Crisp, LiveChat, Tawk.to and Freshchat all put a chat window on your website. What separates them is the meter: one charges a flat fee per workspace, one charges for every agent seat, one is free and sells add-ons, and one charges per seat plus per AI session. If you are pricing an Intercom alternative, that meter — not the widget — is what your bill will follow.
Essentials workspace, 10 seats included. Mini is $45/mo for 4 seats; Plus is $295/mo for 20.
Team plan, billed annually — the first tier a real team can use. Starter ($19) is limited to one seat.
Core platform free with unlimited agents and chats. Paid add-ons are billed per website, from $29/mo.
Growth plan, billed annually. Free plan covers up to 10 agents; AI sessions are billed on top.
| Crisp | LiveChat | Tawk.to | Freshchat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How you are billed | Flat per workspace, seats included | Per agent seat | Free core; add-ons per website (property) | Per agent seat, plus per AI session |
| Free option | Yes — 2 seats, basic chat | No free plan — 14-day trial | Yes — the whole core platform, unlimited agents | Yes — up to 10 agents, web chat and inbox |
| Paid plans | Mini $45/mo (4 seats), Essentials $95/mo (10), Plus $295/mo (20, extra seats $10) | Starter $19/agent/mo (1 seat only), Team $49, Business $79 — annual billing | No paid core plan. Add-ons from $29/mo per property | Growth $19/agent/mo, Pro $49, Enterprise $79 — annual billing |
| How AI is charged | Hugo AI credits included ($5 / $25 / $75 worth by tier, roughly 90 / 450 / 1,350 conversations), then pay-as-you-go at roughly $0.05–$0.10 per conversation | Assist features included in the seat. Autonomous answers need ChatBot by Text: from $19/user/mo with 10 resolutions included, or $79 with 200; extra resolutions $0.99 each | AI Assist add-on from $29/mo per property. A small free allowance (100 message credits), then tiers by message credits — credits are spent per AI-generated message, not per resolved chat | Freddy AI Agent: first 500 sessions free once per account, then $49 per 100 sessions ($0.49 per session). A session is one customer's AI conversation within 24 hours, billed whether or not it resolves the question. Copilot assist is a separate $29/agent/mo add-on |
| Chat history | Unlimited data retention from Mini upwards | 60 days on Starter; unlimited from Team upwards | Kept indefinitely, including on the free platform | Retention period is not stated on the public pricing page — confirm before you rely on it |
| Japanese support | Widget localized in 50+ languages including Japanese, with built-in real-time translation (LiveTranslate) | Widget localized in 48 languages including Japanese; message content is not translated in the core product — language-specific agent groups are the intended setup | Widget can be localized for Japanese visitors; the depth of Japanese AI answering depends on the knowledge base you build | Agent interface, visitor messenger and bot flows all offer a Japanese locale; Freddy AI publishes support for 60+ languages |
| Trade-off to know | Step pricing: the 5th seat pushes you from $45 to $95, the 11th from $95 to $295 | The advertised $19 tier fits exactly one person; every real team starts at $49 per agent, and autonomous AI is a second subscription | "Free" carries Tawk.to branding until you pay $29/mo per site to remove it, and costs scale with the number of sites, not people | Two meters run at once — seats and AI sessions — and the 500 free sessions do not renew monthly |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. LiveChat and Freshchat headline prices assume annual billing; monthly billing is higher. Intercom, the reference point many readers are leaving, charges per seat plus $0.99 per Fin AI resolution — the four tools above each avoid at least one half of that stack. Plans change — always confirm the current price and what is included on the vendor's site before you buy.
Pricing pages show unit prices. Bills show totals. Here is the same small site priced four ways, using only the published prices above: 5 agents, 1,000 chats a month, 500 of them handed to AI, annual billing.
| Setup | The maths | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crisp Essentials | $95 workspace (10 seats included) + about $3 of AI usage beyond the included credits | ≈ $98 | ≈ $1,176 |
| LiveChat Team + ChatBot | 5 × $49 seats = $245, plus ChatBot Growth $79 (minimum one user, 200 resolutions included), plus 300 extra resolutions × $0.99 = $297 | $621 | $7,452 |
| Tawk.to | $0 core + AI Assist $29 + branding removal $29, both per property — if your AI volume fits the included message credits | $0–$58 | $0–$696 |
| Freshchat Growth | 5 × $19 seats = $95, plus 500 Freddy sessions × $0.49 = $245 in a steady-state month (the one-time 500 free sessions are already used) | $340 | $4,080 |
| For reference: Intercom | 5 × $85 Advanced seats = $425, plus 500 Fin resolutions × $0.99 = $495 | $920 | $11,040 |
Three things this example makes visible. First, the gap — roughly $1,200 to $7,500 a year for the same workload — comes from structure, not discounts: whether AI sits inside the seat price, inside a workspace allowance, or on its own meter. Second, Freshchat's $0.49 is charged per session, not per solved problem, so your cost per resolved conversation depends on how many sessions actually resolve. Third, Tawk.to is the mirror image of the others: its costs grow with the number of websites you run, not the number of people or chats. A two-person, one-site shop and a twelve-person, one-site shop pay Tawk.to the same.
At the small end the steps matter just as much. With 2 agents and no AI, LiveChat cannot use its $19 Starter tier at all — it is capped at one seat — so a pair starts at 2 × $49 = $98/mo, while Crisp and Freshchat both have free tiers that fit two agents, and Tawk.to is $0.
Crisp sells one workspace, not a stack of seats. Free ($0) covers 2 seats and basic website chat. Mini ($45/mo) covers 4 seats with a shared email inbox and unlimited data retention. Essentials ($95/mo) covers 10 seats and is where the product becomes complete: omnichannel inbox (chat, email, WhatsApp, Messenger and more), workflow automation, a knowledge base and the Hugo AI agent. Plus ($295/mo) covers 20 seats, with extra seats at $10 each. Human conversations are unlimited on every tier; the AI agent works from included credits ($25 worth on Essentials, roughly 450 conversations) and then bills by usage at a few cents per conversation. The widget speaks 50+ languages including Japanese, and LiveTranslate translates messages in real time, which suits a small team answering Japanese visitors in another language.
LiveChat is the longest-running dedicated chat product here, and it prices like a specialist: strictly per agent. Starter ($19/agent/mo billed annually, $25 monthly) is limited to a single seat, tracks 100 visitors and keeps chat history for 60 days. Team ($49/agent/mo annual, $59 monthly) is the realistic starting point for any team, with unlimited history and 400 tracked visitors. Business ($79/agent/mo annual) adds advanced reporting and staffing tools. There is no permanent free plan, only a 14-day trial. One distinction matters more than any feature: the AI inside the seat price assists your agents (reply suggestions, summaries). An AI that answers customers on its own is a separate product, ChatBot by Text, with its own per-user price and a $0.99 charge per resolution beyond a small included allowance. The widget localizes into 48 languages including Japanese, but plan for native-speaking agent groups rather than built-in translation of message content.
Tawk.to inverts the usual model: live chat, a shared inbox, ticketing, a knowledge base and a contact pipeline are free, with no limit on agents, chats or websites, and chat history is kept indefinitely. The vendor's own add-ons page puts the model plainly — most businesses use it entirely for free, and revenue comes from the minority who buy add-ons. Those add-ons are billed per property (per website), not per person: removing the "Powered by tawk.to" branding is $29/mo, and AI Assist starts at $29/mo, with a small free allowance of 100 message credits. Note how the AI meter works: credits are spent per AI-generated message, so a long back-and-forth conversation costs more than a short one — it is not priced per resolved chat. Optional extras such as voice agents and data enrichment sit on top for sites that want them.
Freshchat is Freshworks' messaging product, and its free plan is the widest seat offer here: Free ($0) covers up to 10 agents with a web and mobile widget, a shared inbox and email. Paid tiers are per agent: Growth ($19/agent/mo billed annually, $23 monthly), Pro ($49, $59 monthly) and Enterprise ($79, $95 monthly), adding social channels, routing and reporting as you climb. The AI layer, Freddy AI Agent, is where careful reading pays. Paid plans include 500 sessions once per account — not every month — and after that you buy sessions at $49 per 100. A session means all of one customer's AI interaction within 24 hours, and it is charged whether the AI solved the problem or handed it to a human. Agent-side help (Freddy AI Copilot) is a further add-on at $29/agent/mo on Pro and Enterprise. For Japanese sites, Freshchat is the most completely localized of the four on paper: agent interface, visitor messenger and bot flows all include Japanese, and Freddy publishes 60+ language support.
Write down two numbers: how many people will answer chat, and how many chats you get a month. Per-seat tools bill the first number, AI meters bill the second, flat tools bill neither until you cross a tier. Most bad purchases come from estimating only one of the two.
Help drafting replies is included almost everywhere. An agent that answers alone at 2 a.m. is a different purchase: included credits on Crisp, a second product on LiveChat, an add-on on Tawk.to, a session meter on Freshchat. Price that specific job, not the word "AI" on the pricing page.
How long are chats kept — 60 days, indefinitely, or unstated? And what does the next seat cost: nothing inside a Crisp tier, a full extra seat on LiveChat and Freshchat, or a whole tier jump at Crisp's boundaries? These two lines decide year-two costs more than the entry price does.
Tawk.to, Crisp and Freshchat all let you run real chats for $0; LiveChat offers a 14-day trial. Put the widget on one real page, handle a week of genuine conversations, and watch which meter — seats, sessions, credits or properties — your own traffic actually touches.
Per-seat pricing charges for each agent who can log in, whether they handle ten chats or a thousand — LiveChat and Freshchat work this way. Per-conversation (or per-session / per-resolution) pricing charges for usage: Freshchat bills per AI session, and Intercom's Fin bills per resolution. Crisp mostly avoids both meters for human chat by charging a flat fee per workspace, and Tawk.to charges neither for its core, billing add-ons per website instead.
On its published terms, yes: the core platform is free with unlimited agents and chats, and history is kept indefinitely. The business model, stated on its own add-ons page, is that most users never pay and a minority buy add-ons — branding removal, AI Assist, voice agents and data enrichment, each billed per website. So "free" is the product, and the add-ons are the shop attached to it.
Usually the bill structure. Intercom charges per seat ($29–$132 per seat per month on annual billing) and then adds $0.99 for every conversation its Fin AI resolves. A team that grows on both axes — more agents and more AI answers — pays both meters at once. Each tool here removes at least one: Crisp flattens the seat side, Tawk.to removes both for human chat, and LiveChat and Freshchat keep seats but price the overall package lower for many team sizes.
All four can show a Japanese widget. The differences are behind it: Freshchat localizes the agent interface and bot flows into Japanese as well, Crisp adds real-time translation so agents can answer in another language, LiveChat expects you to route Japanese chats to Japanese-speaking agent groups, and with Tawk.to the quality of Japanese AI answers depends on the knowledge base content you provide. If your team answers in Japanese natively, widget localization may be all you need; if it doesn't, Crisp's translation or Freshchat's localized agent side matter more.
No tool on this page promises that, and neither do we. Live chat gives visitors a way to ask before they leave; whether that turns into sales or resolved questions depends on your staffing, your answers and your site. What you can verify before paying is the cost structure — seats, sessions, history and AI meters — which is what this guide compares.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published specifications and pricing — based on publicly available vendor information, not hands-on testing. Where a judgment appears (for example, that a one-seat "starter" tier is not a team plan), it follows directly from the published limits shown next to it, so you can check the reasoning yourself.