What's The Best Free Live Chat Software? 8 Top Options

Adding live chat to your support lineup can be a game changer. It’s a win-win for both customers and businesses. 

For customers, live chat means they get instant help — no more waiting for emails or navigating confusing phone menus. For businesses, it’s a cost-effective way to manage multiple chats at once and keep things running smoothly.

There’s a ton of free live chat software out there, each with its own perks. To help you find the right one for your team's needs, we dug deep into the features of dozens of platforms to put together this list of the eight best for 2025.

What features are must-haves in live chat software?

Free tools can sometimes have severe limits on the types of features you get access to, so before you start shopping, it's good to understand what features should be non-negotiable: 

• Ease of use and quick installation: Seek out options that are quick to set up and intuitive to use. Have a few different people test out an option to get the best insight. 

• Multichannel options: Companies tend to get chat messages from a variety of sources, including their own websites and social media platforms. A platform that can pull in requests from multiple sources can make life easier for agents. 

• Reporting: It’s good to have insights into things like what times of day and days of the week are most popular for chat and what questions are most common. Both can help you better prioritize and plan how to use your given resources. 

• AI capabilities or automated responses: It’s fairly common for customers to use chat for more basic requests, so features like AI drafted answers and chatbots can reduce work for human agents. 

Depending on your needs, you may want to add a few more items to this list. However, we think the list above is a great starting point for narrowing down your options. 

The 8 best free live chat software

There’s no shortage of free live chat software options on the market, but most people don't have time to sit down and investigate hundreds of options. Luckily, we've done the work for you to compile this list of the eight best live chat software on the market in 2025.

1. Help Scout — Best for customer support teams

Help Scout's free plan lets you embed a widget on your website and/or in your app that can be used to deliver both live chat and self-service support. 

The free plan lets you serve up to 50 contacts per month and comes with unlimited users. It also includes Facebook Messenger and Instagram integrations that let you respond to requests from multiple sources using a single interface.

In addition to having support agents reply to customers, you can also have AI reply to questions. Help Scout's AI answers (coming soon) is trained on your knowledge base (which is also included in the free plan) and provides answers to customers automatically. If customers don't get the answers they need, they can start a live chat with your team from the same interface.

Help Scout's AI can also be used to summarize live chat conversations after they're completed, adjust the tone or length of a response, and even translate your response into other languages.

In addition to live chat and a knowledge base, you get access to a shared inbox to handle email and social requests. You can create up to 10 saved replies, views, and workflows, send auto-replies, and add tags to tickets — all of which help you manage tickets more easily and efficiently.

Rounding things out, you can also set up 10 targeted Messages to proactively engage with site visitors and you also get access to a month’s worth of reporting data. Reports include things like what times of day and days of the week are busiest and what types of requests are most common. 

What's included in Help Scout's free plan?

• Unlimited users

• Live chat, email, social for up to 50 contacts per month

• AI assist, summarize, drafts (email only), and answers

• One Beacon (chat widget)

• One Inbox

• One Docs (knowledge base) site

• 10 saved replies

• 10 views

• 10 workflows

• 10 Messages (excludes surveys and NPS)

• 100 tags

• Reports with up to one month of data

Upgrading to a paid plan

If your team scales beyond what's available in Help Scout's free plan, you can upgrade to a paid plan, which starts at $50 per month. The Standard plan includes everything in the free plan, plus an additional Inbox and Docs sites, unlimited Messages, access to up to two years of reporting data, integrations, 100 contacts to start, and more.

2. HubSpot — Best for sales and marketing 

HubSpot’s free chat software is best suited for a sales or marketing use case. With it you can add a chat widget to your site. The widget’s customizable, so you can match it to your current design, and you can also create no-code chatbots to automate interactions and help with things like qualifying leads.

Chat conversations are automatically added to a shared inbox on a free version of HubSpot’s CRM. From there you can respond to requests, add notes, create follow-up tasks for a specific interaction, or even schedule a call. They also have a Slack integration so you can be notified about incoming chats there and even respond to those messages from Slack. 

Rounding things out is the ability to create office hours for chat and set up email capture for times you’re not available so you can follow up on requests later. It's a good option, especially if you’re already using another HubSpot product as you’ll already have the needed code on your site to add the widget. 

What’s included in HubSpot’s free plan?

• Customizable chat widget

• Chatbot builder 

• Universal inbox

• Slack integration 

• Office hours

Upgrading to a paid plan

HubSpot’s paid plans start at $15/seat per month. The paid plan allows you to create some workflow automations to reduce the manual work of sorting requests. There’s also more in-depth reporting available on the paid plans. Further, you can remove HubSpot branding from chat widgets. 

3. JivoChat — Best for higher-volume teams

JivoChat’s free plan is relatively bare bones compared to others on the list. It lets teams add chat widgets to a website. There’s no limit on the number of widgets you can add, agent seats, or chat conversations, so if you’re a bigger team, it could be a good option. 

On the free plan you can do things like customize the chat language for a widget — they support 25 languages currently. You can also integrate with email, set up an offline contact form, and set up pre-chat data collection so agents have all the information they need before diving into a request. 

Another interesting feature is the Instagram integration, which lets you reply to Instagram direct messages directly from JivoChat. On the free plan you also get access to basic stats on chats and agents’ performance and the option to receive a daily automated performance email to keep up to date with that data. 

What’s included in JivoChat’s free plan?

• Unlimited chats and widgets

• Unlimited users

• Customizable chat widget with 25 languages

• Basic stats

• Instagram integration 

• Offline contact form

Upgrading to a paid plan

JivoChat’s paid plans start at $19/agent per month. With a paid plan, there are integrations with more platforms, like WhatsApp. You also get access to advanced performance stats, multi-agent chat, and chat transfer capabilities. Further, you can set business hours for chat and edit messages after sending. 

4. Freshchat — Best for adding live chat to a mobile app

With Freshchat, you’re able to interact with customers through a chat widget and email, including a shared inbox to centralize all your incoming requests. You can even set role-based access on the free plan, meaning you can limit certain user accounts to which features they can access and requests they can see. 

Another unique feature is the ability to add the chat widget to a mobile app. It’s not super common on free plans, so if it’s something you need, Freshchat is certainly an option you should consider. It would require some technical assistance to add the chat widget to a mobile app, but it shouldn’t be horribly complicated to do. 

Last, the free plan doesn’t have a conversation volume limit. So, if you’re a higher-volume team, it could be a good option. That said, it does limit you to 10 agents total, so if you have a larger team, it’s something you should keep in mind. 

What’s included on Freshchat’s free plan?

• Chat widget 

• Shared inbox 

• Role-based access control 

• Unlimited chat volume 

• Up to 10 seats 

• Ability to add chat widget to a mobile app

Upgrading to a paid plan

Freshchat’s paid plans start at $19/agent per month. On the paid plan you get access to integrations with WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and more. There are also real-time reporting dashboards to track performance and discover trends. 

5. Crisp — Best for ecommerce support

Crip’s free plan is fairly basic. You get a website chat widget with some basic customization options, like changing colors, etc. Conversations come into a shared inbox, where team members can respond to and sort requests. 

Crisp doesn’t have a conversation limit on their free plan, which is nice for higher-volume teams. That said, they do have a seat limit of two people, so it’s probably not well-suited to larger teams. They also have iPhone and Android apps, making it easy to respond to requests even if you’re away from a computer. 

The most unique features are their Wordpress and Shopify integrations. The Wordpress integration makes adding a chat widget to a Wordpress site quick and easy to do. The Shopify integration allows you to sync data with your Crisp inbox to see things like order history. You can also add a Crisp chat widget directly to a Shopify site.

What’s included on Crisp’s free plan?

• Two seats

• Website chat widget

• Wordpress and Shopify integrations

• Mobile app(s)

• Unlimited conversations 

Upgrading to a paid plan

Crisp’s paid plans start at $45/month per workspace. The paid plan gives you unlimited chat history, and you can also add up to 5,000 contacts. Further, you’re able to create chat triggers to proactively engage with site visitors. It also includes a shortcuts feature of pre-written responses and a Slack integration. 

6. Tawk.to — Best for large teams

Tawk.to is a unique entry on the list because they only have a free plan. Similar to others, they offer a customizable chat widget. There isn’t a seat limit, and there’s unlimited chat history, so you can access messages in perpetuity. 

They offer some great efficiency tools like the ability to create canned responses as well as add filters to route messages based on criteria you set. They even have some more advanced features like screen sharing and messages sneak-peak (which lets you see what someone is typing as they’re typing it). 

Further, you can create departments to keep requests organized and with the right folks. Rounding things out is sentiment tracking to better understand how requesters feel about their interactions and advanced reporting data to keep track of request trends and team performance. 

What’s included on Tawk.to’s free plan?

• Unlimited seats

• Unlimited chat history 

• Canned responses

• Screen sharing 

• Sentiment tracking

• Advanced reporting 

Upgrading to a paid plan

Unlike others on the list, Tawk.to actually doesn’t have a paid plan. That said, they do have a couple of paid add-ons. For chat, the only one listed is video and voice capabilities, which is $29/month. 

7. Chaport — Best for small teams

Chaport’s free plan offers a good amount of value to smaller teams. They have a limit of two users, but there isn’t a chat limit. You also get access to basic chat widget customization options (you can change the color of the widget). The chat widget is also optimized for mobile, which is a nice touch. 

There’s also the option to do one auto invitation, which is proactive messaging to site visitors. Further, you can collect offline messages, ensuring you don’t miss requests. You can also assign operator roles, which gives each operator different permissions in the account. 

Along with those features, you also get access to basic reporting, which tracks the total number of chats served and missed in the last 30 days. Overall Chaport is a good value, but it does seem best suited to smaller teams because of the seat limit. 

What’s included on Chaport’s free plan?

• Basic widget customization

• Two operators

• Unlimited chats 

• Basic reports

• Offline message collection 

• Operator roles

Upgrading to a paid plan

Chaport’s paid plans start at $29/month. Going on a paid plan upgrades a lot of those basic features — like the design options and reports — to more advanced versions. You can also do things like transfer a chat transcript to email, create saved replies to respond to requests more quickly, and do group chats. 

8. Tidio — Best for video calling

Tidio is a customer support solution that lets you communicate with customers through a couple different channels. Along with live chat, you also get access to a shared inbox on the free plan. You can do up to 50 conversations and have up to 10 seats. You can also do some basic customizations to your chat widget.

One unique feature Tidio offers is access to their AI reply assistant, which can help with writing. The free plan also lets you integrate with a couple different platforms like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. You also get access to some basic reports to gain insight into customer trends and team performance. 

Another unique option for Tidio’s free plan is the ability to do video calls through the chat widget, which is generally a paid feature for most. You can also create flows to automate certain tasks and save flow templates for easy recall later. They also have desktop and mobile apps, giving you options on how you interact with the software. 

What’s included on Tidio’s free plan?

• 50 conversations 

• Up to 10 seats 

• AI reply assistant 

• Video chats 

• Automations through flows

• Basic reports

• Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp integrations

Upgrading to a paid plan

Tidio’s paid plans start at $29 per month. On the lowest tier you get 10 user seats and up to 100 conversations per month. You also get more advanced analytics as well as the ability to set operating hours. 

Picking the right live chat solution for you

At the end of the day, it’s hard to say there’s one option that’s the best. Really, it just comes down to figuring out which one is best for you. To do that, there are a few things you should consider:

• Primary use: People use live chat for a number of different things like real-time support or ticket deflection. Depending on what your primary use is, it could mean certain features are more important than others. 

• Team size: It’s common for tools to use number of seats as a limiting factor for free plans. Knowing how many people need direct access can be an easy way to shorten your list of potential options. 

• Anticipated chat volume: Another common limit for free plans is how many chats you can do. If you don’t currently have live chat, knowing what your expected volume is could be difficult, but even a ball-park estimate could help eliminate some options from contention. 

• Additional tools offered: Some options on the list include additional customer support tools (also free of charge). So, if you were thinking about piecing together a free suite of tools, it might be easier to instead look for an option that already offers everything you need in one account.  

Asking those critical questions should help paint a clearer picture of which tool is right for you. If you find that none of the free options satisfy your needs, you can also check out our list of the best paid live chat tools.