Zoho Desk pricing per user, and what Zia AI costs

Zoho Desk pricing is per user, per month, over five editions. The free edition covers 3 users. 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. The AI is priced apart from the seats. Zia Agents, Zoho’s AI agents, cost nothing to build or run, and you pay for the language model behind them, with 30 million tokens a month free on Zoho’s standard models and $1.00 for each million after that. We read every figure in US dollars on Zoho’s pricing page, its edition comparison and its Zia Agents pages on 8 October 2026.

Deacon, which we make, isn’t a helpdesk. It’s an AI customer support agent that answers your customers on your website in seconds, from the pages, files and text you give it, and tells you what they keep asking. It suits a founder who answers support alone, and it has a free plan that needs no card.

Zoho Desk’s five editions side by side

From Standard up, each edition includes everything in the one before it. The paid ones are priced per user, and the price you pay depends on whether you commit to a year.

The prices are from the plan cards, and the user limits and channel counts from Zoho’s edition comparison. Zoho’s FAQ on the pricing page puts the 5-user cap on Standard rather than Express, so if you need six people on Standard, ask Zoho to confirm before you buy.

The page opens on yearly billing and says “save up to 34%”. By our sums that’s Professional, at $23 against $35. Yearly billing saves 22% on Express, 30% on Standard and 20% on Enterprise. Local taxes are added on top. Zoho takes Visa, Mastercard, American Express and PayPal, and a bank transfer or cheque for a yearly subscription. Its FAQ also mentions special pricing for non-profits and educational institutions, without a figure.

Two extras are priced per person or per department. Light agents can view tickets and leave comments without handling support, and they cost $6 a month each. The FAQ offers them on Professional and Enterprise, the comparison lists them from Standard, and Enterprise includes 50 free. Enterprise, which comes with 50 departments, can also buy more at $6 a department a month billed yearly, or $7 monthly, and the comparison gives a maximum of 450.

Why Zoho shows you rupees, pounds or a different dollar price

Zoho keeps a separate price for each currency in a file behind its pricing page, and a script picks the currency from the country you’re in. The HTML we were sent showed rupee figures until that script ran. We read the US dollar column of the price file behind the page’s currency switch, and checked it against the rupee figures in the HTML, which match the file’s rupee column.

That file also holds dollar columns marked for Africa and for Asia-Pacific, where prices are lower. Standard there is $9 a user a month billed yearly, rather than $14. The US prices on this page are the ones the switch shows under USD.

The free edition, and the 15-day trial

Zoho Desk’s free edition is marked Free Forever. It gives 3 users email ticketing from one support address and one web form. Social channels and workflow rules start on Express, and live chat and a public knowledge base on Standard.

Every paid edition comes with a 15-day trial, with no card needed, and you can switch editions during it. When the trial ends, the account drops back to the free edition rather than stopping. Zoho’s FAQ adds one catch for later. When you move to a paid edition, the 3 free user licences are no longer included.

Free ticketing systems sets Zoho Desk’s free edition beside the other free helpdesks, hosted and self-hosted.

Zia AI, priced by the token

Zoho splits its AI in two. Zia, built into Zoho Desk, handles things like summaries, reply suggestions and ticket tagging, and which parts you get depends on the edition. Zia Agents are AI agents you build or take ready-made, and Zoho charges for the model they run on, not for the agents.

Zoho’s model guide fills in how the bill works. Usage past the free allowance comes out of a prepaid wallet, at 1,000 AI credits to the dollar. Credits you buy roll over from month to month, while the free tokens reset on the 1st of each month and don’t. A new Zia Agents account gets $5 of credits. The guide’s own example is a team running GLM 5 through 25 million tokens in a month, which pays $15 for the 5 million past its free 20 million. Local taxes are added. Neither page says what happens when the free tokens and the wallet both run out.

Where the AI meets your customers depends on the edition.

• Express is where the pricing page first lists AI agents, with access to ready-made ones and up to 30 million free tokens a month. Zoho’s comparison splits it differently. It lists Zia Agent Studio, where you build agents, across every edition, and the ready-made Zoho Desk agents on Enterprise only, in its US and India data centres.
• Standard adds the Answer bot, which replies to customers and agents from your knowledge base articles in 30 languages. The public knowledge base it draws on starts on Standard too.
• Professional adds Zia’s own models for summaries, a ticket’s tone and writing help, where Express and Standard need your own API key for those.
• Enterprise puts the Answer bot inside the ASAP widget you embed on your site or app, adds chatbots on messaging channels such as WhatsApp and Business Messaging chat, and adds Guided Conversations, a low-code builder for scripted conversation flows.

So building your own agents costs nothing beyond the seats and the tokens, while the ready-made Desk agents and a bot that chats with customers in the ASAP widget or live chat come with Enterprise, at $40 a user a month billed yearly. AI help desks sets Zoho’s tokens beside the way other helpdesks bill their AI, by the resolution, the session or the conversation.

What one, three or five people pay

These are the seats alone, a month, before tax. Express stops at 5 users and the free edition at 3. The sums are ours, from the pricing page.

Tokens past the free 30 million a month go on top of any row, though Zoho’s guide says that for most teams the free allowance covers typical usage entirely.

For a founder who wants customers to chat on the website, Standard is the first edition with live chat, at $168 a year for one user billed yearly, and that chat is for signed-in customers. Zoho SalesIQ’s live chat and the Answer bot in the ASAP widget come with Enterprise, at $480 a year for one user. If your customers only email you, the free edition or Express covers it.

Zendesk vs Zoho Desk sets Zoho Desk’s seats and token meter against Zendesk’s plans and per-resolution AI. Freshdesk pricing, Help Scout pricing and Front pricing work through other helpdesks’ bills, and Zendesk alternatives and Freshdesk alternatives price Zoho Desk among the other helpdesks a small team picks.

Deacon, with no articles to write and no edition to climb

Zoho’s Answer bot replies from the knowledge base articles you write inside Zoho Desk, and that knowledge base starts on Standard. Deacon starts from what you’ve already written. It reads your website’s main pages, or the whole site on a paid plan, along with PDFs, Word documents and other files, and any text you paste in. Add its one script tag and its website chat widget answers from that content in seconds, in whatever language the visitor uses. Where your content has nothing on a question, it admits it doesn’t know rather than guessing, and asks the visitor for an email.

On Zoho Desk, a bot that chats with customers in the ASAP widget or live chat comes with Enterprise, at $40 a user a month billed yearly. Deacon has no editions to climb. Every feature is on every plan, the free one included, and the plans differ only in answers, knowledge, pages read from your website each month, and seats. The free plan has 50 answers a month and 1 seat, and needs no card and never expires. Starter is $40 a month on yearly billing, or $50 paid monthly, for 1,000 answers a month and 3 seats, and Growth is $120 a month on yearly billing, or $150 paid monthly, for 4,000 answers a month and 10 seats.

Zoho meters tokens, with a free allowance, a wallet of credits and a Pro tier that burns credits three times as fast. Deacon counts answers. An answer is one reply on your live site, and chats in the Playground, where you test it, are never counted. Every plan uses the same model, so an answer costs the same allowance whichever plan you’re on. You get an email at 80% and at 100% of the month’s answers. If they run out, nothing more is billed and no plan upgrades itself. Visitors get a plain reply saying Deacon can’t look into that one, and are asked for an email so you can follow up, unless they’ve already left one.

The questions your content didn’t cover become your list of what to add. Each one sits in Conversations with an Answer this button, and the answer you write there becomes a source Deacon answers from, with no help article to format. If a visitor asks for a person, you reply from the dashboard and it appears in their chat while it’s open. Topics group what people ask and count how many asked each thing, so you can see what to fix or build next.

Zoho Desk pricing questions

Is Zoho Desk free?

Yes, for up to 3 users. The free edition gives email ticketing from one support address and one web form, with no end date. It has no social channels or live chat. Express, the cheapest paid edition, is $7 a user a month billed yearly, or $9 monthly, for up to 5 users.

How much does Zoho Desk cost per user?

From $7 a month on Express billed yearly to $50 on Enterprise billed monthly. Standard is $14 or $20, and Professional $23 or $35. Light agents, who only view tickets and comment, are $6 a month each, and Enterprise includes 50 of them.

Does Zoho Desk charge for AI?

Not for the agents themselves. Zia Agents are free, and you pay for the model they run on. Zoho’s standard models are free up to 30 million tokens a month, then $1.00 per million, and with your own OpenAI, Gemini or Claude key, Zoho charges nothing and the vendor bills you. The catch is the edition. The Answer bot starts on Standard, and a bot answering in the ASAP widget or the live chat on your site needs Enterprise.

Can I pay for Zoho Desk monthly?

Yes, on every paid edition, at $9, $20, $35 and $50 a user against $7, $14, $23 and $40 billed yearly. Zoho takes cards and PayPal, and a bank transfer or cheque for a yearly subscription.

Should I use Deacon instead of Zoho Desk?

It depends which part of Zoho Desk you’d be paying for. If it’s a bot answering customers on your website, Deacon does that on its free plan, from your existing pages and files, where Zoho puts its bot in the ASAP widget and live chat on Enterprise. If it’s the helpdesk, Deacon doesn’t replace it. Zoho Desk handles email from several addresses, social channels, WhatsApp and telephony, with tickets and assignment rules, on the editions that include them. Deacon has no tickets, no support inbox for email, no social, WhatsApp or phone channels and no integrations, so nothing connects it to Zoho CRM, and it always declines questions about a visitor’s own account.