Comparison
TGLiveChat vs Tawk.to: Both Free, One Lives in Your Pocket
This is a weird comparison because both are free. Tawk.to has about 20% of the live chat market, which is massive. They got there by being free and having a ton of features. TGLiveChat is free too, but it takes a completely different approach. Here's the breakdown.
TGLiveChat
Lightweight live chat that sends every message to Telegram. You reply from your phone. No dashboard to keep open, no separate app to download. Just Telegram doing what Telegram does best: instant notifications and fast replies.
Tawk.to
The most popular free live chat out there. Over 20% market share. Comes with ticketing, a knowledge base, CRM (paid), AI Assist (paid), and you can even hire chat agents from them for $1/hour. It's a full support platform that happens to be free at its core.
The real difference isn't features
Tawk.to gives you more stuff. That's not even debatable. Ticketing, knowledge base, visitor monitoring, screen sharing, video chat, automated triggers. It's a full support platform.
But here's the thing. All of that lives inside Tawk.to's dashboard. You need to be logged into their web app or have their mobile app open. It's another tab. Another app. Another thing to check.
TGLiveChat takes the opposite approach. There is no separate dashboard for replying. A visitor sends a message, your phone buzzes with a Telegram notification, you reply right there. Same app you use to text your friends and coordinate with your team.
So the question isn't "which has more features." It's "where do you want your customer conversations to live?" If the answer is Telegram, that's TGLiveChat. If you want a dedicated support platform with all the bells and whistles, that's Tawk.to.
Feature-by-feature comparison
| Feature | TGLiveChat | Tawk.to |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free (100 chats/mo) | Free (unlimited) |
| Paid plan price | $12/mo (Pro) | $19/mo (remove branding) |
| Revenue model | Paid plans | Upsells + paid add-ons |
| Reply from | Telegram app | Tawk.to dashboard/app |
| Setup time | 2 minutes | 5-10 minutes |
| Widget size | ~10KB gzipped | ~200KB+ |
| Ticketing system | No | Yes (built-in) |
| Knowledge base | No | Yes (built-in) |
| AI Assist | Yes (Pro+, included) | Yes ($29/mo add-on) |
| CRM | Basic visitor info | Yes (paid add-on) |
| White-label / remove branding | Yes (Pro plan, $12/mo) | Yes ($19/mo) |
| Canned responses | Yes (via Telegram /r) | Yes |
| Pre-chat forms | Yes | Yes |
| Working hours | Yes | Yes |
| Visitor tracking | Basic (page, referrer, country) | Detailed |
| File sharing | Images | Files + images |
| Chat history | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-language widget | Yes (EN/AR) | Yes (45+ languages) |
| Shadow DOM isolation | Yes | No |
| Mobile app for agents | Telegram (already installed) | Tawk.to app (separate download) |
| Simultaneous chats | Unlimited (Telegram handles it) | Unlimited |
| Agent-to-agent chat | Yes (it's just Telegram) | Yes (built-in) |
| Themes / widget design | 12 built-in themes | Color customization |
| Lifetime deal | Yes ($149) | No |
Where Tawk.to genuinely wins
Let's be real. Tawk.to has a lot of stuff TGLiveChat doesn't. Here's what they do better:
- +Truly unlimited free plan. No chat limits, ever. TGLiveChat's free plan caps at 100 conversations per month. If you're just starting out and can't pay anything, Tawk.to's free plan is hard to beat on volume alone.
- +Ticketing system. Visitors can submit support tickets directly. Your team can assign, track, and resolve them. TGLiveChat doesn't have a ticket system — conversations happen in Telegram threads and that's it.
- +Knowledge base builder. Built-in help center where you write articles and visitors search before starting a chat. This can deflect a lot of repetitive questions. TGLiveChat has no built-in knowledge base.
- +Screen sharing and video chat. Tawk.to agents can see a visitor's screen or start a video call. That's genuinely useful for complex support issues. TGLiveChat is text-based only (you can share images through Telegram, but no screen share).
- +Hire chat agents for $1/hour. This is unique to Tawk.to. If you don't want to reply yourself, you can pay their agents to handle chats. No other tool in this price range offers this.
- +45+ languages. Tawk.to supports over 45 widget languages. TGLiveChat currently supports English and Arabic. If you serve a multilingual audience beyond those two, Tawk.to has better coverage.
Where TGLiveChat wins
Smaller, simpler, and that's the point. Here's where TGLiveChat comes out ahead:
- +You reply from Telegram. No new app, no new dashboard. Telegram notifications are fast and hard to miss. You're already there. In practice, this means faster response times — which is what actually matters to your visitors.
- +Way lighter widget. About 10KB vs 200KB+. That's a 20x difference. On mobile or slow connections, your page loads noticeably faster with TGLiveChat. This shows up in Core Web Vitals and Google rankings.
- +Shadow DOM isolation. TGLiveChat's widget CSS is completely isolated from your site. No style conflicts. Tawk.to's widget can sometimes clash with your page styles, causing visual glitches that require CSS overrides to fix.
- +12 widget themes. Glass, Modern, Terminal, Synthwave, Arcade, Void, and more. Tawk.to lets you customize colors, but the overall look is a standard chat bubble. TGLiveChat themes are distinctive enough to actually match your brand personality.
- +Cheaper white-label. Remove TGLiveChat branding for $12/mo on the Pro plan. Tawk.to charges $19/mo just for branding removal — without any of the other Pro features.
- +Lifetime deal available. $149 once, never pay again. Tawk.to doesn't offer a one-time payment option. If you're planning to use live chat for years, the math on the lifetime deal is obvious.
Let's talk about widget weight
This sounds nerdy, but it matters more than you'd think. Tawk.to's widget loads over 200KB of JavaScript on every page of your site. TGLiveChat loads about 10KB. That's a 20x difference.
Why should you care? Because every KB of JavaScript your site loads slows it down. Google measures this. Core Web Vitals care about this. If you're running an e-commerce store or a landing page where conversion matters, a 200KB chat widget is genuinely hurting you. Run a Lighthouse audit with and without Tawk.to — you'll see it.
Tawk.to loads more because it does more — screen sharing, video calls, triggers, monitoring. That's fair. But if you just need live chat, you don't need all that JavaScript sitting on every page load. TGLiveChat loads fast, isolates its CSS with Shadow DOM, and gets out of your site's way.
The response time argument
Here's something nobody talks about in these comparison articles. The best live chat tool is the one you actually check. It doesn't matter if Tawk.to has a better dashboard or more features if your messages sit there unread for 3 hours.
With TGLiveChat, a new message hits your Telegram the same way a friend's message does. You hear it, you see it, you reply. There's no "let me log into the support dashboard" step. There's no "oh I forgot to open the Tawk app today."
This is the whole bet TGLiveChat is making. You'll respond faster when the messages show up in an app you're already glued to. And faster responses mean happier customers, more sales, and fewer people bouncing from your site without getting their question answered.
Pricing: free vs free (and what comes after)
Both start free. But the free plans work differently, and what you pay when you upgrade is very different too.
TGLiveChat
Tawk.to
Tawk.to is free longer if you don't care about branding. TGLiveChat's Pro plan includes white-label plus all other Pro features at $12/mo — $7 less than Tawk's branding-only add-on.
Common questions
Wait, Tawk.to is completely free?
Yep. Tawk.to is genuinely free for the core live chat. They make money from paid add-ons like AI Assist ($29/mo), removing branding ($19/mo), hiring chat agents ($1/hr), and their CRM. The base product is free with no chat limits.
So why would I pick TGLiveChat over something free and unlimited?
Because free and unlimited doesn't matter if you don't check it. Tawk.to requires you to have their dashboard open or their app installed. TGLiveChat sends everything to Telegram, which you're probably already using. The best live chat tool is the one you actually respond to.
Is Tawk.to's widget really that much bigger?
Yeah. Tawk.to loads a lot more JavaScript because it does a lot more. If page speed matters to you (it should), TGLiveChat's ~10KB widget is noticeably lighter. On slow connections or mobile, you'll feel the difference.
Can I use both at the same time?
Technically yes, but that's kind of chaotic. You'd have two chat bubbles on your site. Pick one. If you want Telegram replies, go TGLiveChat. If you want a full support suite with ticketing and knowledge base, go Tawk.to.
Does Tawk.to have a Telegram integration?
Not natively. You can hack something together with Zapier or webhooks, but it's not the same as TGLiveChat where Telegram IS the product. Every message, every notification, every reply happens in Telegram.
What happens when I'm offline on Tawk.to vs TGLiveChat?
Both tools have offline modes. On Tawk.to, visitors see an offline form and messages go to your email. On TGLiveChat, offline visitors can leave their email and you get notified in Telegram when they do. The follow-up still happens in Telegram, so you don't need to check another inbox.
I get more than 100 chats per month. Does TGLiveChat's free plan work?
Not for unlimited volume. The free plan covers 100 conversations per month. After that you'd want Pro at $12/mo. Tawk.to's free plan is genuinely unlimited, so if you're on a tight budget and get a lot of volume, that's a real advantage for them.
Want to try the Telegram approach?
Free plan, no credit card, takes 2 minutes. If you'd rather reply from Telegram than a dashboard, give it a shot.