Best Free Live Chat Software in 2026: 11 Truly Free Tools

The best free live chat software gives you a real support channel, not a seven-day teaser with a credit card form behind it. That distinction matters more in 2026 than it ever has: several vendors quietly killed or shrank their free plans this year, and the ones that remain differ wildly in what "free" actually covers. Some cap agents, some cap conversations, some stamp their logo on your widget, and a few genuinely let a small team run unlimited chats without paying anything.

We compared eleven free live chat tools that you can run indefinitely at $0, checked every plan limit against the vendor's own pricing page, and organized them by the way each one limits you. One of the eleven is our own product, and we say so openly where it appears. Every price and plan limit in this guide was verified in May-July 2026.

The three meters every free plan runs on

Free live chat plans all monetize the same way: they give you the widget and meter something you will eventually outgrow. Understanding which meter a vendor uses tells you faster than any feature grid whether their free plan fits your team.

Seat meters cap how many people can answer chats. Chaport gives you 2 operators, Zoho SalesIQ gives you 3, HubSpot allows 2 users. If you are a solo founder or a two-person team, a seat meter is the friendliest limit because your conversation volume stays unlimited.

Conversation meters cap monthly chat volume instead. Tidio's free plan handles 50 billable conversations a month and Smartsupp's handles 25. Seats are generous, but a single good traffic day can eat the whole month's quota. Conversation meters suit low-traffic sites that want many teammates available occasionally.

Branding and history meters leave chats and seats alone but keep the vendor's logo on your widget or trim your chat history. Tawk.to is the canonical example: everything is unlimited, and removing the "Powered by tawk.to" badge is the paid product. Smartsupp keeps only 14 days of history; Chaport keeps 60.

Most vendors combine two meters. The comparison below lists which ones apply to each tool.

Free live chat software compared

A note on what we left out: Olark still has a free plan, but it caps at 20 chats per month for one agent, and Formilla's free tier limits both agents and sessions. Both are too small to run real customer support on, so they did not make the list.

1. Chatim: unlimited free chats with a chatbot included

Full disclosure: Chatim is built by the team behind this blog, so judge this entry with that in mind. We put it first because its free plan is structured around the thing most free tiers withhold: automation. The free plan includes unlimited live chat conversations, rule-based chatbot flows, and a multi-channel contact button (WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, phone, email) with no credit card and no conversation cap. The meter is team access: the free plan is built for a single user, and adding teammates starts on the $9/month Starter plan.

That shape fits solo founders and small businesses where one person answers chats but wants a bot to cover nights and weekends. Where competitors gate chatbots entirely behind paid tiers, the free chatbot builder here handles FAQ automation, lead capture, and routing out of the box. What is not free: team seats, email notifications, custom branding, and Chatim AI conversations, which start on paid plans. If you want to see how the free plan compares to paid tiers in detail, the pricing page lists every limit side by side.

Truly unlimited free agents

Two tools let you add your whole team without paying. The catch sits elsewhere.

2. Tawk.to

Tawk.to remains the most famous free live chat software on the market, and the free plan is real: unlimited agents, unlimited chats, and all core features at $0. The business model is the giveaway in reverse. Removing the "Powered by tawk.to" branding costs $29/month billed annually ($39 monthly), and the company sells hired live agents as a service. For a team that does not mind the badge, it is the most generous free plan in the category. The trade-offs are a dated dashboard and no meaningful built-in chatbot automation. If you are evaluating it seriously, our Tawk.to alternatives guide covers where it runs out of road.

3. Smartsupp

Smartsupp flips the meters: unlimited agents forever, but only 25 conversations a month and 14 days of history on the free plan. That combination suits a small site where chats are occasional and several teammates share coverage. The visitor-recording feature, its signature, is one of the few of its kind available on a free tier. Once volume grows past 25 chats a month, you are choosing between upgrading and missing messages.

Conversation-capped but feature-rich

4. Tidio

Tidio's free plan includes 50 billable conversations a month with up to 10 seats, which makes it one of the roomier conversation-metered plans. The product itself is polished, with a solid widget and a chatbot builder, and the Lyro AI agent has a small free allowance (the first 50 AI conversations) before its paid add-on pricing starts at $32.50/month. Paid plans start at $24.17/month billed annually. The free plan is a genuine trial-of-record for small shops; the ceiling arrives when a marketing campaign doubles your chat volume mid-month. We compare it against its rivals in the Tidio alternatives roundup.

5. Crisp

Crisp's free Basic plan covers 2 seats with core chat on per-workspace pricing rather than per-agent, which becomes its differentiator later: paid plans (Mini at $45, Essentials at $95 per workspace per month) cover the whole team at a flat rate. The free tier itself is minimal, essentially a clean two-seat inbox with the shared widget. Teams that expect to grow into flat-rate pricing get the smoothest upgrade path in this list; teams that stay small get a spartan but reliable free chat. See the Crisp alternatives guide for the full picture.

Free live chat inside a CRM

6. HubSpot

HubSpot's free tools include live chat for up to 2 users, with the widget carrying HubSpot branding. The chat itself is basic, but it writes every conversation into HubSpot's free CRM, which is the real product. If your business already runs on HubSpot, turning the chat on costs nothing and keeps everything in one contact timeline. If you are not a HubSpot shop, adopting a full CRM to get a chat widget is the tail wagging the dog, and the branded widget on the free tier is a visible trade-off.

7. Zoho SalesIQ

Zoho SalesIQ's free plan covers 3 operators with core chat and visitor tracking, the most generous seat count among the CRM-attached options. Like HubSpot, it makes the most sense inside its own ecosystem: SalesIQ talks natively to Zoho CRM, Desk, and the rest of the suite. Outside the Zoho world it is a competent free chat with an interface that leans utilitarian.

Simple free plans for small teams

8. Chaport

Chaport's free plan gives 2 operators unlimited chats with a 60-day history window, one of the cleanest small-team offers in the category. The product philosophy is minimalism: a fast widget, multi-channel inboxes, and little else to configure. The 60-day history limit is the quiet catch; support teams that need to reference old conversations will feel it. Paid Pro starts at $29/month. Our Chaport alternatives post maps its neighbors.

9. JivoChat

JivoChat advertises a free plan with basic features and a small agent allowance; the vendor's own pages show the count inconsistently, between 2 and 5 agents, so treat the exact number as subject to change. Its strength is channel breadth: phone, email, and social channels funnel into one app, and the mobile apps are among the better ones in this tier. The free plan trims features like triggers and full chat history. The JivoChat alternatives guide covers the upgrade decision.

10. Brevo Conversations

Chatra, a long-running free live chat staple, was acquired by Brevo and no longer ships new features as a standalone product; its successor is Brevo Conversations, which offers a free plan with basic chat and unlimited contacts. Paid pricing runs around €13/month. The free tier makes sense if you already use Brevo for email marketing, since chat conversations join the same contact base. If you are choosing fresh in 2026, pick the successor, not the frozen original.

The platform-native option for Shopify stores

11. Shopify Inbox is free with any Shopify subscription and runs inside the Shopify admin, with unlimited chats, order context in the conversation view, and the Shop app channel included. For a store that lives entirely on Shopify and wants zero extra vendors, it is the obvious first chat. Its limits are the platform's limits: no use outside Shopify, light automation, and no multi-site support. Stores that outgrow it usually move to a dedicated tool; our best live chat apps for Shopify comparison ranks the candidates, and the Chatim for Shopify integration is our own entry in that race.

The free plans that vanished in 2026

The free tier landscape shrank this year, which is worth knowing before you trust an older listicle. Freshdesk replaced its permanent free plan with a time-limited intro offer: $0 for 1 to 2 agents for six months, after which you pay. LiveChat, HelpCrunch, and LiveAgent offer free trials but no free plan at all. Intercom has no free tier. And Drift no longer exists as a product: it was retired after the Salesloft acquisition, with its capabilities absorbed into Salesloft's platform.

The pattern behind the shrinkage is consistent: AI features raised vendor costs, and free plans were the first thing cut. The tools still offering real free tiers either monetize adjacent services (Tawk.to), use free as a CRM on-ramp (HubSpot, Zoho, Brevo), or meter the plan tightly enough to force upgrades at scale (Tidio, Smartsupp). None of that makes free plans a trick; it just means you should know which meter you are signing up to hit.

Which free live chat tool fits your situation

Take Chatim if you are a solo operator or small business that wants unlimited chats plus a working chatbot without paying. Take Tawk.to if you need many agents at $0 and can live with the branding badge. Take Tidio if you want the most polished product experience and your volume stays under 50 conversations a month. Take Smartsupp if several teammates share coverage of a low-traffic site. Take HubSpot or Zoho SalesIQ if you already live in their CRM. Take Chaport if you want minimalist two-seat chat with no conversation cap. Take Shopify Inbox if your whole business is one Shopify store. And if you are comparing paid tools with bigger ambitions, our best live chat software guide covers the full market, free and paid.

When free stops being enough

Free plans end for predictable reasons: you hire a second support person and hit a seat wall, a campaign spikes traffic and burns a conversation quota, or a client asks why another company's logo sits on your website. When that day comes, the upgrade math matters more than the sticker. Per-agent pricing (Tidio, JivoChat, most helpdesks) scales with headcount; per-workspace pricing (Crisp) and flat plans (Chatim from $9/month) scale with usage instead. Before you upgrade anywhere, list which meter you actually hit, and buy the plan that removes that meter and nothing else. If a chatbot would absorb the volume that broke your free plan, a chatbot on a cheap tier often beats a bigger seat count on an expensive one.

Every tool in this list will let you start today without a card. Pick the meter you can live with, install the widget, and let real conversations, not feature grids, tell you when to pay.