Chatwoot alternatives: 11 live chat tools compared
The typical searcher chose Chatwoot for the open source shared inbox, then hit one of two walls: the cloud free tier stops at two agents and 30 days of data, or self-hosting turned out to mean running a Rails, PostgreSQL and Redis stack that someone has to patch. They move to another open source option, to a free hosted widget, or to a vendor whose plan covers the same channels without the operations work.
Short answer: The closest replacements for Chatwoot in our live chat ranking are Tiledesk, tawk.to and Freshchat. Choose Tiledesk if you want open source and self-hosting but are more interested in a conversation designer and AI agents than in an email-first helpdesk. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Live Chat Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from Chatwoot.
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Pricing: Self-hosting free and open source (MIT); cloud free plan for two agents, then per agent per month, published
Established in: United States
Built for: Technical teams that must keep conversation data on their own servers
Not for: Support teams with no engineer to maintain the deployment
01
Why buyers look past Chatwoot
01
The free cloud plan is a trial with a ceiling
Chatwoot's Hacker plan is $0 for up to two agents, with 500 conversations a month, the live chat channel only and 30 days of data retention. Email, social and messaging channels, a help centre and a year of history start on the $19 per agent Startups plan, so a team that outgrows two seats pays for every agent from then on.
02
The features that stop being free sit one or two plans up
Teams and automation rules are listed from the $39 Business plan, and SSO/SAML and audit logs only on the $99 Enterprise plan. Captain, the AI assistant, runs on credits (300 on Startups, 500 on Business, 800 on Enterprise), with further credits at $20 per 1,000. The seat price is therefore not the whole bill for a team that wants automation and AI.
03
Self-hosting trades the licence fee for operating work
The code outside the enterprise directory is MIT licensed, and the documentation lists a minimum of 2 CPU cores, 4 GB of RAM and 20 GB of storage, with PostgreSQL and Redis recommended for production. Updates are manual on a Linux VM, and features such as whitelabelling, SLA management, audit logs and agent capacity are part of a proprietary Enterprise Edition that is licensed per agent from $19 a month. Self-hosted therefore means free for the core inbox and paid for the rest.
Human chat per agent per month, published; AI website agent at a published flat monthly fee; 14-day trial
Accessible chat widget, now led by a flat-fee AI website agent
you want a predictable flat fee for AI answers on your site instead of a credit meter
#10
03
What each one does differently
1
Tiledesk
Italy · Self-hosting free and open source; cloud published per month
The closest match on philosophy, since it is also open source and can be run on your own infrastructure. The company behind it is an Italian S.r.l. and its product is centred on AI agents and a visual designer rather than a shared support inbox. A narrower fit for teams that mainly want a conversational agent.
Switch from Chatwoot if you want open source and self-hosting but are more interested in a conversation designer and AI agents than in an email-first helpdesk.
United States · Free; paid add-ons for branding removal, AI Assist and hired agents
Free hosted chat that the vendor says most businesses use without paying, with a CRM pipeline, knowledge base and inbox in the same product. Paid add-ons cover whitelabel at $29 a month and AI Assist at $29 a month. We found no self-hosted edition, and the tawk.to badge stays on the widget until you pay for whitelabel.
Switch from Chatwoot if you left self-hosting behind and just want a free hosted widget for a team larger than two agents.
United States · Free tier; paid per agent per month, published; AI sessions extra
A hosted messaging product whose free plan covers up to 10 agents with a chat widget, shared inbox, email connection and roles, against Chatwoot's two. Paid plans are $19, $49 and $79 per agent a month billed annually, with the Freddy AI agent sold per 100 sessions. Not open source and not self-hostable.
Switch from Chatwoot if you need a free tier for a team of three to ten agents without running a server.
Poland · Free tier; paid by monthly conversations reached, published
Prices by billable conversations per month rather than by agent, starting from a Starter plan of 100 billable conversations at about $24 a month on annual billing. Lyro, its AI agent, is metered separately. Strong for a small shop that wants flows and a bot, weaker as a multi-channel support desk, and we found no self-hosted edition.
Switch from Chatwoot if you have a small team and would rather pay for conversation volume than for each agent seat.
Poland · Per agent per month, published; 14-day trial only
A hosted specialist for website chat, priced per user per month at $19 on Essential and $79 on Growth, billed annually, with a 14-day trial instead of a free plan. The AI agent is counted in resolutions per month. It covers chat and a ticket inbox, with less of Chatwoot's channel range and no self-hosting.
Switch from Chatwoot if website chat is the main channel and you want a mature commercial widget with sales-oriented features.
Slovakia · Per agent per month, published, in four bundled plans; 30-day trial
A ticketing-first product with live chat as one channel, priced per agent per month in four plans from $15 on annual billing to $69 for Enterprise. Social channels such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram appear from the Large business plan at $49. Hosted only, with a trial rather than a free plan.
Switch from Chatwoot if you want a ticketing system with chat attached, at a published seat price that stays lower than Chatwoot's Business plan.
India · Free tier; paid per operator per month, published
Chat plus visitor tracking, with a free plan of three operator licences and tiered plans above it that raise the monthly visitor-tracking allowance. Its strength is the link to the other Zoho applications. It is not open source, and it offers less than Chatwoot for email-led support.
Switch from Chatwoot if your CRM and other tools are already Zoho and you want visitor insight next to the chat.
Czechia · Free plan for one operator; paid plans by operator bundle, published; AI agent extra
A website chat for small shops with a free plan of one operator, 25 conversations a month and live chat, WhatsApp and Messenger. A Solo plan with one operator is listed at $17 a month on annual billing, and an AI agent is sold on top. Smaller scope than Chatwoot and we found no self-hosted edition.
Switch from Chatwoot if you run a small online shop with one person answering chats and want to pay little.
Netherlands · Plans with set users and conversations, published; extra users and AI conversations charged
A shared inbox for messaging channels, sold as plans with included users and conversations, not per agent: the Boost plan lists 10 users and 500 conversations a month at EUR 349 monthly billing. Considerably more expensive than Chatwoot's seat prices for a small team, but nothing to host.
Switch from Chatwoot if you are a larger team that wants a managed multi-channel inbox and prefers a fixed plan over per-seat billing.
United States · Per seat per month, published; AI agent conversations extra
Bundles live chat, a chatbot, shared inbox, knowledge base, email campaigns and popups in one product, together with iOS and Android SDKs. HelpCrunch Corporation gives a Delaware address. It adds marketing tools that Chatwoot leaves out, and we found no self-hosted edition on its site.
Switch from Chatwoot if you want chat and email marketing in one hosted tool and no separate newsletter product.
United States · Human chat per agent per month, published; AI website agent at a published flat monthly fee; 14-day trial
Sells human chat at $29 per agent per month and a separate AI website agent at a flat $400 a month on annual billing with unlimited conversations and one human seat. A deliberately simple widget with a 14-day trial instead of a free tier, and little beyond website chat.
Switch from Chatwoot if you want a predictable flat fee for AI answers on your site instead of a credit meter.
Chatwoot remains the right choice when you want to own the conversation data and have someone who can run a Rails application with PostgreSQL and Redis. The core inbox under the MIT licence has no per-agent fee, the cloud plan is published and per agent, and the product covers website chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, SMS and more in one inbox. For a team with an engineer on hand, that combination is hard to match. The company is based in the United States, and its hosted service stores data on servers in the United States, so a team that needs data inside the EU gets the clearest answer from self-hosting rather than from the cloud plans.
05
What moving off Chatwoot involves
01
Export your conversation history before the retention window closes
The cloud plans keep data for a set time: 30 days on Hacker, one year on Startups, two on Business and three on Enterprise. Take the contacts and conversation history out through the API before you cancel.
02
Rebuild inboxes and automation, not just the widget
The chat snippet is the easy part. Each inbox, email forwarding rule, WhatsApp number, label, canned response and automation rule has to be recreated in the new tool, and channel connections such as WhatsApp Business need re-registration. List the inboxes you actually use before you pick a replacement.
03
If you self-host, plan the decommissioning
Switching away from a self-hosted instance leaves a database with customer personal data on a server. Keep the backup for as long as your retention policy requires, then delete it, and remember that the instance reports aggregate usage telemetry unless it was disabled, so shutting it down also ends that traffic.
06
Questions about replacing Chatwoot
6 answers
Is Chatwoot really free?
Partly. The cloud Hacker plan is $0 for up to two agents with 500 conversations a month and 30 days of data.
The self-hosted Community Edition is MIT licensed with no per-agent fee, but you pay for the server and the work. The proprietary Enterprise Edition features are licensed per agent from $19 a month.
Is Chatwoot a European or a US company?
Chatwoot Inc is a US company: its terms are governed by the laws of California, and its privacy policy states that data stored on its hosted service is held on servers in the United States.
The software itself can be installed anywhere, so a self-hosted instance in an EU data centre keeps the data in the EU.
Which Chatwoot alternative is open source?
Tiledesk, which is listed here, is open source and can be self-hosted. It is built around AI agents and a conversation designer, so it suits a different use than Chatwoot's shared support inbox. The rest of the alternatives on this page are hosted commercial products.
Which alternative has a free plan for more than two agents?
Freshchat's free plan covers up to 10 agents with a chat widget and shared inbox, Zoho SalesIQ's free plan lists three operator licences, and tawk.to is free with paid add-ons for branding removal and AI.
Check each against the channels you need, because free tiers differ widely there.
Does Chatwoot send data to the vendor when self-hosted?
Its documentation says no customer data is transmitted, but a self-hosted installation sends anonymised aggregate usage metadata to Chatwoot at set intervals, such as counts of users and inboxes and the list of enabled integrations.
The privacy policy says it can be switched off through an environment toggle.
Can I move my Chatwoot data to another tool?
Chatwoot has a documented API for contacts and conversations, and a self-hosted database can be dumped directly.
We did not verify a ready-made Chatwoot import at any vendor on this page, so plan a scripted export of contacts and a decision about how much history to carry over.
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Sources
Checked 7 October 2026
Chatwoot pricing: Hacker, Startups, Business and Enterprise prices, agent limits, 500 conversations on Hacker, data retention per plan, which features sit on which plan, Captain AI credits and the $20 per 1,000 credit price, 15-day trial.
tawk.to add-ons: Free product, AI Assist $29 a month, Whitelabel $29 a month.
Freshchat pricing: Free plan for up to 10 agents, Growth $19, Pro $49, Enterprise $79 per agent per month billed annually, Freddy AI agent per 100 sessions.
Tidio pricing: Plans by billable conversations, Starter with 100 billable conversations, Lyro AI conversations metered separately.
LiveChat pricing: Essential $19 and Growth $79 per user per month billed annually, AI resolutions per month, 14-day trial.
LiveAgent pricing: Four per-agent plans from $15 to $69 billed annually, social channels from the Large business plan.
Zoho SalesIQ pricing: Free plan with three operator licences, tiered plans with visitor-tracking allowances.
Smartsupp pricing: Free plan with one operator and 25 conversations a month, Solo plan at $17 a month annual, AI agent sold separately.
Trengo pricing: Boost, Pro and Enterprise plans with included users and conversations, EUR prices.
HelpCrunch: Product scope (chat, chatbot, shared inbox, knowledge base, email marketing, popups, mobile SDKs), HelpCrunch Corporation address in Delaware.
Olark pricing: Human chat $29 per agent per month, AI website agent $400 a month billed annually with one human seat, 14-day trial.
Tiledesk: Open source positioning, on-premises deployment, Tiledesk S.r.l. registered in Italy.
