Freshdesk alternatives in 2026: Freddy session pricing, the free plan that shrank, and seven alternatives compared for 3, 5 and 10 agents

Search "Freshdesk free plan" and some pages still promise ten free agents. Freshdesk's current pricing page lists no free plan at all, only a 14-day trial (Freshworks does document a smaller, six-month Free program, covered below), and its search-result description still advertises plans that start at $15 while the cards start at $19. Add three overlapping Freshworks products and an AI that bills by the session, and it's no surprise people go looking for Freshdesk alternatives.

This guide sorts out what Freshdesk, Freshchat and Freshdesk Omni each cost, how Freddy AI sessions are billed, and how seven other options compare for the same teams of 3, 5 and 10 (HubSpot is described but not priced). Prices come from the vendors' own pages, checked October 21, 2026, in US dollars before tax. We make Talvo, one of the options. It's here with its gaps, and we say where Freshworks wins.

Is Freshdesk still free?

Not permanently. The pricing page lists Growth, Pro and Enterprise, plus a 14-day trial with Enterprise access. What Freshworks does document, in a help-center article last modified September 22, 2026, is a Free program: up to two agents, free for six months, Freshdesk only (not Omni). After six months you need a paid plan, and once you upgrade you can't switch back. Freshchat, the chat product, still lists a Free plan for up to 10 agents.

The history is murkier. Third-party write-ups say Freshdesk's free tier fell from ten agents to two in November 2024, quoting a Freshworks notice, and that old free accounts were wound down by mid-2025. Freshworks' own pages don't confirm those dates, so treat them as reported. Today's position is clear: no permanent free plan on Freshdesk, a two-agent, six-month Free program, and a free plan on Freshchat.

If a guide tells you Freshdesk is free for 10 agents, check its date. The 10-agent free plan you can still get is Freshchat's: a chat widget, team inbox and email connection, with 100 campaign contacts and no Freddy AI. It's chat, not ticketing. The details, with the monthly prices, are in Freshdesk pricing.

Freshdesk, Freshchat and Omni in one table

Freshworks sells three products with their own price ladders. Freshdesk is email-first ticketing. Freshchat is chat and messaging. Freshdesk Omni combines them. If you want chat and email in one inbox, you need Omni, or two products at once.

Source: Freshdesk pricing, Freshchat pricing and Freshdesk Omni pricing. Monthly prices appear when you switch each page's billing toggle to Monthly.

Buying Freshdesk Growth and Freshchat Growth separately costs $38 per agent on annual billing, so a 5-person team pays $190 before AI. Omni Growth is $29, which is $145 for the same five people. That's why a team that wants chat and email in one inbox usually looks at Omni first.

What each tier adds, in short:

• Growth includes the Freddy AI agent (500 sessions to start; on plain Freshdesk it is an email agent, and the chat agent is Omni only), ticketing and a shared inbox, a portal and knowledge base, analytics and roles. On Freshchat it also adds Facebook, Instagram, SMS, WhatsApp, LINE and Google Business Messages.
• Pro adds multilingual support, custom dashboards, intelligent routing, multiple SLAs and external collaborators. Freshchat Pro adds round-robin assignment.
• Enterprise adds Freddy AI Insights, skill-based routing, a sandbox, audit logs and IP allowlisting.

SAML SSO is listed on every Freshdesk tier. Voice is a separate product, Freshcaller, at $15, $39 and $69 per agent a month on annual billing for Growth, Pro and Enterprise ($18, $47 and $83 monthly).

Other add-ons: Freddy Copilot is $29 per agent a month billed annually ($35 monthly) on Pro and Enterprise only. Day passes, per agent per day, cost $2, $7 and $12 by tier on Freshdesk and Freshchat, and $5, $10 and $15 on Omni. MCP actions are $15 per 1,000 and connector tasks $80 per 5,000. Freshchat campaign contacts run $100 a month per 5,000.

What Freshworks costs a small team

The Freddy AI agent is billed per session: 500 free sessions, granted once per account and not each month, then $49 per 100, about $0.49 each. A chat session covers every interaction within 24 hours of the first one, and an email session covers 72 hours from the customer's first email. The full mechanics are in Freshdesk pricing.

To compare fairly, we used three teams. Team A is 3 people with 300 chats a month that the AI handles. Team B is 5 people with 1,000. Team C is 10 people with 3,000. We assumed one session per AI-handled conversation, and that the AI fully resolves 60% of them (180, 600 and 1,800), which matters to every vendor here that bills resolutions. The 60% is our assumption.

Once the free sessions are gone, Omni Growth (the cheapest plan with a chat AI) costs $234, $635 and $1,760 a month on annual billing for the three teams, or $252, $665 and $1,820 monthly: seats of 3, 5 and 10 × $29 ($35 monthly), plus Freddy at $147, $490 and $1,470. Team A spends the free pool in under two months, Team B in the first month and Team C in the first week.

Sessions versus resolutions

Most AI vendors say "resolution." Freshworks says "session," and the difference shows up on your bill.

Take one chat: a visitor asks about a refund, the AI can't answer, and a person takes over. Freshworks defines a session by the interaction window, not the outcome, so on our reading that chat opened a session, about $0.49. Freshworks doesn't say either way. Talvo charges nothing, because a hand-off is never a resolution. Zendesk charges nothing, because a human finished it. LiveChat's Text plans charge only if the AI directly solved a question earlier in the chat. On our reading, Intercom's Fin doesn't charge for a plain hand-off, though it does count a completed workflow that ends in one.

Two quirks of the session rule. A customer who comes back the next day starts a new session, so 200 conversations can bill as more than 200. And because sessions are counted per interaction window rather than per resolution, a rate that looks equal to Talvo's $0.49 isn't equal in practice on our reading: the price per solved question is higher whenever some chats get handed off. For the full comparison, see AI resolution pricing compared.

Seven Freshdesk alternatives, and what six of them cost on the same teams

Same three teams. Vendors that bill per resolution (Zendesk, Help Scout, Talvo) charge for 180, 600 and 1,800. Crisp and Tidio meter usage, so they charge for all 300, 1,000 and 3,000. Tidio also bills by conversations your humans handle, which we assumed at 600, 1,000 and 2,000. Each tool uses the lowest-cost plan that fits the team and includes chat plus email. For Talvo that means the lowest total among plans with enough teammate seats, and a bigger plan can be cheaper because it includes more AI resolutions: Team B would pay $294 a month on Starter against $198 on Growth, and Team C $786 on Growth against $299 on Scale.

Monthly billing:

Annual billing, where published:

These aren't like-for-like feature sets. Crisp's Mini plan has no omnichannel inbox or knowledge base, and its AI overage rate beyond included credits isn't published, so its figures are our estimates from Crisp's own $0.05 to $0.10 per conversation. With the knowledge base you'd need Essentials, which makes Team A about $95 to $100, more than Talvo's $88.20. Chatwoot doesn't say how many credits a conversation uses, so we left its AI out, and its seat-only rows are lower than Talvo's for that reason.

Zendesk Suite Team: the deepest, and the priciest

Zendesk is the other obvious name when people ask "is Freshdesk better than Zendesk?" At the entry level they match: $19 per agent on annual billing for email-only Zendesk Support Team and for Freshdesk Growth. The difference shows up once you add chat. Zendesk needs Suite Team at $55 per agent annual ($69 monthly), against Omni Growth at $29 ($35). Zendesk also includes only 5 AI resolutions per agent a month and charges $1.50 to $2.00 for each beyond that, against Freddy's $0.49 per session.

What the extra money buys: deeper ticketing and routing, an app marketplace of 1,000-plus apps, voice (IVR starts on Suite Professional), FedRAMP and data-residency options, and a HIPAA BAA through an add-on. Freshworks lists SAML SSO on every tier, and Zendesk supports SAML or JWT SSO as well. For most small teams, Zendesk is the bigger tool than they need. Our Zendesk alternatives and Zendesk pricing posts go further.

Skip it if you mainly want chat: AI resolutions cost $1.50 to $2.00 past 5 per agent, Copilot and QA are paid add-ons, and there is no free plan. SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA through an add-on and data residency options are the reasons to pay.

Help Scout, Crisp and Tidio, briefly

If your Freshdesk use is mostly email, Help Scout is the closest feel with a friendlier inbox: $25 per user on annual billing ($30 monthly), $0.75 per strictly counted AI resolution, Beacon live chat on Standard and up, and three free months of AI for new accounts. Choose it for the mailbox-style inbox and HIPAA on Pro; skip it if you want chat as a main channel, since the 26th user forces Plus and SMS on Standard comes via integration. We wrote up every cap in Help Scout pricing.

Crisp is the cheaper way to get chat and email with more channels. It prices per workspace: Mini $45 for 4 seats, Essentials $95 for 10, Plus $295 for 20-plus, with Hugo AI on monthly credits ($5, $25, $75) at an estimated $0.05 to $0.10 per conversation, so handed-off chats cost credits too. On our estimate it is lowest for Teams A and B, and for Team C its range ($220 to $370) brackets Talvo's $299. WhatsApp, Instagram, SMS and phone arrive on Essentials. It says it hasn't passed a SOC 2 audit, lists no SSO or HIPAA, and has seat cliffs at the 5th and 11th person. See Talvo vs Crisp.

Tidio's Starter is $29 and Growth runs from $59 to $349 by human-handled conversation count, with Lyro AI from $39 for 50 conversations up to $700 for 1,000, and Flows as a third meter. It suits Shopify and WordPress shops and has 10 seats on every self-serve plan, but Lyro bills any conversation where it replies, handed off or not, and human replies stop at the conversation limit. See Tidio alternatives.

Two outliers: Chatwoot and HubSpot

Chatwoot is the open-source choice. Cloud plans are per agent monthly: Startups $19, Business $39, Enterprise $99, with a free Hacker plan for 2 agents and chat only. Its Captain AI uses credits (300, 500 or 800 a month by plan, extra at $20 per 1,000), but the pricing page doesn't state how many credits one conversation uses. Self-hosting needs real DevOps work.

HubSpot Service Hub makes sense if you already live in HubSpot's CRM. Free covers up to 2 users with live chat and limited bots, with HubSpot branding. Professional shows $90 and $100 per seat (most likely annual and monthly, though the page does not label them), with a required one-time onboarding fee of $1,500. The Starter card shows two prices, $7 and $20 per seat, and the page doesn't say which goes with which billing option, so we haven't priced it. HubSpot says it holds a SOC 2 Type 2 report, with SAML SSO on its Enterprise tier only.

Freshchat alternatives, if you only need chat

Most "Freshchat alternatives" searches are people who want a chat widget and an inbox, not a ticketing system. That comparison, including Freshchat Free, the session meter and the same teams priced on Freshchat, Omni and Talvo, has its own post: Talvo vs Freshdesk and Freshchat. For other paid chat-first options, the closest comparisons are Tidio, Crisp and our best live chat software for small business guide. If the old chat tool you're replacing is LiveChat, see LiveChat alternatives.

Where Freshworks is still the better pick

Stay on Freshworks if you need WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook, Instagram or LINE in the inbox today, or voice through Freshcaller. Stay if SAML SSO on every tier matters, or a security reviewer wants SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 and 27701 on paper. Stay if you run a real ticketing operation with a customer portal, multiple SLA policies, skill-based routing and a sandbox. Talvo has no customer ticket portal or sandbox, and its routing rules and SLA policies are simpler (audit logs exist on Scale). Seats at $19 to $29 are cheap too, which makes sense if your AI usage is small.

Freshworks's reputation has rough edges. Capterra review summaries mention bugs, weak email handling (no spam filtering or bulk actions), billing and cancellation disputes, and costs that climb as you move up the tiers. Praise centers on ease of use and quick setup. Treat that as directional, not verified.

Where Talvo fits, and where it doesn't

Talvo is a chat-first support platform, priced per workspace: live chat, an AI agent, a shared inbox, two-way email, a knowledge base with a hosted help center, and automation. Starter is $49 a month ($39 annual) for 5 teammates and 100 AI resolutions. Growth is $149 ($119) for 15 teammates and 500. Scale is $299 ($249) for 25 and 2,000. Extra resolutions are $0.49, hand-offs are never billed, and adding a teammate up to the plan limit never changes the bill.

For a ticketing replacement, the fair question is what it covers. Email lands in the same inbox as chat, on the same customer record. Conversations can be assigned, prioritized, tagged and snoozed. On Growth and above you get routing rules (conditions on channel, priority, tag or keyword, first match wins), saved views, no-code workflows and SLA policies.

SLA targets are set per priority and measure the first human response. Business hours and an away message are on every plan, and when hours are set, SLA due times count business hours only.

What it doesn't cover, plainly: there's no customer-facing ticket portal, no WhatsApp, SMS, Instagram, Messenger or phone (the first four are on the roadmap), and no marketplace of apps. Integrations today are the REST API, webhooks and Slack. There's no SOC 2 report, no SAML SSO and no HIPAA. Talvo launched in 2026, is in beta, and has no reviews on G2 or Capterra. If you need real ticketing depth or any of those channels, stay on Freshworks or look at Zendesk.

If the per-seat math is the problem, per seat vs flat pricing explains where flat plans win and where they don't.

How to switch from Freshdesk

The moving parts are your help articles and your contacts. Past tickets aren't imported, so keep Freshdesk read-only or on a cheaper plan for your history.

1. 1Install the widgetAdd Talvo's one script tag before </body>. Leave Freshchat or your Freshdesk widget in place for now (guide).
2. 2Import your help centerTalvo reads Freshdesk's public help center, and most others, from its public address. Articles arrive as drafts (guide).
3. 3Bring your contactsExport a CSV from Freshdesk and upload it. Contacts match by email, so existing people are updated, not duplicated.
4. 4Forward your support emailPoint your support address at the forwarding address in Settings, and replies thread back into the same conversation.
5. 5Publish and testPublish the articles the AI should use, then ask it your real top questions in Setup.
6. 6Retire the old widgetOnce chat and email are live on Talvo, remove the Freshworks snippet.

Before you cancel anything, run through this list.

Prices change often. Re-check every figure on the vendors' pages in the week you decide.