Intercom has no free plan, so many small teams look elsewhere. Here is what to check in a free live chat plan, and what TalkingDot, tawk.to, Crisp, Tidio, HubSpot and Zoho SalesIQ include at $0.
Intercom is one of the most complete customer messaging platforms on the market, and it is priced accordingly. Its pricing page lists three per-seat plans and a 14-day free trial, but no free plan, and its Fin AI Agent is billed per outcome on top. If you are a founder answering chats between other jobs, or a small support team that needs a shared inbox before it has a software budget, a free tool can cover most of what you need.
The catch is that "free" means different things: some free plans are a complete product with optional extras, others a trial with the useful parts locked. Below is what to check before you commit, then what six free options include. Every vendor detail was checked on the vendor's own website on 3 October 2026.
Plans and limits change. Treat the vendor details here as a snapshot and check each vendor's pricing page before you decide. Each section links to it.
Free plans look alike on a feature grid. The differences appear after a few weeks of real use.
Count everyone who will reply: founders, support, sales, perhaps an engineer on call. Two seats are plenty for one person and painful for four. Then look for monthly caps on conversations or chat sessions. A generous-looking cap tends to bite during a launch or a sale, exactly when you want to answer every chat.
Conversation history records every question customers ask, and it feeds your help center and roadmap. Check whether old conversations stay searchable on the free tier and whether you can export them.
Many free widgets show the vendor's name. That is a fair trade, but if it bothers you, check whether it can be removed and at what cost.
Look for button-based chatbot flows, away messages outside office hours, routing rules and proactive messages. Check separately whether AI features are included, capped or billed by usage.
A public help center, with article suggestions inside the chat widget, cuts repeat questions. Some vendors include one for free; others keep it for paid plans.
Even small teams eventually want chat events in a CRM or a team channel. A documented REST API and signed webhooks let you build that yourself.
Ask where conversation data lives, who can access it and how you get it out. If you work under GDPR or customers ask about data residency, running the software on your own server settles questions a hosted-only product cannot.
The table lists only details published on each vendor's own site.
| Tool | Free plan, as published | Good to know |
|---|---|---|
| TalkingDot | Free forever: no trial, no card, no seat pricing. Unlimited teammates and conversations, with fair-use limits on attachment size and storage. | Chatbots, help center, REST API and webhooks included. Self-hostable PHP and MySQL app. |
| tawk.to | Live chat free for life if you keep its branding. Free hosted knowledge base and ticketing. | Removing the "Powered by tawk.to" branding costs $29 a month. AI Assist from $29 a month, with a free plan for limited chat volume. |
| Crisp | Free plan with 2 seats, website chat widget, shared inbox and mobile apps. No AI credits. | Paid plans are priced per workspace. Knowledge base listed from the Essentials plan. |
| Tidio | $0 plan with 50 billable conversations a month (conversations where a human agent replies). | First 50 Lyro AI Agent conversations free as a one-off. Flows reach 100 visitors a month. |
| HubSpot | Live chat and chatbot builder free to start, no credit card. | Conversations are stored in an inbox in HubSpot's free CRM. |
| Zoho SalesIQ | Free plan with 3 operator licenses and 100 operator chat sessions a month. | Visitor insights for up to 10,000 visitors a month. Chatbots listed from the Basic plan. |
TalkingDot covers the everyday Intercom-style workflow for free: a messenger for any website, a real-time shared inbox for unlimited teammates, chatbot flows, an answer bot that suggests help-center articles, routing rules, proactive messages, a public help center, and reports with median first response time and CSAT. Developers get a REST API, signed webhooks, and Slack, Discord and Telegram notifications. Because TalkingDot is a plain PHP and MySQL application, it can also be self-hosted, which keeps conversation data on infrastructure you control. Its automation uses flows, rules and article suggestions you configure, not an AI agent that writes its own answers. See every feature.
tawk.to has offered free live chat since 2013, along with a free hosted knowledge base and free ticketing, and says the product stays free for life if you keep its branding. It earns money from add-ons: branding removal ($29 a month), its AI Assist chatbot (from $29 a month, with a forever-free plan for sites with limited chat volume) and hired chat agents billed by the hour. Its pricing link currently leads to its "Why free?" page.
Crisp's Free plan includes two seats, the website chat widget, a shared inbox and mobile apps, with no AI credits. Paid plans are priced per workspace rather than per seat, and the knowledge base is listed from the Essentials plan up. See Crisp pricing.
Tidio's Free plan costs $0 and includes 50 billable conversations a month; a conversation becomes billable once a human agent replies in it. Your first 50 conversations with its Lyro AI Agent are free as a one-off, and its Flows automation can reach 100 visitors a month on the free tier. That makes it a low-risk way to try an AI agent on real questions. See Tidio pricing.
HubSpot's live chat and chatbot builder are free to start with no credit card, and every conversation is stored in an inbox inside HubSpot's free CRM. If you already keep contacts in HubSpot, that shared context is the main attraction. See HubSpot live chat and HubSpot pricing.
Zoho SalesIQ's Free plan includes three operator licenses, 100 operator chat sessions a month and visitor insights for up to 10,000 visitors a month. Chatbots and FAQ articles are listed from the Basic plan, and paid plans are priced per operator. It fits best if your business already runs on Zoho apps. See Zoho SalesIQ pricing.
A fair comparison should say this plainly: for some teams, Intercom's price is justified.
Whichever tools you shortlist, test each for a week with real traffic and note which limits you hit. Our comparison page sets TalkingDot against other tools feature by feature.
If TalkingDot looks like a fit, you can create a free workspace and install the messenger with a single script tag. The getting started guide covers the first ten minutes.
One script tag is all it takes. Where to paste the TalkingDot snippet on WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow or Google Tag Manager, what to set up next, and how to test it before customers see it.
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