A free live chat plan is enough when your team fits inside six limits: how many people can answer, how many conversations a month are allowed, how long history is kept, whether the vendor's logo stays, whether any AI is included, and which channels are covered. Most free plans cap at least three of the six. This guide lists what each vendor documents, and what it leaves out.
The six things a free plan caps
- Seats. The number of people who can log in and answer chats. This is the limit a growing team hits first.
- Conversations. A monthly quota of chats. What happens at the cap matters as much as the number: some vendors lock new chats until the quota resets.
- History. How long past conversations stay searchable. A short window means you lose context on returning customers.
- Branding. Whether a "Powered by" line stays on the widget. On several products it stays on every free plan, and on some it stays on paid plans too.
- AI. Whether any AI chatbot replies are included. Where they are, the allowance is often one-off rather than monthly.
- Channels. Whether email, WhatsApp or social inboxes are included, or only website chat.
What each free plan documents
| Product | Seats | Conversations | History | Branding removable | AI included |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tawk.to | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Paid add-on, $39 a month | 100 AI message credits a month |
| Crisp | 2 | Unlimited (capped at 100 customer profiles) | Not documented | No | No |
| HubSpot Live Chat | 2 | No cap published (capped at 1,000 contacts) | Not documented | No | No |
| Freshchat | 10 | Not documented | Not documented | No | No |
| Tidio | 10 | 50 a month | Not documented | No | 50 Lyro conversations, once |
| Chatwoot | 2 | 500 a month | 30 days | No | No |
| Smartsupp | 1 | 25 a month | 14 days | No, on any plan | 10 test conversations, once |
| Lime Connect | 1 | 200, period not stated | Not documented | Not documented | No |
Channels vary as much as the numbers. Crisp, Chatwoot and Lime Connect limit their free plans to website chat. Freshchat adds email. HubSpot's free inbox takes team email and Facebook Messenger. Smartsupp's free plan covers live chat, WhatsApp and Messenger. Tidio and tawk.to document their other channels on the free plan too.
Three well-known products have no free plan at all. LiveChat offers a 14-day trial, Intercom a 14-day trial and Zendesk a 14-day trial. A trial answers "does this work for us", not "can we run on it for free".
The undocumented-limit problem
A limit the vendor does not publish is still a limit. It simply cannot be checked before you sign up. Freshchat's pricing page states no conversation cap for its Free plan, but it does not say "unlimited" either. Crisp crosses out "full conversations' history" on its Free plan without saying how many days you keep. Lime Connect's pricing page gives its free conversation quota with no period, so you cannot tell whether 200 is a monthly or a lifetime figure.
Some caps sit outside the six headline columns. Crisp's free workspace stops at 100 customer profiles even though conversations are unlimited. HubSpot's free account stops at 1,000 contacts. Chatwoot's fair-use policy caps its Hacker plan at 1,000 contacts and schedules cloud accounts inactive for more than 6 months for deletion.
AI on free plans is usually a sample
Where a free plan includes AI replies, the allowance is often a one-off. Tidio's 50 free Lyro conversations are a lifetime quota that never resets. Smartsupp's 10 Mira conversations are a test allowance. tawk.to is the exception among these products: its Hobby tier documents 100 AI message credits a month, where one credit is one AI message. The guide to AI billing explains what happens after the free allowance runs out.
A checklist before you commit to a free plan
- Count the people who will answer chats in the next twelve months, not today. Compare that with the seat limit.
- Estimate your monthly chats. If a vendor publishes a cap, read what happens at it: a warning, an automatic upgrade, or a lock-out.
- Decide whether the vendor's logo on your widget is acceptable. If not, check whether removing it needs a paid plan, an add-on, or is impossible.
- Check how long history is kept, and whether you can export transcripts before they expire.
- Check whether AI replies are monthly or one-off, and whether they exist on the free plan at all.
- List every limit the vendor does not document, and ask the vendor in writing before relying on the plan.
- Price the first paid step now, so the upgrade is a known cost rather than a surprise. The per-seat vs per-workspace guide shows how that step changes with team size.
The free-plan audit runs this check for you: enter your team size, monthly conversations and whether the logo must go, and it shows which free plans fit and the cheapest published paid route where they do not. For a ranked list, see the best free live chat software.
Frequently asked questions
Which live chat free plan has the most seats?
tawk.to documents unlimited agents on its free plan. Among capped plans, Freshchat documents 10 seats and Tidio 10. Tidio's free plan is limited by conversations instead: 50 a month.
Can I remove the vendor's logo on a free plan?
Rarely without paying. tawk.to sells a Remove Branding add-on at $39 a month per property; its own pages also list a lower advertised price. Crisp, HubSpot, Freshchat, Tidio and Chatwoot keep their branding on the free plan, and Smartsupp's help centre says its logo cannot be removed on any plan.
What does "not documented" mean in the free-plan table?
The vendor does not publish that limit on its pricing page or help centre. It does not mean unlimited. Treat it as unknown and ask the vendor in writing before relying on it.
Keep reading
- Per-seat vs per-workspace pricing: what your team size does to the billguide
- How live chat vendors bill for AIguide
- Live chat vs chatbot vs AI agentguide
- Does a chat widget slow your site?guide
- Best live chat software in 2026best list
- Free-plan audit: does your team fit a free live chat plan?
This page was researched and drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed on it. We have not installed or tested these products ourselves. Method: How we review