Alternatives
Twelve live chat widgets, compared without pretending we win every row
Every entry below names a reason to stay where you are. Six of them are reasons we cannot answer, because the other product genuinely does something this one does not.
Last checked 1 September 2026
The short answer
Which live chat tool should you actually use?
If you need a helpdesk, use a helpdesk: Crisp from $45 a month or LiveAgent from $15 an agent. If you need free forever, Tawk.to genuinely is. If widget weight is your binding constraint, LiveAgent measured lightest at 79KB and Zoho SalesIQ fastest at 259ms.
If you want a light widget that puts every message in your Telegram at a flat $19 a month with no per seat charge and no per resolution AI billing, that is the gap TGLiveChat was built for, and it is a narrow one on purpose.
Every vendor, one table
Prices are read off each vendor's own pricing page rather than a review site, and each one is dated. Weight figures are DebugBear's measurements. Where they did not measure a widget, the cell says so instead of guessing.
| Vendor | From | Per seat? | Widget | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elfsight Telegram Chat | $6 | No | Not measured | Yes |
| Zoho SalesIQ | $10 | Yes | Not measured | Yes |
| LiveAgent | $15 | Yes | 79KB | Yes |
| Smartsupp | $19 | No | Not measured | Yes |
| Tidio | $24 | No | Not measured | Yes |
| LiveChat | $24 | Yes | 385KB | No |
| Intercom | $29 | Yes | 301KB | No |
| Tawk.to | $29 | No | 749KB | Yes |
| Olark | $29 | Yes | Not measured | No |
| Crisp | $45 | No | 155KB | Yes |
| Zendesk Chat | $55 | Yes | 533KB | No |
| TGLiveChat | $19 | No | 26KB | Yes |
| Drift | Enterprise | Yes | 464KB | No |
Sorted by entry price, cheapest first. A low entry price and a low total bill are different things, which is what the per seat column is for.
Read the full write up
Each page below covers the same ground: what the product really is, when leaving makes sense, when it does not, a side by side table, the measured widget weight, and what a migration actually involves step by step.
How to choose, in four questions
Do you have a support team, or a person who also answers chat? If chat is somebody's job, per seat pricing is fair and the platforms earn their money. If it is answered by whoever sees the notification, per seat pricing charges you for availability you are not using.
Which features did you open in the last thirty days? Open your current tool and look, rather than remembering. Most people find they use the inbox and nothing else, which changes the entire calculation.
Where does your traffic come from? If it is mostly phones on mobile data, a 749KB widget is a real cost paid by every visitor, not just the ones who chat. If it is desktop users on office connections, weight barely registers.
What happens when your AI usage doubles? Per resolution billing looks cheap at 50 conversations and stops being cheap at 500. Run the arithmetic at the traffic you want, not the traffic you have.
The bottom line
Most of this category is priced for a support department and bought by companies that do not have one. That mismatch, rather than any feature, is why people end up on pages like this.
Work out which features you touched in the last month before you compare anything else. If the honest answer is the inbox, almost everything on this page will do, and price and widget weight become the only two rows that matter.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best live chat alternative in 2026?
Why do you tell people to stay with your competitors?
Which live chat widget is the lightest?
Which live chat has the best free plan?
Do any of these let me answer from Telegram?
How much does switching live chat providers cost?
Is a cheaper live chat worth the tradeoff?
What do you charge?
Sources and references
- DebugBear: How Do Different Chat Widgets Impact Site Performance? Published 14 July 2019, updated 10 November 2025, checked 2026-09-01. Source of every competitor weight figure on this site.
- Elfsight Telegram Chat pricing Checked 2026-09-01.
- Zoho SalesIQ pricing Checked 2026-09-01.
- LiveAgent pricing Checked 2026-09-01.
- Smartsupp pricing Checked 2026-09-01.
- Tidio pricing Checked 2026-09-01.
- LiveChat pricing Checked 2026-09-01.
No vendor on this page pays us and we run no affiliate links. If a figure here is out of date it is wrong rather than approximate, and we would rather be told than left alone.