Zendesk vs Zoho Desk, what each charges for seats and AI

Zendesk and Zoho Desk are both helpdesks priced per seat, and they bill their AI in completely different ways. Zendesk charges for each resolution its AI agent makes past an allowance. Zoho Desk runs its AI agents for free and charges for the model’s tokens, with 30 million a month free. Zoho also has a free edition, and Zendesk doesn’t. Here they’re compared on price, the AI and chat on your site. The third column is Deacon, an AI customer support agent for founders who answer support themselves. It has a free plan, and it needs no card.

Prices read in US dollars on zendesk.com/pricing and zoho.com/desk/pricing on 23 September 2026

How Zendesk and Zoho Desk bill for the AI

Zendesk counts resolutions

Zendesk sells seats by the agent and includes an AI allowance with each one. Its pricing page counts that allowance in automated resolutions, 5 an agent a month on Support Team and Suite Team, 10 on Suite Growth and Suite Professional and 15 on Suite Enterprise, up to 10,000 a year. Its help centre describes newer resolution tiers with the allowance held as money, $2 to $10 an agent a month by plan, up to $5,000 a year. Past the allowance, each resolution costs $2.00, or $1.50 if you commit in advance. You pay for outcomes, however long the conversation ran.

Zoho Desk counts tokens

Zoho Desk sells seats by the user, and its AI agents, Zia Agents, are free to run. You pay only for the language model behind them. Zoho’s own standard models are free up to 30 million tokens a month, and after that a million tokens costs $1.00, or $3.00 on its pro model, which has 20 million free. A token is a piece of a word, so the bill follows how much text the model reads and writes, not whether a customer’s problem was solved. The free tokens reset on the first of each month, while credits you buy roll over. With your own OpenAI, Anthropic or other key, Zoho charges nothing and the model’s vendor bills you.

The figures in these cards are from zendesk.com/pricing, Zendesk’s help centre, Zoho’s Zia Agents pricing and its guide to credits, read on 23 September 2026. Zendesk AI pricing works through a month of Zendesk’s AI for one or two agents.

Under the AI, the seats differ as much. Zendesk’s Support Team is $19 an agent a month billed yearly, or $25 monthly, for email and ticketing, and messaging and live chat start on Suite Team at $55 or $69. Zoho Desk’s Express is $7 a user a month billed yearly, or $9 monthly, Standard is $14 or $20, Professional $23 or $35 and Enterprise $40 or $50. Zoho’s page opens on yearly billing and picks your currency, and the dollar prices here are from its own price list.

Zoho’s AI is the cheaper meter on paper, but read the small print. Zoho’s help centre says AI agents for Desk are open to selected users in its US and India data centres, and you ask for them from inside the product. Its Answer bot replies from knowledge base articles, and the knowledge base starts on Standard. Zendesk’s AI agents are on every plan, but each one they settle past the allowance is another $2.00.

Zendesk, Zoho Desk and Deacon, point by point

Free plan

Zendesk
None. A 14-day trial of Suite Professional, with no card
Zoho Desk
The Free edition, for 3 users, with email ticketing and no end date. The 15-day trial needs no card and drops back to it
Deacon
50 answers a month on one seat, with every feature, no card and no end date

Cheapest paid plan

Zendesk
Support Team, $19 an agent a month billed yearly, or $25 monthly, for email and ticketing
Zoho Desk
Express, $7 a user a month billed yearly, or $9 monthly, for email, social channels, web forms and AI agents
Deacon
Starter, $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers on three seats

Chat on your website

Zendesk
Messaging and live chat from Suite Team, $55 an agent a month billed yearly, or $69 monthly
Zoho Desk
A live chat widget for signed-in customers from Standard, $14 a user a month billed yearly, or $20 monthly. Live chat from Zoho SalesIQ comes with Enterprise
Deacon
On every plan, the free one included

The AI that answers customers

Zendesk
AI agents on every plan, answering by email, and in chat once you have messaging
Zoho Desk
Zia Agents from Express, which Zoho says are open to selected users in its US and India data centres. Answer bot, which replies from your knowledge base articles, from Standard
Deacon
On every plan, answering from your own content in seconds

How the AI is billed

Zendesk
By the resolution. An allowance comes with each plan, then $2.00 each pay as you go, or $1.50 bought in advance
Zoho Desk
By the token. Up to 30 million a month free on Zoho’s standard models, then $1.00 per million. Bring your own key and Zoho charges nothing, and the model’s vendor bills you
Deacon
It isn’t billed on its own. Every reply is one of the plan’s answers, on the same model on every plan

Past the allowance

Zendesk
The AI keeps answering and the overage is billed monthly, unless you switch overage off. Then it pauses and conversations go to your agents
Zoho Desk
Tokens come out of a prepaid wallet of AI credits. Zoho’s pages don’t say what happens when the free tokens and the wallet both run out
Deacon
Nothing more is billed. 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

What the AI learns from

Zendesk
Your Zendesk help centre, plus outside content brought in by a web crawler or a knowledge connector
Zoho Desk
Your Zoho Desk knowledge base, which starts on Standard
Deacon
A crawl of your website or single pages, files (PDF, Word, Markdown, text, CSV or HTML), pasted text and the answers you write

Channels

Zendesk
Email and the web widget on every plan. Messaging, live chat, social channels and voice from Suite Team
Zoho Desk
Email, Instagram, Facebook, X and web forms from Express. WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, WeChat and Line from Standard, telephony from Professional
Deacon
The chat widget on your own website

Seats

Zendesk
Priced per agent on every plan
Zoho Desk
Priced per user. Light users, who read and comment, are $6 a month on Professional, and Enterprise includes 50 of them
Deacon
one seat on Free, three seats on Starter

Zendesk’s prices come from zendesk.com/pricing and Zoho Desk’s from zoho.com/desk/pricing and the price list behind it, all read on 23 September 2026. The other pages used are listed at the end.

When Zendesk fits, and when Zoho Desk does

Zendesk fits a support team that wants its AI working today on every channel. The AI agents are on every plan, answer from your help centre and outside content, and can act in other systems through integrations. Suite Team brings messaging, live chat, social channels and voice into one workspace, and the marketplace lists more than 1,800 apps. You choose whether the AI keeps answering past its allowance or hands the extra work to your agents.

Zoho Desk fits a team watching every dollar, or one that already runs on Zoho. The free edition covers 3 people on email, and Express starts at $7 a user a month billed yearly. The AI is billed for the tokens it uses, with a large free allowance, or through your own model key at no charge from Zoho. Standard adds a knowledge base, the Answer bot and chat for signed-in customers, and Enterprise adds Zoho SalesIQ’s live chat.

Both are helpdesks, built for people sharing a queue of tickets. If you’re a founder answering support between building, you may not need a helpdesk at all, and there’s a third option.

Deacon, when you want answers without a helpdesk

A helpdesk shares out work between people. When support is just you, the job is to stop answering the same questions by hand. Deacon does that on your website. It answers your visitors in seconds, at any hour and in the language they write in, from the content you already have, your site, your docs, files or text you paste in. There’s no knowledge base to rewrite inside a helpdesk first and no flows to build. When your content doesn’t cover a question, it says it doesn’t know instead of inventing an answer, and asks for the visitor’s email.

You get an email when a visitor leaves an address or asks for a person, and you reply from Deacon’s dashboard, straight into their chat if it’s still open. Then you answer that question once. Your answer becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it can answer the next person who asks, and Save & check shows you the reply it now gives and how many other open questions your answer covers. The more you answer, the less Deacon needs you.

It also shows you what customers need. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group the questions, count how many people asked and label most of them, for example as a feature ask, a bug report or a how-to, so you know what to fix and what to build next. The same script runs your website analytics, with visitors, sources, goals and funnels.

And the bill is one plan price. The AI is on every plan from the first day, with no resolutions or tokens to count and no request form, and every plan answers with the same model. Every feature is on every plan, the plans differ only in answers, knowledge, crawled pages and seats, and nothing is billed past a plan’s answers. No plan upgrades itself, there’s no “powered by” line on any of them, and the free plan needs no card, has no end date and deletes nothing for inactivity.

What buyers ask about Zendesk and Zoho Desk

On seats, yes, plan for plan. Zoho Desk’s Express is $7 a user a month billed yearly, or $9 monthly, and Standard is $14 or $20. Zendesk’s Support Team is $19 an agent a month billed yearly, or $25 monthly, and Suite Team is $55 or $69. Zoho also has a free edition for 3 users, and Zendesk has none. The AI is harder to compare, because Zendesk charges for each resolution past an allowance and Zoho charges for tokens past a free 30 million a month.

Yes. The Free edition gives 3 users email ticketing with no end date, and every paid plan starts with a 15-day trial that needs no card and drops back to the free edition when it ends. It doesn’t include live chat, a knowledge base or the Answer bot, which start on Standard. Zendesk has no free plan, only a 14-day trial.

Maybe not straight away. Zoho’s help centre says AI agents for Desk are available to selected users in its US and India data centres, opened incrementally, and you ask for them with a request form inside the product. The Answer bot, which replies from your knowledge base articles in your help centre, on web pages and in Zoho’s ASAP widget, starts on Standard.

Both set a price for each currency rather than converting. Zendesk’s own page data lists Support Team at £15 an agent a month billed yearly against $19. Zoho’s price list goes further, with separate dollar prices for Asia-Pacific and Africa, where Standard is $9 a month billed yearly against $14. The page picks a currency for you, and its selector switches to US dollars, which is what this page quotes.

A lot, if a team shares your support. Deacon is a chat widget for your own website, with no email inbox, phone line, WhatsApp or social channels. It isn’t a helpdesk, so there are no tickets, queues, routing or service levels, and it connects to no other system, where Zendesk’s marketplace alone lists more than 1,800 apps. If your customers write to you on those channels, or several people answer them, choose one of the two.

Where each figure was read

Every figure above was read on 23 September 2026, from these pages.

Try Deacon for free

Deacon answers your customers in seconds from your own content, admits when it doesn’t know, and shows you what they need next, with no helpdesk to run. Every feature is on the free plan, and it needs no card.

To see how Deacon learns from what you already have, see a knowledge base chatbot. Zendesk also meets Freshdesk, HubSpot, Salesforce, Gorgias and Tidio on pages of their own. Deacon is set against Zendesk directly in Deacon vs Zendesk, Zendesk competitors prices eight more helpdesks, and Deacon’s plans are on the pricing page.

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