By platform
Live chat for Webflow
One script tag, then every message arrives in your Telegram. Including the three ways this specifically goes wrong on Webflow, which is the part the install docs leave out.
Last checked 1 September 2026
Live chat by platform/Webflow
The short answer
How do you add live chat to Webflow?
Project Settings, Custom Code, Footer Code.
With TGLiveChat that is one tag and about five minutes. The widget is roughly 26KB across 3 requests, replies arrive in Telegram rather than in another dashboard, and your visitors need no Telegram account of their own. One platform limit to know about first: custom code needs a paid Site plan. It cannot be published on the free webflow.io staging domain.
What Webflow is, briefly
A visual site builder that produces clean static output, used heavily by designers and agencies for marketing sites.
Check this before you start
Custom code needs a paid Site plan. It cannot be published on the free webflow.io staging domain.
The install, step by step
- 1Open Project Settings, then Custom Code.
- 2Paste the script into Footer Code, which Webflow injects before the closing body tag.
- 3Save changes, then publish. Custom code only exists on the published site.
- 4Open the published domain, not the Designer preview, and send a test message.
The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the install guide.
The three ways this goes wrong on Webflow
Every one of these is a real failure that looks like a broken widget and is not. They are the reason this page exists rather than just a link to the docs.
Custom code does not run in the Designer or in preview
This is the single most common Webflow support question in any category. The widget is not broken and you have not pasted it wrong. Webflow strips custom code from the Designer canvas and from preview mode on purpose. Publish and open the real URL.
The free plan cannot publish custom code at all
A Site plan is required. On the free webflow.io domain the Footer Code field will accept your script, save it, and never publish it, which looks exactly like a broken install.
Page level code runs after site level code
If you add the widget to both Project Settings and an individual page, you get two widgets on that page. Pick one place. Site wide is almost always the right one.
What Webflow gives you instead
Webflow has no native chat, so every option here is third party. Webflow Logic and forms cover contact capture, which is a different job to a live conversation.
What a chat widget costs a Webflow page
People choose Webflow partly because the output is clean and fast, and then undo most of that with third party embeds. If you picked this platform for performance, the chat widget is the place that decision gets tested.
| Widget | Transfer size | Versus ours |
|---|---|---|
| Tawk.to | 749KB | 29x heavier |
| Zendesk Chat | 533KB | 21x heavier |
| Drift | 464KB | 18x heavier |
| LiveChat | 385KB | 15x heavier |
| Intercom | 301KB | 12x heavier |
| Crisp | 155KB | 6x heavier |
| LiveAgent | 79KB | 3x heavier |
| TGLiveChat | ~26KB | Baseline |
Competitor figures are DebugBear's measurements, published 14 July 2019 and updated 10 November 2025. Ours is measured by gzipping the files we serve, and the command is on our methodology page.
Why the replies land in Telegram
The reason most small sites end up with a dead chat widget is not the widget. It is that answering means opening a dashboard that nobody keeps open, so messages sit unread for six hours and visitors stop bothering. Telegram is already open on your phone, so a message from your website arrives the same way a message from a friend does.
Your visitors see none of that. They get a normal chat window on your Webflow site, they need no account, and they never learn which app you answered from. The AI agent handles the questions that have obvious answers while you are asleep, and hands anything else to you.
The bottom line
Adding chat to Webflow is one tag in the right place. Getting it to keep working is about the platform specific traps above, and about whether you will actually answer the messages once they arrive.
The free plan covers 100 conversations a month and does not ask for a card, which is a faster way to find out than reading any more of this.
Frequently asked questions
How do I add live chat to a Webflow site?
Is there a free live chat for Webflow?
Will a chat widget slow down my Webflow site?
Do my visitors need Telegram?
Why does the widget not show up on my Webflow site?
What is the native Webflow option?
Can I remove the branding?
How long does the install actually take?
Sources and references
- DebugBear: How Do Different Chat Widgets Impact Site Performance? Published 14 July 2019, updated 10 November 2025. Source of every competitor weight figure above.
- web.dev: Largest Contentful Paint The Core Web Vital that third party scripts move most on a content page.
- How we measure our own widget The command, the numbers, and the four figures we published wrong and corrected.