tawk.to pricing, and what free really costs

tawk.to pricing starts at $0. The live chat, inbox, knowledge base and CRM are free, with no limit on team members, and tawk.to charges only for add-ons, each priced per property rather than per seat. AI Assist, its AI agent, has a free tier of 100 message credits a month and paid plans from $29 a month, or $290 a year. Removing the “Powered by tawk.to” badge is $29 a month billed yearly, or $39 month to month. We read every figure on tawk.to’s add-ons page and help centre on 25 September 2026.

So the real question is what the extras add up to. For a founder who wants the AI able to hand chats over and the badge gone, it’s $68 a month, or $53.17 a month billed yearly, by our sums below.

Deacon is ours. It’s an AI customer support agent for founders who answer support themselves. It answers your customers from your own docs and hands you the chats that need a person, on every plan, and its free plan needs no card and has no end date.

What tawk.to gives you for free

tawk.to says 99% of businesses use it entirely for free, and the free product is broad. Its FAQs promise “no limits at all on the number of Agents, chat volumes or sites you can add widgets to”. Live chat, an omnichannel inbox, chat pages, a knowledge base and a CRM all come with no card and no time limit.

What free doesn’t give you is someone to answer. Live chat only helps while a person is at the keyboard, and tawk.to’s own letter on its Why is tawk.to free? page says the cost of staffing chat around the clock, not the software, is the biggest barrier for businesses. Its paid extras are its answer to that, starting with an AI that replies for you. The “Powered by tawk.to” badge stays on unless you pay to remove it.

tawk.to’s add-ons and what each costs

The add-ons page lists four add-ons. Each is bought per property, which is usually one website, so two sites pay twice.

The add-ons page’s FAQ says add-ons “are billed monthly”, but tawk.to’s help centre offers AI Assist and Whitelabel on yearly billing too. A year of AI Assist costs ten months’ price.

Two older ways to pay still show on tawk.to’s own pages. Its founder’s letter on the Why is tawk.to free? page offers hired chat agents at $1 an hour, though the add-ons page doesn’t list them and the old page for hiring them now leads to the add-ons page. Customer support outsourcing compares what people charge to answer for you. The help centre also still describes a Video + Voice + Screensharing add-on, bought per property in the dashboard, with no price on any page we read.

AI Assist plans and message credits

AI Assist has four plans. Every figure here is from tawk.to’s AI Assist billing article.

Growth also adds 1,000 API calls for integrations, Business 5,000 and Enterprise 10,000.

A credit is one message AI Assist sends. That covers the AI agent’s replies to visitors, and also Smart Reply and AI Commands, the AI tools your team uses in its own replies. Testing in AI Assist’s settings is free. The plan’s credits reset at each renewal and don’t carry over.

On Hobby, the AI can’t hand a chat to you. tawk.to’s getting started guide marks the escalation settings, and the schedule for when the AI agent answers, as paid plans only, and the billing article lists “Escalations to human agents” from Growth.

An upgrade adds the new plan’s credits at once, and the old plan’s stay until your next billing date. A downgrade takes effect on the next billing date.

When AI Assist runs out of credits

Past its credits, AI Assist “will continue existing conversations”, but “will not join new conversations until you purchase more credits or your monthly subscription credits reset”, by tawk.to’s article on message credits. The messages it sends in the meantime count as excess usage, and they come off your next balance.

Extra credits cost $30 for each 1,000, bought 1,000 at a time and on paid plans only. Unlike the plan’s own credits, they don’t expire and they roll over. Auto top-up buys more whenever your balance drops below a threshold you set.

What a small team pays for tawk.to with AI and no badge

Here’s what the free product costs for one website once you add the AI and take the badge off. The sums are ours, from tawk.to’s add-ons page and help centre, and a yearly column shows the whole year’s price spread over 12 months.

Nothing here is priced per seat, so a team of five pays what a team of one does. A second website doubles every paid line.

Volume is what moves the bill after that. Across 1,053 conversations Deacon answered, measured on 22 September 2026, a conversation ran to 1.95 replies, so call it 2.

By that measure, Growth’s 1,000 credits cover about 500 conversations if the AI does all the answering, fewer if your team also uses Smart Reply, and each 1,000 credits more is $30. There’s a wider look at how AI agents are priced in how much an AI chatbot costs.

Deacon, for the founder who can’t sit at the chat

tawk.to’s software is free because answering is the expensive part, and it expects a person to do it or an add-on to help. A founder can’t sit at the chat all day, and on tawk.to’s free AI tier the AI can’t pass a chat to you. Deacon is built for that founder.

You add one script tag and point Deacon at your help pages, files or pasted text, and it answers your customers in seconds, day or night. When your content doesn’t cover a question, it says it doesn’t know instead of guessing, and asks for the visitor’s email. Handing a chat to you works on every plan, the free one included. You’re emailed when a visitor leaves an address or asks for a person, and your reply from Deacon’s dashboard appears in their chat under your name while it’s still open.

Every question your docs didn’t cover waits in the dashboard with an Answer this button, and every answer you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it needs you less over time. Topics group what people ask and count them, so you can see what to fix and what to build next.

Every feature is on every plan. Free is 50 answers a month for 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, so there’s no badge to pay to remove.

Questions about tawk.to pricing

Is tawk.to really free?

Yes. The live chat and the rest of the platform are free, with no card, no time limit and no cap on agents, chats or websites. tawk.to makes its money from optional add-ons, and says 99% of businesses never pay for any.

How much does tawk.to cost a month?

Nothing, unless you add something. AI Assist is $29, $99 or $399 a month for 1,000, 5,000 or 20,000 message credits, and removing the badge is $39 a month, or $29 a month billed yearly. Each is priced per property.

Does tawk.to’s free AI hand chats to a person?

No. Escalation to your team is on paid AI Assist plans only, from Growth at $29 a month. On the free Hobby tier, AI Assist answers from 100 credits a month and can’t pass a chat to your team.

What happens when AI Assist runs out of credits?

It finishes the conversations it’s already in and joins no new ones until you buy more credits, at $30 for 1,000, or your plan’s credits reset. Anything it sends past zero comes off your next balance.

Do I pay for tawk.to per website?

Per property, which is usually one website. Every add-on is bought for one property, so AI Assist and Whitelabel on two sites cost twice as much. Seats are never counted.

Can Deacon replace tawk.to?

If you want the repeat questions answered for you and the rest brought to you, yes. Deacon answers from your docs and hands you the chats that need a person, on every plan. It isn’t a free live chat suite, though. It has no ticketing, no CRM, no Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS or Telegram, no voice agent and no hired agents, and it never starts a conversation. tawk.to alternatives compares eight tools with a free plan, Tidio vs tawk.to sets tawk.to beside Tidio, and chatbot vs live chat sets out which one your site needs.