Crisp vs Intercom in 2026: the same team priced on both

Take a five-person support team that lets AI handle 1,000 conversations a month. On Intercom (now Fin), list prices put that bill near $1,185. On Crisp it lands around $120 to $170. Same team, same chat volume, a gap of roughly seven to ten times.

That gap is the main reason "Crisp vs Intercom" gets searched at all. But price isn't the whole story, and Intercom's price buys things Crisp doesn't offer. This post prices three team sizes on both, compares them where it matters (AI, channels, inbox, compliance), says who should pick which, and then introduces a third option briefly, because we make it.

A disclosure up front: Talvo, the third option, is our product. The Crisp and Intercom facts come from their own pricing and help pages as listed in October 2026, and we flag the places where we couldn't confirm something.

Two pricing models that barely resemble each other

Intercom charges for people and for results. You pay a per-seat fee for the helpdesk, then $0.99 each time its Fin AI agent produces an "outcome." WhatsApp, SMS, phone and email campaigns are billed as extra usage on top. On Intercom's pricing page, the three plans are:

New customers are currently shown lower promotional prices on Essential ($19 annual, $29 monthly). The page doesn't say how long those last, so this post uses the list prices. There's no free plan, only a 14-day trial. Advanced and Expert include 20 and 50 free Lite seats, but only full seats can send messages.

Crisp charges per workspace. You pick a plan, and the plan decides how many people can log in.

Crisp's pricing page lists extra agents at $10 each per month. That means a fifth agent on Mini should cost $10 more; confirm that at checkout. Reviewers say the cost that actually climbs on Crisp is the customer-profile limit (5,000 on Mini). Crisp says yearly billing can be turned on after you subscribe, but it doesn't publish yearly prices, so everything here is monthly.

The part that surprises people is that Crisp doesn't bill for conversation volume. Its AI is the main variable cost, and it uses prepaid credits.

The same team on both bills

Three teams, list prices, monthly billing. The scenarios assume every AI conversation counts once on each side, with no promotions, no add-ons such as Intercom's Copilot ($35 per agent monthly) or its $99 Proactive Support Plus, and Intercom's cheapest plan.

On the Crisp side, the AI estimate comes from Crisp's own help article, which puts an AI-handled conversation at about $0.05 to $0.10 in credits and calls that an estimate. Crisp doesn't publish its pay-as-you-go rate after the included credits run out, so we assume extra credits cost face value. Included credits are $5 on Mini and $25 on Essentials.

One disclosure on the 5-agent row: Mini plus one extra agent ($45 + $10) with the same AI would run about $100 to $150, a bit under the Essentials figure, but Essentials is where the workflow builder, routing and omnichannel inbox start. On annual billing Intercom's seat cost drops from $39 to $29 a seat, which takes the three totals to $384, $1,135 and $3,260. The AI line doesn't change.

The ten-person row deserves a caveat. Essential has no workflow builder or multiple team inboxes, so many ten-person teams would land on Advanced, where ten seats cost $990 a month ($850 annual). With the same 3,000 outcomes that's $3,960, or $3,820 on annual billing. The Lite seats on Advanced help only if some of your people don't need to reply.

The gap has two causes: Intercom's per-seat fees plus Fin's $0.99 rate, against Crisp's flat workspace price and cents-per-conversation credits. Intercom's bill is also hard to forecast, because you can't know in advance how many conversations Fin will touch. If that sounds familiar, our Intercom pricing breakdown goes through the add-ons in detail.

Fin and Hugo are different bets

Fin is Intercom's AI agent and the main reason many teams pay Intercom prices. Reviewers consistently praise the quality of its answers. Fin can also be bought on its own for $0.99 per outcome on top of another helpdesk, with a minimum monthly commitment (50 outcomes in Intercom's example).

Crisp's Hugo ships inside every paid plan from Mini upward, trained on your knowledge base, and Crisp lists 50-plus-language AI. Cost depends on message length, how large your knowledge is and which model runs, which is why Crisp quotes a range. Credits reset each billing cycle, and trial and Playground use come out of them. When credits run out and pay-as-you-go is off, Hugo stops answering and conversations go to your team.

Is Crisp's AI "like Fin"? For answering from a knowledge base, the idea is the same. What differs is the commercial design: Fin is priced as an outcome you buy, Hugo as a utility you consume. We have no independent head-to-head accuracy data on the two, and we won't make one up. If the AI is why you're buying, run your own twenty hardest questions through both trials. Both vendors offer a 14-day trial.

For a wider look at how other vendors define what counts, see AI resolution pricing compared.

Channels: Crisp includes more in the plan, Intercom charges per use

Both cover the usual set. Intercom's help center lists Messenger, email, phone, WhatsApp, Slack, SMS and social channels, with WhatsApp billed per conversation, SMS per message and phone by usage. Live chat and support email are free and unlimited on every plan.

Crisp's list is wider by default: web chat, contact forms, email, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, X direct messages, Instagram, SMS, Viber, Line, WhatsApp Business and phone. The omnichannel inbox sits on Essentials. The limit to know about is one account each for Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp Business, Viber, Line and Telegram per workspace, which matters for agencies handling several brands.

The practical difference: if WhatsApp is central to your business, price Intercom's per-conversation fees at your real volume before you compare.

The inbox, the help center and what's missing

Intercom's Essential gives you a shared inbox, ticketing, the Messenger, pre-built reports and a public help center. Advanced adds multiple team inboxes, a workflow builder, round-robin assignment and a private, multilingual help center. SLAs and SSO start on Expert. Product tours, surveys and checklists aren't in any base plan. They come with the Proactive Support Plus add-on at $99 a month including 500 messages.

Crisp's Essentials plan lists a no-code workflow builder, routing, CRM, a knowledge base and analytics. Plus adds ticketing with a customer portal, white-labeling and unlimited task automations. Crisp also sells a Status Page and AI campaigns. We couldn't confirm product tours on Crisp either.

Intercom's polish is real: its Messenger and in-app experience are the thing reviewers praise most. Crisp's reviewers praise setup speed and value, then complain about reporting depth, flaky integrations (Pipedrive comes up) and thin documentation. Both sets of comments come from secondary sources, so weigh them accordingly.

Security, hosting and who gets to say yes

This is where the choice can be made for you.

Intercom lists SOC 2 Type II, several ISO certifications and HIPAA support (on the Expert plan), with hosting in the US, EU or Australia. SSO is on Expert. Crisp hosts in Europe, offers a DPA and supports 2FA, but its own help center says it hasn't been through a SOC 2 audit, and it doesn't mention HIPAA or SAML. If a customer's security review demands a SOC 2 report, Crisp stops there.

What reviewers say

Secondary sources that summarize the review sites report Intercom at about 4.5 on both G2 (roughly 3,900 reviews) and Capterra (roughly 1,100), and Crisp at about 4.5 on G2 (roughly 200) and 4.6 on Capterra (roughly 147). We couldn't open those sites directly, so verify the numbers before quoting them. The pattern is steadier than the numbers. Intercom's recurring complaint is cost predictability (seats plus outcomes plus channel fees), and Crisp's is the climb in cost as customer profiles grow.

Who should pick which

Choose Crisp if you're a small team that wants one flat price, a free tier to start on, a long channel list and a bill that stays small. It's the sensible default for a team of two to ten, particularly when European hosting is a plus.

Choose Intercom if you need a polished in-product Messenger, a compliance story for larger customers (SOC 2, HIPAA, SSO, regional hosting), or you want to buy the AI agent whose answer quality gets the most praise and you can absorb the bill. Early-stage startups should look at Intercom's Early Stage program, which the pricing page describes as 93 percent off plus a year of Fin free. It could change this math entirely, but our research doesn't include the eligibility rules, so check them first.

For anyone weighing cost against fit, is Intercom worth it? takes the Intercom side further, and cheaper Intercom alternatives prices more options.

Moving between them takes planning. We couldn't verify the import tools on either side, so assume you'll rebuild help articles, saved replies and check what each vendor lets you export before you commit.

A third option: Talvo, and where it falls short

Talvo is the product we make. It shares Crisp's flat per-workspace model and tries to give you Fin-style AI without per-seat pricing. Its Starter plan is $49 a month for five teammates and 100 AI resolutions, Growth is $149 for 15 teammates and 500, and Scale is $299 for 25 and 2,000. Extra resolutions cost $0.49, and a resolution means the AI answered from your published knowledge base without a teammate stepping in, so handoffs are free. On the three teams above, that's about $147, $299 and $789 a month. Cheaper than Intercom, pricier than Crisp.

It's also new. Talvo launched in 2026, is in beta and has no review-site ratings, no case studies and no SOC 2 report. There's no WhatsApp, SMS, Instagram, Messenger or phone support (the first three are on the roadmap), no native Shopify or HubSpot integration and no mobile app beyond the phone browser. If you need any of that today, pick Crisp or Intercom. Our Talvo vs Crisp post makes that case in full.