you only want the AI, Chatbase answers from your content. If a few of you will answer chats yourselves, Crisp, Freshchat and HubSpot all have free live chat, and HubSpot adds a CRM. If you want to host it yourself, Chatwoot is open source. And if you want free live chat for a whole team and don’t need AI yet, tawk.to itself is hard to beat.

If you answer support yourself, start with Deacon. On the free plan the AI does the answering, from your docs and in seconds, brings you only the chats that need a person, and shows you what customers are stuck on and asking for. It needs no card.

Questions about tawk.to alternatives

Is there a free tawk.to alternative with AI?

Yes. Deacon’s free plan gives you 50 answers a month with every feature, handoff included, and no card. Chatling’s free plan has 200 AI credits a month with live chat, and Chatbase’s 50 message credits a month. Tidio’s free plan has 50 Lyro AI conversations, once. Crisp, Freshchat and Chatwoot’s free plans have no AI, and HubSpot’s free bots follow rules rather than answering from your content.

Is there an open-source alternative to tawk.to?

Yes. Chatwoot calls itself an open source, self-hosted customer support platform, and its Community Edition is free to run on your own servers, without its Captain AI or custom branding. tawk.to isn’t open source, and neither is Deacon, which is a hosted service with a free plan.

Is tawk.to really free?

Its live chat is. Live chat, ticketing, a knowledge base and a CRM are free for unlimited team members, and tawk.to makes its money from add-ons. AI Assist has a free tier with 100 message credits a month and paid plans from $29 a month, and removing the badge is $29 a month for each site. Its Why is tawk.to free? page also offers trained human agents at $1 an hour.

Does Deacon have ticketing and a knowledge base like tawk.to?

No. Deacon has no ticketing and doesn’t host a help centre for you. It reads the help pages, files and text you already have, answers from them, and lists the questions they don’t cover so you can answer them once. If you need free ticketing for a team, tawk.to and HubSpot include it.

Can a whole team use Deacon, as they can tawk.to?

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. tawk.to’s live chat has no seat limit. Deacon has no routing, assignment or rota, because it’s made for a founder or a small team rather than a support desk.

Can I move from tawk.to to Deacon?

Yes, by adding your content again, since there’s no import from tawk.to. If your tawk.to knowledge base is public, point Deacon at it and tick the pages it should learn from. Your shortcuts can go in as questions and answers with Add Q&A, and PDF, Word (.docx), Markdown, text, CSV or HTML files upload as they are, up to 10 MB each. Then swap tawk.to’s script for Deacon’s one tag. Your old chats stay in tawk.to.