Freshdesk raised the price of every paid plan this year, and the free plan that used to sit at the top of its pricing page is not there anymore. We compared today's page with Internet Archive snapshots from 2025, then priced the help desks people usually move to, and the open source ones that do not charge per agent at all. Every current price was checked on Oct 25, 2026 from the vendor's own page.
What changed at Freshdesk
The seat prices. In a June 2025 snapshot of the Freshdesk pricing page, Growth was $15 per agent a month billed annually, Pro was $49 and Enterprise was $79. Today the same page says $19, $55 and $89. Snapshots put the change somewhere between late December 2025, when the old prices were still up, and mid-March 2026, when the new ones were. That is 27% more on Growth, 12% on Pro and 13% on Enterprise.
The free plan. The June 2025 page listed a "Free plan" at $0 "for up to two agents". By the December 2025 snapshot it was gone, and today's page has no free plan card at all. What it offers instead is a 14-day trial of Enterprise.
The AI meter. Freddy AI Agent comes with 500 sessions, which the FAQ says is "limited to once per account", and then costs $49 per 100 sessions. Freddy AI Copilot is $29 per agent a month billed annually, and it is only offered as an add-on on Pro and Enterprise.
What a five-agent team pays now
Take a small support team of five on annual billing. On Growth that was $900 a year in 2025 and is $1,140 now, so $240 more for the same five people. On Pro it went from $2,940 to $3,300. Add Copilot for all five on Pro and the bill is $5,040 a year before a single AI Agent session.
| Tool | Cheapest paid plan | What it counts | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freshdesk | $19/agent/mo, annual (Growth) | Agents, plus AI sessions | None on the page |
| Zendesk | $19/agent/mo, annual (Support Team) | Agents, plus AI resolutions | None, 14-day trial |
| Help Scout | $25/user/mo (Standard) | Users | 5 users, 100 contacts a month |
| Chatwoot (cloud) | $19/agent/mo (Startups) | Agents | 2 agents, 500 conversations a month |
| Chatwoot (self-hosted) | $0 (Community) | Nothing | Free forever |
Freshdesk's two cheapest paid plans now cost exactly what Zendesk's do: $19 and $55 per agent. The cheaper rival stopped being cheaper.
Zendesk's Support Team is $19 per agent billed annually or $25 monthly, and Suite Team is $55 or $69. Its AI agents are billed per automated resolution, $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay as you go. Help Scout is $25, $45 and $75 per user a month and charges $0.75 per resolution for its AI Answers add-on. Everyone has two meters now: one for the people answering, and one for the software answering.
The catalog is calmer than the famous names. Of the 165 help desk tools live on AppClap today, 61 have a free tier, and the median lowest paid plan among the 97 that list a price is $22 a month. 47 are self-hostable, and 18 are flagged open source.
Freshdesk alternatives that do not charge per agent
Hosted, with a real free plan. Help Scout has a free plan with 5 users, 1 inbox and 1 Docs site, capped at 100 contacts a month, and it does not ask for a card. Chatwoot cloud has a Hacker plan at $0 for up to 2 agents and 500 conversations a month. Both are small, but both are on the page, which is more than Freshdesk can say.
Self-hosted, free per agent. Chatwoot is MIT licensed with about 38.2k stars, and its README calls it an open source alternative to Intercom and Zendesk. The self-hosted Community Edition is $0 per agent and "Free forever", released v4.19.1 on Oct 24, and leaves out Captain AI, SSO, SLA policies and priority support. FreeScout is an AGPL-3.0 help desk and shared inbox built on Laravel, about 4.6k stars, with release 1.8.248 out on Oct 17 (repo). The core is free, and extras come as paid modules sold as lifetime licences per instance. Libredesk is AGPL-3.0, about 3.1k stars, and ships as a single binary covering email, live chat and WhatsApp; v2.9.0 landed on Oct 22 (repo).
The older guard. osTicket is the classic GPL-2.0 ticket system, about 4k stars, latest release v1.18.4 (repo). UVdesk has about 19.6k stars on its community skeleton under OSL-3.0 (repo). Zammad is AGPL-3.0 with about 6k stars and a full web help desk, though it does not publish GitHub releases, so check its own site for versions.
What you give up
Freshdesk is not charging for air. You get a help desk you never patch, on someone else's servers and someone else's on-call rotation, from a vendor whose whole job is keeping tickets flowing at 2am. If you run five agents and the extra $240 a year is less than one afternoon of a developer's time, staying is a reasonable call.
Self-hosting moves the work, it does not delete it. A help desk holds every customer email you have ever received, so you own the backups, the upgrades and the security patches. Chatwoot's free edition also drops things a growing team asks for, like SSO and SLA policies, and those live in its $99 per agent Enterprise Edition. Free per agent is not free per year once you count the server and the person looking after it.
How to read a help desk pricing page
- Is the price per agent, per user or per contact? Freshdesk and Zendesk count agents, Help Scout counts users, and its free plan also counts contacts.
- Annual or monthly? Zendesk's $19 is $25 if you pay month to month.
- What does the AI cost per unit? Freddy is $49 per 100 sessions, Zendesk is $1.50 to $2.00 per resolution, Help Scout is $0.75.
- Is the free plan on the page, or only in a sales call? Freshdesk's isn't on it anymore.
- What does the self-hosted edition leave out? Read the comparison table, not the headline.
What we do about it
AppClap reads pricing pages so you do not have to, we never take vendor money, and when a page does not show a number we say so. The Freshdesk alternatives page lists every option we track, and Zendesk and Freshdesk have their own pages.
Or describe what you need in plain words: a help desk that doesn't charge per agent.
Sources: freshworks.com, Freshdesk pricing (live page, plus Internet Archive snapshots of Jun 1, 2025, Dec 29, 2025 and Mar 16, 2026); zendesk.com, Pricing; helpscout.com, Pricing; chatwoot.com, Pricing and Self-hosted plans; freescout.net, Modules; GitHub repos and releases for chatwoot/chatwoot, freescout-help-desk/freescout, abhinavxd/libredesk, osTicket/osTicket, uvdesk/community-skeleton and zammad/zammad; AppClap catalog counts, Oct 25, 2026. All checked Oct 25, 2026.
