Intercom vs LiveChat (2026)
Comparing Intercom and LiveChat? Both are AI Agents & Chatbots and Help Desk & Ticketing tools in the directory, which is why buyers put them on the same shortlist. Below is a side-by-side look at pricing and an estimated monthly bill, channels, compliance claims, and integrations, plus when each is the better fit, so you can pick on the facts rather than either vendor's own sales page.
At a glance
| Attribute |
 Intercom
|
 LiveChat
|
|---|---|---|
| What it is | AI-first helpdesk with an omnichannel inbox, ticketing, help center and Copilot, built natively around Intercom's Fin AI agent. | Long-running website live chat from Text, now sold as Text by LiveChat with an AI Agent, shared inbox and ticketing on one plan. |
| Pricing | Paid · $19/seat/mo billed annually + $0.99/Fin outcome | Paid · $19/user/mo billed annually |
| Est. monthly cost | No published price to estimate | No published price to estimate |
| Founded | 2011 | 2002 |
| Categories | Agent Assist & Copilots AI Agents & Chatbots Help Desk & Ticketing Knowledge Base & Self-Service | AI Agents & Chatbots E-commerce Support Help Desk & Ticketing |
| Channels | ||
| Chat | ✓ | ✓ |
| ✓ | ✓ | |
| Voice | ✓ | — |
| SMS | ✓ | ✓ |
| ✓ | ✓ | |
| Social | ✓ | ✓ |
| Compliance (vendor-claimed) | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | ✓ |
| HIPAA | ✓ | — |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓ |
| ISO 27001 | ✓ | — |
| ISO 42001 | ✓ | — |
| Data residency | US, EU or Australia | US, EU |
| Languages | 45 languages (Help Center) | 48 languages |
| What the AI can do | ||
| Takes actions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hands off to a human | ✓ | ✓ |
| Choice of LLM | Not verified | Not verified |
| Buying | ||
| Free trial | 14-day free trial | 14-day free trial |
| How you buy | Self-serve signup | Self-serve signup |
| Minimum commitment | 50 outcomes/mo minimum (Fin on an existing help desk) | — |
| Company | Acquired by Salesforce (September 2026) | Product of Text S.A. (public, WSE: TXT) |
| Works with | Slack Shopify GitHub Linear Notion Salesforce WhatsApp Instagram Facebook Discord Okta Microsoft Entra ID OneLogin | Shopify WooCommerce WordPress Webflow WhatsApp Facebook Messenger Instagram Klaviyo Google Tag Manager BigCommerce Squarespace Adobe Commerce (Magento) Twilio |
| Key features |
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| Next step |
Full listing Visit site → |
Full listing Visit site → |
Estimates assume 5,000 conversations a month, 60% handled by AI and 10 agent seats, at each vendor's published list price (the cost calculator's model); treat them as a floor, not a quote. Compliance rows are what vendors publicly claim, and “Not verified” means we have not confirmed that fact yet, not that the tool lacks it.
Choose Intercom or LiveChat?
Choose Intercom if
Best for: SaaS, fintech and ecommerce support teams that want an AI-first helpdesk with Copilot in the inbox and the Fin agent built in, starting at $19 per seat a month billed annually plus $0.99 per Fin outcome, with US, EU or Australian hosting and SOC 2, HIPAA and ISO 42001 coverage.
- you need agent-assist copilots for human reps
- you need a knowledge base and self-service
- you need Voice coverage
- you need a vendor that publicly claims HIPAA, ISO 27001, and ISO 42001
Look elsewhere if you want a flat, predictable bill or an independent vendor: seats, Fin outcomes, Copilot and channel usage are metered separately, and the company is now owned by Salesforce.
Choose LiveChat if
Best for: Ecommerce and small business teams that want website live chat with an AI Agent, visitor and cart tracking and chat-attributed sales, starting at $19 per user a month billed annually with a 14-day no-card trial.
- you need deep e-commerce and Shopify support
Look elsewhere if you need phone support or a high volume of AI resolutions on an entry plan: Essential includes just 10 AI resolutions a month, extra packs cost $49.50 per 50, and the product leans toward sales over service.
About Intercom
Intercom is the customer service suite that the Fin AI agent was built on: an omnichannel inbox, a ticketing system, a help center, outbound messaging, reporting and a Knowledge Hub that feeds both the AI and the human team. This listing covers that helpdesk. Fin, Intercom's AI agent, has its own listing in this directory, because it is also sold on its own for teams that keep Zendesk, Salesforce, HubSpot or Freshdesk underneath. The AI piece that belongs to the helpdesk itself is Copilot, an assistant in the inbox that reads the whole thread, internal notes and customer data before a teammate opens the conversation, drafts a reply from the knowledge base and past conversations, and pulls context from GitHub, Linear and Notion. It can update a ticket or log an issue in those tools with the teammate's approval, and it stops to ask if a reply looks like it has the wrong customer details or belongs to another conversation.
The design choice worth understanding is that Fin and the human team share one record, one inbox and one knowledge base. When Fin needs an approval it asks a teammate and then finishes the conversation itself, and managers get suggestions on missing content or data integrations to fix. Tickets come in three shapes: customer issues, back-office collaboration and tracker tickets that tie many reports of one widespread problem together. The inbox handles chat, email and phone as core channels, plus WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Discord, SMS and shared Slack channels, and the help center publishes in 45 languages across multiple brands.
Eoghan McCabe, Des Traynor, Ciaran Lee and David Barrett founded Intercom in 2011. In 2026 the company renamed itself Fin after its AI agent, and Salesforce completed its acquisition of Fin, formerly Intercom, on September 10, 2026, with Fin placed inside Salesforce AI Labs; intercom.com still sells the helpdesk under the Intercom name. It reports more than 30,000 customers. Neo Financial credits it with replacing a stitched-together stack with one system for AI and human support, and Anthropic reports around 560,000 Fin resolutions a month at about a 79 percent resolution rate. Intercom holds SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, ISO 27001, ISO 27701 and ISO 42001, with hosting in the US, EU or Australia.
Pricing has two parts: seats and usage. On annual billing the Essential plan is $19 per seat a month ($29 month to month), Advanced $85 and Expert $132, and every plan includes Fin at $0.99 per outcome. Copilot is an add-on at $29 per agent a month billed annually, after 10 free Copilot conversations per agent each month, and WhatsApp, SMS, phone and email campaigns are pay-as-you-go. There is a 14-day free trial with no card. Choose Intercom if you want the helpdesk and the AI agent as one system rather than two vendors stitched together, especially for SaaS, fintech or ecommerce support. Skip it if you want a flat, predictable bill or a vendor outside Salesforce: seats, outcomes, add-ons and channel usage all meter separately.
Read the full Intercom listing → · See Intercom alternatives →
About LiveChat
LiveChat is one of the oldest names in website chat, and what a new customer signs up for at livechat.com today is Text by LiveChat: live chat, an omnichannel inbox, ticketing and an AI Agent in one workspace on one subscription. The AI Agent answers from your website, help articles and product information when your team is busy or offline, and it can check order status in Shopify, WooCommerce or another order system to handle "where is my order?" chats. You choose when it hands a chat to a person or turns it into a ticket with the conversation attached. AI Copilot drafts reply suggestions and summaries for the human agents, and visitor tracking shows who is on the site, which pages they are viewing and what is in their cart.
The thing to understand is that this product is pitched at revenue as much as at service. The reports attribute sales, orders and conversion to chats, separately for AI and human agents, and the AI has a sales skill, a live Shopify catalog, cart recovery campaigns and buying intent detection. Channels on every plan include the website widget, in-app chat, a chat page, Facebook Messenger and SMS through Twilio, with WhatsApp and Instagram connectable and email follow-up from tickets. Growth adds multilingual routing with 48 languages and dedicated agent groups per language. Existing LiveChat customers keep their old plans and prices, so you will find two price lists on the site.
The company was founded as LiveChat in Wrocław, Poland in May 2002 by Mariusz Cieply, who still runs it, and listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 2014. It renamed itself from LiveChat Software to Text in September 2023 and now also makes ChatBot, HelpDesk, KnowledgeBase and OpenWidget. Text reports 30,000+ customers, $83.1 million in ARR and a 46 percent net profit margin for FY 24/25. Named customers include Nuvoo, which says 70 percent of its chat sales come through the AI Agent, Wembley Stadium, at $1.5 million earned in eight months, and the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. Text claims SOC 2 Type 2 audited security plus GDPR and CCPA compliance.
Essential costs $19 per user a month billed annually, or $25 billed monthly, and includes one AI Agent with only 10 AI resolutions a month. Growth is $79 per user a month billed annually with 10 AI Agents and 200 resolutions, and extra resolutions come in packs of 50 for $49.50. Enterprise is quoted. There is a 14-day free trial with no card. Choose LiveChat if you are an ecommerce or small business team that wants website chat which sells as well as supports, and you will start from a self-serve plan. Skip it if you need a voice channel, heavy AI volume on a small plan, or a support-first helpdesk: the resolution allowances are tight and the product is tuned toward conversion.
Read the full LiveChat listing → · See LiveChat alternatives →
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