Chatwoot vs LiveAgent
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentLiveAgent compared with Chatwoot
Chatwoot is open source and can be self-hosted, which makes it the answer whenever data sovereignty, unlimited-seat economics, or the ability to modify the code is the deciding constraint. LiveAgent is closed hosted SaaS with a support organisation attached and a call centre nobody has to assemble. Choose Chatwoot if you have engineering capacity to run it and a reason to keep the data on your own infrastructure. Choose LiveAgent if you want voice, SLA, and reporting working this afternoon and would rather pay $29 a seat than own an operations problem.
Choose Chatwoot if
Technically capable teams that need data residency, source-code control, or a genuinely zero-cost support platform: EU and regulated companies with sovereignty requirements, agencies deploying per-client instances, and cost-constrained startups with an engineer willing to own a server.
Choose LiveAgent if
Small and mid-sized teams that want one flat, forecastable invoice covering email, chat, and phone, especially any business where inbound calls are a real channel rather than an afterthought: local service businesses, travel and hospitality, ecommerce with returns lines, and B2B teams whose customers still pick up the phone. It suits buyers who would rather pay a fixed seat price than model an AI meter.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Chatwoot | LiveAgent |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Support | Support |
| Starting price | $0 (Community Edition self-hosted, or cloud Hacker tier); $19/agent/mo for cloud Startups billed annually (free plan available) | $15 per agent per month (Small Business, billed annually; $10 under the current new-customer discount) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Two parallel ladders: a per-agent cloud subscription (Hacker free, Startups, Business, Enterprise, billed annually) and a self-hosted ladder (Community Edition free under MIT, Premium Support, Enterprise Edition). Captain AI is metered by credits on both, with allowances by tier and overage sold per 1,000. | Flat per-agent subscription across four tiers, quoted per agent per month with an annual and a monthly rate. AI agents are included on every paid plan with no per-resolution or per-session meter. Social channels, extra knowledge bases, custom domain, branding removal, and time tracking are separate monthly add-ons. |
| Free plan | Two free options: cloud Hacker for up to 2 agents with 500 conversations a month, live chat only, and 30-day data retention; or self-hosted Community Edition, free forever with unlimited agents but no Captain AI, voice, custom branding, or SSO. | None currently advertised. The pricing page lists four paid tiers and a 30-day trial; the limited free plan LiveAgent previously offered is no longer shown, so do not plan around it. |
| Free trial | 15 days on cloud plans | 30 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Technically capable teams that need data residency, source-code control, or a genuinely zero-cost support platform: EU and regulated companies with sovereignty requirements, agencies deploying per-client instances, and cost-constrained startups with an engineer willing to own a server. | Small and mid-sized teams that want one flat, forecastable invoice covering email, chat, and phone, especially any business where inbound calls are a real channel rather than an afterthought: local service businesses, travel and hospitality, ecommerce with returns lines, and B2B teams whose customers still pick up the phone. It suits buyers who would rather pay a fixed seat price than model an AI meter. |
| Setup time | Cloud: minutes to a working inbox with a 15-day trial. Self-hosted: a competent engineer can have a Docker deployment running in a few hours, but a production-grade install with backups, monitoring, TLS, S3 storage, and an upgrade plan is realistically two to five days of work plus ongoing maintenance. | A working email and chat queue in under an hour: connect your support addresses, paste the chat button, invite agents. The call centre takes longer, typically a day or two, because you have to configure a SIP trunk with your carrier, build IVR menus, record prompts, and test routing before you point a published phone number at it. |
| Learning curve | Low for agents; the inbox behaves as expected. Moderate for administrators configuring automation rules, macros, SLA policies, and Captain AI. High for whoever owns a self-hosted deployment, since that person needs to be comfortable with Postgres, Redis, object storage, and version upgrades. | Moderate. Individual features are straightforward but the interface is dense, and the settings area is large enough that finding a specific option is the main early frustration. Agents pick up the queue quickly; the admin needs a focused afternoon with departments, rules, SLA policies, and portal configuration. |
| Platforms | Web app, Self-hosted (Linux with PostgreSQL, Redis, S3-compatible storage), Cloud SaaS, iOS and Android apps, REST API | Web app, iOS, Android, Embeddable chat widget, Customer portal (custom domain available as an add-on) |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II (cloud service), with documented personnel, development, testing, and cloud security practices, Encryption, audit logs, and role-based access controls, GDPR: self-hosting allows full control over data location, which is the practical route to residency compliance | GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA (available), 2-step verification and HTTPS encryption throughout |
| Founded | 2017 | 2004 |
| Headquarters | Distributed; Chatwoot Inc, with roots in Kerala, India and a Y Combinator (W21) background | Bratislava, Slovakia (with offices in Kyiv and New York City) |
| Ownership | Venture-backed (early stage), with an MIT-licensed open-source core | Privately held and bootstrapped (Quality Unit, s.r.o.) |
Strengths and limitations
Chatwoot
Strengths
- MIT-licensed source with 25,000+ GitHub stars and 300+ contributors, which means no vendor can take the product away from you, raise your price unilaterally, or sunset your deployment.
- Genuine self-hosting on modest infrastructure (4GB RAM, 2 CPU cores minimum) solves data residency and sovereignty requirements that most competitors answer only on a custom enterprise contract.
- Broader channel coverage than most paid rivals at this price: eleven-plus channels including WhatsApp Business API, Instagram, TikTok, Telegram, LINE, SMS, and native voice.
- Cloud Startups at $19 per agent undercuts nearly everything comparable while including all channels except voice, a help centre, and 300 Captain AI credits.
Limitations
- Self-hosting is free of licence cost, not free of cost. Running PostgreSQL, Redis, S3, upgrades, and backups is ongoing engineering work, and teams routinely underestimate it into a bad decision.
- Captain AI is entirely excluded from the free Community Edition, so the open-source story stops precisely at the feature most teams now want.
- Captain credit consumption per action is not published, making the included 300 to 800 credit allowances difficult to translate into an expected number of automated conversations.
- SSO and SAML sit at $99 per agent on both ladders, a jump from $39 that is out of proportion to the feature for mid-sized teams.
LiveAgent
Strengths
- A genuinely native call centre with IVR, automatic call distribution, attended and consultative transfer, and unlimited call recording, on a $29 seat. Nothing else in this price band ships real voice.
- AI agents included in every paid plan with no per-resolution or per-session meter, which makes the invoice forecastable in a category that has spent two years making invoices unforecastable.
- Bring-your-own SIP trunk across 60-plus VoIP providers means you pay carrier rates for minutes and you keep ownership of your numbers, rather than renting telephony from your help desk vendor.
- SSO and custom roles arrive at the $29 Medium tier, which is unusually early; most competitors reserve single sign-on for their top plan.
Limitations
- The interface is dense and dated. Twenty-two years of feature accretion shows, and teams coming from Help Scout, Intercom, or Plain will find it visually and ergonomically behind.
- Social channels are per-channel add-ons at $39 a month each, and Instagram requires the Facebook integration on top of its own $19, so a socially active brand can pay more in channel fees than in seats.
- No free plan is currently listed on the pricing page, and no light-agent or day-pass mechanism exists, so part-timers and contractors cost a full seat each.
- Per-tier caps on email accounts, chat buttons, contact forms, and knowledge bases mean the Small tier at $15 is genuinely small: three email addresses and two chat buttons.
Pricing compared
Chatwoot
Two parallel ladders: a per-agent cloud subscription (Hacker free, Startups, Business, Enterprise, billed annually) and a self-hosted ladder (Community Edition free under MIT, Premium Support, Enterprise Edition). Captain AI is metered by credits on both, with allowances by tier and overage sold per 1,000.
- Hacker (cloud)$0
- Startups (cloud)$19
- Business (cloud)$39
- Enterprise (cloud)$99
- Community Edition (self-hosted)$0
- Premium Support (self-hosted)$19
- Enterprise Edition (self-hosted)$99
Chatwoot has the best floor and a competitive middle. Community Edition at zero licence cost with unlimited agents is unmatched by any proprietary product here, and cloud Startups at $19 per agent undercuts Help Scout's $21 while including WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, and a help centre. Captain AI at $20 per 1,000 credits is far more forgiving than $0.75 per resolution once volume climbs. The honest accounting is that free self-hosting has a labour cost that most teams undercount: Postgres, Redis, S3, upgrades, backups, and the incident at 2am are real work, and one engineer-day a month at market rates already exceeds a $19 cloud seat. Chatwoot is outstanding value if data control is a requirement you would otherwise pay a premium for, and merely good value if you were only chasing a lower invoice.
LiveAgent
Flat per-agent subscription across four tiers, quoted per agent per month with an annual and a monthly rate. AI agents are included on every paid plan with no per-resolution or per-session meter. Social channels, extra knowledge bases, custom domain, branding removal, and time tracking are separate monthly add-ons.
- Small Business$15
- Medium Business$29
- Large Business$49
- Enterprise$69
Judged on capability per dollar, Medium at $29 a seat is one of the strongest offers in customer support software, because it is the only tier at that price anywhere that includes a functioning call centre with IVR, ACD, transfers, and unlimited recording alongside SLA policies, reporting, agent ratings, and SSO. Add unmetered AI on top and a phone-heavy small business will struggle to build a cheaper stack from parts. The value erodes in two specific directions: social channels at $39 apiece can double a small bill, and there is no light-agent or day-pass concept, so irregular cover is expensive. If your support is phone plus email plus chat, this is the best price in the category. If it is Instagram and WhatsApp with three part-time agents, do the arithmetic carefully first.
Editorial verdict on each
Chatwoot
Chatwoot is the only product in this category that lets you own the software outright, and for teams with a data-residency mandate or a genuinely zero software budget that single fact settles the decision. The channel breadth is better than most paid rivals, the cloud pricing undercuts them, Captain AI is metered by credits rather than punished per resolution, and SOC 2 Type II on the cloud service is more formal assurance than several better-funded competitors publish. Be honest about two things before choosing it. Self-hosting has a labour cost that reliably exceeds a $19 cloud seat once you count the maintenance, and the free Community Edition deliberately excludes Captain AI, so the open-source pitch stops exactly where the modern feature set begins. Choose it for control, not because free sounds cheaper than $19.
Read the full Chatwoot profileLiveAgent
LiveAgent is the flat-rate option in a category that has spent two years converting itself to meters, and for a phone-heavy small business it is the best value on the board. Medium at $29 a seat is the only price anywhere that includes a working call centre with IVR, ACD, transfers, and unlimited recording alongside SLA policies, reporting, agent ratings, and SSO, and the AI agents come with it rather than on a separate invoice line that grows as they succeed. The counterweights are real: the interface is dense and dated, social channels are $39 a month each, custom domain and branding removal cost $38 more, and there is no light agent or day pass for part-timers. Buy it if your support includes a phone number, if you want to forecast next year's invoice without modelling a containment rate, and if you would rather have a bootstrapped vendor of twenty-two years than a venture timeline. Look elsewhere if your support is Instagram and WhatsApp with three part-time agents, or if the way the product looks matters to you as much as what it does.
Read the full LiveAgent profileChatwoot profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; LiveAgent last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.