Live chat puts a person on your website while the visitor is still on it. The software is the easy part: a widget, a queue and a transcript.
What decides whether it works is who answers, how fast, and when. This guide ranks the tools on staffing reality, on what the pricing unit counts, and on where the transcripts live.
Vendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. Every vendor link is marked the same, whatever the arrangement behind it. How that works.
In short
What live chat software does
Live chat software places a messaging widget on a website and routes those conversations to human agents in a shared queue, keeping transcripts, visitor context and history.
In this order: setup effort, what it really costs, how your data comes back out, whether you can leave, and who each live chat tool is built for. On top of them sits one rule. The top three places are for challengers, which means vendors outside the big names, where the category has any, and the household brands come in from fourth place. The reasoning behind the five tests, and behind having no score out of ten, is set out on the how we work page.
German-hosted chat with WhatsApp and messaging channels included
Ranked #1 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
Userlike, now sold as Lime Connect, answers the compliance question directly, with hosting in Germany and contract terms written for a German buyer, and it adds WhatsApp, Facebook and SMS to the same agent inbox on the Pro plan without an extra product.
For a mid-sized European company that is usually enough. Push it harder and the limits appear: advanced and skill-based routing are Enterprise-only, the reporting will not tell you much about queue behaviour, and customisation of the widget beyond colours is limited compared with the Polish competition.
What stands out
German hosting
WhatsApp included
Free tier
Where it costs you
Advanced and skill-based routing only on the Enterprise plan
Analytics stay at the surface level
Right for
German-speaking companies needing EU hosting and WhatsApp in one inbox
Wrong for
Teams needing detailed routing logic and deep reporting
GermanyFree plan for one seat on the website channel; Pro with three seats from a published monthly price; AI agent extra
Czech chat for small shops, with an AI shopping assistant as an add-on
Ranked #2 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
Smartsupp combines a competent chat widget with WhatsApp, Messenger and email in one inbox, and sells Mira, an AI shopping assistant that recommends products, as an add-on from $16 a month for 100 conversations.
At this price that is genuinely useful, and hosting in the EU removes a procurement conversation. Two caveats: plans come in operator bundles of one, three and five, so a fourth person means the top plan, and the integration list is short enough that connecting it to a warehouse or ERP means custom work.
What stands out
EU hosting
Ecommerce focus
Published pricing
Where it costs you
The AI agent is a separate add-on with its own conversation limit
Fewer integrations than the bigger platforms
Right for
Small Central European ecommerce teams wanting cheap chat hosted in the EU
Wrong for
Companies needing deep CRM or order system integration
CzechiaFree plan for one operator; paid plans by operator bundle, published; AI agent extra
Chat, shared inbox, knowledge base and email campaigns in one
Ranked #3 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
HelpCrunch contracts through a Delaware corporation and positions itself as an Intercom alternative with a readable price list. Chat, inbox, knowledge base, pop-ups and email campaigns share one contact list, with no charge per contact.
Setup takes an afternoon. The limits appear as the team grows: routing, service-level reporting and automation are thinner than in LiveAgent or Trengo, and the AI agent adds a usage-based charge that is easy to underestimate.
What stands out
Published price
Unlimited contacts
All-in-one
Where it costs you
AI agent conversations are billed on top of seats
Reporting and routing rules are basic for larger teams
Right for
A small SaaS company that wants chat, help centre and emails together
Wrong for
A contact centre that needs detailed routing and service levels
United StatesPer seat per month, published; AI agent conversations extra
The specialist that does website conversations and little else
Ranked #4 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
LiveChat is the specialist's specialist: canned responses, transfers, supervision of live conversations, and reporting that answers whether staffing matches demand. Agents who use it all day notice the difference from the cheaper widgets within a week.
The commercial shape is the objection. The AI agent and the ticketing live in Text, the company's own separate product at another per-user price from $19 a month, so a team wanting one integrated stack should price both products before comparing.
What stands out
Published pricing
Mature product
Polish vendor
Where it costs you
The AI agent and ticketing are a separate Text subscription
Little value if chat volume is only a few conversations a week
Right for
Support or sales teams handling steady daily chat volume properly
Wrong for
Sites with a handful of conversations a week
PolandPer agent per month, published; 14-day trial only
Open source shared inbox you can host on your own server
Ranked #5 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Free tierOpen sourceSelf-hostablePublished pricingNorth America
Chatwoot gives a shared inbox with website chat, email and messaging channels under an MIT licence, which removes both the per-agent fee and the data residency argument in one step. Run the community edition on your own infrastructure and the transcripts never leave.
The trade is real work: container upgrades, a database to back up, and websocket issues to diagnose when chats stop appearing. Captain AI and SSO cost $19 to $99 per agent even self-hosted, and the hosted version, free for two agents, runs on AWS in the United States.
What stands out
Open source
Self-hostable
Own your data
Where it costs you
Self-hosting means you run upgrades, backups and scaling
Mobile applications lag behind the web interface
Right for
Technical teams that must keep conversation data on their own servers
Wrong for
Support teams with no engineer to maintain the deployment
United StatesSelf-hosting free and open source (MIT); cloud free plan for two agents, then per agent per month, published
Chat widget for small shops, with bots on a separate meter
Ranked #6 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
Tidio is built for the shop owner, with a free tier that works, ecommerce integrations that pull order data, and an interface nobody needs training for.
The pricing unit deserves attention before anything else: plans are sized by monthly conversations reached, so success on the marketing side raises the support bill, and the AI answering carries its own meter on top. As a multi-agent tool it runs out of routing, permissions and reporting quickly.
What stands out
Free tier
Ecommerce focus
Conversation pricing
Where it costs you
Billing counts conversations, so a busy month costs more
Falls apart as a team tool beyond a few agents
Right for
Small online shops where the owner answers the chats personally
Wrong for
Support teams of more than three or four agents
PolandFree tier; paid by monthly conversations reached, published
Dutch shared inbox where website chat is one channel
Ranked #7 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Trengo treats website chat as one inbox channel among many, which is the correct model for a company where customers also write on WhatsApp, email and Instagram, and where nobody should have to check six tools. Rules, assignment and reporting work across all of it.
Buy it only for the widget and you overpay for scope you do not use. Plans come with ten or twenty users and a conversation allowance (yearly on annual billing), which suits ten occasional answerers better than three constant ones, and AI-handled conversations are charged on top.
What stands out
Omnichannel inbox
EU hosting
Dutch vendor
Where it costs you
Entry plan is priced for ten users, dear for a small team
Heavier than needed if the website is the only channel
Right for
European teams merging chat, email and WhatsApp into one queue
Wrong for
Companies that only want a widget on one website
NetherlandsPlans with set users and conversations, published; extra users and AI conversations charged
Genuinely free chat widget, paid for branding removal and AI
Ranked #8 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
tawk.to is free for unlimited agents and unlimited websites, with payment only for removing the branding, the AI Assist add-on or hiring their agents, and there is no volume trap waiting in the licence. That makes it the cheapest way to learn whether chat produces conversations worth staffing.
What you give up is polish, integration depth and a clear commercial relationship, and for a company handling health, financial or other sensitive data the data processing terms deserve a proper legal read before installation.
What stands out
Free
Unlimited agents
Hired agents option
Where it costs you
The business model is selling outsourced agents, not software
Interface and integrations are dated
Right for
Sites testing whether their visitors will use chat at all
Wrong for
Regulated businesses handling sensitive personal or financial customer information
United StatesFree; paid add-ons for branding removal, AI Assist and hired agents
Chat, tickets and calls from one Slovak vendor at one price
Ranked #9 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
LiveAgent has one of the faster chat widgets and surrounds it with ticketing, a call centre and social channels, which for a ten-person team means one invoice instead of three integrations. The reason it is not higher is focus.
Every part is competent and none is excellent, the interface shows its age and its feature density, and the plan gating, with the call centre from Medium Business and social channels from Large Business, means the entry figure in a comparison table understates what you will actually pay.
What stands out
Ticketing included
Call centre module
Published pricing
Where it costs you
Call centre and social channels are held back for higher plans
Interface is crowded and dated
Right for
Small teams wanting chat, tickets and phone from one vendor
Wrong for
Buyers who need the best agent experience for chat alone
SlovakiaPer agent per month, published, in four bundled plans; 30-day trial
Accessible chat widget, now led by a flat-fee AI website agent
Ranked #10 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Olark's argument is narrow and real: the classic chatbox works with screen readers and keyboard navigation, is independently rated WCAG 2.1 AA and comes with a VPAT, which most competitors treat as a roadmap item and which is a hard requirement for public bodies in Europe and the United States.
Setup is quick and human-only chat is $29 per agent. The company's attention has moved to an AI website agent at a flat $400 a month with no usage meter, and certification for the newer products is still under way, so check which chatbox you are getting.
What stands out
Accessible widget
Simple setup
Published pricing
Where it costs you
The AI agent is a flat $400 a month, dear for a small site
The newer AI chat products are not yet accessibility certified
Right for
Public sector and education websites with accessibility obligations to meet
Wrong for
Teams wanting cheap bots and rich analytics in the per-agent price
United StatesHuman chat per agent per month, published; AI website agent at a published flat monthly fee; 14-day trial
Chat plus visitor tracking, cheap if you run Zoho already
Ranked #11 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingAsia-Pacific
SalesIQ costs a fraction of the specialists and delivers visitor tracking, lead scoring and chat that writes straight into Zoho CRM without integration work. For an existing Zoho customer the decision is nearly automatic.
Elsewhere, the picture changes: the agent interface is denser and slower to work in, the configuration takes longer than the price implies, and adopting it quietly pulls the rest of the suite into the conversation, which is exactly the intention.
What stands out
Low cost
CRM integration
Visitor scoring
Where it costs you
Weak case outside the Zoho ecosystem
Agent experience trails the chat specialists
Right for
Zoho CRM customers wanting cheap chat and visitor tracking together
Wrong for
Teams whose CRM and help desk are from other vendors
IndiaFree tier; paid per operator per month, published
Freshworks messaging product with a free tier and AI add-on
Ranked #12 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Freshchat is the messaging part of Freshworks, the listed American suite vendor. It covers web chat, mobile SDKs and messaging apps, and the free tier is generous for a first test. The case for it is integration with Freshdesk and Freshsales.
The case against is the bill: AI sessions are sold in blocks, routing and reporting sit on higher tiers, and Freshworks bundles its products into suites that make comparing prices across years awkward.
What stands out
Free tier
Omnichannel
Suite vendor
Where it costs you
AI agent sessions are billed separately from seats
Plans and bundles are repackaged frequently
Right for
A support team that already runs Freshdesk or Freshsales for its customers
Wrong for
A team that wants a standalone chat widget and nothing more
United StatesFree tier; paid per agent per month, published; AI sessions extra
Tiledesk is an EU-based open source project with a visual designer for conversation flows and the option to run everything on your own infrastructure, which is a rare pairing. For a technical team on a small budget with data residency to satisfy, it does the job.
Expect rough edges: the agent console is the less-developed half of the product, the community is small, and upgrades occasionally require reading the repository rather than the manual.
What stands out
Open source
EU vendor
Flow designer
Where it costs you
Human agent tooling is secondary to the bot builder
Documentation gaps show up during version upgrades
Right for
Technical European teams wanting self-hosted chat with visual flow design
Wrong for
Support managers expecting a polished agent workspace day one
ItalySelf-hosting free and open source; cloud published per month
Pipeline-focused chat that routes named accounts to sales
Ranked #14 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
Qualified, now a Salesforce company, is a pipeline tool: its AI agent Piper matches the visitor to a company record, wakes the account executive, and lets them jump into the conversation or book a meeting on the spot.
Where there is a target account list and a Salesforce instance behind it, that is measurably different from generic chat. For support use it is the wrong shape and the wrong price, and every tier says contact us, so each evaluation starts with a sales process.
What stands out
B2B pipeline
Salesforce-native
Quote only
Where it costs you
Priced for enterprise sales teams, with no published rate
Built around Salesforce, which now owns it
Right for
B2B sales teams chasing named accounts on a marketing website
Wrong for
Customer support teams answering questions about existing orders
Website chat, shared inbox and help articles for one flat workspace price
Ranked #15 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingElsewhere
Cove Inbox sells a branded website chat widget, a shared inbox and a help article library as one product, priced per workspace instead of per agent. A free plan covers two seats and paid plans bundle ten to fifty.
That suits a small team that answers chats itself. The company is not named on its Terms, data may be processed in the US, and the product is only weeks old, so ask for a data processing agreement and a reference before you rely on it.
What stands out
Per-workspace pricing
Free tier
Very young product
Where it costs you
Its Terms and Privacy pages do not name the company, owner or country behind the product
The status page shows 26 workspaces in total, and there is no SAML, voice or published SLA on the self-serve plans
Right for
Small teams that want chat, an inbox and help articles for one flat price
Wrong for
Buyers who need a named vendor, an EU-only region or enterprise controls
Not statedPer workspace with unlimited conversations, published; free plan for two seats, 14-day trial
Ranked #16 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingElsewhere
Chaport offers Free, Pro and Unlimited plans, with prices in euros excluding VAT shown on a monthly and annual toggle. Pro lists 4 operators, unlimited chat history, auto-invitations, detailed reports and REST and JavaScript API access.
Unlimited removes the operator cap and adds teams, custom fields, advanced reports and Zapier. A 14-day trial of Unlimited needs no card and ends on the Free plan.
What stands out
Free plan
Per-plan pricing
Chatbots
Where it costs you
Chatbots and a knowledge base bot are limited to the highest plan.
The free plan keeps only 60 days of chat history and 2 operators.
Right for
Small sites wanting a chat widget that starts on a free plan
Wrong for
Teams needing chatbots or teams without paying for Unlimited
Not stated by the vendorFree plan, then two euro-priced paid plans, plus a 14-day trial of the top plan
Open source chat widget project now in maintenance mode
Ranked #17 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Open sourceSelf-hostablePricing on requestElsewhere
The repository points to a maintenance notice on the papercups.io blog, which could not be read because the site returned an error when checked. The README names app.papercups.io as the hosted version, though its terms are unseen.
Self-hosting means you take on deployment, upgrades and security yourself, for a project whose maintainers say they will not extend it with major features.
What stands out
MIT licence
Maintenance mode
Self-hostable
Where it costs you
No major new features are planned, so the product will not gain new channels or tools.
The homepage was unreachable, leaving prices, plans and company details unconfirmed.
Right for
Technical teams wanting to run and modify a small chat widget codebase themselves
Wrong for
Buyers who need an actively developed product with published plans
Not stated by the vendorNo prices seen; hosted version named, or self-host the MIT code
Shared inbox helpdesk with live chat, aimed at online shops
Ranked #18 of 18 in Best Live Chat Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
The pricing page lists Basic, Pro and Plus per team member, plus a flat Starter plan for unlimited members with 500 responded conversations a month. Basic allows one brand, while Pro and Plus allow unlimited brands.
AI resolutions are capped per user on each tier, and extra ones cost a set amount each. A 14-day trial with Plus features needs no credit card. Peek co-browsing and iOS and Android apps are named.
What stands out
Helpdesk
Ecommerce integrations
Cloud
Where it costs you
The AI Agent is labelled Beta and each plan includes only a small monthly allowance of AI resolutions, with extras charged individually.
The vendor states no hosting location or parent company, so data residency questions need a direct answer from it.
Right for
Small online shops wanting chat, email and social messages in one shared inbox
Wrong for
Teams needing a stated European hosting location or self-hosting
United StatesPer team member per month on three published tiers; flat Starter plan with unlimited members; 14-day trial; extra AI resolutions charged per unit
Live chat software places a messaging widget on a website and routes those conversations to human agents in a shared queue, keeping transcripts, visitor context and history. These are the questions that actually differ between vendors, in the order we would ask them.
01
Check who publishes a price
The split is 16 published against 2 quoted. If you want to compare numbers first, start with Lime Connect (formerly Userlike), Smartsupp, HelpCrunch, LiveChat, Chatwoot, Tidio, Trengo, tawk.to, LiveAgent, Olark, Zoho SalesIQ, Freshchat, Tiledesk, Cove Inbox, Chaport, Re:amaze.
02
Weigh the vendor's home jurisdiction
Jurisdiction is a buying criterion here. The 18 vendors are spread over 10 countries (North America 7, Europe 7, Elsewhere 3, Asia-Pacific 1), and the home country determines which disclosure rules bind them.
03
Check the open source options
Source code is available for Chatwoot, Tiledesk, Papercups. Running it yourself swaps the licence fee for your own upkeep.
Live chat is a staffing decision wearing a software badge
The widget takes an afternoon. The commitment is that somebody answers within a minute during the hours it is visible, and an unanswered chat does more damage than no chat at all, because the visitor asked and was ignored. Work out the hours first, then the rota, then the tool.
A site with two hundred visitors a day generates a manageable trickle; a campaign can produce forty conversations in an hour, and Tidio's conversation-based pricing means that hour also costs more. Hide the widget outside staffed hours and show an email form instead, rather than promising a person who is not there.
Decide the staffed hours and put them in the widget before launch.
Measure first response time weekly and act when it drifts past a minute.
Route the out-of-hours widget to a form or a promise of a reply time.
Where live chat stops and the AI agent starts
These are two products and two budgets. Live chat is a person; an AI agent answers without one and is usually metered per conversation or per resolution. Most vendors here sell both, and the bot sits on a separate meter: Tidio prices its AI answering apart from the chat plan, and LiveChat sells its AI agent inside Text, a separate subscription.
The sane order is to run human chat first for a month, read the transcripts, and only automate the questions that repeat. Buying automation first means automating questions you have not read yet, which is how the bot ends up answering things nobody asks.
Run chat with people for a month and categorise the transcripts before automating.
Price the bot meter separately; it is never included in the per-seat figure.
Keep a visible route to a human in every automated conversation.
What the pricing unit counts, because it is not always seats
Comparison tables assume per-agent pricing, and the market no longer agrees. LiveChat, Olark and HelpCrunch bill per seat, Userlike's paid plan starts with three seats, and Trengo sells plans with ten or twenty users included. Tidio bills by conversations reached in a month. tawk.to charges nothing for agents at all and sells services instead.
Chatwoot costs nothing per agent if you host it. The unit matters most for teams where many people answer occasionally: a shop with eight staff who each take a few chats a week pays eight seats at the specialists and nothing extra at tawk.to or a self-hosted Chatwoot. Count the occasional answerers before shortlisting.
List everyone who might answer a chat, including weekend and holiday cover.
Re-price the shortlist at twice your expected conversation volume.
Check whether a supervisor who only watches conversations needs a paid seat.
Transcripts are customer data, and the widget is a third-party script
Installing chat means putting someone else's JavaScript on every page and sending them what visitors type, which can include an order number, a health question or a complaint about an employer. Two things follow. The processing agreement and the hosting location are not paperwork: Userlike, Smartsupp and Trengo host in the EU, Chatwoot and Tiledesk can run on your own servers, and most of the American vendors here offer neither.
And session recording, if you add it, is a separate processing purpose that needs its own notice and lawful basis, agreed with whoever signs off privacy in your organisation before the recording starts rather than after a visitor asks about it.
Check where transcripts are stored and how long the vendor keeps them.
Set a retention period yourself instead of accepting the default forever.
Mask card numbers and other sensitive fields in the transcript before it is stored.
What goes wrong most often when buying live chat software
Showing the widget twenty-four hours a day while staffing it from nine to five. The visitor at eight in the evening learns that you ignore people.
Judging the tool on the proactive invitation feature. Automatic pop-ups raise conversation counts and annoyance in equal measure, and the count is what the vendor reports.
Letting sales and support share one queue with no routing. The pre-sales question and the angry order chase need different people and different answer times.
Never reading the transcripts. They are the cheapest research the company owns, and they say exactly which page on the website is unclear.
07
Frequently asked questions
8 answers
What is the best live chat in 2026?
Lime Connect (formerly Userlike) leads our ranking of 18. Now renamed Lime Connect and part of Lime Technologies since 2021, it is the straightforward answer for a European company that needs the transcripts to stay in Germany and wants WhatsApp in the same inbox as the website widget.
Documentation and support are strong in German and English. Advanced and skill-based routing are kept for the Enterprise plan, the AI agent is a paid add-on, and the free plan is one seat on the website channel only.
Which live chat tools publish their pricing?
16 of the 18, with the pricing model each one publishes:
Lime Connect (formerly Userlike): Free plan for one seat on the website channel; Pro with three seats from a published monthly price; AI agent extra.
Smartsupp: Free plan for one operator; paid plans by operator bundle, published; AI agent extra.
HelpCrunch: Per seat per month, published; AI agent conversations extra.
LiveChat: Per agent per month, published; 14-day trial only.
Chatwoot: Self-hosting free and open source (MIT); cloud free plan for two agents, then per agent per month, published.
Tidio: Free tier; paid by monthly conversations reached, published.
Trengo: Plans with set users and conversations, published; extra users and AI conversations charged.
tawk.to: Free; paid add-ons for branding removal, AI Assist and hired agents.
LiveAgent: Per agent per month, published, in four bundled plans; 30-day trial.
Olark: Human chat per agent per month, published; AI website agent at a published flat monthly fee; 14-day trial.
Zoho SalesIQ: Free tier; paid per operator per month, published.
Freshchat: Free tier; paid per agent per month, published; AI sessions extra.
Tiledesk: Self-hosting free and open source; cloud published per month.
Cove Inbox: Per workspace with unlimited conversations, published; free plan for two seats, 14-day trial.
Chaport: Free plan, then two euro-priced paid plans, plus a 14-day trial of the top plan.
Re:amaze: Per team member per month on three published tiers; flat Starter plan with unlimited members; 14-day trial; extra AI resolutions charged per unit.
2 vendors do not print a price.
Is there a free live chat tool?
Lime Connect (formerly Userlike), Smartsupp, Chatwoot, Tidio, tawk.to, Zoho SalesIQ, Freshchat, Tiledesk, Cove Inbox, Chaport have a free plan or free self-hosted edition.
Where are these live chat vendors established?
Vendor countries on this page, North America 7, Europe 7, Elsewhere 3, Asia-Pacific 1:
Lime Connect (formerly Userlike): Germany.
Smartsupp: Czechia.
HelpCrunch: United States.
LiveChat: Poland.
Chatwoot: United States.
Tidio: Poland.
Trengo: Netherlands.
tawk.to: United States.
LiveAgent: Slovakia.
Olark: United States.
Zoho SalesIQ: India.
Freshchat: United States.
Tiledesk: Italy.
Qualified: United States.
Cove Inbox: Not stated.
Chaport: Not stated by the vendor.
Papercups: Not stated by the vendor.
Re:amaze: United States.
Which live chat tools are open source?
Chatwoot, Tiledesk, Papercups.
Which live chat tools can you host yourself?
Chatwoot, Tiledesk, Papercups. The other 15 are hosted by the vendor only.
What should you use instead of Lime Connect (formerly Userlike)?
Look at Smartsupp (made for small Central European ecommerce teams wanting cheap chat hosted in the EU) and HelpCrunch (made for a small SaaS company that wants chat, help centre and emails together), which hold places two and three.
Who should not buy Lime Connect (formerly Userlike)?
Teams needing detailed routing logic and deep reporting. Advanced and skill-based routing only on the Enterprise plan.
Your live chat product is not among these 18? Tell us what it is for and who it serves, and we will consider it. The decision is editorial, and the ground rules are set out under software advice.
