Best Live Chat Software for Freelancers
Putting live chat on a freelance site costs nothing with tawk.to, which gives away unlimited agent seats and charges $29 a month if you want its badge off the widget. For a paid tool, Zoho SalesIQ is the cheapest entry here at $7 per operator a month on annual billing, and its free plan already covers three operators.
Past price, the ten differ in what makes the bill grow. Seven charge per agent seat, which is cheap while you work alone and doubles the day you bring in a helper. Crisp charges $45 for the whole workspace, four seats included, and Tidio bills by conversation volume, so its cost follows your busiest month rather than your headcount. LiveChat, Olark and Intercom have no free plan at all, only trials.
Our picks
- Paying nothing at all: tawk.to. Unlimited agent seats, a shared inbox and mobile apps with no paid tier to graduate into; the $29 a month charge only removes the badge from the widget.
- Cheapest paid seat, for catching leads: Zoho SalesIQ. $7 per operator a month on annual billing, three free operator licences, and a lean toward visitor tracking and sales conversations.
- Chat that comes in bursts: Tidio. Billed by conversation volume rather than seats, and only chats a human replies to count; the free plan covers 50 and the $24.17 Starter plan 100, for up to ten people.
- Adding a collaborator without raising the bill: Crisp. $45 a month per workspace with four seats and no cap on conversations; the free plan, pitched at solopreneurs, has two seats.
- Running it on your own server: Chatwoot. Open source with a hosted cloud version; the free cloud tier covers two agents and 500 conversations a month, and paid seats start at $19.
At a glance
| Option | Entry Price | Price Basis | What You Pay For | Free Plan Seats | Free Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29source | $29 per month to remove the tawk.to branding; the chat software itself is freesource | Nothing (free)source | Unlimitedsource | ||
| 24.17source | Per month, billed by conversation volumesource | Conversation volumesource | 10source | 7 dayssource | |
| 45source | Per month, per workspacesource | The whole workspacesource | 2source | 14 dayssource | |
| 19source | Per agent, per monthsource | Each agent seatsource | 2source | 15 dayssource | |
| 19source | Per person, billed annuallysource | Each agent seatsource | 14 dayssource | ||
| 29source | Per agent, per monthsource | Each agent seatsource | |||
| 19source | Per agent, per month, billed annuallysource | Each agent seatsource | 10source | 14 dayssource | |
| 28source | Per agent, per month, billed annuallysource | Each agent seatsource | 5source | 14 dayssource | |
| 19source | Per seat, per monthsource | Each agent seatsource | 14 dayssource | ||
| 7source | Per operator, per month, billed annuallysource | Each agent seatsource | 3source | 15 dayssource |
Per seat, per workspace, or per conversation
Four tools share a $19 entry price, Chatwoot, LiveChat, Freshchat and Intercom, and all four charge it per agent. JivoChat is $28 and Olark $29 on the same basis. For a solo freelancer that is one seat, but a part-time assistant doubles it, which is where Crisp's flat $45 workspace starts to look reasonable: it includes four seats and does not move when you add someone.
Tidio runs the other way. Up to ten people can answer chats on one plan, but a busy month pushes you up its plan ladder even if nobody new joined. That is a good trade when your chat volume is spiky, since only conversations a human replies to are counted.
How far the free plans stretch
By seats, tawk.to is unlimited, Freshchat and Tidio allow ten, JivoChat five, Zoho SalesIQ three, and Crisp and Chatwoot two. Seats are rarely the limit for one person, though. Tidio's free plan stops at 50 billable conversations and Chatwoot's at 500 a month, while JivoChat's five free agents come with Telegram, Facebook, Instagram and Viber connected, more channel coverage than most free tiers offer.
LiveChat and Intercom offer 14-day trials instead of a free plan, and Olark offers a trial without stating its length. After that you pay whether you take one chat or a hundred.
AI and add-ons that sit outside the entry price
Several headline prices leave out the automation. Intercom's Fin AI Agent is billed per outcome from $0.99, on top of a $19 seat that was itself a discount off a $29 list price in September 2026. Freshchat's Freddy AI is priced per session or per agent, and JivoChat sells WhatsApp at $27 a month and its AI assistant at $13. tawk.to's AI assistant starts at $29 a month, and Olark's AI Website Agent is a separate $400 a month flat product, while its human-only chat stays at $29 per agent. Chatwoot works differently, with its Captain AI running on credits included in each paid plan.
The options in detail
tawk.to
tawk.to gives the entire live chat product away: unlimited agent seats, the shared inbox, mobile and desktop apps, and a knowledge base, with no paid tier to graduate into. It funds itself through optional extras, chiefly $29 a month to remove the small "Powered by tawk.to" badge from the widget, an AI assistant from $29 a month, and trained human agents it will staff for you by the hour. For a freelancer that makes it the lowest-commitment way to put chat on a site. The trade-off is the branding: leave it and you pay nothing at all, remove it and you are paying more than several tools here charge for their entry plan.
Tidio
Tidio bundles live chat, ticketing and its Lyro AI agent into one inbox, and bills by conversation volume rather than by seat, so up to ten people can answer chats on the same plan. The free plan covers 50 billable conversations and the paid Starter plan raises that to 100. Only conversations a human actually replies to count against the limit, which suits a freelancer whose chat volume is spiky. The catch is that the meter is the thing to watch: a busy month pushes you up the plan ladder even though your team never grew.
Crisp
Crisp prices per workspace rather than per person, so the bill does not move when you add a collaborator, and it puts no cap on how many conversations you handle. The free plan is pitched explicitly at solopreneurs and includes two seats and the website chat widget; Mini at $45 a month adds a shared email inbox and four seats. That flat shape makes it one of the more predictable options here if you expect volume. It is also the most expensive first paid step in this table, so the free tier has to be enough or the jump is real.
Chatwoot
Chatwoot is an open-source support inbox with a hosted cloud version, and its free cloud tier is genuinely usable for one person: two agents and 500 conversations a month. Paid plans start at $19 per agent per month, and its Captain AI features run on credits included with each paid plan rather than a separate subscription. It is the option here that a technically comfortable freelancer can take in either direction, hosted or run themselves. The free tier's 500-conversation ceiling is the thing to check against your own traffic.
LiveChat
LiveChat is the long-established dedicated chat product of the group, aimed at businesses rather than hobby sites, and its Starter tier is labelled for small business at $19 per person on annual billing. There is no free plan at all: you get a 14-day trial and then you are paying. For a freelancer that means it only makes sense if chat is a real sales channel rather than a nice-to-have, since the cheapest month costs the same whether you take one chat or a hundred.
Olark
Olark sells two quite different things: the classic human-only live chat it has run since 2009 at $29 per agent per month, and a newer AI Website Agent at $400 a month flat that includes unlimited AI conversations and one human seat. A freelancer wants the first one, and Olark keeps it available rather than forcing the AI bundle. It argues against usage-based AI pricing on the grounds that it makes you ration your own success. There is no free plan, and the trial's length is not stated on the pricing page.
Freshchat
Freshchat, part of the Freshworks suite, has the most generous free tier in this table by seat count: $0 for up to ten agents, with the chat widget on web and mobile, a shared inbox and connected email. Paid Growth is $19 per agent per month on annual billing and adds more channels and AI. Its Freddy AI features are priced separately on top, per session or per agent, so the headline price is not the whole bill if you want automation. For a freelancer who may later bring in collaborators, the free plan stretches unusually far.
JivoChat
JivoChat's free plan covers five agents and connects website chat to Telegram, Facebook, Instagram and Viber, with desktop, mobile and browser apps, which is more channel coverage than most free tiers offer. Paid Basic is $28 per agent per month billed annually and adds proactive chat invitations, visitor monitoring and its CRM. Several things a freelancer might assume are included, notably WhatsApp at $27 a month and the AI assistant at $13, are priced as separate modules. Read the add-on list before comparing its headline price with the others here.
Intercom
Intercom's Essential plan is described on its pricing page as customer support for individuals, startups and small businesses, and it was showing a discounted $19 per seat per month against a $29 list price when this table was built. Its Fin AI Agent is billed separately by outcome, from $0.99 each, so automation is a usage cost on top of the seat. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial. It is the most feature-heavy option here and the one most likely to cost more than a freelancer expects once Fin starts answering.
Zoho SalesIQ
Zoho SalesIQ is the cheapest paid entry in this table at US$7 per operator per month on annual billing, and its free plan includes three operator licences. It leans toward visitor tracking and sales conversations rather than pure support ticketing, which fits a freelancer using chat to catch leads on a portfolio site. Being part of the wider Zoho suite is the main reason to pick it or skip it, depending on whether you already live in those tools.
How we researched this
Almost every tool here does web chat, social channels, mobile apps and some AI, so a feature checklist would have read the same on every row. The columns are about money and limits instead: the lowest paid price, what it is charged per, and how far the free plan and trial go, all taken from each vendor's own pricing page on September 8, 2026. LiveChat, Freshchat, JivoChat and Zoho SalesIQ quote the rate for a year paid up front, which the Price Basis column says row by row.
Smartsupp was left out because it prices in euros, which would have sorted wrongly beside nine dollar figures. HubSpot's free chat is folded into its wider CRM packaging with no standalone price to compare, Pure Chat could not be confirmed as still on sale, and Chatra's pricing pages came back not found. The empty free-seat cells for LiveChat, Olark and Intercom mean those three have no free plan, and tawk.to has no trial because there is nothing to unlock. Discounts like Intercom's come and go, so compare the list price as well as the offer when you sign up.