LiveChat

Name: LiveChat
Brand: LiveChat
Price: 1925 USD

The original per-agent live chat platform, from a Polish company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange

LiveChat is a website live chat and multichannel messaging platform built by Text S.A., a Polish software company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange under the ticker TXT. It gives support and sales teams a customisable chat widget, a shared agent inbox covering chat, email, SMS, WhatsApp Business, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and Apple Messages for Business, proactive targeted messages and campaigns, routing and work scheduling, and a reporting suite that includes ecommerce and agent performance data. Pricing is strictly per person per month, published from $19 billed annually ($25 monthly), with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required, and no free plan. Its sibling products ChatBot, HelpDesk, and KnowledgeBase are separate subscriptions rather than included modules.

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Overview

LiveChat is one of the oldest products in this category still under active development. The company was founded in Wrocław in 2002, went public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in April 2014, and renamed itself Text S.A. in 2023 to reflect a portfolio that had grown past a single chat widget. Very little else in small-business customer support software has that kind of continuity: most of the competitive set is venture-funded and under a decade old, while LiveChat has been profitable, publicly audited, and shipping the same core product for over twenty years.

What you get for that longevity is polish and reliability rather than novelty. The widget is fast, the agent application is genuinely good at the mechanics of chatting (message sneak-peek shows what a visitor is typing before they send it, canned responses and tags are fast, chat transfer and supervision work the way a team lead expects), and the reporting is deeper than most chat-first tools attempt, including ecommerce attribution and, on the Business tier, staffing prediction that forecasts how many agents you need at a given hour. The integration marketplace lists over 200 apps, and the developer surface is unusually complete for this price band: a Customer SDK, webhooks, a chat widget JavaScript API, agent and customer chat APIs, and a Reports API, all available without an enterprise contract.

The commercial structure is where buyers need to pay attention, because in 2026 Text is effectively running two parallel product lines. The classic LiveChat plans (Starter, Team, Business, Enterprise) are per person per month and do not include the autonomous AI Agent. To get the AI Agent, which resolves customer questions without a human and is billed by resolution rather than by conversation, Text directs customers to its newer unified Text platform, sold on Essential and Growth plans with monthly resolution allowances of 10 and 200 respectively and overage at $0.99 per resolution. LiveChat plans do include a set of AI assist features (reply suggestions trained on your own knowledge sources, chat summaries, text enhancement, tag suggestions, and plain-language custom skills), but the agent that actually deflects volume sits on the other track. This is confusing, and it is fair to say the naming does not help.

The second commercial fact is the product family. LiveChat, ChatBot, HelpDesk, KnowledgeBase, and OpenWidget are separate products with separate subscriptions, unified only by a shared Text Accounts login and organisation layer. A team that wants chat plus ticketing plus a help centre is buying three subscriptions, not one plan, and Text's own investor disclosures note that only around 40 percent of its customers use two or more products. Group ARR passed $89.5 million in mid-2026 across roughly 40,000 companies in 150 countries, with LiveChat itself the largest contributor at over 28,000 paying customers.

Best for

Sales-led and support teams of roughly 3 to 50 agents that want a fast, dependable chat widget with proactive campaigns, real reporting, and a broad developer API, from a profitable public company with a twenty-year operating record, and that are comfortable paying a fixed per-agent price rather than chasing a usage meter.

Not the right fit for

Teams with a large rota of part-time or occasional agents. LiveChat now bills strictly per person, and multiple verified reviewers specifically mourn the older model where a fixed number of licences could be shared. If eight people cover chat across evenings and weekends, you pay for eight. Tidio's conversation-based meter and Crisp's flat workspace fee are both structurally cheaper for that shape.
Anyone whose primary requirement is an autonomous AI agent. The AI Agent is not included in LiveChat plans; the vendor directs you to its separate Text platform to get it. If AI deflection is the reason you are shopping, you are comparing Text or Intercom's Fin, not LiveChat's Starter tier.
Businesses that need chat, ticketing, and a public help centre as one purchase. Those are three separate Text subscriptions (LiveChat, HelpDesk, KnowledgeBase), which stacks up quickly against an all-in-one such as Freshdesk or Zoho Desk.
Very small businesses and solo operators with no budget. There is no free plan at all, and Starter is capped at a single user, so the moment a second person answers chat the real entry price roughly doubles. Tawk.to gives away an unlimited-agent product permanently.
Teams that need voice telephony as a core channel. LiveChat has in-chat voice, video, and screen sharing, but it is not a phone system with queues, IVR, and call recording. LiveAgent bundles a genuine call centre at a lower per-agent price.

How it works

1
You sign up for a 14-day trial with no card, then install the widget. Installation is a script tag or a native app for Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or Webflow, and the widget is themed from a visual editor. Starter gets basic customisation; full widget customisation, including changing layout and behaviour rather than just colours, starts on Team, and removing LiveChat branding entirely is an Enterprise white-label feature.
2
You connect the other channels you want in the same inbox: email, Facebook Messenger, Instagram for Business, WhatsApp Business, a standalone chat page, and, from the Business tier upward, SMS and Apple Messages for Business. Everything lands in one agent application available on web, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, so an owner-operator can answer from a phone and a team can work from desktop.
3
You configure how chats reach people. Groups split agents by skill, language, or brand; routing rules decide who gets what; availability settings and chat limits stop one person absorbing eight simultaneous conversations; and chat transfer and supervision let a lead step into a live chat rather than take it over after the fact. The Business tier adds a work scheduler and staffing prediction, which turns rota planning into something the reports do for you instead of a spreadsheet.
4
You set up the proactive layer. Targeted messages fire on behaviour such as time on page, URL, cart value, or referral source; eye-catchers are the animated prompts that pull attention to the minimised widget; chat buttons place entry points elsewhere on the site. Starter allows one recurring campaign, Team and above allow unlimited, which is the practical reason most sales-led teams do not stay on the entry plan.
5
You add AI in one of two ways, and the distinction matters. Inside LiveChat plans, AI assists your humans: reply suggestions drawn from knowledge sources you supply (website URLs, PDFs, help articles, capped at 3 sources on Starter and 10 on Team and Business), conversation summaries, text enhancement, tag suggestions, and custom skills written in plain language. To have an AI agent answer customers on its own, you move to the Text platform, where the AI Agent is billed by resolution with 10 per month on Essential, 200 on Growth, and $49.50 for a 50-resolution top-up, roughly $0.99 each.

Feature breakdown

27 features in 4 modules

Chat and messaging

The core product, and the part that has had twenty years of refinement.

Customisable chat widget: Themed, positioned, and localised, installed by script tag or through native apps for Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and Webflow. Basic customisation on Starter, full customisation from Team, and a white-label widget with LiveChat branding removed only on Enterprise.
Message sneak-peek: Agents see what a visitor is composing before it is sent, which measurably shortens first response time on busy chat. It is also a privacy posture some organisations decline, so check it against your own policy before enabling it.
Multichannel inbox: Chat widget, email, Facebook Messenger, Instagram for Business, WhatsApp Business, and a standalone chat page across all paid tiers, with SMS and Apple Messages for Business gated to Business and above.
In-chat voice, video, and screen sharing: Escalation from text to a call or a shared screen inside the same conversation. Useful for troubleshooting, but distinct from a telephony system: there is no queue, IVR, or inbound number.
Canned responses, tags, and rich messages: Reusable replies with shortcuts, taggable conversations for reporting, and structured message cards (carousels, buttons, quick replies) that make the widget usable for product selection rather than only Q and A.
Chat transfer, supervision, and ratings: A lead can watch a live conversation and whisper to the agent rather than take it over, chats hand off between groups without losing history, and customers rate the conversation at the end, which feeds the satisfaction reports.
Chat archives and transcripts: Searchable history with transcript export. Retention is a hard tier gate: Starter keeps only 60 days, and unlimited history begins on Team, which is the single most common reason a Starter account upgrades.

AI features

Two different things sold on two different tracks, and the distinction is the most important thing to understand before buying.

Reply suggestions: Drafts a response for the human agent, trained on knowledge sources you supply. Included in LiveChat plans, but the number of knowledge sources is capped at 3 on Starter and 10 on Team and Business, which constrains how much of your documentation the model can actually see.
Chat summaries: Condenses a long conversation into a short summary so a transferring agent or a supervisor does not read the whole log. Included in LiveChat plans.
Text enhancement and tag suggestions: Polishes agent wording for tone and clarity, and proposes conversation tags automatically so reporting categories stay populated without manual discipline. Included in LiveChat plans.
Custom skills: Plain-language instructions that create rule-based automation without code, for example always offering a shipping-policy link when a customer asks about delivery.
AI Agent (not included in LiveChat plans): The autonomous agent that recommends products, captures leads when the team is offline, resolves questions without a human, and hands off with full context. Text states it is not automatically included on LiveChat subscriptions and that customers move to the Text platform to use it. The vendor cites resolution of up to 74 percent of cases, which is a vendor figure and should be measured against your own content during a trial.
Resolution-based AI billing: On the Text platform the AI Agent is metered by resolution rather than by conversation, with 10 resolutions a month on Essential, 200 on Growth, and top-ups at $49.50 per 50 resolutions (roughly $0.99 each). Billing on resolution rather than participation is the buyer-friendlier of the two common models, and matches Intercom's Fin at the same $0.99 unit price.

Engagement, routing, and team management

The operational layer that decides whether chat scales past one person.

Targeted messages and campaigns: Proactive messages triggered by URL, time on page, referral source, cart contents, or visitor attributes. Starter is limited to one recurring campaign; unlimited campaigns start on Team, which is the practical gate for any sales-led use.
Eye-catchers and chat buttons: Animated prompts that draw attention to the minimised widget, plus chat entry points placed anywhere on the page. Small features that measurably move chat volume on ecommerce sites.
Routing rules and chat assignment: Automatic distribution across agents and groups by skill, language, page, or brand, with configurable concurrent chat limits per agent so nobody is handed more conversations than they can hold.
Groups and agent roles: Departments with their own agents, widgets, and availability, plus role-based permissions separating owner, administrator, and agent.
Work scheduler: Rota planning inside the product rather than in a spreadsheet, gated to the Business tier.
Staffing prediction: Forecasts how many agents you need at a given time based on historical traffic. Genuinely uncommon at this price and a real reason to take the Business tier seriously, but also a Business-only feature.
Visitor tracking limits: How many concurrent site visitors LiveChat will track and let you engage: 100 on Starter, 400 on Team, 1,000 on Business, customisable on Enterprise. A high-traffic store can exhaust the Team allowance and lose visibility of exactly the visitors it wanted to reach proactively.

Reporting, developer platform, and security controls

Deeper than most chat-first competitors attempt, with the usual tier gates.

Reporting suite: Data summary, chat reports, agent reports, customer reports, and ecommerce reports with filters and export. Basic reporting starts on Team; advanced reporting and agent performance metrics are Business features.
Ecommerce attribution: Reports tie chats to sales, and LiveChat 2.0 adds a revenue counter in the inbox showing what a conversation earned, including carts recovered and leads captured. This is the clearest expression of the product's sales-led positioning.
Full developer API set: Customer SDK, webhooks, chat widget JavaScript API, agent and customer chat APIs, configuration API, and a Reports API, available without an enterprise contract. This is materially more open than competitors that gate API access behind a top tier.
200+ integration marketplace: Shopify, WordPress, HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Zendesk, Google Analytics, Zapier, and a large catalogue of smaller apps, plus the ability to build private apps against the developer platform.
Credit card masking and visitor banning: Card numbers pasted into chat are masked before storage, and abusive visitors can be blocked. Small, practical controls that many chat tools omit.
Access restriction and SSO: IP and access restrictions plus Google login on standard plans; SAML single sign-on is an Enterprise feature, as is HIPAA compliance, per the published pricing page.
EU data storage: LiveChat lists EU data storage among its security features, which matters for European buyers and reflects the company's Polish base. Confirm the specific arrangement in writing if data residency is contractual for you.

Use cases

4 documented

Ecommerce store running chat as a sales channel

Traffic is decent but conversion stalls at the product page, and nobody can prove whether answering pre-purchase questions actually generates revenue.

Targeted messages fire on cart value and time on page, eye-catchers lift widget engagement, and the ecommerce reports plus the LiveChat 2.0 revenue counter attribute closed sales and recovered carts to individual conversations, so chat stops being a cost line and becomes a measurable one. Unlimited campaigns require the Team tier at $49 per person.

Support team of eight in a regulated or security-conscious business

Procurement wants a vendor with audited financials and a long operating history, security wants SSO and card masking, and the team wants a chat tool that does not fall over.

Text S.A. is a Warsaw Stock Exchange listed company publishing quarterly results, which answers the vendor-risk question in a way a Series B startup cannot. Credit card masking, access restrictions, and EU data storage are standard, while SSO and HIPAA compliance require the quoted Enterprise tier rather than Business.

SaaS company building chat into its own product

The chat widget needs to know who the logged-in user is, pass account context to agents, and push conversation data into an internal data warehouse.

The Customer SDK, chat widget JavaScript API, chat APIs, webhooks, and Reports API are available on standard plans rather than gated behind an enterprise contract, so a single engineer can build the integration without a sales conversation. This is one of LiveChat's genuinely strong differentiators against similarly priced competitors.

Retailer planning agent coverage across a seasonal peak

Chat volume triples for six weeks and the team habitually over-staffs mornings and under-staffs evenings because nobody has the data.

Business tier staffing prediction forecasts required agents by time slot and the work scheduler turns that into a rota inside the product. The cost is real: Business is $79 per person per month billed annually, and the 1,000 concurrent visitor tracking cap may still bind during the peak.

Pricing

from $19 per person per month billed annually ($25 monthly) on the Starter plan, limited to one user

Strictly per person per month, billed annually or monthly, with annual materially cheaper. There is no usage meter on the classic LiveChat plans and no free tier. The autonomous AI Agent is not included and is sold on Text's separate platform plans, metered by resolution. ChatBot, HelpDesk, and KnowledgeBase are separate subscriptions rather than modules of a LiveChat plan.

Plan	Price	Includes
Starter	$19 per person per month, billed annually ($25 monthly)	1 user only 60-day chat history, 100 tracked visitors, 1 recurring campaign Basic widget customisation, 3 knowledge sources for reply suggestions 24/7 support and the core multichannel inbox The single-user cap and the 60-day history ceiling are the two limits that push almost every real team off this tier. Treat $19 as a solo-operator price, not a team price.
Team	$49 per person per month, billed annually ($59 monthly)	Unlimited users and unlimited chat history Up to 400 tracked visitors and unlimited campaigns Full widget customisation and basic reporting 10 knowledge sources for reply suggestions The de facto entry plan for anything with more than one agent. Note the jump from $19 to $49 is 158 percent, which is a much steeper step than the headline starting price suggests.
Business	$79 per person per month, billed annually ($89 monthly)	Up to 1,000 tracked visitors Work scheduler and staffing prediction Advanced reporting and agent performance metrics SMS and Apple Messages for Business channels Staffing prediction and advanced reporting are the genuine draws here; SMS and Apple Messages being Business-only is a channel gate worth checking before you price the Team tier.
Enterprise	Quote contact sales	Customisable visitor tracking limits and white-label widget Single sign-on and HIPAA compliance Dedicated product expert, software engineer support, and SLAs Alternative payment terms and professional services SSO and HIPAA sitting at quote-only is the detail most likely to break a comparison built on the published $79 Business price.

Add-ons

Text platform plans (for the AI Agent) (Essential $19 per user per month annually ($25 monthly); Growth $79 annually ($99 monthly); Enterprise quoted): Text's unified platform bundles the AI Agent, live chat, help desk, and inbox, with 10 AI resolutions a month on Essential and 200 on Growth. This is the route to an autonomous AI agent, since it is not included on classic LiveChat plans.
Additional AI resolutions ($49.50 per 50 resolutions (roughly $0.99 each)): Auto-refilling top-up packages. A resolution means the AI answered the customer's question without human intervention; multiple questions in one chat still count as one resolution.
ChatBot (Essential $19 per user per month annually ($25 monthly); Growth $79 annually ($99 monthly)): A separate subscription for building conversational bots, with the same 10 and 200 monthly AI resolution allowances and the same $49.50 per 50 top-up.
HelpDesk (Essential $19 per user per month annually ($25 monthly); Growth $79 annually ($99 monthly)): Text's ticketing product, sold separately from LiveChat. A team wanting chat plus tickets buys two subscriptions. 14-day trial, no card, with annual billing saving up to 24 percent.
KnowledgeBase ($49 per month billed annually ($59 monthly) per organisation, unlimited users): The only product in the family not priced per seat. Extra knowledge bases cost $21.99 a month annually ($24.99 monthly).

Billing notes

Annual billing is significantly cheaper on every tier: $19 versus $25 on Starter, $49 versus $59 on Team, and $79 versus $89 on Business, as published in August 2026.
The published entry price of $19 buys exactly one user. The first tier that supports a team is Team at $49 per person, so a three-agent business starts at $147 a month annually, not $57.
LiveChat raised subscription prices effective 29 September 2025 (Starter $24 to $25 monthly, Team $49 to $59, Business to $89) and Text's own investor reporting cites the end of price grandfathering as a driver of 2026 ARR growth. Long-standing customers on legacy rates should expect that protection to end on any plan or billing-cycle change.
Billing is per person, not per licence. Verified reviewers specifically flag losing the older arrangement where a fixed pool of licences could be shared across a rota, and this is the change that hurts teams with many part-time agents most.
The autonomous AI Agent is not included in the LiveChat subscription. Budgeting for AI deflection means budgeting for a Text platform plan and its resolution overage at roughly $0.99 each, not an incremental line on your LiveChat bill.
ChatBot, HelpDesk, and KnowledgeBase are separate subscriptions. Text's own disclosures note that fewer than half of its customers use two or more products, which is consistent with the stacking cost.
SSO and HIPAA compliance are Enterprise-only and quote-only, so any security or healthcare requirement removes published pricing from the conversation entirely.

Value assessment: Judged as a live chat product on its own, LiveChat is fairly priced in the middle of the market: $49 per person on Team buys unlimited history, unlimited campaigns, full widget customisation, a broad channel set, and a developer API that several competitors reserve for their top tier. Judged as a customer support platform, the arithmetic is less kind. The $19 headline is a one-seat price, the real team entry is $49, ticketing and a help centre are separate subscriptions, the AI agent lives on a different product line, and SSO is quote-only. A five-agent team wanting chat, tickets, and AI deflection is realistically looking at a LiveChat or Text plan plus a HelpDesk plan plus resolution overage, which lands well above Crisp's flat $45 workspace fee and above what Zoho Desk or Freshdesk charge for a bundled equivalent. Buy LiveChat when chat itself is the point, when the reporting and API depth earn their keep, and when a twenty-year-old profitable public vendor is worth something to your procurement process. Do not buy it as the cheap option, because on total cost it is not.

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

Exceptional vendor stability: founded 2002, listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since April 2014, consistently profitable, with audited quarterly results and group ARR above $89.5 million as of mid-2026. Almost nothing else in this category can be diligenced that thoroughly.
The agent experience is genuinely refined after twenty years, with message sneak-peek, fast canned responses and tagging, chat supervision and whisper, transfer between groups, and per-agent concurrent chat limits all working the way an experienced chat team expects.
A complete developer platform available on standard plans rather than gated to enterprise: Customer SDK, webhooks, chat widget JavaScript API, chat APIs, configuration API, and a Reports API, alongside a marketplace of over 200 integrations.
Deeper reporting than most chat-first competitors, including ecommerce attribution, a per-conversation revenue counter in LiveChat 2.0, agent performance metrics, and Business-tier staffing prediction that forecasts required coverage by time slot.
Broad channel coverage in one inbox: chat widget, email, Facebook Messenger, Instagram for Business, WhatsApp Business, a chat page, plus SMS and Apple Messages for Business on higher tiers, with in-chat voice, video, and screen sharing.
Strong proactive engagement tooling for sales-led chat, with behaviour-triggered targeted messages, eye-catchers, and unlimited campaigns from the Team tier, which is what differentiates it from purely reactive support widgets.

Limitations

Strictly per-person billing with no shared licences. Multiple verified Capterra reviewers name this directly, one noting they now need a licence per user rather than a chosen number of licences shared across unlimited users as before. For a rota of part-time agents this is the single most expensive structural choice in the product.
The autonomous AI Agent is not included in LiveChat plans. Text's own AI page states it is not automatically included and that customers move to the Text platform to get it. Buyers comparing LiveChat against Intercom's Fin or Tidio's Lyro on the LiveChat pricing page are comparing the wrong thing.
The $19 Starter tier supports exactly one user and keeps only 60 days of chat history, so the advertised entry price is unavailable to any actual team. The step to Team at $49 is a 158 percent increase.
Repeated price increases are a recurring complaint in verified reviews, with one long-standing customer stating the price has increased dramatically over recent years and the tool is becoming less viable, and another that it is not affordable for small businesses. The September 2025 increase and the end of grandfathering are documented in Text's own investor communications.
Chat, ticketing, and a public help centre are three separate subscriptions (LiveChat, HelpDesk, KnowledgeBase), unified only by a shared login. Against a bundled all-in-one such as Freshdesk or Zoho Desk, the stacked cost is substantial.
Verified reviewers report reliability and notification problems, including a legal services director describing the service disconnecting without warning, incoming chat requests producing no alerts, and messages being missed entirely. Several also describe setup as convoluted, and there are Capterra reports of disputed post-cancellation charges with refunds refused.
Key features sit behind tier gates that are easy to miss: SMS and Apple Messages for Business are Business-only, staffing prediction and advanced reporting are Business-only, unlimited campaigns and unlimited history start at Team, and SSO plus HIPAA compliance are Enterprise-only and quote-only.
Public security disclosure is thinner than the competitive set. The vendor lists encryption, credit card masking, EU data storage, access restriction, and SSO as features, and HIPAA as an Enterprise item, but a primary-source SOC 2 or ISO 27001 attestation was not verifiable from LiveChat's own published pages at the time of review; buyers with a vendor-security process should request the reports directly.

Head-to-head comparisons

6 alternatives

LiveChat vs Tidio

from $24.17/mo (Starter, as published on the pricing page)

The clearest structural contrast in this category: LiveChat bills per person, Tidio bills per billable conversation with 10 seats even on its free plan. For a team of eight part-timers covering evenings and weekends, Tidio is dramatically cheaper because headcount is not the meter; for a team of three full-time agents handling very high volume, LiveChat's fixed per-seat cost is the predictable one. On product, LiveChat is deeper on reporting, routing, staffing, and the developer API, while Tidio is faster to install on Shopify, has a real free tier, and ships an AI agent (Lyro) inside its own product rather than on a separate platform. Pick Tidio if you are a small store that wants chat live this afternoon with AI included; pick LiveChat if chat is a staffed function with reporting and API requirements attached.

Full LiveChat vs Tidio comparison

LiveChat vs Intercom

from $29 per seat per month (Essential), plus $0.99 per Fin resolution

Intercom has repositioned entirely around Fin, its AI agent, at $29 per seat plus $0.99 per resolution, and it is the more ambitious product: better AI, a stronger help centre, deeper product-tour and outbound tooling, and a much larger enterprise footprint. LiveChat is the more conservative purchase, cheaper per seat at Team than Intercom becomes once Fin resolutions are running, and built by a profitable public company rather than one that has repriced aggressively. The honest comparison is that Text's own AI Agent bills at the same $0.99 per resolution as Fin, so the AI economics are close; the difference is that Intercom sells it as one platform while Text sells it as a second product line. If AI deflection is the strategy, Intercom is the more coherent buy. If a well-built human chat operation with proactive campaigns is the strategy, LiveChat costs less and does it well.

Full LiveChat vs Intercom comparison

LiveChat vs Crisp

from $45/mo flat (Mini, 4 seats included)

Crisp charges a flat workspace fee starting at $45 for the Mini plan with four seats included, which makes it the cheapest option here for any team above two or three agents and by far the most predictable. LiveChat's answer is depth: better reporting, staffing prediction, a wider channel set, a much larger integration marketplace, a full developer API, and a public company behind it. The crossover is roughly at the point where reporting and API access start mattering more than the invoice. A five-person team that just needs a good shared chat inbox should run the Crisp numbers first, because LiveChat Team at five seats is $245 a month annually against Crisp's flat fee. A team that needs agent performance data, work scheduling, or programmatic access should accept the premium and take LiveChat.

Full LiveChat vs Crisp comparison

LiveChat vs tawk.to

from $0 (unlimited agents, unlimited chats, permanently)

Tawk.to gives away an unlimited-agent live chat product permanently, which makes it the honest first question for any business that has not yet decided chat is worth paying for. What you give up is real: LiveChat's reporting suite, staffing prediction, proactive campaign tooling, the developer API set, ecommerce attribution, EU data storage guarantees, and a vendor with published financials and SLAs. Tawk.to monetises through paid removal of branding and hired agents, and its interface shows its price. The rational path is to run Tawk.to until chat demonstrably drives revenue or until the reporting gap starts costing you decisions, then move to LiveChat, and to skip Tawk.to entirely if you already know chat is a staffed, measured function.

Full LiveChat vs tawk.to comparison

LiveChat vs LiveAgent

from $15 per agent per month (Small Business, billed annually; $10 under the current new-customer discount)

LiveAgent is the value competitor and the one to beat on price: roughly $15 per agent per month with a genuine call centre, ticketing, and live chat bundled into a single subscription, plus a 30-day trial. LiveChat charges $49 per person for chat alone and sells ticketing as a separate HelpDesk subscription, so on raw scope per dollar LiveAgent wins decisively. LiveChat wins on the chat experience itself, on proactive campaign tooling, on reporting depth, on the integration marketplace, and on vendor transparency as a listed company. If you need phone support or an all-in-one help desk on a tight budget, LiveAgent is the correct answer. If chat is the primary channel and you want the best version of it, the premium for LiveChat is defensible.

Full LiveChat vs LiveAgent comparison

LiveChat vs Zendesk

from $19 per agent per month (Support Team, billed annually); $55 per agent per month for Suite Team

Different weight classes solving overlapping problems. Zendesk Suite Team at $55 per agent is a complete ticketing platform with chat attached, extensive workflow automation, a mature help centre, and the enterprise ecosystem that comes with being the category default, though it now runs a second AI resolution meter alongside the seat price. LiveChat is a chat platform first, priced at $49 per person for Team, with better proactive engagement and ecommerce attribution but no native ticketing without buying HelpDesk separately. Choose Zendesk if tickets are the primary object and chat is one channel among several; choose LiveChat if chat is the primary object and you would rather have a great widget with real campaigns than a great ticket queue. Many teams end up running LiveChat alongside Zendesk, which the existing Zendesk integration suggests is a common pattern.

Full LiveChat vs Zendesk comparison

Implementation & onboarding

Setup time: A working widget takes under thirty minutes through a script tag or the Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or Webflow app. Getting to a properly configured deployment (groups, routing rules, chat limits, canned responses, targeted message campaigns, knowledge sources for reply suggestions, and reporting tags) realistically takes one to two weeks. Some verified reviewers describe initial setup as convoluted and difficult to get working correctly, so budget more than the marketing implies if your routing is non-trivial.
Learning curve: Low for agents and moderate for administrators. The agent application is conventional and a new hire is productive within a day. The administrative surface is larger than most chat tools because of routing rules, groups, campaign targeting, and the reporting suite, and the two genuinely tricky parts are designing targeted message triggers that help rather than annoy, and understanding which capabilities live on which tier before you commit to a plan.
Onboarding: Fully self-serve on all published tiers, with a 14-day trial that does not require a credit card and 24/7 support included from Starter upward. Enterprise adds a dedicated product expert, software engineer support, professional services, and SLAs. There is no mandatory implementation fee on the published plans.
Migration notes: Importing conversation history from another chat vendor is rarely clean, and the more common pattern is a cutover date with the old archive kept read-only. Contacts and canned responses move easily; targeted message campaigns and routing rules must be rebuilt because they do not map across vendors. Getting data out of LiveChat is straightforward given the Reports API, chat APIs, and transcript export are available on standard plans, which is a genuine reduction in lock-in risk compared with tools that gate API access. Two migration traps are worth naming: Starter's 60-day history ceiling means an account that sat on the entry tier may simply not have the archive you expect, and any change to plan or billing cycle ends legacy price grandfathering.

Platform, API & security

Platforms: Web applicationWindows and macOS desktop appsiOS and Android appsChat widget with native apps for Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and Webflow
API: A complete developer platform available on standard plans rather than gated to enterprise: Customer SDK, webhooks, chat widget JavaScript API, agent and customer chat APIs, configuration API, and a Reports API, plus over 200 marketplace integrations and the ability to build and publish private apps.
Compliance: GDPR, as an EU company operating from PolandHIPAA compliance offered on the Enterprise tier per the published pricing pageFormal SOC 2 or ISO 27001 attestation not verifiable from the vendor's own published pages at the time of review
Data residency: The vendor lists EU data storage among its security features, consistent with its Polish base and a Boston, Massachusetts office. Specific regional guarantees should be confirmed contractually rather than assumed.
SSO: SAML single sign-on is an Enterprise-tier feature and therefore quote-only. Google login is available on standard plans.
Security notes: Published security controls include encryption in transit and at rest, credit card masking so card numbers pasted into chat are not stored in the clear, access and IP restrictions, visitor banning, Google login, and single sign-on on Enterprise. Third-party security profile aggregators list SOC 2 and ISO 27001 for LiveChat, but this could not be confirmed against a primary vendor source during this review and one such aggregator also lists FedRAMP, which is implausible for a product of this profile. Buyers with a formal vendor-security process should request the attestation reports directly rather than relying on aggregated claims.

Support & resources

Channels: 24/7 chat and email support on all paid tiers including StarterDedicated product expert and software engineer support on EnterpriseSLAs and professional services on Enterprise
Documentation: A large and well-maintained help centre alongside genuinely thorough developer documentation for the Customer SDK, chat APIs, webhooks, and Reports API. The developer platform documentation is a notable strength relative to competitors at this price.
Community: No large independent user forum. The company runs an extensive content and education programme, and the developer platform has its own documentation and app-building resources. Peer discussion mostly happens on general review sites rather than a vendor-run space.

Company

Founded: 2002
Headquarters: Wrocław, Poland, with an office in Boston, Massachusetts
Ownership: Publicly listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange as Text S.A. (ticker TXT, ISIN PLLVTSF00010), a WIG30 index component. Renamed from LiveChat Software S.A. in 2023.
Founders: Mariusz Ciepły, Jakub Sitarz, Maciej Jarzębowski
Employees: ~268 (company reporting, 2024)
Funding: Never venture-funded in the conventional sense. The founders sold 63 percent of the company to Gadu-Gadu (Naspers Group) for 3.6 million zloty in 2008 and regained control roughly three years later, then took the company public in an IPO on the Warsaw Stock Exchange on 11 April 2014. The business has been profitable and self-funding since, reporting group revenue of PLN 249.2 million and net profit of PLN 88.1 million across the first three quarters of the 2025/26 financial year.

Funding history

Round	Amount	Year	Notes
Trade sale (63 percent stake)	PLN 3.6M	2008	Sold to Gadu-Gadu, then owned by the Naspers Group. The founders bought back control roughly three years later.
IPO (Warsaw Stock Exchange)	Public listing	2014	Debuted 11 April 2014 under the ticker LVC, later changed to TXT following the 2023 rename to Text S.A. Now a WIG30 component.

Timeline

2002Founded in Wrocław, Poland by Mariusz Ciepły, Jakub Sitarz, and Maciej Jarzębowski as a live chat tool letting website owners talk to visitors directly.
2008The founders sell a 63 percent stake to Gadu-Gadu, then part of the Naspers Group, for PLN 3.6 million; they regain control roughly three years later.
2014LiveChat Software S.A. debuts on the Warsaw Stock Exchange on 11 April under the ticker LVC, becoming one of the first Polish SaaS companies to list publicly.
2017ChatBot launched in August as a separate product for building conversational bots, beginning the shift from a single product to a portfolio.
2022OpenWidget released in November as a free widget product, alongside continued expansion of HelpDesk and KnowledgeBase as separately sold subscriptions.
2023The company renames itself Text S.A. and changes its ticker to TXT, reframing the group around AI and text-based communication rather than around the LiveChat product alone.
2025Subscription prices rise effective 29 September (Team from $49 to $59 monthly, Business to $89 monthly), and legacy price grandfathering begins to be wound down for customers who change plan or billing cycle.
2026LiveChat 2.0 ships with a revenue counter in the inbox and an AI Agent sold on Text's unified platform at $0.99 per resolution; group ARR passes $89.5 million in July with over 40,000 companies across the portfolio in 150 countries.

Integrations

Shopify
WordPress
Wix
Squarespace
Webflow
WhatsApp Business
Facebook Messenger
Instagram for Business
Apple Messages for Business
HubSpot
Salesforce
Mailchimp
Google Analytics
Zapier

Frequently asked questions

13 questions

What is LiveChat used for?

LiveChat is used to talk to website visitors in real time and to turn those conversations into sales and resolved support cases. Teams install a chat widget on their site, connect email, WhatsApp Business, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, SMS, and Apple Messages for Business into a single agent inbox, trigger proactive targeted messages based on visitor behaviour such as cart value or time on page, route conversations across groups by skill or language, and report on chat volume, agent performance, customer satisfaction, and attributed ecommerce revenue. It is built by Text S.A., a Polish company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

How much does LiveChat cost?

Starter is $19 per person per month billed annually ($25 monthly) but supports only one user and keeps 60 days of chat history. Team is $49 annually ($59 monthly) and adds unlimited users, unlimited history, unlimited campaigns, and full widget customisation. Business is $79 annually ($89 monthly) and adds a work scheduler, staffing prediction, advanced reporting, SMS, and Apple Messages for Business. Enterprise is quote-only and adds SSO, HIPAA compliance, a white-label widget, and SLAs. There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

Does LiveChat have a free plan?

No. LiveChat offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, but there is no permanently free tier on any plan. If a free product is the requirement, Tawk.to gives away unlimited agents and unlimited chats indefinitely, and Tidio and Chatwoot both have free plans, though all three trade away reporting depth, campaign tooling, or polish relative to LiveChat. Text's own OpenWidget is a free product but is a lightweight widget rather than the LiveChat platform.

What are LiveChat's main weaknesses?

Four recur consistently. First, billing is strictly per person with no shared licences, which verified reviewers specifically criticise as a downgrade from an older model, and which punishes teams with many part-time agents. Second, the autonomous AI Agent is not included in LiveChat plans and requires moving to Text's separate platform. Third, ticketing and a help centre are separate HelpDesk and KnowledgeBase subscriptions, so a full support stack means multiple bills. Fourth, price increases are a repeated complaint, with a documented rise in September 2025 and the winding down of legacy grandfathering. Some verified reviewers also report notification failures and missed chats, and setup being harder than expected.

Is the AI agent included in a LiveChat subscription?

No, and this is the most commonly misunderstood thing about the product. LiveChat plans include AI features that assist human agents: reply suggestions trained on knowledge sources you supply (3 sources on Starter, 10 on Team and Business), chat summaries, text enhancement, tag suggestions, and plain-language custom skills. The autonomous AI Agent that resolves customer questions without a human is not automatically included; Text directs customers to its unified Text platform, where AI is billed by resolution with 10 a month on Essential, 200 on Growth, and top-ups at $49.50 per 50 resolutions, roughly $0.99 each.

What is the relationship between LiveChat, ChatBot, HelpDesk, and Text?

They are separate products from the same company. Text S.A., formerly LiveChat Software S.A., sells LiveChat for live chat, ChatBot for building conversational bots, HelpDesk for ticketing, KnowledgeBase for self-service help centres, OpenWidget as a free lightweight widget, and Text as a newer unified platform bundling AI Agent, live chat, help desk, and inbox. Each has its own subscription and its own price; they share a single Text Accounts login and an organisation layer for management, but buying one does not include another. Text's own investor reporting states that nearly 40 percent of its customers use at least two products, which implies most use only one.

Who owns LiveChat and is the company financially stable?

LiveChat is owned by Text S.A., a public company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange under the ticker TXT (ISIN PLLVTSF00010) and a component of the WIG30 index. It was founded in Wrocław in 2002 by Mariusz Ciepły, Jakub Sitarz, and Maciej Jarzębowski, and listed in April 2014 as LiveChat Software S.A. before renaming in 2023. The company is consistently profitable: it reported PLN 249.2 million of revenue and PLN 88.1 million of net profit across the first three quarters of the 2025/26 financial year, and group annual recurring revenue passed $89.5 million in July 2026. That level of public disclosure is unusual in this category and is a genuine advantage for buyers with a vendor-risk process.

LiveChat vs Intercom: which should a small business choose?

Intercom is the better choice if AI deflection is the strategy. It has repositioned entirely around its Fin agent at $29 per seat plus $0.99 per resolution, with a stronger help centre and deeper outbound and product-tour tooling. LiveChat is the better choice if a well-run human chat operation is the strategy: it is cheaper per seat than Intercom becomes once Fin is resolving volume, its proactive campaign tooling and ecommerce attribution are strong, and its developer API is open on standard plans. The catch is that LiveChat's own AI Agent bills at the same $0.99 per resolution as Fin but lives on a separate Text platform subscription, so if you want both chat and AI in one coherent product, Intercom is the tidier purchase.

LiveChat vs Tidio: what is the real difference?

The meter. LiveChat charges per person per month, so cost scales with headcount. Tidio charges by billable conversation and includes 10 seats even on its free plan, so cost scales with volume. For a rota of part-time agents Tidio is dramatically cheaper; for a small number of full-time agents handling high volume LiveChat is the more predictable bill. On product, LiveChat is deeper on reporting, routing, staffing prediction, and the developer API, while Tidio is faster to install on Shopify, has a real free tier, and ships its Lyro AI agent inside the product rather than on a separate platform.

Does LiveChat support WhatsApp, Instagram, and SMS?

Yes, but with a tier gate worth checking. The chat widget, email, Facebook Messenger, Instagram for Business, WhatsApp Business, and a standalone chat page are available across the paid plans. SMS and Apple Messages for Business are Business-tier features at $79 per person per month billed annually. In-chat voice, video, and screen sharing are also supported, though LiveChat is not a telephony platform: there is no queue, IVR, or inbound number, which is where a tool such as LiveAgent has a genuine advantage.

Does LiveChat have an API?

Yes, and it is one of the product's clearest strengths. The developer platform includes a Customer SDK, webhooks, a chat widget JavaScript API, agent and customer chat APIs, a configuration API, and a Reports API, all available on standard plans rather than gated behind an enterprise contract. There are also over 200 marketplace integrations and the ability to build private apps. This openness also reduces lock-in risk, since exporting your own conversation and reporting data does not require a sales conversation.

Is LiveChat secure and GDPR compliant?

LiveChat publishes a set of security controls including encryption, credit card masking so card numbers pasted into a chat are not stored in the clear, access and IP restrictions, visitor banning, Google login, EU data storage, and single sign-on on the Enterprise tier. As an EU company operating from Poland it works under GDPR, and HIPAA compliance is offered on Enterprise per the published pricing page. One caveat should be stated plainly: a primary-source SOC 2 or ISO 27001 attestation was not verifiable from the vendor's own published pages during this review, and third-party security aggregators making those claims also list FedRAMP, which is not credible. Request the reports directly if formal attestation matters to your procurement.

Why did my LiveChat price go up?

LiveChat raised subscription prices effective 29 September 2025, moving Starter from $24 to $25 monthly, Team from $49 to $59 monthly, and Business to $89 monthly. The increase applied to new customers and to existing customers who changed plan or billing cycle, meaning long-standing accounts were initially grandfathered. Text's own investor communications then cited the end of LiveChat price grandfathering as a driver of ARR growth into 2026, so customers still on legacy rates should expect that protection to end, and should be aware that any plan or billing-cycle change triggers it immediately.

Editorial verdict

LiveChat is the most institutionally solid product in small-business live chat, and that is both its argument and its limitation. Twenty-four years of continuous development, a Warsaw Stock Exchange listing with audited quarterly results, consistent profitability, and $89.5 million of group ARR make it the easiest vendor in this category to diligence, and the product earns the reputation: the agent experience is refined, the proactive campaign tooling is genuinely good for sales-led chat, the reporting goes deeper than chat-first rivals attempt, and the developer platform is open on standard plans rather than held hostage to an enterprise contract. What holds it back is commercial structure rather than craft. The $19 headline buys one seat, the real team price is $49 per person, ticketing and a help centre are separate subscriptions, the autonomous AI agent lives on a different product line entirely, SSO and HIPAA are quote-only, and price rises plus the end of grandfathering are a live grievance in verified reviews. Buy LiveChat when chat itself is a staffed, measured function, when reporting and API depth pay for themselves, and when vendor stability is worth a premium. If you want a bundled support stack, a free tier, or AI deflection as the centrepiece, the better answers in this category are elsewhere.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.