9 best tawk.to alternatives for customer support in 2026

The strongest tawk.to alternatives in October 2026 are Robylon for an AI agent that takes action across chat, email, voice and WhatsApp; Crisp, Zoho SalesIQ and Tidio for low-cost chat with AI; Text (formerly LiveChat) for stores that want the chat agent to sell; HubSpot Service Hub for teams on HubSpot’s CRM; and Freshdesk, Intercom and Zendesk for a full helpdesk.

tawk.to gives live chat, an inbox, ticketing and a knowledge base to any number of agents for free. On price it is hard to beat: on the worked example below, its AI Assist ($219.06 a month) costs less than Robylon ($682.00), and so do Zoho SalesIQ and Crisp. Teams look elsewhere for other reasons: AI Assist bills every AI reply and only looks up orders, the free AI tier cannot hand over, phone is not yet a live channel, and removing the branding costs extra. Every tool below is judged on three things: whether its AI takes the action a ticket needs, whether every channel runs from one setup, and whether it fits the stack you already run.

tawk.to alternatives at a glance

Prices checked October 2026 on each vendor's pricing page. G2 ratings read October 2026, with the review count in brackets.

Robylon publishes this page and ranks itself first; every tool on the list, Robylon included, gets the same “Where it falls short” line.

What tawk.to does

tawk.to is a free live chat platform for small businesses, launched in October 2013. The free platform covers unlimited agents, chats and websites, with a chat widget, an inbox for email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram, ticketing, a knowledge base and a contact CRM, all carrying “Powered by tawk.to” branding. AI Assist, the AI agent add-on, answers from your FAQs, website pages and documents; on Growth, Business and Enterprise it hands chats to people and calls tools, including Shopify order lookups, custom APIs and MCP servers. AI Assist plans run from a free Hobby tier of 100 message credits to Enterprise at $399 a month.

Why teams look beyond tawk.to

AI billed per reply

AI Assist is billed per message the AI sends, rather than per conversation or resolution, according to tawk.to’s AI Assist billing article. Each reply uses 1 to 10 or more credits depending on the model, and new agents default to the Auto model at 3 credits a reply, per the completion model article. Every AI reply before a handover is billed. Extra credits cost $30 per 1,000.

Free AI tier without handover

The free Hobby tier gives 100 message credits a month with no escalation to a person and no integrations, so a chat Hobby cannot answer stays with the bot. Handover, Shopify lookups and custom API tools start on Growth, at $29 a month.

Order lookups rather than changes

AI Assist’s Shopify tools search orders, after verifying the customer, and search products, as tawk.to’s Shopify article describes. tawk.to’s help centre documents no native action that cancels, refunds or edits an order as of October 2026. Teams can build them as custom APIs or MCP servers.

No live phone channel

tawk.to’s AI phone product, Voice Agents, was waitlist only on 8 October 2026, priced from $49 a month plus usage on the add-ons page. A paid add-on runs unrecorded calls inside the chat widget between one agent and one visitor.

Branding removal sold separately

The free widget, chat page, knowledge base and ticket email footers all show “Powered by tawk.to”. Removing that costs $39 a month or $348 a year per property, according to tawk.to’s branding article. Email replies also go out from tawk.to’s address unless the same add-on sets up your own domain.

Few published security certifications

tawk.to’s security page lists GDPR, the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and UK ICO registration. The page lists no SOC 2 report, ISO 27001 certificate or HIPAA support, and tawk.to is hosted only, with no data residency option.

Three kinds of tawk.to alternatives

Three kinds of product get called tawk.to alternatives, and they solve different problems.

• Live chat and chatbot tools: a website widget, a light inbox and an AI agent, priced for small teams. Tidio, Crisp, Zoho SalesIQ and Text (formerly LiveChat) belong here, as tawk.to does. Their AI agents answer from your content, reach outside systems to different depths, and run only inside their own inbox.
• AI agent platforms: an agent that resolves across channels, standalone or inside a helpdesk. Robylon belongs here, acting in other systems from its own inbox or inside nine helpdesks and chat tools.
• Helpdesk suites with their own AI: ticketing, SLAs and routing for a human team, with an AI agent on top. HubSpot Service Hub, Freshdesk, Intercom and Zendesk belong here; all four AI agents take actions on paid plans.

If the bot only answers website questions, the first kind costs least, and tawk.to does that free. If the agent must change orders, or the team needs SLAs and queues, the other two fit.

How we compared the tools

We read each vendor’s pricing page, help centre and security page on 7 and 8 October 2026, and each tool’s G2 page the same days. We did not run hands-on tests for this page.

We compared them on what the AI agent can resolve, channels covered, where each runs, billing model, setup effort, and how each works for support agents and team leads.

The 9 best tawk.to alternatives

1. Robylon

Best for: teams that have outgrown a free chat widget and need the AI agent to finish tickets by acting in their systems, across chat, email, voice and WhatsApp from one setup.

What it is for: Robylon is an AI customer support platform that resolves tickets across email, chat, voice and WhatsApp. It works standalone or alongside an existing helpdesk. It takes the action a ticket needs: agents read the systems the answer lives in, act through tools built from your APIs and connected apps, and hand anything they cannot finish to a person with the checking already done. Every channel runs from one setup. And it fits the stack you already run, inside your helpdesk or standalone. Robylon resolves over 95% of queries automatically for a gaming company.

What the AI does:

• A triage agent routes each conversation to the sub-agent for that topic.
• Agents call tools built from your APIs and from 32 pre-built integrations, among them Shopify, HubSpot, Salesforce and Google Sheets. Custom API integrations are on the Business plan.
• With Shopify connected, an agent looks up an order and cancels it before fulfilment.
• The knowledge base answers from your sources, and the KB gap report shows what it could not answer (Pro plan and above).
• Anything the agent cannot finish goes to a person through assignment rules, with the conversation, intent and checks attached.

Channels: email, website and in-app chat, voice, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, SMS through Twilio, YouTube comments, and reviews on Google Play, the App Store and Google My Business, all on the channels page, in over 40 languages. Robylon runs standalone with its own inbox and optional human seats, or inside Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, Salesforce, Vtiger and Gorgias tickets and inside Intercom, Freshchat, SalesIQ and Zendesk messaging chat; inside Gorgias it covers email and chat. WhatsApp and email start on the Pro plan; voice phone calls and the Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, Intercom, Freshchat and Gorgias integrations start on Business. The human team works in a unified inbox with tickets, SLAs and queues.

Pricing: by AI credits, with seats only for people (see pricing). Starter is free with 300 credits a month (about 40 conversations), paid plans start at $25 a month for 500 credits, Business starts at $180 a month, and yearly billing takes 10% off. Human seats are optional, at $19 (Basic), $49 (Advanced) or $89 (Expert) a month. G2 rating: 5.0 from 42 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: tawk.to’s chat is free for unlimited agents, and on the worked example below tawk.to AI Assist ($219.06 a month), Crisp ($190.00) and Zoho SalesIQ ($75.00, chat only) cost less than Robylon ($682.00). Robylon’s free Starter plan is chat only. Voice phone calls start on the Business plan at $180 a month, and Robylon publishes no per-minute voice price. Credits per conversation vary with the AI model chosen, so the bill is harder to forecast than a flat plan.

Where tawk.to does better:

• Free for the whole team: no charge for unlimited agents, chats and properties, with ticketing, a knowledge base and a CRM. Robylon bills each human seat.
• Lower AI cost at volume: AI Assist Business came to $219.06 a month on the worked example, about a third of Robylon’s $682.00.
• Self-serve billing: AI Assist plans and credit top-ups are bought in the dashboard. Robylon’s plan changes go through an account manager.
• Review volume: 203 G2 reviews for tawk.to against Robylon’s 42.

Pick it if: you need the AI agent to cancel an order, update an account or book a callback, or want voice, WhatsApp and email answered by the same agents as chat. Stay on tawk.to if free chat and an AI agent that answers and looks up orders cover what customers ask.

2. Tidio: best for small online stores

Best for: small Shopify or WooCommerce stores that want chat, email and social messages in one panel, with AI sold in conversation packs.

Tidio bills by conversations rather than seats: Billable conversations when a person replies, Lyro conversations when the Lyro AI agent replies. Self-serve plans include up to 10 seats. Lyro answers from your FAQs, website and files, follows multi-step Procedures, recommends products from a Shopify or WooCommerce catalogue, and calls outside APIs through Actions: 3 on the Core Lyro plan, up to 10 on Plus.

What the AI does: Lyro answers and calls APIs through Actions, in 48 languages; editing orders is listed for Plus and Premium.

Channels: live chat widget, email tickets, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, a chat page and video calls in the widget.

Pricing: Starter costs $29 a month for 100 Billable conversations; Lyro costs $39 a month for 50 Lyro conversations up to $700 for 1,000 (Tidio pricing). G2: 4.6 from 1,962 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: the Free plan’s 50 Lyro conversations never renew, and a Lyro conversation is used as soon as Lyro replies, resolved or not, per Tidio’s help centre. Tidio’s docs list no phone, voice or SMS channel as of October 2026.

Pick it if: you run a small store and prefer paying by conversation. The Tidio alternatives guide covers the tools teams compare it with.

3. Crisp: best for flat workspace pricing

Best for: small and mid-size teams that want chat, a shared inbox and an AI agent at one flat price per workspace.

Crisp prices per workspace: Free includes 2 seats, Mini 4, Essentials 10 and Plus 20, with unlimited human conversations. The AI agent, Hugo, draws on each paid plan’s AI credits and answers from Q&A snippets, a website crawl, files and the knowledge base. Hugo acts through MCP: one-click Shopify tools read order details and update a shipping address before fulfilment, and a team can build its own MCP server for refunds or account resets.

What the AI does: Hugo answers, escalates and acts through MCP tools; the plan table lists the MCP server on Essentials and Plus.

Channels: website chat widget, contact form and mobile SDKs; email, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and X DMs from Mini; Instagram, WhatsApp, Line, Viber, SMS through Twilio and phone through Aircall, Ringover or KrispCall from Essentials.

Pricing: Free costs $0 for 2 seats with no AI; Mini costs $45 a month per workspace with $5 of AI credits, Essentials $95 with $25 and Plus $295 with $75, then Hugo usage is billed by tokens (Crisp pricing). G2: 4.5 from 205 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: Crisp publishes no per-token rate; its Hugo billing article estimates $0.05 to $0.10 a conversation, used whether Hugo resolves or hands over. Crisp’s help centre says Crisp has not been through a SOC 2 audit, and Crisp sells no voice AI.

Pick it if: you want a flat workspace price with seats included.

4. Zoho SalesIQ: best for Zoho teams

Best for: teams on Zoho CRM or Zoho Desk that want website chat with real-time visitor tracking at a low price per operator.

Zoho SalesIQ bills per operator, with a free plan for 3 operators covering website and app chat without chatbots or AI. Basic adds messaging apps, one Zobot chatbot and one Zia Agent. Answer Bot, on Enterprise only, answers from articles, FAQs and crawled pages, and Zia Agents call tools that create leads in Zoho CRM and tickets in Zoho Desk. SalesIQ is also the live chat channel inside Zoho Desk.

What the AI does: Answer Bot answers on Enterprise, on Zoho’s built-in Zia or your own LLM key, in 34 languages; Zia Agents call tools, and handover to a person must be written into their instructions.

Channels: website chat widget and mobile SDKs; WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, LINE and WeChat from Basic; in-chat audio and video calls; outbound calls through telephony partners on Enterprise. Email comes through Zoho Desk.

Pricing: Basic costs $7 per operator a month billed annually or $10 monthly, Professional $12.75 or $17, and Enterprise $20 or $25 (Zoho SalesIQ pricing). G2: 4.4 from 256 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: SalesIQ has no email channel, so email needs Zoho Desk as well, and Answer Bot is on Enterprise only.

Pick it if: your team already runs on Zoho and wants visitor tracking beside the chat.

5. Text (formerly LiveChat): best for sales chat

Best for: online stores, Shopify above all, that want live chat, email tickets and an AI agent that sells as well as answers.

Text is LiveChat’s successor from the same company, Text S.A., which renamed itself from LiveChat Software in September 2023. New sign-ups at livechat.com get Text plans; existing LiveChat customers keep theirs. Text AI Agent answers from website pages, help content and files, and up to 10 Custom Skills per agent call outside systems through webhooks and APIs for order status, CRM updates and stock checks. With Shopify the agent recommends products and adds them to the cart in chat.

What the AI does: answers, sells and acts through Custom Skills, in 46 languages; 10 resolutions a month on Essential, 200 on Growth.

Channels: website and in-app chat widget, a chat page, email forwarded into tickets, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp (native since 17 June 2026), Instagram DMs (since 6 October 2026) and SMS through your own Twilio account.

Pricing: Essential costs $19 per user a month billed annually or $25 monthly; Growth costs $79 or $99. Extra AI resolutions cost $49.50 per package of 50 ($0.99 each) (Text pricing). G2: 4.1 from 12 reviews (G2, October 2026); a dozen reviews says little.

Where it falls short: there is no free plan, only a 14-day trial, and every human user needs a paid seat. Text’s help centre documents the AI Agent on chat, WhatsApp and Instagram but not on email tickets as of October 2026.

Pick it if: you want the chat agent to recommend products and fill carts. The LiveChat alternatives guide covers the tools teams compare Text with.

6. HubSpot Service Hub: best for CRM teams

Best for: teams that run marketing or sales on HubSpot’s CRM and want support on the same contact records.

HubSpot’s free tools give up to two users ticketing, a shared inbox for email and live chat, and rule-based bots. The AI customer agent needs Service Hub Professional or Enterprise. The customer agent answers from the knowledge base, website pages and files, and runs up to 20 configured actions: enrol a visitor in a workflow, update a CRM record, book a meeting, qualify a lead or call an outside API.

What the AI does: the customer agent answers and acts through configured actions on Professional and Enterprise; on voice it answers inbound calls in public beta.

Channels: email, website live chat, forms and Facebook Messenger; WhatsApp (up to 1,000 messages a month) and calling on Professional and Enterprise.

Pricing: Service Hub Starter lists at $20 per seat a month, offered to new customers for a limited time at $7 billed annually or $10 monthly. Professional costs $90 per seat a month billed annually or $100 paid monthly on an annual commitment; the customer agent uses 50 credits ($0.50) per resolved conversation, with 3,000 credits a month included (HubSpot Service Hub pricing). G2: 4.4 from 3,018 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: the customer agent needs a Professional seat on an annual commitment, the included credits are shared with every other HubSpot AI feature, and a lead marked qualified or not qualified counts as a billed resolution, per HubSpot’s customer agent guide.

Pick it if: your contacts and deals already live in HubSpot.

7. Freshdesk: best full helpdesk upgrade

Best for: growing teams that want a full ticketing helpdesk with SLAs, routing and a customer portal.

Freshworks sells Freshdesk, which is email-first, and Freshdesk Omni, which adds full live chat, Instagram and WhatsApp. Freddy AI Agent answers from knowledge sources and runs workflows with API actions, with pre-built integrations for Shopify, Stripe, PayPal and Wix. The chat AI agent runs only on Freshdesk Omni.

What the AI does: answers and runs workflows with API actions on Growth, Pro and Enterprise, in more than 60 languages for chat.

Channels: email, a customer portal, web chat and Facebook Messenger; Freshdesk Omni adds Instagram and WhatsApp. Phone comes through Freshcaller, sold separately.

Pricing: Freshdesk Growth costs $19 per agent a month billed annually ($23 monthly) and Freshdesk Omni Growth $29 ($35); Freddy AI Agent sessions cost $49 per pack of 100 on every plan (Freshdesk pricing). G2: 4.4 from 3,777 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: there is no free-forever plan (the Free Program gives Freshdesk accounts 2 agents for 6 months), and a Freddy session is billed whatever the outcome, handovers included, as Freshworks’ session FAQ describes.

Pick it if: your team has outgrown a chat tool’s inbox and needs SLAs, routing and a customer portal.

8. Intercom: best for SaaS messengers

Best for: SaaS teams that want an in-app messenger, help center and proactive messages, with AI billed per outcome.

Intercom is a helpdesk built around a messenger for websites and apps. Its maker renamed itself Fin on 12 May 2026, and Salesforce completed its acquisition on 10 September 2026; the helpdesk keeps the Intercom name. Fin AI Agent, on every plan, acts through Procedures: plain-language instructions that call REST APIs and MCP connectors.

What the AI does: Fin answers and acts through Procedures, in more than 45 languages; nothing is billed when the customer asks for a person or Fin cannot answer.

Channels: messenger chat on web, iOS and Android, email, WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Slack and Discord; Fin Voice for select customers through sales.

Pricing: Fin costs $0.99 per outcome. Advanced seats cost $85 a month billed annually or $99 monthly, and Expert $132 or $139 (Intercom pricing). G2: 4.5 from 3,918 reviews (G2, October 2026), on the Fin listing.

Where it falls short: there is no free plan, every teammate needs a seat, a Procedure that ends in a handover is still billed as an outcome per Fin’s outcomes article, and Fin Voice has no published price.

Pick it if: your product runs on an in-app messenger and you want onboarding and support in one tool.

9. Zendesk: best for omnichannel suites

Best for: support teams that want ticketing, messaging, voice and an AI agent in one suite.

Zendesk Suite combines email, messaging, live chat and Zendesk Talk voice in one workspace. Since June 2026, AI agents on every plan follow natural-language procedures and read and write data in outside systems. Each AI agent serves one channel type (messaging, email or voice), and voice AI agents became generally available in September 2026.

What the AI does: answers and acts through integrations, replying in more than 80 languages; messaging AI agents need a Suite plan.

Channels: email, web form, web messaging and live chat, mobile SDKs, voice through Zendesk Talk, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, X DMs, LINE, WeChat and Slack; SMS through an add-on.

Pricing: Suite Team costs $55 per agent a month billed annually or $69 monthly, with 5 automated resolutions per agent a month included; further resolutions cost $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay-as-you-go (Zendesk pricing). G2: 4.3 from 7,093 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: there is no free plan, and a messaging handoff that fails because no agent is available is recorded as an automated resolution, per Zendesk’s help centre.

Pick it if: a growing support team needs voice, messaging and email in one suite.

Alternatives by situation

What to decide before switching

Actions versus answers

Count what share of your chats ask for something to change: an order cancelled, an address updated, a refund issued. If most only need answers, tawk.to AI Assist, Crisp and Zoho SalesIQ’s Answer Bot cover them at the lowest cost. If many need actions, shortlist Robylon, Intercom with Fin, HubSpot’s customer agent and Freshdesk Omni, and check which systems each can write to without custom building.

Channels your customers use

List every channel customers use today, including phone. tawk.to’s AI voice agents were waitlist only on 8 October 2026, Crisp routes phone through Aircall, Ringover or KrispCall, and Freshdesk through Freshcaller. Zendesk sells voice AI agents, HubSpot’s customer agent answers inbound calls in beta, and Robylon includes voice phone calls from its Business plan, so the same agents answer chat, email, WhatsApp and calls.

Where your team works

Decide where the human team will reply. tawk.to, Crisp, Tidio and Text give a chat-first inbox; the four suites add SLAs, routing and help centers; Robylon gives an inbox with tickets, SLAs and queues, or runs inside the helpdesk the team already uses. Count seats too: tawk.to has no limit, Crisp Plus includes 20, Tidio’s self-serve plans stop at 10, and the four suites charge for every agent.

Pricing at your volume

The billing units differ (per AI message, token, conversation pack, operator, session, resolution or credit), so compare at one volume. On published prices for 3,000 chat and email conversations a month, 60% resolved by the AI (1,800 resolutions), 3 human agents and monthly billing:

Robylon’s figure is 3,000 conversations at about 7.5 credits each: the Business 10,000-credit tier at $300 plus 13 extra 1,000-credit bundles at $25, and 3 Basic seats at $19. tawk.to’s figure assumes three AI replies a conversation on a 1-credit model, so 3 per-message credits a conversation; the default Auto model uses 3 credits a reply, which would triple the usage cost. Zoho SalesIQ’s $75.00 is three Enterprise operator seats: Answer Bot is Enterprise only, runs on Zoho’s built-in Zia with no published usage fee, and Enterprise includes 200K bot chat sessions a month. SalesIQ has no email channel, so email would need Zoho Desk on top. Crisp’s figure uses the $0.05 a conversation of Crisp’s Hugo calculator, the low end of its range. Tidio’s figure is an extrapolation past its 1,000-conversation packs.

When to stay on tawk.to

• Your team needs live chat and ticketing for many agents on a budget close to zero.
• Your AI only needs to answer questions and look up Shopify orders. At 3,000 conversations a month, tawk.to AI Assist ($219.06) costs less than Robylon ($682.00), and so do Crisp ($190.00) and Zoho SalesIQ ($75.00, chat only).
• Your developers are happy to build order changes as custom APIs or MCP servers.
• Your customers do not phone, or a separate phone system handles calls.

What usually drives a switch is a need tawk.to leaves to add-ons or to your developers: an AI agent that changes orders without custom building, a live phone channel, a SOC 2 report, or SLAs and queues. If none applies, staying is reasonable.

Moving off tawk.to

1. Baseline today’s numbers: AI Assist credits used a month, replies per conversation, the share of chats handed to people, CSAT and total monthly cost.
2. Export the knowledge base articles, shortcuts, documents, Instructions and Scenarios AI Assist answers from.
3. List the tools AI Assist calls today and every system the new agent must act in.
4. Build the top intents first and test them in bulk against real past chats, with bulk knowledge base testing or the new tool’s equivalent.
5. Install the new chat widget on a subset of pages while tawk.to handles the rest.
6. Repoint email forwarding, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram, and move Zapier and webhook automations.
7. Compare resolution rate, CSAT and cost per resolution against the baseline, then move the rest.
8. Keep the free tawk.to account for 30 days in case you need to roll back.

Choosing a tawk.to alternative

tawk.to is hard to beat for what it charges: live chat, ticketing, a knowledge base and a CRM for unlimited agents at no cost, and an AI agent that answers and looks up orders for less than most paid tools. For a small team whose chats mostly need answers, it remains a sensible home.

Move when the AI must change things rather than look them up, when customers phone, or when the team needs SLAs, queues and a security report. Crisp and Zoho SalesIQ are the cheapest moves, Text suits stores selling in chat, and Freshdesk, Intercom and Zendesk add a full helpdesk. Robylon suits teams that want the agent to take the action a ticket needs, run every channel from one setup and fit the stack they already run, and its Starter plan is free to try.