LiveChat pricing explained

LiveChat is one of the oldest names in the category, built by the company now called Text (formerly LiveChat Software), which also makes ChatBot.com, HelpDesk, KnowledgeBase, and OpenWidget. The pricing page itself is straightforward: four per-agent tiers, billed annually by default. What takes longer to figure out is how AI fits into that price, because LiveChat splits its AI into three different things with three different pricing rules. This post breaks down each tier, explains where the AI costs actually live, and works the math for a small team.

How does LiveChat pricing work?

LiveChat charges per agent seat per month across four tiers: Starter, Team, Business, and Enterprise, billed annually by default with a cheaper effective rate than paying month to month. There is no free plan. The tier you pick changes which support features you get access to, and separately, which AI features are unlocked.

That second part is the detail worth slowing down on. LiveChat bundles some AI capability into the seat price, but its main automated AI Agent, the feature that resolves conversations without a human, meters usage separately from the seat itself, and the company's dedicated bot-building product, ChatBot, is sold as an entirely separate purchase. None of that is hidden, but it is spread across three different pages, which is exactly why this post exists.

How much does LiveChat Starter cost?

LiveChat Starter costs $19 per agent per month billed annually. It covers the core live chat widget, ticketing basics, and a single website, aimed at small teams or solo founders who need a working chat tool without the higher-tier reporting and automation features.

Starter is also the tier where LiveChat holds back some of its agent-facing AI. Reply Suggestions, the feature that drafts a response for the agent based on the conversation, is only available starting on the Team plan. Starter gets the baseline product, not the full AI-assisted agent workflow.

Does LiveChat have a free plan?

No. LiveChat does not currently publish a free tier, unlike some competitors in the category that offer a permanent free plan with capped conversation volume. LiveChat's entry point is the paid Starter tier at $19 per agent, though the company does advertise a short free trial before that first bill.

How much do the Team and Business plans cost?

Team costs $49 per agent per month billed annually, and Business costs $79 per agent per month billed annually, both verified on LiveChat's pricing page on 2026-07-27. Enterprise sits above Business at custom pricing with a dedicated account manager, aimed at large deployments rather than published self-serve rates.

Team is where the agent-facing AI tools switch on: Reply Suggestions and the broader set of AI assistance features LiveChat groups under its Text Intelligence branding are available from Team upward. Business adds deeper reporting, more granular staff management, and higher usage ceilings, but the AI assistance features themselves are the same tier over tier once you clear the Team threshold.

Is AI included in the LiveChat seat price, or is it separate?

It is split. Some agent-assist AI (drafting replies, summarizing a chat) is bundled into the Team and Business seat price. The automated AI Agent that resolves conversations on its own runs on a separate usage meter with overage fees. A fully custom chatbot builder, ChatBot, is an entirely separate product with its own subscription, sold by the same company.

That third layer is the part worth flagging clearly, because it is easy to assume a "live chat with AI" company sells one unified AI price. LiveChat instead sells three things that all use the word AI: reply assistance for human agents (in the seat price above Starter), an automated resolution agent (metered separately), and ChatBot (a standalone purchase). Budgeting for one and missing the other two is the most common way teams underestimate this bill.

How does the LiveChat AI Agent's resolution pricing work?

LiveChat's built-in AI Agent, described on livechat.com/ai, automates replies to repetitive questions, collects visitor details, and hands off to a human when it cannot finish the job. Each plan includes a monthly allowance of AI Agent resolutions. Once a team goes over that allowance, LiveChat charges $49.50 per additional pack of 50 resolutions, which works out to $0.99 per resolution beyond the included amount.

What is ChatBot, and why is it a separate purchase?

ChatBot (chatbot.com) is Text's dedicated no-code bot builder, a sibling product to LiveChat rather than a feature inside it. It integrates with LiveChat but is billed on its own subscription, starting at $52 per month billed annually. A team that wants a fully custom, scripted bot flow on top of LiveChat, beyond what the built-in AI Agent handles automatically, buys ChatBot as a second line item.

How much does a 5-person team pay on LiveChat?

Five seats on LiveChat Team at $49 per agent per month totals $245 per month in base seat cost. That price includes Reply Suggestions and the other agent-assist AI features, plus a monthly AI Agent resolution allowance that LiveChat does not publish exactly. If the team's AI Agent volume runs past that allowance, every 50 additional resolutions costs $49.50, or $0.99 each.

If that same team also wants ChatBot for a custom automated flow, for example a product finder or a scripted lead-qualification bot, that is another $52 per month minimum on top, for a base total of about $297 per month before any AI Agent overage is counted. The honest range for a team leaning on AI at real volume, seats plus ChatBot plus a modest overage buffer, lands closer to $350 to $400 per month.

What does the same 5-person team pay on HelpYap?

Five seats on HelpYap Pro cost $49 per seat per month, the same $245 per month base as LiveChat Team for the same headcount. The difference is what that price includes: 1,000 pooled AI conversations per seat, 5,000 total for the team, with no resolution overage fee, no separate bot product to buy, and no credit or resolution math to track. The AI agent answers from your knowledge base with source citations, escalates into the team inbox when it cannot help, and HelpYap Pro also includes Slack notifications, webhooks, conversation memory, and the social proof widget, all in that one $245 line.

The two platforms land at the exact same base price for five seats. The difference shows up the moment AI volume becomes real: LiveChat starts a second and potentially third meter (AI Agent overage, ChatBot subscription), while HelpYap's $245 already includes the full AI conversation pool for the month.

When does LiveChat pricing make sense?

LiveChat makes sense for a team that primarily wants a proven, agent-operated live chat tool, where the humans do most of the talking and AI just speeds up drafting and summarizing. If Reply Suggestions and chat summaries cover what you need from AI, Team at $49 per agent is a reasonable, predictable number, and you never touch the resolution meter at all.

It makes less sense as a first purchase for a team that wants AI to carry meaningful resolution volume from day one. Between the unpublished per-tier resolution allowance, the $0.99 overage rate, and the separate ChatBot subscription for anything more custom, a team cannot fully model its AI cost from the pricing page alone the way it can with a pooled, included allowance.

How does LiveChat compare to an AI-included platform?

The structural difference is where the AI conversation volume lives. On LiveChat, the seat price buys agent tools and a live chat widget, and AI resolution volume is a separate meter (plus a separate product if you want custom bot building). On HelpYap, the seat price buys the agent workspace and a pool of AI conversations at the same time, scaling automatically as you add seats, across seven channels on the Business plan.

LiveChat's strength is maturity: it is a long-established product with a wide app marketplace and deep integrations across ecommerce and support tooling. If your team is comparing pure live chat platforms rather than AI-first support platforms, it is worth reading the best live chat software for startups in 2026 for how it stacks up against the rest of that category. For teams weighing whether they want AI resolution baked into the seat price from the start, the HelpYap pricing page shows the full plan matrix with no separate meter to budget for.

What should you check before signing up for LiveChat?

Confirm three numbers before committing: the seat price for the tier you actually need (Starter does not include Reply Suggestions), the AI Agent resolution allowance your sales contact quotes you for that tier, and whether your use case needs ChatBot as a second subscription. Those three lines, not just the headline seat price, determine the real monthly bill.

• Which tier unlocks the AI features you actually plan to use, since Starter excludes Reply Suggestions.
• The AI Agent's monthly resolution allowance for your tier, since the pricing page states the $0.99 overage rate more clearly than the included amount.
• Whether your use case needs ChatBot as a second subscription starting at $52 per month, on top of LiveChat seats.

The bottom line

LiveChat's seat prices, verified on LiveChat's pricing page on 2026-07-27, are $19 for Starter, $49 for Team, and $79 for Business per agent per month billed annually, with custom Enterprise pricing above that. Agent-assist AI like Reply Suggestions is included from Team upward, but the automated AI Agent that resolves conversations meters separately at $0.99 per resolution past its allowance, and the ChatBot bot-builder is a separate product starting at $52 per month. For a 5-person team, that lands at $245 in base seats, and comfortably $300 to $400 once real AI usage and any ChatBot subscription are counted. The same five seats on HelpYap Pro also cost $245 per month, and that price already includes 5,000 pooled AI conversations with nothing metered on top.