Best Intercom alternatives in 2026: 10 cheaper options, with or without Fin

Your Intercom bill has two lines, and both keep climbing. Seats grow with every hire, and Fin outcomes at $0.99 each grow with every busy week. For 10 agents on Advanced with 500 outcomes, that's $1,345 a month before Copilot.

Below are 10 cheaper Intercom alternatives for teams of 5 to 30 agents, with the real monthly bill and AI pricing. Deskwoot is ours, so it comes first, downsides included.

Quick answer: the best Intercom alternatives for a team of 10

Monthly bill: 10 agents with 2,000 conversations a month, AI working on 1,000 of them and settling 500 without a person, annual billing where the page shows it. Prices come from each vendor's pricing page, in US dollars, checked on October 28, 2026. Intercom Advanced costs $1,345 for the same month.

Before you pick, decide which move you need

Look at which line on the invoice hurts. That decides the move.

Replace all of Intercom

Do this when both lines hurt and your team uses Intercom mostly as an inbox with a chat widget. It saves the most and takes the most work.

History, the help center, saved replies and the bot's training all have to move. The full help desks and the chat tools below are for this move.

Keep Intercom and change only the AI

Do this when the seat price is fine, or when your product team depends on tours and messages inside your app. The levers are on your own invoice:

• buy Copilot only for agents who go past the 10 free Copilot conversations a month
• look hard at which channels are worth $0.99 an outcome

If you have an enterprise budget and want a different AI agent, Decagon's own list of Intercom alternatives opens with Decagon, Sierra and Ada. For smaller teams, our customer service chatbot ranking compares more of the field.

Keep Fin and change the help desk

Do this when Fin works well for you and the seats are the problem.

According to Fin's pricing page, checked October 28, 2026, Intercom sells Fin on other help desks at $0.99 per outcome, with a minimum of $49 a month that covers 50 outcomes, and no seat costs.

The page names Zendesk, Salesforce, HubSpot, Freshdesk, Front, Gorgias, Zoho, Dixa and Sprinklr. Your AI line stays where it is and only the seat line gets cheaper, so check that your new desk is on that list before you plan around it.

Why teams look elsewhere

Seats and Fin outcomes billed separately

According to Intercom's pricing page, checked October 28, 2026, seats cost this much a month on annual billing:

• Essential: $29 per seat (new customers get 35% off, so $19)
• Advanced: $85
• Expert: $132

Fin comes on top at $0.99 per outcome on every plan. Intercom counts an outcome when:

• the customer confirms the problem is solved
• the customer asks for nothing more after Fin's reply
• Fin finishes a Procedure (one of its scripted workflows), and a handoff to your team at the end of a Procedure counts too

You pay once per conversation, however many questions Fin answered in it. By that definition, a customer who reads Fin's answer and closes the tab costs the same as one who writes "thanks".

So the bill moves on two axes. Hire 3 agents and the seat line moves; have a launch week and the outcome line moves.

Both are fair prices for what they buy, and both are hard to forecast for finance.

One point in Intercom's favor: Advanced includes 20 free Lite seats and Expert 50, for teammates who only collaborate internally. On most tools below, everyone who replies to customers needs a paid seat.

Copilot beyond a small free allowance

Every Intercom agent gets 10 Copilot conversations a month for free. After that, Copilot costs $29 per agent a month billed annually, or $35 billed monthly, for unlimited use.

An agent who handles 30 conversations a day and uses Copilot on them runs through the free 10 on the first morning of the month. For 10 agents that's another $290 a month, which takes the Advanced bill above to $1,635.

Paying for product messaging you do not use

Every Intercom plan includes chats, banners and tooltips inside your app. Proactive Support Plus adds product tours, surveys, messages inside your app, mobile push and carousels at $99 a month for 500 messages.

For a product team that uses them, that's a reasonable deal. A support team that only answers questions gets little from them.

Of the tools below, Help Scout comes closest, with targeted messages and surveys on your site or in your app listed on its pricing page.

How we compared

We priced every tool for the same team:

• 10 agents
• 2,000 conversations a month
• AI working on 1,000 of them and settling 500 without a person

Where a vendor bills by result, we counted 500 results. Where it bills by conversation or session, we counted 1,000.

We took the cheapest plan with chat, email, an AI agent and automation rules for 10 people. We used annual billing where the page shows it and left out taxes, phone minutes and WhatsApp message fees.

Intercom's baseline is Advanced, because team inboxes, the workflow builder and round robin assignment start there.

Every number comes from the vendor's pricing page as we saw it on October 28, 2026. Where a page didn't show a number, we say so instead of guessing.

Switch from Intercom in one click

Paste an access token from a small app you create in Intercom's Developer Hub, click Start Import, and Deskwoot brings everything over in the background. Your team keeps working in Intercom until switch day.

What comes over:

• every conversation, from the first one, with replies, internal notes and attachments
• state, assignee, team and priority
• users and leads as contacts, with tags, notes and attributes
• companies as organizations, and teams with their members
• tags as labels, data attributes and user segments
• saved replies as canned responses
• every help center and collection, with their sections
• satisfaction ratings with the customer's remark

On switch day, click once more and only what is new comes over. The import is free on every plan, even the free Hacker plan, and changes nothing in your Intercom. The Intercom import guide has the steps.

Full help desks that replace Intercom

Deskwoot

Deskwoot is ours. It fits teams that use Intercom mostly as an inbox with a chat widget and want every channel and AI on one small bill, with data in the EU on every plan.

Pick something else if your product team needs tours inside your app, or if you need Facebook Messenger or Instagram.

On our pricing page, seats cost $8 per agent a month on Business ($6.40 billed annually) and $12 on Enterprise ($9.60).

AI counts once a month per conversation that Fynn, our AI agent, or Copilot works on, or where a voice message gets transcribed, whatever the result:

• Business includes 100 such conversations and charges $0.05 for each one after that
• Enterprise includes 300 and charges $0.03

There is no fee per outcome and no minimum, and Copilot comes with the Startup plan and up, without a seat fee.

Answers in your help center search count too: 1 for a visitor's first answered question in a month, 0.25 for each further one, and nothing for a question without an answer.

For the team of 10 in this guide that's $109 a month on Business. The AI line moves only with the number of conversations the AI touches, so last month's volume is a good guide to next month's bill.

There is no product messaging layer to pay for either. The chat widget runs in your web app on any plan, and its embedded mode fits a mobile app WebView.

One inbox covers 11 channels, among them WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, Microsoft Teams, Discord and phone calls through a 3CX phone system.

Your Intercom history comes over with the one click import above, and imported conversations never count toward your monthly limit.

The downsides, plainly:

• Deskwoot has no product tours, Facebook Messenger or Instagram today.
• SLA policies and the REST API need Enterprise.
• Startup stops at 1,000 conversations a month.
• Business shows one year of history, imported conversations included, while Enterprise shows all of it.
• Fynn does not answer in conversations you imported.
• Deskwoot is a newer vendor.

The next step is one test on your own data: start the 7 day trial (Enterprise, no card, up to 30 seats including yours), run the Intercom import once and compare the full bill on our Intercom comparison.

Zendesk

According to Zendesk's pricing page, checked October 28, 2026, Suite Team costs $55 per agent a month billed annually ($69 monthly). Suite Professional is $115 ($149 monthly).

Suite Team adds messaging, live chat, AI agents and telephony to the email desk. Facebook, Instagram, X, WhatsApp and LINE connect on the Suite plans, with extra fees for some. The pricing page offers a trial of 14 days.

AI agents are billed per automated resolution: a request the AI resolved with no human involved. Suite Team includes 5 per agent a month and Professional 10. Beyond that you pay:

• $1.50 each on a committed volume
• $2.00 each without a commitment

Copilot costs an extra $50 per agent a month, from Professional up.

The strength is breadth, plus the option to put Fin on top later, since Intercom sells Fin for Zendesk. The limit is the AI price: at $1.50 to $2.00 a resolution, each AI success costs more than Fin's $0.99.

Against Intercom Advanced, Suite Team saves about $120 a month for our team of 10. Against Intercom Essential at $785, it costs more.

Freshdesk (chat via Freshdesk Omni)

Chat lives in Freshdesk Omni. According to its pricing page, checked October 28, 2026, Omni costs this much per agent a month, billed annually:

• Growth: $29
• Pro: $79
• Enterprise: $119

Freddy AI Agent is billed per session. In chat, everything within 24 hours of the session's start is one session; in email, it's a window of 72 hours from the customer's first email.

Each account gets 500 free sessions once, then sessions cost $49 per 100. Freddy AI Copilot costs $29 per agent a month and is offered on Pro and Enterprise, not on Growth.

A session costs the same whether or not Freddy solves the question, but at $0.49 it's half of Fin's price per outcome. Watch the free 500: they don't renew, so your second month's bill is the real one.

The pricing page offers a trial of 14 days.

Help Scout

According to Help Scout's pricing page, checked October 28, 2026, it charges per user a month, billed annually (the page shows 16% off against monthly):

• Standard: $25, for up to 25 users
• Plus: $45
• Pro: $75, for at least 10 users

Standard includes live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. A free plan covers 5 users, 1 inbox and 1 Docs site, and Standard and Plus come with a free trial of 15 days.

AI Answers costs $0.75 per resolution, meaning a conversation the AI settles without human help. It doesn't count if the customer escalates, searches the docs or asks for more help, and you pay at most once per conversation.

New accounts get 3 months of unlimited resolutions. You can set a monthly cap that switches AI Answers off when it's reached.

The limit for an Intercom team: round robin routing starts on Plus. If you rely on Intercom's round robin assignment, price Plus at $450 a month for 10 users before AI.

Front

According to Front's pricing page, checked October 28, 2026, seats cost this much a month on annual billing:

• Starter: $25
• Professional: $65
• Enterprise: $105

The page shows no monthly prices, only that annual billing saves 24%. Starter allows one type of channel and up to 10 seats, so a team that answers chat and email needs Professional.

Autopilot, Front's AI agent, starts at $0.05 per conversation and is sold through sales. Copilot costs $20 per seat on Starter and Professional and comes included on Enterprise. WhatsApp is billed at Meta's cost plus a 20% admin fee.

Front is at its best when most of your volume is email and agents comment on threads with each other before answering. The trial runs 14 days with Professional features and no card.

Gorgias

Gorgias prices by tickets and includes 500 user seats from Basic up. According to its pricing page, checked October 28, 2026, Pro costs $471 a month billed annually for 2,000 tickets:

• $300 for the helpdesk
• $171 for AI Agent with 190 automated interactions

Extra automated interactions cost $0.90 on Basic and Pro.

It's built for online stores on Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce, so it fits an Intercom team that sells products and rarely a SaaS team. We worked through the store math in Gorgias alternatives for small Shopify stores.

Cheaper tools that start from chat

These four cost less at 10 seats, and each has its own catch. For a wider field of chat tools, see our live chat software comparison.

Crisp

Crisp prices per workspace, with seats included. According to its pricing page, checked October 28, 2026:

• Free: 2 seats
• Mini: $45 a month with 4 seats
• Essentials: $95 a month with 10 seats
• Plus: $295 with 20 or more

Extra agents cost $10 a month. The page shows monthly prices; yearly billing is switched on inside the app.

Essentials adds the omnichannel inbox with WhatsApp Business, Instagram DMs, SMS, LINE and Viber.

AI comes as credits included in the plan, which the page translates into automated conversations:

• Mini: $5 of credits, around 90
• Essentials: $25, around 450
• Plus: $75, around 1,350

The page doesn't show what more credits cost, so a team that expects 1,000 AI conversations a month should ask before it buys.

Crisp offers a trial of 14 days without a card and chat SDKs for your own app. We looked at Crisp in more detail in our Crisp comparison.

Tidio

Tidio prices by billable conversations: conversations with at least one message from a human agent. Replies from Lyro, its AI agent, and from its automated Flows don't count.

According to Tidio's pricing page, checked October 28, 2026, on annual billing:

• Starter: $24.17 a month for 100 billable conversations
• Growth: from $49.17 for 250, going up to 2,000

Free, Starter and Growth each include 10 seats. Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and email come on every plan, the free one too.

Lyro is priced on its own in tiers of Lyro conversations, where any conversation with at least one Lyro reply counts as one. Tiers start at $32.50 a month for 50 on annual billing, and 1,000 cost $700 a month billed monthly.

That's $0.70 per conversation the AI touches, solved or not.

The seat ceiling matters too: past 10 agents you need Plus, from $300 a month plus usage. The trial lasts 7 days and needs no card.

HelpCrunch

HelpCrunch charges per team member. According to its pricing page, checked October 28, 2026, for one member:

• Basic: $12 a month billed annually ($15 monthly), with no AI agent
• Pro: $20 ($25 monthly), with 50 AI conversations a month
• Unlimited: a flat $495 a month billed annually ($620 monthly) for any number of team members

More AI conversations come as extensions, for example 1,000 for $160 a month billed annually or $200 monthly. At that volume you pay $0.16 each, and the price per conversation only drops at larger volumes.

For Intercom teams, the reason to look is its SDKs for iOS, Android and React Native. You can put chat inside your own mobile app, as Intercom's Messenger does. The trial runs 14 days without a card.

Chatwoot

According to Chatwoot's pricing page, checked October 28, 2026, Chatwoot Cloud costs this much per agent a month (the page shows monthly prices only):

• Startups: $19, with 300 Captain credits a month
• Business: $39, with 500
• Enterprise: $99, with 800

The free Hacker plan covers up to 2 agents and 500 conversations a month, with live chat only.

Captain, its AI, runs on those credits, then costs $20 per 1,000. The page doesn't say how many credits one AI reply uses, so ask before you budget.

Chatwoot is open source, and you can host it yourself instead of paying for Cloud. Chatwoot Cloud runs on AWS servers in the United States, which matters if your customers expect their data in the EU.

Automation rules and teams start on Business, so a team of 10 replacing Intercom lands at $390 a month before extra credits. The trial lasts 15 days. More in our Chatwoot comparison.

The cheaper options for a team of 10

Same team in every row: 10 agents, 2,000 conversations a month, AI working on 1,000 and settling 500 without a person. Annual billing where the page shows it, US dollars, prices checked on October 28, 2026.

The rows don't count the same thing. Tools that bill per result charge for 500 events here, while tools that bill per conversation or session charge for 1,000.

Deskwoot also counts a conversation when Copilot helps on it. If your agents use Copilot on the other 1,000 conversations, Deskwoot Business comes to $159 and Enterprise to $147, against Intercom's $1,635 with Copilot for everyone.

Two rows stay open because the vendor's page doesn't price the AI: Crisp's extra credits and Chatwoot's credits per reply. The 500 free Freshdesk sessions are left out because they come once per account.

Deskwoot Startup would cost less again, but it stops at 1,000 conversations a month, half of this team's volume.

If the AI bill is the real problem

Every vendor names its billing unit differently, and the names hide very different prices. They fall into these groups:

• An outcome or a resolution charges only when the AI is judged to have succeeded.
• A session or a conversation charges whenever the AI takes part.
• Credits are a currency that each AI action draws from.

When billing per conversation is cheaper

To compare the two main families, divide the price per conversation by the price per result. If your AI settles a bigger share of the conversations it touches than that number, billing per conversation is cheaper.

Against Fin's $0.99:

• Freshdesk's session at $0.49 breaks even at about 49%
• HelpCrunch at $0.16 breaks even at 16%
• Tidio's Lyro at $0.70 needs a rate above 71% to beat Fin

You can work out your own rate from last month's numbers: Fin outcomes divided by the conversations Fin took part in.

Billing per result protects you when the AI is weak. Billing per conversation is easier to forecast, because you know roughly how many conversations the AI will see.

If you don't know how a different AI will do on your questions, test it on a copy of your help center before you commit. Our customer service chatbot ranking shows how the AI agents compare.

What you give up when you leave Intercom

Product tours

The first thing you lose is product tours. None of the 10 pricing pages we checked lists them as a feature.

If your onboarding depends on them, keep Intercom for the product team or price a separate tool for tours before you cancel.

Chat inside your mobile app

Chat inside your own mobile app needs a check. Intercom's Messenger runs on the web, iOS and Android.

HelpCrunch publishes SDKs for iOS, Android and React Native, and Crisp lists chat SDKs. For the rest, ask how chat inside your app works before you sign.

Facebook and Instagram

Intercom connects Facebook and Instagram. Here is what the other pricing pages show:

• Zendesk's Suite plans, Help Scout Standard, Crisp and every Tidio plan name both Instagram and Facebook or Messenger.
• Gorgias and Front Professional list social channels without naming them.
• The pages for Freshdesk Omni, HelpCrunch and Chatwoot don't name them.

Ask early if social messages make up a real share of your volume.

Free Lite seats

Intercom's free Lite seats for internal collaborators go too. On tools priced per agent, anyone who replies to customers needs a full seat. Gorgias with its 500 seats and Crisp with seats inside each plan soften this.

The trust Fin has earned

If Fin performs well for you today, the AI you move to starts from your help center and has to earn the same trust. Plan time to test it on real questions before you switch the widget.

Moving from Intercom: what comes over

What Intercom lets you export

Start with what Intercom itself lets you take. Its help article on exporting conversation data lists 6 methods, and they differ in what they include:

• The dataset CSV export carries reporting data such as IDs, timestamps and attributes, with no message text.
• Bulk export from the Inbox handles 200 to 300 conversations at a time as PDF or text, without internal notes.
• Full conversations come through the Conversations API, one request per conversation.
• The S3 export arrives as JSON without transcripts.

So full conversations with message text, notes and attachments need an importer that reads Intercom's API. Deskwoot's one click import above does.

Check a test import

Before you switch, run a test import and check it like this:

1. Pick 5 old conversations you know well, including one with attachments and one with internal notes, and compare them line by line.
2. Check that each person ended up as one contact, whether Intercom had them as a user or a lead, and that their company is still attached.
3. Open the help center and confirm that drafts are still drafts. Intercom's internal articles do not come over, so keep a copy of those.
4. Count saved replies before and after.
5. Run the import a second time and look for duplicates.
6. Keep Intercom readable until the renewal date, and move new chat and email traffic only after the checks pass.

Before your next renewal

Take last month's Intercom invoice and pull three numbers: paid seats, Fin outcomes and Copilot seats. Put them next to the tables above and you'll see which of the three moves saves money.

If you pay Intercom annually, run any test before the renewal date, while leaving is still an option.

If Deskwoot is on your list, the next step is one test: start the 7 day trial (Enterprise, no card, up to 30 seats including yours) and run the one click import above. Intercom keeps running while you test.

When the trial ends, you pick a paid plan or keep working on the free Hacker plan.