What is Freshdesk AI? A complete 2025 overview

Katelin Teen
Last edited August 1, 2025

If you’re on a customer support team, you know the drill. You’re expected to resolve issues faster than ever, keep customers happy, and make the whole operation more efficient, usually without any extra budget or people. It’s a lot to juggle.
Freshdesk is a go-to helpdesk for many teams, and their answer to this pressure is a built-in AI called Freshdesk AI, or Freddy AI. It’s meant to automate routine tasks and give your agents a bit of a boost. But is it the best fit for your team’s needs?
In this guide, we’ll walk you through what Freshdesk AI actually is, what it can do, how much it costs, and some key drawbacks to keep in mind. A built-in tool can be handy, but it’s not always the whole story. We’ll also look at how “layered” AI tools can help you get more out of the software you already have.
Freshdesk AI Explained: Freddy Self-Service, Copilot & Insights
Freshdesk AI is the name for Freshworks’ own artificial intelligence, Freddy, which works directly inside the Freshdesk platform to help automate work and assist agents. Instead of being one single feature, it’s more like a collection of AI skills woven into your day-to-day helpdesk tasks.
According to Freshworks’ own documentation, the AI is based on three main components:
- Freddy Self-Service: This part focuses on customer-facing automation. It includes tools like an Email AI Agent that can read and answer common questions on its own, helping to deflect simple tickets before a human even sees them.
- Freddy AI Copilot: This is your agent’s assistant. It sits alongside your support team to help them write replies, summarize long ticket threads, and find information quickly.
- Freddy Insights: This piece gives managers analytics and suggestions based on data. It even has a nifty “Thank You Detector” that stops tickets from reopening just because a customer replied with “thanks,” which helps keep your metrics clean.

Overview of the Freshdesk AI admin dashboard.
The core idea is that these features are designed to work together, but they can only function inside the Freshdesk environment.
Top Features of Freshdesk AI: What It Can (and Can’t) Do
Let’s look at the features your support team would likely use the most. These tools are built to handle different steps in the support process, from the first time a customer reaches out to how tickets are managed internally.
Automated customer support with AI agents
Freshdesk’s AI agents, like the Email AI Agent, are often the first point of contact. They can deal with repetitive questions by grabbing answers from your Freshdesk knowledge base and providing instant answers on email, chat, or social media.

The Freshdesk AI Agent in action.
This sounds great, but there’s a catch: the AI is only as good as the information you’ve stored inside Freshdesk. If your most important and current info is in other places, like Confluence, Google Docs, or Notion, the bot can’t see it. This can lead to half-answers and tickets that need a human agent anyway, which kind of defeats the point.
Empowering human agents with the Freshdesk AI copilot
For tickets that need a person to handle them, the Freddy AI Copilot is there to help agents get things done faster and more consistently. Its main features are:
- Ticket Summarization: Quickly turns long ticket threads into a few main points. This is a huge help when passing a ticket to another agent or just trying to catch up on a complicated problem.
- Writing Assistance: Helps agents rephrase sentences, adjust the tone, or turn a few bullet points into a complete reply. This is great for keeping your brand voice consistent.
- Solution Article & Canned Response Suggesters: Suggests relevant help documents or saved replies based on the ticket’s content, so agents don’t have to go digging for them.
Here’s a quick sketch of how the Copilot fits into an agent’s day:

The core features of the Freshdesk AI Copilot.
Streamlining workflows with Freshdesk AI auto triage
Auto Triage is meant to help you keep the helpdesk tidy by automatically categorizing new tickets. It analyzes your past tickets to suggest or automatically apply things like Priority, Type, and Group.

Freshdesk's AI Auto Triage feature.
This is also where you might run into some friction. According to Freshdesk’s own support guides, you can’t just flip a switch to enable Auto Triage for new or custom fields. Admins have to send a formal request to the Freshdesk team to have a custom model trained. For fast-moving teams that need to adjust their workflows quickly, this waiting period can be a real roadblock.
In comparison, some other AI platforms like eesel AI let you set up triage rules yourself using plain language, allowing you to make changes whenever you need to without getting in line for support.
How to set up and license Freshdesk AI
Before you decide on any new tool, you need to know what it takes to get it running and what it’ll cost you. Even though Freshdesk AI is built-in, it’s not on by default, and it’s not free.
The Freshdesk AI setup process: Enabling Freddy features
Getting Freshdesk AI working takes a few steps on the admin side. First, an admin needs to go to the Plans & Billing section to buy the AI add-ons. After that, they have to assign those licenses to specific agents. Only then can you go to the Freddy admin page and start turning on the features you want.

Workflow for setting up Freshdesk AI.
This process shows where the platform can be a bit inflexible. The manual request for Auto Triage is one example. You also have to keep an eye on the auto-recharge for bot sessions to make sure the service doesn’t get cut off, adding another billing task for your team to manage.
Understanding the Freshdesk AI pricing model
It’s important to realize that the most useful Freshdesk AI features will cost you extra. The Freddy Copilot add-on is $29 per agent, per month (when billed annually), according to their pricing page.
This per-agent pricing can be a real hurdle. For big teams or teams that are growing, the cost adds up quickly since it’s tied to your headcount. You also pay the full fee for agents who might only use the AI features every now and then.
A different way to handle pricing is based on usage. For example, eesel AI’s plans are based on the number of AI interactions per month. This means you pay for the value the AI provides, not just the number of people on your team. This model is often more predictable and easier on the budget.
Aspect | Freshdesk AI (Freddy) | eesel AI |
---|---|---|
Pricing Model | Per agent, per month | Based on monthly AI interactions |
Example Cost | $29/agent/month | Starts at $239/month for 1,000 interactions |
Scalability | Cost grows with your team size | Cost grows with your AI usage |
Best For | Smaller, static teams | Teams of any size looking for usage-based pricing |
Key limitations of Freshdesk AI and a more flexible alternative
Freshdesk AI is a solid tool for teams that are all-in on the Freshworks ecosystem, but because it’s so tightly integrated, it has some major limitations you should think about.
The challenge of the Freshdesk AI closed ecosystem
Because Freddy AI is made only for Freshdesk, it can lock you in. All the effort you put into setting up workflows, training the AI, and getting your team comfortable with it is stuck on one platform. If your company ever wants to move to a different helpdesk like Zendesk or Intercom, you lose all that work and have to start from scratch.
A “helpdesk-agnostic” tool like eesel AI gives you a more durable plan. It connects to your helpdesk instead of being part of it, so your AI setup can come with you if you ever switch systems. This protects your investment and gives you the freedom to pick the right tools for the job.
The Freshdesk AI challenge of integrating knowledge beyond Freshdesk
This is probably the biggest headache for many teams: Freddy AI mostly learns from your Freshdesk knowledge base and ticket history. But what about all the important support information that’s scattered everywhere else? We’re talking about internal wikis in Confluence, troubleshooting guides in Google Docs, or key discussions in Slack. Freshdesk AI can’t touch any of it, leading to weak AI answers and annoyed customers.

The knowledge limitations of Freshdesk AI.
This is the exact issue that eesel AI’s Freshdesk integration was built to fix. It connects to over 100 different sources, bringing all of your company’s scattered knowledge together so the AI has the complete story.
A better way: Enhancing Freshdesk AI with eesel AI
Instead of viewing AI as just another feature inside your helpdesk, think of it as a smart layer that improves the tools you’re already using. eesel AI offers a more powerful and adaptable way to automate support on Freshdesk.
Here’s what sets it apart:
- It connects to all your knowledge: Unify help articles, past tickets, Confluence docs, PDFs, and more to give your AI the context it needs.
- Flexible and clear pricing: You pay for what you use with interaction-based plans, not pricey per-seat licenses.
- You’re not locked in: Your AI automations and knowledge base are future-proofed and can work with other helpdesks if you decide to change later on.
- Test before you launch: You can run the AI on your past tickets in a safe sandbox to check its accuracy and see what kind of return you might get before you go live.

Enhancing Freshdesk with eesel AI integrations.
Is Freshdesk AI a good fit for you?
So, what’s the final word on freshdesk ai? Freddy is a well-integrated set of tools that can certainly help teams who live and breathe the Freshworks ecosystem and keep all of their knowledge neatly inside of it.
But it has some clear downsides: a rigid per-agent price, a setup that can feel slow, and a major blind spot when it comes to knowledge outside of Freshdesk. For businesses that want a more adaptable, scalable, and capable AI that can use their entire company knowledge, a layered tool like eesel AI makes more sense. It improves the tools you already have, like Freshdesk, without tying you down or limiting what you can do.
If you’re ready to get more from your Freshdesk data and all your other knowledge sources, you can learn more about eesel’s AI integration for Freshdesk or book a demo to see it in action.
Frequently asked questions
No, the most powerful features like the Freddy Copilot are paid add-ons that come with an extra per-agent, per-month cost. This is in addition to your regular Freshdesk subscription plan, so it’s important to factor this into your budget.
Natively, Freshdesk AI is limited to learning from information stored inside the Freshdesk platform, like past tickets and its own knowledge base. It cannot access external knowledge from sources like Confluence, Notion, or Google Docs, which can limit the quality of its automated responses.
The primary advantages are flexibility and better knowledge access. A third-party AI tool can connect to all of your company’s knowledge (not just what’s in Freshdesk) for more accurate answers and isn’t locked into one helpdesk, protecting your investment if you ever switch platforms.
An administrator must first purchase the AI add-ons and assign licenses to specific agents before features can be enabled. While most tools can be switched on from the admin panel, some processes like custom Auto Triage models require a manual request to the Freshdesk team.