Live Chat · ranked shortlist
Best Live Chat software for Startups in 2026
20 approved live chat listings, ordered by published rating with the method stated below rather than assumed. Startups are buying for a headcount they do not have yet, which makes the second and third tier of each ladder more important than the first. Check what the price becomes at ten people.
- Tools ranked
- 20
- Entry price range
- $0.01-$200
- Publish a $0 plan
- 8 of 20
How this ranking is derived
The sort key
Published rating, highest first. Ties break on the number of ratings behind the score, then on product name so the order never depends on what the API happened to return first. That is the whole rule, there is no weighting, no score of our own, and nothing paid: no sponsored slot runs on these pages.
Where the ratings come from
No listing in this set carries a rating, so the order falls back to name. Those scores are aggregated from public sources rather than collected here, Softwr hosts no reviews of its own, which is also why no rating on this page is marked up as ours in structured data.
What the pool is
Approved live chat listings, capped at 20 per page; 20 came back for this one. It is not the whole market, and a tool being absent means we hold no record of it rather than that it failed a test. The unranked full set is on the live chat category page.
The ranking
Each entry lists why it sits where it sits, drawn from its own published rating and pricing.
- #1
Acquire
Highest rated hereConversational customer engagement platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $50 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $100 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- co-browsing, video-chat, Enterprise, secure
- #2
Ada
Conversational AI platform powered by machine learning
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $100 a month.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- ai-chatbots, customer-support, machine-learning, automation
- #3B
Bold360
AI-powered customer engagement and service platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $75 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $150 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- Live Chat, ai-chatbots, omnichannel, customer-service
- #4
Botpress
Open-source chatbot platform and framework
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
- Billing
- open-source
- Tags
- ai-chatbots, Open Source, bot-builder, nlp
- #5
Capacity
AI-powered customer service automation platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $125 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $300 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- ai-chatbots, customer-service, automation, knowledge management
- #6
Comm100
Enterprise omnichannel customer engagement
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $29 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $59 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- Enterprise, secure, on-premise, regulated-industries
- #7
Conferbot
No-code AI chatbot builder for websites and messaging channels
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $19 a month.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $59.
- Billing
- freemium
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- chatbot, No-Code, customer-support, lead generation
- #8
Conversica
AI-powered conversational platform for sales and customer service
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $200 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $500 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- ai-chatbots, lead-nurturing, sales-automation, customer-engagement
- #9
Crisp
Customer messaging platform for startups and SMBs
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $45 a month.
- 5 published tiers, topping out at $295 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- freemium
- Published tiers
- 5 tiers
- Tags
- Live Chat, startup-friendly, affordable, modern
- #10
Freshchat
Modern messaging for customer engagement
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $19 a month.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $79.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- freshworks, modern, messaging, chatbots
- #11
Google Dialogflow
Google's conversational AI platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $0.01 a month.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- usage-based
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- ai-chatbots, cloud-platform, google, nlu
- #12
Gorgias
E-commerce helpdesk built for Shopify
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $10 a month, with no free plan.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $900.
- Billing
- usage-based
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- E-commerce, shopify, dtc, revenue-focused
- #13
Haptik
Conversational AI platform for customer engagement and support
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $100 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $300 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- ai-chatbots, conversational-ai, multi-channel, customer-engagement
- #14
IBM Watson Assistant
IBM's enterprise AI platform for conversational experiences
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $140 a month.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- ai-chatbots, Enterprise, ibm, watson
- #15
Jivochat
All-in-one communication platform for customer engagement
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $28 a month.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $56.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- Live Chat, multi-channel, phone, email
- #16
Kayako
Effortless customer service
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $30 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $100.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- unified inbox, customer-journey, modern, personalized-support
- #17
Kore.ai
Enterprise conversational AI platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $200 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $500 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- ai-chatbots, virtual-assistants, Enterprise, nlu
- #18
Landbot
No-code chatbot builder for websites, WhatsApp, and lead generation
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $32 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $80 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- freemium
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- chatbot, No-Code, whatsapp, lead generation
- #19
LiveChat
Customer service software that delights
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $20 a month, with no free plan.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $59 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- subscription
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- Live Chat, premium, E-commerce, reliable
- #20
ManyChat
Chatbot and automation platform for Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and SMS
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $15 a month, with no free plan.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- freemium
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- chatbot, Instagram Automation, Whatsapp Marketing, sms-marketing
What live chat software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 20 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $0.01Google Dialogflow
- Median entry price
- $32across 19 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $200Conversica
- Publish a $0 plan
- 8of 20
Paid live chat plans in this set start anywhere from $0.01 a month for Google Dialogflow to $200 for Conversica. The median entry price across the 19 tools that publish one is $32, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is Gorgias's at $900 a month, 4.5× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
8 of 20 publish a $0 plan, and 1 of those charge nothing at all. 12 tools have no free tier of any kind.
14 of 20 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 20 live chat listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- subscription
- 13
- freemium
- 4
- usage-based
- 2
- open-source
- 1
Separately, 14 of 20 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for
Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 19 live chat tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.
Named most often
- Dedicated support , 9 of 19
- Advanced AI , 4 of 19
- AI chatbot , 3 of 19
- Basic chatbot , 3 of 19
- Custom integrations , 3 of 19
Named by fewer
- Full customization , 3 of 19
- Live chat , 3 of 19
- Ticketing system , 3 of 19
- Advanced automation , 2 of 19
- Advanced features , 2 of 19
Named by exactly one vendor: Advanced analytics, Basic customization, Custom SLA, Limited interactions, Proactive invitations and visitor monitoring, Team collaboration. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.
What “Live Chat” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 20 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- ai-chatbots9
- automation4
- chatbot4
- Enterprise4
- Live Chat4
- conversational-ai3
- modern3
- customer-engagement2
- customer-service2
- customer-support2
- E-commerce2
- lead generation2
Carried by a single tool: affordable, cloud-platform, email, ibm, messaging, premium, shopify, video-chat. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
8 of 20 live chat tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with dedicated support, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$0.01 to $200 is a $200 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $200 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
18 of 20 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 3 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, dedicated support, advanced ai, ai chatbot, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 4 billing models: subscription on 13 listings, freemium on 4, and 2 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare live chat tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Acquire vs Ada
- Ada vs Bold360
- Bold360 vs Botpress
- Botpress vs Capacity
- Capacity vs Comm100
- Comm100 vs Conferbot
- Conferbot vs Conversica
- Conversica vs Crisp
Go straight to the numbers
- Acquirepricingalternatives
- Adapricingalternatives
- Bold360pricingalternatives
- Botpresspricingalternatives
- Capacitypricingalternatives
- Comm100pricingalternatives
Questions people ask about live chat software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How is this live chat ranking decided?
- Mechanically. The 20 approved live chat listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.
- Is this list re-ordered for startups?
- No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the startups framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Startups are buying for a headcount they do not have yet, which makes the second and third tier of each ladder more important than the first. Check what the price becomes at ten people.
- How much does live chat software cost?
- Across the 20 live chat tools listed here, paid plans start between $0.01 and $200 a month, with a median entry price of $32. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $900 a month (Gorgias). 8 of 20 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest live chat software?
- 1 of the 20 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Google Dialogflow has the lowest published entry price at $0.01 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free live chat software?
- Yes, 8 of 20 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 1 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- What features should live chat software have?
- Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are dedicated support (9 of 19 tools that publish plan detail), advanced ai (4) and ai chatbot (3). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as advanced analytics or basic customization, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
- How is live chat software usually billed?
- subscription (13), freemium (4), usage-based (2), open-source (1), counted across the 20 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 14 of 20 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does live chat software actually cover?
- The 20 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are ai-chatbots (9), automation (4), chatbot (4), enterprise (4), live chat (4). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under live chat may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do live chat tools offer?
- 19 of 20 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 3 tiers. 18 of 20 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many live chat tools are listed on Softwr?
- 20 approved live chat listings appear on this page, including Acquire, Ada, Bold360, Botpress. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/live-chat, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep reading
More on Live Chat
Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.