LiveChat vs Zendesk AI Agents (2026)
Comparing LiveChat and Zendesk AI Agents? 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 |
 LiveChat
|
 Zendesk AI Agents
|
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Long-running website live chat from Text, now sold as Text by LiveChat with an AI Agent, shared inbox and ticketing on one plan. | Zendesk AI agents can handle the most sophisticated matters across any channel. Provide instant, personalized support and make customers happier while reducing costs. |
| Pricing | Paid · $19/user/mo billed annually | Per resolution · $1.50/resolution |
| Est. monthly cost | No published price to estimate | $4,500/mo $1.50 per resolution; Committed automated resolutions $1.50 each; pay-as-you-go $2.00; plans include 5 to 10 resolutions per agent a month |
| Founded | 2002 | 2007 |
| Categories | AI Agents & Chatbots E-commerce Support Help Desk & Ticketing | AI Agents & Chatbots Enterprise Help Desk & Ticketing |
| Channels | ||
| Chat | ✓ | ✓ |
| ✓ | ✓ | |
| Voice | — | ✓ |
| SMS | ✓ | — |
| ✓ | — | |
| Social | ✓ | ✓ |
| Compliance (vendor-claimed) | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | ✓ |
| HIPAA | — | ✓ |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓ |
| ISO 27001 | — | ✓ |
| FedRAMP | — | ✓ |
| ISO 42001 | — | ✓ |
| Data residency | US, EU | US, Europe (EEA), Asia Pacific |
| Languages | 48 languages | 80+ 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 | — | — |
| Company | Product of Text S.A. (public, WSE: TXT) | Product of Zendesk (private, owned by Hellman & Friedman and Permira) |
| Works with | Shopify WooCommerce WordPress Webflow WhatsApp Facebook Messenger Instagram Klaviyo Google Tag Manager BigCommerce Squarespace Adobe Commerce (Magento) Twilio | Slack Shopify Salesforce Jira Microsoft Teams WhatsApp |
| 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 LiveChat or Zendesk AI Agents?
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
- you need SMS and WhatsApp coverage
- you prefer a flat subscription to usage-based billing
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.
Choose Zendesk AI Agents if
Best for: Teams already on Zendesk that want autonomous agents drawing on their knowledge base and ticket history across email, chat, messaging and voice, billed per automated resolution at $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay-as-you-go, with a 14-day trial, 80 languages, hosting in the US, EEA or Asia Pacific and compliance up to FedRAMP and ISO 42001.
- you need enterprise scale, security, and compliance
- you need Voice coverage
- you need a vendor that publicly claims HIPAA, ISO 27001, and FedRAMP
- you would rather pay per resolved ticket than per seat
Look elsewhere if you do not run Zendesk, or you want a flat bill: the agents are built into the Zendesk Suite, the fully autonomous Advanced tier is billed per resolution on top of seats, and the Essential tier is far more limited.
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 →
About Zendesk AI Agents
Zendesk AI agents resolve customer requests autonomously across email, chat, messaging, and voice, and they have the advantage of sitting on one of the most widely used support platforms on earth. Because they are built into Zendesk's help desk, the agents draw on your knowledge base and years of past tickets to answer questions instantly, then hand off to a human with full context when a conversation needs one. Zendesk also threads AI through the agent workspace itself with a copilot that suggests replies, detects intent, and summarizes long tickets.
The lineup comes in two flavors. The Essential tier bundles friendly generative answers into the Suite, while the Advanced tier, built on Zendesk's acquisition of Ultimate, goes fully autonomous, working off-script and calling your APIs to actually get things done. In keeping with where the industry is heading, the Advanced agents are billed per resolution, so you pay for issues solved rather than seats filled.
There is a fun irony in Zendesk's origins. The company was founded in 2007 by three friends in a Copenhagen loft who wanted support software that felt human instead of clunky, and its deliberately approachable branding helped it grow into an industry giant, go public, and later get taken private in a deal worth roughly ten billion dollars. More recently it has been on an AI shopping spree, absorbing companies to bolt voice, quality assurance, and deeper automation onto the platform. In March 2026 it completed the acquisition of Forethought, whose self-learning agents it now sells as Forethought AI Agents by Zendesk, pitched for any help desk stack rather than only its own.
Real customers put it to work in colorful ways: cosmetics brand Lush named its Zendesk agent Marvin and uses it to resolve a large share of first contacts. For the enormous number of teams already running support on Zendesk, switching on its native AI agents is often the shortest path of least resistance to real automation, with no new vendor to onboard and no data to migrate.
Read the full Zendesk AI Agents listing → · See Zendesk AI Agents alternatives →
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