Tawk.to vs Crisp vs Chatwoot: Best Live Chat Software for a Small Business Website
A live chat widget answers a different question than a helpdesk: Zammad, FreeScout, and Zendesk handle support tickets that can sit for hours or days, while live chat is for catching a visitor while they’re still on your pricing page and about to bounce. Tawk.to, Crisp, and Chatwoot sit at three different points on the cost spectrum — genuinely free forever, paid-and-polished, and self-hosted-if-you-want-it — and the right pick depends more on how much you value zero setup effort versus zero recurring cost than on any one feature.
Quick take
- Want a permanently free chat widget with no seat limits and don’t mind a “Powered by tawk.to” badge unless you pay to remove it: Tawk.to
- Want the most polished all-in-one inbox (chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram) and are fine paying per workspace: Crisp
- Want an open-source, self-hostable option to avoid per-agent SaaS fees entirely, or want Chatwoot’s hosted free tier first: Chatwoot
The three options
Tawk.to is free to use forever for the core live-chat widget and shared inbox — no seat limit, no message cap, and the company states plainly it will never charge for the base product. It makes money on optional add-ons instead: removing the “Powered by tawk.to” badge costs $29/month, an AI-powered chatbot assist feature starts at $29/month (with a limited free tier for low chat volume), and Tawk.to will sell you actual hired human chat agents at $1/hour if you want someone else answering chats. For a small business that just wants a chat bubble on the site and doesn’t mind the branding, Tawk.to is difficult to beat on pure cost — the trade-off is a less polished admin interface and fewer built-in omnichannel features than Crisp.
Crisp is a paid SaaS tool built around a genuinely omnichannel shared inbox — website chat plus WhatsApp, Instagram, and SMS on its higher tiers — with a real free tier to start. Pricing runs Free (2 seats, core widget and shared inbox), Mini at $45/month (4 seats, custom email domain, chat triggers), Essentials at $95/month (10 seats, omnichannel channels, workflow automation, knowledge base), and Plus at $295/month (20+ seats, full AI support suite, white-labeling, 100+ integrations) — all billed per workspace, not per seat, with extra seats at $10/month each beyond the included count. Crisp is the right pick if you want the polish of a modern support-inbox product and are willing to pay a flat monthly fee once you outgrow the 2-seat free tier.
Chatwoot is open-source (MIT-licensed) and can be self-hosted for free, or run on Chatwoot’s own cloud with a genuinely useful free tier: Hacker (free, up to 2 agents, 500 conversations/month), Startups at $19/agent/month (unlimited conversations), Business at $39/agent/month (marked as most popular), and Enterprise at $99/agent/month. Self-hosting the free Community Edition removes the per-agent fee for the core product, similar to the trade-off between Rocket.Chat/Mattermost and paid team-chat SaaS — though Chatwoot also sells paid self-hosted support tiers (Premium Support at $19/agent/month, Enterprise at $99/agent/month) for teams that want Captain AI, SSO, or priority support on top of a self-hosted install, so “self-hosted” doesn’t mean every feature is free of a per-agent cost. Chatwoot’s optional Captain AI add-on otherwise bills separately at $20 per 1,000 credits on whichever plan you’re on.
Cost compared (2026)
| Tawk.to | Crisp | Chatwoot | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Core widget + shared inbox, unlimited agents, forever | 2 seats, core widget + shared inbox | Self-hosted: free, unlimited agents. Cloud Hacker: 2 agents, 500 conv/mo |
| Entry paid cost | $29/mo to remove branding (optional) | Mini: $45/mo (4 seats) | Cloud Startups: $19/agent/mo |
| Mid tier | AI assist add-on from $29/mo | Essentials: $95/mo (10 seats, omnichannel) | Cloud Business: $39/agent/mo |
| Self-host option | No | No | Yes, free (MIT license); paid support tiers optional |
| Human agents available for hire | Yes, $1/hour | No | No |
Tawk.to and self-hosted Chatwoot are both effectively free at the software layer; Tawk.to is the faster path to “live in five minutes” since there’s no server to run, while Chatwoot self-hosted suits a team that already self-hosts other services and wants to avoid recurring SaaS fees entirely. Crisp is the one genuinely worth paying for if the omnichannel inbox (WhatsApp/Instagram/SMS alongside chat) matters more than saving a monthly bill.
Which one should you actually pick?
- Just want a free chat bubble on the site, don’t mind minor branding: Tawk.to — pay $29/month only if the badge bothers you.
- Want a polished, modern support inbox across chat/WhatsApp/Instagram and are past the 2-seat free tier: Crisp, starting at $45/month per workspace.
- Already self-host other services and want to avoid per-agent SaaS fees long-term: Chatwoot self-hosted — see Hetzner vs DigitalOcean vs Vultr for where to run it, or Cloudflare Registrar vs Namecheap vs Porkbun if you need a domain for it first.
- Site is built on WordPress, Ghost, or a hosted platform: all three offer a simple embed script — see WordPress vs Ghost vs Squarespace if you haven’t picked a site platform yet.
- Support volume has grown past “answer chats live” into a real ticket queue: live chat and helpdesk solve different problems — see Zammad vs FreeScout vs Zendesk for the ticketing layer most teams eventually add alongside chat.
VPS/hosting referral placeholder — swap for a real hosting/VPS affiliate link once a program is confirmed, for readers self-hosting Chatwoot rather than using a hosted option.
Bottom line
Tawk.to is the free-forever default if you just want a working chat widget with no recurring bill. Crisp is worth the $45+/month once you want a genuinely omnichannel inbox and a more polished interface than Tawk.to’s. Chatwoot splits the difference: a real free hosted tier for testing, and a self-hosted path to avoid per-agent fees for the core product for teams already comfortable running their own infrastructure — just budget for paid support tiers if you want Captain AI, SSO, or priority support on top of self-hosting.