Freshdesk 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
Both sides assessedFreshdesk compared with LiveAgent
The clearest contrast in this category. LiveAgent charges $15 to $69 a seat annually with AI agents included and no per-resolution meter, plus a genuinely native call centre with IVR on its Medium tier. Freshdesk charges $19 to $89 and then meters the AI separately. At 500 tickets a month the two are close; at 2,000 tickets a month with real deflection, LiveAgent is dramatically cheaper because the bill does not move. Pick Freshdesk for automation depth, reporting, marketplace, and a public-company vendor. Pick LiveAgent if a flat, forecastable invoice and built-in voice matter more than platform depth.
LiveAgent compared with Freshdesk
The cleanest illustration of the pricing split in this category. Freshdesk Pro at $55 gives deeper automation, better reporting, a real marketplace, day passes for part-timers, and a public-company vendor, but meters Freddy AI at $49 per 100 sessions and charges $29 a seat for the agent-facing Copilot. LiveAgent Medium at $29 gives voice and unmetered AI and a bill that does not move with volume. At 2,000 tickets a month the Freshdesk AI line alone can exceed LiveAgent's entire invoice. Choose Freshdesk for platform depth and irregular staffing; choose LiveAgent for phone support and predictable spend.
Choose Freshdesk if
Small and mid-sized teams that genuinely want ticketing rather than a shared inbox: 3 to 50 agents, structured queues, SLA obligations to customers, and enough process that dispatcher rules and skill-based routing earn their keep. It is strongest for a team that wants one vendor covering support, a customer portal, and eventually IT service management, and that is comfortable modelling an AI meter rather than a flat bill.
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 | Freshdesk | LiveAgent |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Support | Support |
| Starting price | $19 per agent per month (Growth, 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 | Per-agent subscription across three tiers, quoted per agent per month on annual billing, plus a metered customer-facing AI charge and a per-seat agent-facing AI add-on. Occasional agents can be covered by day passes instead of seats. | 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 | A Free Program advertised as $0 for one or two users for six months. The old permanently free three-agent tier is no longer the offer, so treat this as an extended trial rather than a plan you can build on. | 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 | 14 days on the Enterprise plan, no credit card required at signup | 30 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Small and mid-sized teams that genuinely want ticketing rather than a shared inbox: 3 to 50 agents, structured queues, SLA obligations to customers, and enough process that dispatcher rules and skill-based routing earn their keep. It is strongest for a team that wants one vendor covering support, a customer portal, and eventually IT service management, and that is comfortable modelling an AI meter rather than a flat bill. | 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 | A working queue in about an hour: forward your support address, verify the domain, invite agents, and set business hours. A properly configured instance takes one to two weeks, because the value is in the dispatcher rules, SLA policies, ticket fields, and knowledge base structure, and those are decisions rather than settings. | 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 | Moderate for agents, who mostly need to learn statuses, canned responses, and when to use a private note. Steeper for whoever owns admin: three rule engines, SLA policies, routing, portal theming, and the marketplace add up to a real configuration surface, and a badly-set dispatcher rule silently misroutes tickets for weeks. | 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, iOS, Android, Customer portal on your own domain, Embeddable help widget | Web app, iOS, Android, Embeddable chat widget, Customer portal (custom domain available as an add-on) |
| Compliance | SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA (available on higher tiers under a BAA) | GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA (available), 2-step verification and HTTPS encryption throughout |
| Founded | 2010 | 2004 |
| Headquarters | San Mateo, California, United States (with major operations in Chennai, India) | Bratislava, Slovakia (with offices in Kyiv and New York City) |
| Ownership | Public company (NASDAQ: FRSH) | Privately held and bootstrapped (Quality Unit, s.r.o.) |
Strengths and limitations
Freshdesk
Strengths
- Real ticketing depth at a small-business price: three separate rule engines, multiple SLA policies with their own business-hours calendars, and skill-based routing on Enterprise.
- Day passes at $2 to $12 solve the part-timer problem that almost every per-seat competitor forces you to overpay for, and 5,000 external collaborators on Pro means occasional internal contributors cost nothing.
- The knowledge base publishes to your own domain with your own branding and is crawlable, so self-service accumulates organic search value rather than sitting behind a vendor subdomain.
- Backed by a public company with $838.8 million of 2025 revenue, 67,000-plus customers, and roughly 4,500 employees, which is the lowest vendor-continuity risk in this category.
Limitations
- The bill is not predictable. Freddy AI Agent at $49 per 100 sessions ties your invoice to your ticket volume, and at 2,000 tickets a month the AI charge exceeds the seat charge for a five-person team.
- Freddy AI Copilot is a separate $29 per agent per month and does not exist on Growth, so the honest cost of an AI-assisted agent is $84 a month, not $19.
- The permanently free tier is gone. What remains is described as $0 for one or two users for six months, which is a trial with a long fuse, not a plan.
- The Freshdesk versus Freshdesk Omni split is confusing and expensive to get wrong; chat, messaging, and telephony are not in the product called Freshdesk.
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
Freshdesk
Per-agent subscription across three tiers, quoted per agent per month on annual billing, plus a metered customer-facing AI charge and a per-seat agent-facing AI add-on. Occasional agents can be covered by day passes instead of seats.
- Growth$19
- Pro$55
- Enterprise$89
Per seat, Freshdesk is one of the better deals in customer support: $55 for multiple SLA policies, intelligent routing, custom dashboards, a multilingual portal, and 5,000 external collaborators is more capability per dollar than Zendesk Suite Team at a similar price, and the day-pass mechanism is genuinely useful for a team with irregular cover. Per resolution, the picture inverts. Once you are deflecting seriously, the Freddy meter is the dominant line on the invoice and it grows with the same volume the tool exists to absorb. Freshdesk is excellent value if you are buying seats and process, and only average value if you are buying automation, because the automation is the part you rent by the unit.
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
Freshdesk
Freshdesk is the best per-seat value among serious ticketing help desks, and the day-pass and external-collaborator mechanics make it unusually kind to small teams with irregular coverage. Pro at $55 buys multiple SLA policies, intelligent routing, custom dashboards, and a branded multilingual help centre from a public company that will still exist in five years. The catch is structural, not incidental: the AI is metered, at $49 per 100 sessions plus $29 a seat for Copilot, and at any real deflection volume that meter becomes the largest line on your invoice. Buy Freshdesk if you want disciplined ticketing with process you can enforce and you are willing to model an AI bill that grows with your ticket count. Look at LiveAgent or Help Scout instead if you want a flat number you can forecast, or if your customers should never feel like they have been assigned a ticket ID.
Read the full Freshdesk 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 profileFreshdesk 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.