Understanding Freshchat pricing: A complete 2025 guide

Picking the right customer messaging tool is a big deal, and let’s be honest, figuring out the total cost is usually the hardest part. Freshchat is a popular name in the game, offering live chat, AI bots, and support across different channels. But when you start looking at its pricing, with all the different tiers and AI add-ons, things can get complicated, fast.

This guide is here to clear things up. We’re going to walk through each Freshchat pricing plan, shine a light on the hidden costs tied to its "Freddy AI," and see what you actually get for your money. Our goal is to give you a straight-up, unbiased look so you can decide if it’s the right move for your team or if a more straightforward alternative might be a better fit.

What is Freshchat?

Freshchat is a customer messaging tool built for sales and support teams. It's part of the larger Freshworks family of products, and its main job is to pull all your customer conversations from places like your website, app, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger into one shared inbox. It mixes old-school live chat with AI-powered chatbots (their Freddy AI) to help businesses automate answers, reach out to customers, and offer support around the clock. Teams typically use it to capture leads, help customers, and generally make the whole customer experience a bit smoother.

A look at Freshchat's Freddy AI, which is central to its platform and a key factor in its pricing structure.

Breaking down the Freshchat pricing plans

Freshchat has four main plans that you pay for per agent, per month. There’s also a free plan if you’re just starting out with a tiny team. One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the cool AI and automation features are tucked away in the more expensive plans. Here’s how it all breaks down.

Core tiers in the Freshchat pricing model

The hidden costs: Freddy AI and other add-ons

The per-agent price looks simple enough on the surface, but the true cost of Freshchat often comes down to its AI add-ons. Those 500 "Freshbot sessions" you get with the paid plans can disappear pretty quickly, which can lead to extra, and sometimes surprising, charges.

How Freddy AI agent sessions affect your bill

Freshchat defines a "session" as any unique chat between a customer and a bot in a 24-hour window. Every time a bot gets involved, whether it's through chat, email, or voice, that's one session. Once you burn through your 500 free sessions for the month, you have to buy more.

• The cost: $100 for every 1,000 extra sessions.

This model can make budgeting a real headache. If you have a busy month and customer questions spike, your costs could shoot up unexpectedly. It’s a common frustration with platforms that charge per interaction, you almost get punished for being successful and engaging more customers.

Freddy AI Copilot: An extra fee for agent assistance

Freddy AI Copilot is a tool designed to help your human agents by suggesting replies and summarizing conversations. It sounds useful, but it’s not part of the standard Pro or Enterprise plans, it's an extra cost.

• The cost: $29 per agent, per month (when billed annually).

So, if you have a team of 10 agents on the Pro plan ($49/agent), adding the Copilot would take your monthly bill from $490 to $780. That’s a pretty big jump.

Other potential costs to watch for

On top of the main AI features, you might also run into extra fees for:

• Campaign Contacts: You get a set number of free contacts for sending proactive messages. If you need more, you have to pay up.

• Connector App Tasks: If you want to automate workflows with other apps, you’ll be using "tasks." Run out of your allotted tasks, and you'll have to buy more.

Freshchat's features and limitations

Freshchat has a lot of features, but it’s good to know their limitations, especially when you compare them to newer, more focused AI platforms.

The chatbot builder and automation

Freshchat gives you a no-code chatbot builder to map out automated conversations. It’s handy for simple stuff like tracking an order or handling a refund request, but some people find it gets tangled and complicated when you try to build anything more advanced. You have to manually set up and train the AI, and it’s only as good as the flows you design.

One of the biggest drawbacks is that the AI is built to live inside the Freshworks world. To really make it work, you're nudged toward using Freshdesk for support tickets and Freshsales for your CRM. If your team is already happy using tools like Zendesk or Jira, or if all your company knowledge lives in Confluence or Google Docs, moving to Freshchat can feel like you're being pushed into a walled garden.

This is where a tool like eesel AI feels like a breath of fresh air. It's built to be a smart AI layer that connects right into the helpdesk and knowledge bases you already use. You can get it up and running in a few minutes without having to switch tools or rebuild your processes. It learns from your existing tickets, Confluence spaces, and Google Docs on its own, so it can provide accurate answers right away.

An infographic showing how eesel AI integrates with existing knowledge bases, a key alternative to the complex Freshchat pricing model.

Omnichannel messaging and the unified inbox

Bringing together conversations from web chat, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger into one spot is definitely one of Freshchat's strengths. However, some users have pointed out that you have to set up a separate chatbot for each channel. That can mean a lot of duplicated work and a struggle to keep the customer experience consistent everywhere.

Analytics and reporting features

Freshchat gives you some basic dashboards on its Growth plan, but the really detailed reports are reserved for the Pro and Enterprise plans. You can track things like how long it takes to solve an issue and customer satisfaction scores. But if you want to dig deep and figure out why your bots are stumbling or where your knowledge base is lacking, it can be tough to get clear answers.

Is Freshchat pricing right for you?

Freshchat can be a good option for mid-sized companies that are already using other Freshworks products or are open to making the switch. That unified inbox is a genuinely helpful feature for teams juggling conversations across a bunch of different channels.

But if what you really need is powerful AI that’s easy to set up and has a predictable price tag, this model might not be the one. The session-based pricing for the bot, the extra costs for tools like Copilot, and the way features are split across different plans can make the total cost much higher than what you first see. If you need an AI tool that works with your current setup instead of making you change it, it's probably a good idea to see what else is out there.

eesel AI: A simpler alternative

If the complex pricing and surprise costs of Freshchat have you hesitating, eesel AI is a completely different approach. It’s designed for teams who want serious AI automation without the usual headaches.

Here’s what makes eesel AI different:

• Go live in minutes, not months: eesel AI is built for you to set up yourself. You can connect your helpdesk (like Freshdesk, Zendesk, or Intercom) and knowledge sources in one click. No mandatory demos or long sales calls needed.

• Clear, predictable pricing: Our plans are straightforward and based on the features you need, not how many tickets you resolve. You’ll never get a surprise bill because you had a busy month.

• Test it with your own data: You can use our simulation mode to see how the AI performs on thousands of your actual past tickets. You get to see exactly how it will work and calculate your return on investment before you ever turn it on for customers.

• You're in complete control: You decide which types of tickets the AI should handle. You can start with just a few and expand as you get more comfortable. eesel AI fits into your workflow, not the other way around.

eesel AI's public pricing page, offered as a transparent alternative to the variable Freshchat pricing.

Final thoughts on Freshchat pricing

Freshchat is a decent messaging platform, but when you really dig into the Freshchat pricing, you find a system that can get complicated and expensive, especially if you want to use AI well. The per-agent fees, session-based charges for bots, and pricey add-ons can really inflate your bill.

For teams looking for a more modern, flexible, and budget-friendly way to automate support, it pays to look at AI platforms that plug right into the tools you already know and love. By choosing a tool with transparent pricing and a simple setup, you can get powerful automation working for your team without blowing your budget.