Best Free Live Chat Software (2026): Nine Free Plans Compared
Shayan, Founder10 min read
Every tool below has a free plan that does not expire. Each one stops somewhere, and the place it stops is what you are choosing: one seat or ten, 25 conversations a month or unlimited, two weeks of history or all of it.
Every limit here comes from the vendor's own pricing page or billing documentation, checked in October 2026.
What you are choosing between
The number that ends the free plan. Each one caps something different. Seats: Smartsupp one, Crisp, Chatwoot and HubSpot two, UserJot and Zoho SalesIQ three, JivoChat five or two depending on which part of its pricing page you read, Tidio ten, tawk.to unlimited. Conversations a month: Smartsupp 25, Tidio 50, Zoho SalesIQ 100 sessions, Chatwoot 500, HubSpot not published, the rest unlimited. Stored contacts: Crisp 100, Chatwoot 1,000. History: Smartsupp 14 days, Chatwoot and Zoho SalesIQ 30 days, JivoChat two months.
Channels. Website chat is on every free plan. Support email in the same inbox is on UserJot, Tidio, tawk.to and HubSpot for free. JivoChat's pricing table puts email on Free and its help centre puts it on Basic. Crisp's email starts at $45 and Chatwoot's on a paid cloud plan.
AI on the free plan. UserJot includes Juno. tawk.to gives 100 AI credits a month. Tidio gives 50 AI conversations once, for the life of the account, and Smartsupp 10. The other five sell it.
Branding. Every free plan here carries the vendor's badge where the vendor documents it; Zoho SalesIQ does not say. Removing it costs $59 a month on UserJot, $39 a month per property on tawk.to, $20 a seat on HubSpot, a $16.67 a month add-on billed yearly on Tidio, $60 an agent on JivoChat's Professional plan, $295 a month on Crisp and an Enterprise plan on Chatwoot. Smartsupp does not remove it on any plan.
1. UserJot
UserJot is a public feedback board, roadmap and changelog with live chat and a shared inbox in the same product. Chat and the inbox are in beta and free on every plan while they are.
Free plan: Three teammates. Live chat on your site and support email in one inbox, Juno, and no cap on conversations or on the people who write in. Two feedback boards, the roadmap, the changelog and the widget come with it. It does not expire.
Where it stops: Three teammates. The fourth is $29 a month for the whole workspace. Chat and email are the only channels, so no WhatsApp, SMS or phone, and there are no canned replies.
Paid from: $29 a month flat, up to 100 teammates, with a custom domain, private boards, guest posting and the API. $59 adds single sign-on, identity masking and removes the "Powered by UserJot" badge.
AI: Juno answers from your docs and the sites you point her at, hands the thread to a person when a question needs one, and files a feature request with the customer's vote once they confirm. Included on Free.
Best for: SaaS teams that want support and feedback from one vendor at a price that does not move with seats or conversations.
Stop guessing what to build. Let your users vote.
UserJot keeps feedback, roadmap, and changelog in one simple loop.
2. Crisp
Crisp is live chat, a shared inbox and a knowledge base, priced per workspace rather than per seat.
Free plan: Two agents, unlimited conversations, 100 customer profiles, website chat and the mobile SDK, agent apps for iOS and Android, a Shopify integration and the basic API. It does not expire.
Where it stops: 100 stored customer profiles. Email as a channel, full conversation history, file sharing, canned responses and internal notes all start on Mini.
Paid from: $45 a month per workspace for four seats and 5,000 profiles. $95 for ten seats and the knowledge base.
AI: Hugo, from Mini, on $5 of monthly credits, which Crisp estimates at about 90 conversations. Nothing on Free.
Best for: A two-person team with a small customer base that wants chat now and email later. See Crisp pricing.
3. Tidio
Tidio is live chat and a shared inbox for small businesses, with Lyro, an AI agent, and Flows, a visual chatbot builder.
Free plan: Ten agent seats, 50 human-handled conversations a month, 100 Flows visitors a month and 50 Lyro conversations for the lifetime of the account. Email, website chat, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp all land in the inbox.
Where it stops: 50 conversations a month. At the limit, agents cannot see incoming conversation details or reply until the month resets or you upgrade. The 50 AI conversations never refill.
Paid from: $29 a month for 100 conversations, $59 for 250, up to $349 for 2,000. Seats stay at ten. Monthly paid plans have automatic upgrades switched on by default at 95% of quota; you can turn that off.
AI: Lyro, sold separately from $39 a month for 50 conversations, billed per conversation it replies in rather than per resolution.
Best for: A shop or small business with a few dozen conversations a month across social channels.
4. tawk.to
tawk.to is free live chat with no paid plan above it. The company sells add-ons and hired agents instead.
Free plan: Unlimited agents, chats and sites, a knowledge base, and website chat alongside WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS, Telegram and email, as listed on its current product pages. It does not expire.
Where it stops: The badge. Removing it is $39 a month per property, or $29 a month paid yearly. AI Assist's free tier is 100 message credits a month, and the default model spends three credits a reply, so about 33 AI replies.
Paid from: $0 for the chat. AI Assist Growth is $29 a month for 1,000 credits. Hired agents from $129 a month for ten hours a week.
AI: AI Assist, 100 free credits a month, then $29, $99 or $399 a month by tier.
Best for: Teams that want unlimited seats for nothing and will live with the badge or pay $39 to drop it.
5. Chatwoot
Chatwoot is an open-source shared inbox you can self-host or use as a cloud service.
Free plan: Cloud Hacker: two agents, 500 conversations a month, website chat only, 1,000 contacts and 30 days of history. The self-hosted Community Edition is free with no published seat or conversation cap, on your own servers.
Where it stops: Two agents and one channel on Hacker. Email, social channels, the help center and Captain AI need a paid plan, and free cloud API and webhook access was removed in July 2026. Self-hosting is free; the servers and upkeep are yours.
Paid from: $19 per agent a month advertised for Startups. The current pricing page does not say whether that is monthly or annual billing.
AI: Captain, on paid cloud plans, from 300 credits a month included. On self-hosted it needs a paid licence and your own model provider.
Best for: Teams with an engineer who will run it, or who need the data on their own infrastructure.
6. HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot's free tools include live chat, a ticket pipeline and one shared inbox, inside its free CRM.
Free plan: Two users, live chat, ticketing, one shared inbox and ten reporting dashboards. The CRM comes with it. It does not expire.
Where it stops: Two users. The knowledge base, the help desk workspace and Customer Agent start on Professional at $100 per seat a month, with a $1,500 onboarding fee and an annual commitment. HubSpot does not publish a conversation cap for the free tools.
Paid from: $20 per Core seat a month on Starter at list price, with a new-customer promotion at $10 running in October 2026. Starter removes the HubSpot branding from chat.
AI: Customer Agent, Professional and up, 50 credits per resolved conversation, about $0.50 each after the included credits. Nothing on Free.
Best for: Teams already on HubSpot's CRM that want chat in the same place.
7. Zoho SalesIQ
Zoho SalesIQ is Zoho's live chat and visitor tracking. Tickets live in Zoho Desk, a separate product.
Free plan: Three operators, 100 chat sessions a month, 10,000 tracked visitors, 25 canned replies, 30 days of chat history and one brand. The 15-day trial drops to it. It does not expire.
Where it stops: 100 sessions a month, and no bots or help articles on Free. A session starts when a visitor opens or resumes a chat and ends when the browser closes or the chat idles out, so one customer can count several times in a month.
Paid from: $10 per operator a month, or $7 paid yearly, for 1,000 sessions a month, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Telegram, and one custom bot.
AI: Answer Bot on Enterprise at $25 per operator a month, billed by bot session with 200,000 included.
Best for: Zoho customers who want a chat widget on the site and Zoho Desk for tickets.
8. Smartsupp
Smartsupp is live chat for websites, with Mira, an AI agent sold in packs of 100 conversations.
Free plan: One operator, 25 conversations a month, one website and 14 days of history. It does not expire.
Where it stops: 25 conversations. New incoming conversations stop at the limit until the month resets. Smartsupp's branding cannot be removed on any plan, paid ones included.
Paid from: $24 a month for one operator with unlimited conversations, or $17 paid yearly. Three operators are $35.
AI: Mira, $20 per 100 conversations a month, counted by session rather than resolution. New accounts get 10 free conversations plus 25 for finishing onboarding.
Best for: A one-person shop with a handful of chats a week.
9. JivoChat
JivoChat is live chat with a free plan and per-agent paid tiers.
Free plan: Five agents by the plan header, two by the comparison table on the same page. Unlimited conversations and websites, and two months of chat history. It does not expire.
Where it stops: Two months of history, and a free seat count the pricing page states two ways.
Paid from: $40 per concurrent agent a month, or $28 paid yearly. As late as March 2025 the free plan was called Basic and the first paid plan was $19 a month paid yearly; by August 2025 both had moved up.
AI: AI Agent, a module at $99 a month or $69 paid yearly, with no published allowance or resolution definition.
Best for: Teams that want unlimited chats on a free plan and can work within two seats if that is what applies.
Stop guessing what to build. Let your users vote.
UserJot keeps feedback, roadmap, and changelog in one simple loop.
Side by side
| Tool | Agents on Free | Conversations a month | History | AI on Free | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UserJot | 3 | Unlimited | Full | Juno, included | $29 a month, flat |
| Crisp | 2 | Unlimited | Partial | None | $45 a month, 4 seats |
| Tidio | 10 | 50 | Full | 50 conversations, once | $29 a month, 100 convos |
| tawk.to | Unlimited | Unlimited | Full | 100 credits a month | $0; badge removal $39 |
| Chatwoot | 2 | 500 | 30 days | None | $19 per agent |
| HubSpot | 2 | Not published | Full | None | $20 per seat |
| Zoho SalesIQ | 3 | 100 sessions | 30 days | None | $10 per operator |
| Smartsupp | 1 | 25 | 14 days | 10 conversations, once | $24 a month, 1 operator |
| JivoChat | 5 or 2 | Unlimited | 2 months | None | $40 per concurrent agent |
Limits checked October 2026 against each vendor's pricing page. "Full" in the history column means the vendor lists no retention limit on the free plan. Crisp's "Partial" means Free does not include full conversation history and Crisp does not publish how far back it goes.
Questions people ask
Is there live chat software that is completely free?
Yes. tawk.to is free with unlimited agents and chats and sells add-ons instead of plans. UserJot's free plan has no cap on conversations for three teammates and includes the AI agent. JivoChat and Crisp have free plans with unlimited conversations, capped at a few agents and, on Crisp, 100 stored contacts.
Which free live chat has no conversation limit?
UserJot, tawk.to, JivoChat, and Crisp while you stay under 100 customer profiles. The capped ones are Smartsupp at 25 a month, Tidio at 50, Zoho SalesIQ at 100 sessions and Chatwoot at 500. HubSpot does not publish a cap.
Which free live chat includes an AI agent?
UserJot includes Juno on the free plan, with no cap on the conversations she handles. tawk.to includes 100 AI credits a month, about 33 replies on its default model. Tidio includes 50 AI conversations once, and Smartsupp 10. Crisp, Chatwoot, HubSpot, Zoho SalesIQ and JivoChat sell the AI agent on a paid plan.
Can I remove the branding on a free plan?
No, on every plan here where the vendor documents it. The first plan without the badge is a $16.67 a month add-on billed yearly on Tidio, $20 a seat on HubSpot, $39 a month on tawk.to, $59 a month on UserJot, $60 an agent on JivoChat, $295 a month on Crisp and the Enterprise plan on Chatwoot. Smartsupp keeps its badge on paid plans too, and Zoho SalesIQ does not document removal.
Do these free plans expire?
No. All nine are continuing plans, not trials. All but tawk.to also have a separate trial of paid features: Crisp 14 days, Tidio 7, Zoho SalesIQ 15, Smartsupp 14, Chatwoot 15, HubSpot 14, JivoChat 14 and UserJot 14 on its paid plans. Crisp, Tidio and Zoho SalesIQ document that the account drops to the free plan when the trial ends; the others do not say.
What is the best free live chat for a SaaS product?
We make UserJot, so weigh this accordingly. For a SaaS team, UserJot's free plan has chat, email and an AI agent with no conversation or contact cap, and the feedback board next to it. tawk.to if you want unlimited seats and do not mind the badge. Crisp if your customer base is small enough to fit in 100 profiles and you want a knowledge base later. Chatwoot if the data has to stay on your own servers.
