how much does live chat cost? free, cheap and per seat
How much does live chat cost? For a small team, anywhere from $0 to well over $100 a month, and the number on the pricing page is rarely the number on the invoice. This post lays out the four ways chat tools charge, runs them for a team of three on one site and on three sites, and shows what a “free” plan costs you in things that aren’t money.
Every rival price below comes from that vendor’s own page, linked, as we checked it for our comparison pages between 2026-09-28 and 2026-10-02. Prices move, so click through before you buy. And yes, we sell one of these. Spookat is priced per site. We’ll say where that wins and where it doesn’t.
the four ways live chat is priced
free, with a catch
The chat costs nothing. The money comes from add-ons, upgrades and caps. Tawk.to gives you the core product free, with unlimited agents, chats and sites, and sells add-ons per site from $29 a month. Tidio’s free plan covers 50 conversations a month with their branding. Smartsupp’s covers 1 operator, 25 conversations a month and 14 days of history. Crisp’s gives you 2 seats, their branding and no AI.
per seat
You pay for every person who can answer. Intercom Essential is $39 per seat a month (their pages also show $19 to $29 billed yearly). LiveChat Starter is $25 a month per person, $19 billed yearly. Chatwoot’s cloud Startups plan is $19 per agent a month.
A close cousin is the tier with a seat cap: one price per workspace, but only so many people. Crisp Mini is $45 a month per workspace, with seats capped per plan. Smartsupp Solo is $24 a month for 1 operator.
Either way, each new person who could answer is a line on the invoice, so teams add fewer people. The one who actually knows how refunds work stays out of the tool. That’s the seat tax.
per conversation or per AI answer
Some tools count chats. Tidio Starter is $29 a month for 100 conversations.
And the AI is metered too. Intercom’s Fin is $0.99 per outcome. LiveChat’s AI agent lives in their separate Text product at $0.99 per resolution. Tidio’s Lyro add-on starts at $39 a month for 50 AI conversations. Tawk.to’s AI Assist is $29 a month for 1,000 messages, then $30 per 1,000 more.
The pattern: a good month costs more, and the better the bot works, the bigger the bill.
per site
One price per website, whoever answers and however often. That’s us. Spookat charges per site, every teammate is included, and chats are unlimited on every paid plan. More on our numbers below.
live chat cost for a team of three, one site
Three people who might answer, one website, monthly billing, the cheapest plan each tool sells that fits three people:
| tool | plan | a month | what’s not in that number |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intercom | Essential, 3 × $39 | $117 | Fin, $0.99 per outcome. Removing their logo starts on Advanced |
| LiveChat | Starter, 3 × $25 | $75 | Their Slack app, $5 per agent a month |
| Chatwoot cloud | Startups, 3 × $19 | $57 | AI credits: 300 a month, then $20 per 1,000 |
| Smartsupp | Plus, up to 3 operators | from $35 | Their logo can’t be removed on any plan |
| Tidio | Starter, up to 10 seats | $29 | Capped at 100 conversations |
| Tawk.to | free | $0 | Their logo. Removing it is an add-on from $29 a month |
| Spookat | starter | $4.99 in early access, $9.99 after | A small “powered by” link. Chats unlimited |
Now hire a fourth person. Intercom goes up by $39, LiveChat by $25, Chatwoot by $19. Smartsupp’s Plus tops out at 3 operators, so you move up a tier. Tidio and Spookat don’t change.
That’s the whole argument against seats in one row: the bill tracks the size of your team, not the value of the chat. A team of three that answers fast and a team of three that ignores the chat pay exactly the same, and the fourth person is a budget meeting.
same three people, three sites
This is where the models split again.
Seat-priced tools charge for people, not domains. Whether three sites fit in one workspace depends on the product and the plan. We didn’t verify that for each tool, so check it before you count on it.
Per-site add-ons multiply. Tawk.to stays free on all three, but removing the branding is a per-site add-on: 3 × $29 is $87 a month just to drop the logo.
Widget caps bite. Chatlio Starter is $29 a month for 2 operators and 1 widget. Social Intents Lite is $29 a month for 1 seat and 1 widget. Three people on three sites means a bigger tier on both.
Some tools are built for many sites. GhostChat’s Team plan is $25 a month for unlimited sites and 10 seats, with the logo removed. On three sites that’s about what our starter costs after early access, with a cap of 10 people where we have none. If you don’t need Slack, it’s a fair pick.
Spookat charges each site its plan, and once one site on your account pays full price, every other site you pay for through Spookat is 30% off, for as long as it’s paid. On starter after early access: one site at $9.99, two at 30% off. The pricing calculator adds it up for any mix of plans.
what a free live chat plan really costs
A free plan beats no chat. If $0 is the budget, take one. Just know where the meter is, because a free plan exists to become a paid one, and it isn’t free in every currency.
Your page carries their logo. Tawk.to, Tidio, Crisp, Smartsupp and GhostChat all show their branding on the free plan. On Smartsupp it stays on every plan.
The caps hit on your best day. 50 conversations a month on Tidio. 25 a month and 14 days of history on Smartsupp. 2 seats on Crisp. 1 site, 1 seat and 30 days of history on GhostChat. The month you run out is the month people were actually asking.
Your visitors pay in bytes and cookies. Tawk.to sets a visitor ID cookie kept 6 months on page load, and its widget loaded 13 requests and about 220 kb gzipped of scripts before anyone clicked when we measured it on 2026-09-26. Cookies before consent can mean a cookie banner. Which chat widgets set what is in our cookie test, and your lawyer knows what applies to your site.
The AI is the upsell. Crisp’s free plan has no AI at all. Where a bot is on offer, that’s where the per-answer meter lives.
where spookat lands
Per site, per month:
- starter: $4.99 if you subscribe in early access (until 30 November 2026), $9.99 after. 30 days of history.
- pro: $14.99 in early access, $19.99 after. 90 days of history, email follow-up when a visitor leaves, your own AI agent, no “powered by”.
- agency: $49.99, with no early price because it never goes up. 365 days of history, chat on your own domain, routing, custom CSS.
An early price stays yours while you stay subscribed, on every plan you switch to. Yearly billing gives you two months free.
What every paid plan has: unlimited teammates, unlimited chats, answers in a Slack thread or in our inbox and its phone app. The launcher makes 0 requests to our API before a visitor clicks, sets no cookies, and we never store an IP address.
What we don’t have: a bot of our own and a per-answer fee. On pro you plug in your own AI agent, it bills you at your model’s price, and a thousand agent answers cost the same as none. We also don’t have a free plan. You get 14 days of pro, no card. After that, with no plan, the chat stays on your site but your team can’t reply until you pick one.
when spookat is the wrong pick
We’d rather lose you here than in month two.
- You want WhatsApp, Messenger and email in one inbox. Crisp, Tidio, Smartsupp and Tawk.to do that, per their pages. We only do the chat on your website.
- You want a hosted bot that answers without you building anything. Intercom’s Fin, Tidio’s Lyro and Crisp’s Hugo are that. With us, you bring the agent.
- You run a support desk with SLAs, ticketing, shifts and reports. Intercom and LiveChat are built for it.
- The budget is $0, forever. Tawk.to’s free plan is the honest answer.
- You want to host it yourself. Chatwoot’s Community Edition is open source and free to run on your own server.
- Your team lives in Microsoft Teams or Google Chat. Social Intents answers from there.
If none of those is you, and your team is on Slack or would rather answer from a phone than from another dashboard, per site is the model that doesn’t grow with your team.
how to price any live chat in five minutes
Run this on any tool, ours included:
- Count the people who should be able to answer, not the ones who will. Multiply by the seat price.
- Count your sites. Check what each one costs: a plan, an add-on, a widget slot.
- Take your busiest month, not your average one. Check the conversation cap.
- Find the AI price per answer, and what happens if you turn the AI off.
- Find the plan that removes their logo, and the plan that keeps the history you need.
- Load the widget with DevTools open and count the cookies before anyone clicks.
Then compare the number at the bottom, not the number on the card.
Try per site on your own site: 14 days of pro, no card. Prices for every plan are on /pricing.