What are the Best Live Chat Tools for 2025? Top 11 Picks

Customers often want quick, direct help. They might not find what they need in your help articles, or they might have tricky problems that need solving right away.

Real-time support can make your customers much happier. Phone calls are still common, but live chat is becoming more popular. It's as fast as a phone call, but often more efficient. Many customers prefer live chat because it's easy to use, they can get help quickly, and they don't have to listen to hold music.

In this article, we’ll look at the 11 best live chat tools and provide some other tips to help you get chat support up and running for your business.

How do live chat tools work?

Though there may be some slight differences between different platforms, most live chat tools function in the same way. You start by embedding a chat widget on your website or in your app.

After embedding the widget on a page, you can choose to set yourself as online — which is when a visitor can start a chat with an agent — or offline, meaning visitors won’t be able to start a chat. That said, it’s usually possible for them to submit a support ticket to your team through the widget when you’re offline, which your team can follow up on through email. 

From the agent side, when a visitor starts a chat, the agent will generally see a notification of some sort and can choose to start interacting over chat. From there, it plays out much the same as a text conversation would on your phone.

Depending on the tool you use, you can set a limit on the number of chats an agent is able to take at any given time to ensure each customer is getting a great experience. When a chat interaction ends, you generally have a few options:

• Close the chat: You both say goodbye and go your separate ways with no further action on either side. 

• Add a tag or internal note: If your chat tool has analytics capabilities, you might add a tag to keep track of what’s causing visitors to reach out.  

• Move to another channel: Some issues simply aren’t best handled through chat. In the case something needs more investigation or time to solve, you might move the interaction to a different channel — like email — and follow up from there when you have more information. 

The different types of live chat tools

When thinking about live chat tools, you’re generally choosing between a stand-alone tool and one that’s included as a feature or service of another platform, like a help desk. There are benefits and disadvantages of both.

One of the benefits of a stand-alone tool is that — with its singular focus — it may be able to offer more in-depth analytics specifically about chat. It’s also possible they have other features — like automation or artificial intelligence — that chat tools included as a feature of another service may not have.

The main benefit of using a chat tool that's included in another service is the added utility of the other tools of the platform. Also, depending on the software, there’s the benefit of cost savings over a dedicated chat tool (sometimes chat is an add-on feature with an additional cost).

Overall, an all-in-one support platform may cost a little more per month, but when all parts are considered, they can be a better value.

The benefits of using live chat software

While most support teams start out with email support, there are a lot of good reasons to add live chat to your list of supported channels. Live chat software allows you to:

• Increase accessibility to support: Often customers may shy away from seeking support when they perceive the process to be time consuming or incompatible with their schedules. Live chat lets customers seek help quickly and in the moment.

• Encourage engagement: Aside from simply giving your customers increased access, many chat support tools also have the ability to proactively launch a chat window during specific moments in the customer journey or when the customer performs a predetermined action. Reaching out and offering a helping hand can help strengthen the customer relationship and increase customer success.

• Provide faster support: While email can be a great channel for working through complicated issues, it’s not immediate. Live chat helps you get users the answers they need the moment they need them. 

• Increase support coverage: Live chat software makes it easy to provide support even when your agents are offline. Many chat widgets have chatbots or the ability to integrate with a knowledge base, allowing customers to find answers on their own when you’re unavailable.

• Improve customer experience: Probably the best reason to consider adding chat to your support lineup is that it's popular. Customers prefer live chat to other channels like email, and customers who interact with companies via chat tend to have a higher rate of customer satisfaction.

These are just a few of the benefits of using live chat software. The specific features and benefits that will be available to you will depend on the type of live chat tool you choose to adopt.

Features to look for in live chat support software

While the features of a stand-alone tool might look a little different from the features included in more robust customer service software, there is some functionality that should be present regardless of the option you choose.

Common features to look for include:

• A customizable widget: Look for platforms that let you customize your widget to match your brand and don't require significant developer involvement to set up.

• Additional messaging channels: Many customers like to initiate real-time conversations with your team through the platforms they already use. Choosing software that can integrate with apps like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp lets your chat team respond to customer messages from a single platform.

• Saved replies: Look for a tool that will let you save templated responses for the questions you get asked the most. This will save time and help standardize the information your team is providing during a chat session.

• Knowledge base integration: An ideal chat platform will have the ability to integrate your knowledge base with the software. This will allow your customers to look up answers on their own via the chat widget and also allow your team to quickly access and share helpful articles with customers during a chat.

• Customer management: Having a customer’s profile in the side panel of your team’s dashboard lets them review important data like name, contact details, company, and chat history without leaving the chat. This ensures that your team has all of the data they need to provide helpful, personalized support.

• Chat transcripts: It can be helpful for both agents and customers to have access to a chat transcript after the chat has ended. Many tools will automatically email a chat transcript to your customer immediately following the chat so they can reference it later.

• Chatbots: When thoughtfully implemented, rule-based or AI-powered chatbots can help take the stress off of your chat support team. Chatbots can handle some of the easier requests so that customers get quick answers while your team is able to focus their attention on more complicated cases.

• Artificial intelligence (AI): AI tools are becoming more and more popular in support settings. While most commonly found in the aforementioned chatbots, AI can also help your agents with drafting responses, researching customer issues, gauging customer sentiment, and performing repetitive tasks.

• Integrations: Having software that integrates with the rest of the apps your team uses can help centralize your support efforts and ensure your team has access to the information they need to be successful.

• Reporting: It’s important to be able to measure your efforts, so ensure that the software you choose comes with the ability to report on things like volume, average wait time, and agent performance.

• Proactive messaging: The option to proactively reach out to a website visitor or customer at a particular moment can be powerful. Some tools offer the ability to launch a chat or provide helpful content to visitors based on things like location or browsing behavior.

• Mobile accessibility: People spend around half of their internet browsing time using mobile devices like cell phones and tablets. Your chat solution should be optimized for those viewing your site or app on a mobile device. In addition, if your team is frequently away from their desks, you might look for platforms that offer mobile apps for agents as well.

The 11 best live chat tools

If you've decided that you need a new tool for offering chat support, get started on your research with our list of the 11 best live chat software.

1. Help Scout – Best overall live chat tool

Help Scout offers a great solution for those looking to start using chat. Help Scout's messaging widget, Beacon, lets you provide live chat support, serve customers relevant knowledge base articles, and provide customers with a way to email you when live support isn't available.

When a user fills out the initial chat form, Help Scout’s intelligent routing tool will make sure the query reaches the most qualified agent for the topic. When a support agent isn’t available, Beacon lets your customers search your help documentation within the chat widget.

If customers aren't able to find the answers they’re looking for, they can simply send in their request as an email right from the same window, saving a lot of time and hassle.

You can even create automations to automatically trigger a chat box to open when a certain action is taken or certain condition is met, which means you can use Beacon to provide proactive support to customers, too.

From the agent perspective, live chat conversations are managed from within Help Scout's shared inbox, which is packed with features that make chat management easier and more efficient for your team. 

Profile information in the conversation sidebar helps you get a complete view of your customer, allowing you to provide contextual support. Saved replies and in-tool access to knowledge base articles let you respond to frequently asked questions more quickly.

AI assist — one of Help Scout's new AI tools — can help you send better responses. AI assist can lengthen or shorten a reply, alter its tone, check for spelling and grammar mistakes, or even translate text into other languages.

Help Scout also offers out-of-the-box reports so you can track performance and understand impact right away. Additionally, Help Scout integrates with messaging apps like Instagram and Facebook Messenger, and it's available on desktop, iOS, and Android.

There aren't any chat limits and Beacon is included with all Help Scout plans at no additional cost.

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $50 per month.

2. Olark – Best for advanced chat needs

Olark is a dedicated chat tool with lots of advanced features for teams that are planning to use live chat heavily. Along with the standard live chat features, Olark offers automation capabilities and chatbots — artificial intelligence tools used to interact with customers in lieu of a live person — that your team can use for ticket deflection.

Further, you can take advantage of pre-chat surveys to get context and in-depth analytics to better understand where you’re excelling and where you have room to improve. They also offer some very advanced features like live chat translation and co-browsing as optional add-ons.

Olark also includes a number of productivity features like canned responses to answer frequently asked questions quickly and chat routing to automatically assign new chats. 

When you sign up, you also get access to team and agent-level analytics to better understand overall trends and individual contributions. In addition, Olark offers a number of native integrations with tools like Slack and MailChimp. 

Pricing: Plans start at $29/seat per month.

3. LiveChat – Best for variety of integrations

LiveChat is a dedicated chat tool that helps teams deliver a great experience across a number of different chat channels. They accomplish this through an extensive list of over 200 integrations, including Shopify, Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages, and many more.  

LiveChat has a couple of other standout features like the ability to share product cards directly in the chat widget, making it even simpler for customers to make a purchase. You’re also able to set up basic automations to assign chats to get customers the best support quickly.

If you’re interested in providing both reactive and proactive support through chat, LiveChat may be a good option for your team. Not only do they offer the ability to chat in real time, they also allow you to automatically send targeted messages to site visitors to proactively engage them.

Other useful live chat features include canned responses, the ability to organize chats by tags, and easy transfer of chats between agents. And for those interested in chatbots, LiveChat also has a chatbot offering called ChatBot that's sold separately but integrates easily with LiveChat.

Pricing: LiveChat plans start at $20/agent per month. ChatBot plans start at $52/month.

4. Chaport – Best free live chat software

Chaport is a customer support tool that offers solutions for both live and self-service support. With Chaport you’re able to add a live chat widget to your site as well as build out chatbots for automated support. You’re also able to connect to a number of messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and Viber to keep all your chat interactions in one place. 

Chaport also offers knowledge base building software, which you can connect to your chat widget to suggest articles to customers to deliver quick support while reducing requests for your live staff. Other notable features include saved replies, typing insights, a multilingual chat widget, and reporting dashboards. 

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $29/month (includes four agents).

5. HubSpot Service Hub – Best for teams using other HubSpot products

When most people think of HubSpot, they think of their sales and marketing tools like their CRM. Over the past few years, they’ve developed a customer service software offering called Service Hub. Service Hub includes a number of different service tools, including chat. 

When a customer starts a chat, agents see a notification in a universal inbox, making those interactions easy to manage. You can also set office hours to let customers know when a live agent is available and even automate routine support interactions by building a basic chatbot. 

Last, but certainly not least, if you use HubSpot CRM you’re able to see customer profiles and previous conversation history to have more context when handling customer requests. 

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $18/month (includes two users).

6. Intercom – Best for sales and marketing teams

Intercom is all about engaging with customers. The product focuses on a powerful web widget called Messenger. Installing the widget on your website or within your app opens up a number of communication paths between a company and its customers. 

Through Messenger, you can chat with customers live or asynchronously. The widget also offers access to knowledge base articles as well as any content like blog posts or announcements that you want to surface to your visitors.

Looking at Intercom’s features, it’s clear they have a higher focus on using chat for marketing and sales. For example, you’re able to set up push notifications and A/B test copy for pop-up messages. It also has a lot of non-chat features that appeal to marketing and sales teams like product tours and tooltips. 

Though many product features are more focused on other business functions, the platform has aimed to focus more on support over the last couple of years. The software also has some support-focused features like team inboxes and ticketing features.

Also worth discussing is Intercom’s AI-powered chatbot offering, Fin. It can answer FAQs based on support content, author bespoke responses based on external data like order history or billing data, and target its answers based on customer data like location or customer personas.

Pricing: Plans start at $39/seat per month. Fin is not included with any plan; instead, it utilizes a usage-based model, with each resolution costing $0.99.

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7. LiveAgent – Best for multilingual support

When LiveAgent first started, they were focused on live chat. Over the years they’ve added more tools like a shared inbox and a knowledge base builder, but they still have a very robust chat tool. 

Some key features LiveAgent offers are chat-specific analytics, pre-chat forms to offer agents more context for conversations, and a real-time typing view to let you see what someone is typing before they hit send, helping you deliver great service that much faster. 

LiveAgent is also optimized for multilingual support. The software currently supports more than 40 different languages, allowing you to customize your chat widgets to display whichever language your customers prefer. In addition, you can use the system to route customers to agents who speak their language.  

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $9/agent per month.

8. Userlike – Best for combining personal and AI support

If you're looking for a professional, all-in-one solution for live chat and customer messaging, then Userlike is the right choice. It’s a unified messaging solution that lets companies receive messages from different channels such as website chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and more in one central inbox.

It offers a sophisticated website messenger that companies can add to their websites in just a few steps to assist their visitors along their buyer journeys and nurture long-term customer relationships. Service reps can support customers with powerful service features such as canned messages, file sharing, live translations, voice messages, and video calls that also allow for screen sharing.

To automate their service, companies can benefit from Userlike's AI Automation Hub which lets them create self-learning chatbots, smart FAQ pages, and contact form suggestions, all connected to a central knowledge base that learns over time.

Data protection also comes first. That’s why the software is developed and hosted in Germany, making Userlike a GDPR-compliant customer communication solution.

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $90/per month, including four operator seats, four widgets, and two messaging apps.

9. Brevo – Best for teams with basic chat needs

Brevo is a platform that is mainly focused on marketing and sales tools. Their tool, Conversations, helps teams engage with customers across several channels, including live chat, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, offline messaging, phone, and email.

The platform has a lot of the same features you will find included with most chat software, such as saved replies, chat notes, and usage analytics. It also has some more specialized abilities like being able to see what is in a customer’s cart as well as a feature that lets you see what a customer is typing before they hit send.

Like with other tools, Brevo offers a couple of chatbot options. One collects lead information using a form directly from your site, the other is a chatbot that can be programmed to respond to customer FAQs.

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $15/user per month.

10. Chatlio – Best for Slack-based communication

If your team uses Slack, Chatlio could be a great chat option for you. With their app, you’re able to chat with customers directly from Slack. They offer a simple setup and some basic customization you can do to make your chat windows on-brand.

There are some plan limits on the lower-priced plans that could be problematic depending on expected volume, but otherwise, it’s a strong contender.

Pricing: Plans start at $29/month, including two operators.

11. TeamSupport – Best for multi-channel chat

If you need multi-channel chat options or are very interested in chatbot services, TeamSupport could be a strong contender for you. Even on their base plan, they have the ability to chat with people coming in from Facebook Messenger, X (Twitter), SMS, and a few other channels, letting your customers reach out from where they are.

The product has the ability to route chats based on team or product, offers canned responses, and supports proactive messaging to customers while they're on your website. The SneakPeak feature lets you see what a customer is typing before they hit send to give you a head start on troubleshooting, and the platform has analytics to help you keep track of your efforts.

As mentioned above, they also offer a chatbot solution, though it is only available as an optional add-on on their higher-cost plans.

Pricing: Plans start at $25/agent per month.

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How to choose the right live chat tool for your business

Though there are many things to consider when deciding on a new live chat solution, there are three fundamental questions you should ask:

• What’s my need? When deciding on any new tool, it really helps to have a good idea of what you need it for. Perhaps you’re offering tiered support and chat will be part of a higher-tier plan. Maybe you have other customer engagement needs and you want to use it for both support and sales. No matter the case, knowing how you’ll use the tool helps give clarity to what you need from it.

• What do I already have? Have you ever gone to the store and picked up some jelly, only to come home and realize there’s a half-full jar sitting in the fridge? To avoid a similar situation, it’s important that you take inventory of the tools you already have access to. For example, if you have help desk software already, it’s possible chat is included in your current platform or offered as an add-on.

• What’s my budget? For nearly every team, the cost of a new tool is a big consideration. If you can’t afford something, nothing else about it matters much. However, you do always have to take into consideration the value a product brings as well as the actual cost. A more robust product, though perhaps more expensive, may provide more value and justify the higher price tag.

Adding live chat to your app or website can be a great addition to your support strategy. It helps customers easily connect with your team as well as creates an avenue for you to provide proactive assistance.

Picking the right live chat tool comes down to what your specific needs are. Once you have a good idea of how you’ll use the tool, take the time to test out a couple of options. Having that firsthand experience can help making a decision easier if two tools are identical on paper. 

You should also check out their training resources and consider sending a ticket to their support team. Even the most tech-savvy users need help from time to time, so knowing what level of support you’ll receive when you need help is always good.