Help desk pricing pages have quietly turned into a shell game. The per-agent number you see is the part that barely matters now; the real bill is set by how the tool charges for AI. Some meter it per resolved conversation, some sell it as a flat add-on, and one of the five below reprices the same plan depending on the date you signed up. I pulled the live numbers for all of them in early August 2026, so this is what you would actually pay today, not what a year-old comparison table claims.

These five cover the range most teams choose between: two enterprise-scale help desks, one AI-first newcomer, and two built for small teams that want a shared inbox without a six-month rollout.

How I compared them

Feature checklists all read the same after the third product, so I ignored them and looked at the four things that decide whether support software is any good in practice: what the plan you would actually buy costs, how the AI is billed once you switch it on, where the free tier stops being usable, and how painful it is to leave. That last one matters more than teams expect. A help desk holds years of ticket history, macros and customer context, and a thin export turns a migration into a rebuild.

Every price below is the annual-billing rate per agent unless I say otherwise, checked on each vendor's pricing page in early August 2026.

Zendesk: the enterprise default

Zendesk is the name procurement reaches for, and for a large omnichannel operation it earns the reputation. Suite Team runs $55 per agent per month, Growth $89, and Professional $115, with a ticket-only Support plan at $19 if you never need chat or voice. It routes email, chat, voice, WhatsApp and social into one agent workspace, and the reporting depth on the higher tiers is genuinely hard to match.

The catch is the AI. Zendesk's Copilot is a $50 per agent per month add-on that stacks on top of your seat price, and its AI agents carry usage charges beyond that. Turn AI on across a 20-agent team and you have doubled the seat cost before a single automated resolution. Zendesk is also the heaviest of the five to administer: the flexibility that enterprises pay for is configuration work a five-person team does not want.

Buy it if you run a large, multi-channel support org with an admin to own it. If you are under about ten agents, you are paying for headroom you will never use. See Zendesk's current plans.

Freshdesk: best all-round value

Freshdesk does most of what Zendesk does for roughly a third of the money, which is why it is my overall pick for the majority of teams. Growth is $15 per agent per month on annual billing, Pro is $49, and Enterprise is $79. Pro is the sweet spot: custom reports, multilingual support, custom agent roles and ticket sharing, at a price where Zendesk only sells you the mid-tier Suite.

Read our full Freshdesk review →

Two things to know before you commit. The free plan is no longer the open-ended tier it used to be: it is now a six-month starter for one or two agents, so it is a trial, not a home. And Freddy, the AI copilot, is a $29 per agent per month add-on, cheaper than Zendesk's Copilot but still a real line item once you scale it. Freshdesk's reporting is a step below Zendesk's at the top end, and heavy customizers occasionally hit the ceiling on workflow rules.

Buy it if you want a proper omnichannel help desk without enterprise pricing. If you specifically need best-in-class analytics or deep custom routing, Zendesk still wins that fight. Start with Freshdesk here.

Intercom: the AI-first bet

Intercom rebuilt itself around Fin, its AI agent, and if you believe AI will handle the bulk of your tickets it is the most convincing product here. Seats run $29 (Essential), $85 (Advanced) and $132 (Expert) per month on annual billing. The messenger is the best-looking of the five, and Fin resolves a real share of conversations without a human.

Then you read the AI pricing. Fin charges $0.99 every time it resolves a conversation, with a 50-outcome monthly minimum and no volume discount. That is fine at low volume and brutal at scale: a team handling thousands of AI resolutions a month can watch the Fin bill dwarf the seat cost. One widely cited estimate puts a ten-person team on the middle plan with moderate AI use near $3,100 a month, several times the headline seat number. Intercom is powerful, but it is the easiest of the five to under-budget.

Buy it if you are a product-led company that wants AI to deflect tickets and you have modeled the per-resolution cost. If your volume is high and predictable, a flat AI add-on from Freshdesk or Zendesk is easier to forecast. Check Intercom and Fin pricing.

Tidio: live chat for small stores

Tidio comes at support from the other direction: it is a live chat and chatbot tool that grew a help desk, and it fits a small e-commerce store better than any enterprise suite. There is a genuinely free plan, Starter is about $29 a month, and Growth starts around $59. Then it jumps straight to Plus at $749 a month with nothing in between, so mid-sized teams get stranded.

The AI trap is specific and worth flagging. Lyro, Tidio's AI, is metered by conversation, and on the Free and Starter plans you get 50 Lyro conversations total, not per month. Once they are gone Lyro simply stops answering until you buy the add-on, which starts around $32.50 a month. Tidio's Shopify integration and the fact that the free tier needs no credit card make it easy to start; just do not mistake the free Lyro allowance for an ongoing one.

Buy it if you run a small store and live chat is your main channel. If your volume grows past the Growth plan's conversation caps, the $749 cliff means you should be looking at Freshdesk instead. Try Tidio's free plan.

Help Scout: the simplest inbox

Help Scout is the one your team will not complain about. It treats support as a shared inbox that happens to be smart, the emails go out looking like real email rather than ticket #48213, and a new agent is productive in an afternoon. Plans are $25 (Standard), $45 (Plus) and $75 (Pro) per user per month, with roughly 16% off on annual billing. There is a free plan for up to five users, one inbox and 100 contacts a month, which is a real starting point for a tiny team.

One wrinkle to know going in: Help Scout spent years charging per seat, switched to billing by contacts helped in late 2024, and by 2026 the public page shows per-user pricing again. The result is a dual system where a new signup and a long-time customer can be on different models, so confirm which one your quote uses. AI Answers is billed at $0.75 per resolution, the cheapest per-resolution rate here. Help Scout is deliberately not built for phone-heavy or complex omnichannel work; that is the trade for its simplicity.

Buy it if you are a small support or success team that lives in email and values a tool people enjoy using. If you need voice, IVR or deep automation, this is the wrong end of the market. See Help Scout's plans.

Pricing side by side

Entry paid tier and AI billing, on annual pricing, as of early August 2026:

Read the AI column before the seat column. On a team that leans hard on automation, the per-resolution products can cost more than the per-agent ones, and that reverses the ranking the headline prices imply.

Which one should you pick?

There is no single winner, because these five are not really competing for the same buyer.

Freshdesk is the best default for most growing teams that want full omnichannel support without Zendesk's bill. Choose Zendesk instead only if you are a large org that needs its reporting depth and has an admin to run it. Pick Intercom if you are betting on AI to deflect most tickets and you have modeled the $0.99-per-resolution math, not before. Go with Tidio if you are a small store where live chat is the front door, and with Help Scout if you are a small email-first team that wants software people actually like using.

Skip the free tiers as a long-term plan. Freshdesk's and Zendesk's are trials in disguise, and Tidio's free Lyro allowance runs out for good. Whichever you choose, turn on the AI during your trial and watch the meter, because that number, not the seat price, is the one that will surprise you on the invoice.

Get started with Freshdesk, or trial the one that matches your team from the links above.