Olark Alternatives 2026: Olark vs LiveChat, Tawk.to, Tidio

2026-03-08 · Laurentiu Dobra · 14 min read · Comparison

Olark's AI agent is $400/mo billed annually; live chat with no AI is $29/agent. Olark vs LiveChat, Tawk.to, Tidio, Crisp and 7 more, from vendors' own pages.

Table of Contents

• What Olark actually costs in 2026
• Why other comparisons say $29
• Olark vs the main alternatives
• The alternatives, at a glance
• The pricing contradiction worth knowing
• Channel coverage
• The eleven alternatives in detail
• When Olark is still the right choice
• Where Wallu is the wrong choice
• Migrating off Olark
• Sources and read dates
• Frequently asked questions

Short answer: Olark sells human-only live chat at $29 per agent a month and an AI website agent at $400 a month billed annually ($4,800 a year), with unlimited AI conversations and no published month-to-month price. For human chat only, Tawk.to is free, and LiveChat (now sold as Text) is the like-for-like swap at $25 per user ($19 billed annually), with 10 AI resolutions included. Below about 375 to 500 AI answers a month, Intercom, Tidio and LiveChat each cost less than Olark at one seat; above that, Olark is cheaper than all three. For flat per-workspace pricing, look at Crisp (from $45 a month); for AI across messaging apps at low volume, our own Wallu ($4.99 a month, $3.99 billed yearly, for 350 AI replies).

> ### The number most articles are missing

>

> Updated 10 October 2026. Olark's AI product is the Standard AI Website Agent at $400/month, billed annually ($4,800/yr), with one human agent seat included and additional seats at +$29/agent/month. Olark's live-chat-only plan, with no AI, remains $29/agent/month.

>

> *Source: olark.com/pricing, read 10 October 2026.*

Most "Olark alternatives" articles still describe Olark as a $29-per-agent live chat tool. That figure is real, but it is the plan with no AI in it. This page prices eleven alternatives against the $400 AI tier.

What Olark actually costs in 2026

Live chat, no AI - $29/agent/month. Olark's words: "Just want live chat with humans, no AI? Our classic live-chat-only plan is $29/agent/month." This is Olark's true entry price, with a 14-day free trial and no card required.

Standard AI Website Agent - $400/month, billed annually ($4,800/yr). Unlimited AI conversations, with "No token limits, no overages." One human agent seat is included; further seats are +$29/agent/month. Olark's own FAQ spells out the arithmetic: "Two agents on AI = $429/month; three = $458/month, and so on." There is no self-serve checkout - the button is "Talk to sales."

Custom - not published. Quote only, for SSO and custom SLAs.

The annual commitment is not a footnote: with no month-to-month option published, the real commitment is $4,800 before a second human seat.

SMS and WhatsApp are separate, metered by message volume with one phone number each: $100 a month for 1,000 messages, $200 for 4,000 and $400 for 10,000 (our 31 August read, not re-checked). Overage terms, and whether these stack on top of the $400 website agent, are not published.

Why other comparisons say $29

Not because they are lying. Because Olark has had two pricing pages live at the same time, and they disagree.

• olark.com/pricing is the current one: AI-first, leading with the $400 agent.
• olark.com/pricing-tiers/ is a legacy page. When we checked it on 31 August, it returned HTTP 200, was self-canonical and not noindexed, and showed only "$29 per agent, per month," a quote-based "Pro Olark," and Visitor Cobrowsing at $99/month. It had no AI tier at all.

Neither pointed at the other as canonical, so a writer - or a language model - landing on the legacy page describes Olark as a $29 live chat tool, which was accurate before the AI product existed.

A third source of drift: olark.com/faq still lists $29 per agent with no required contract, $23 on a one-year prepaid term, $19 on two years, a free plan after the trial (one agent, at most 20 chats a month), and PowerUps from $29 to $99 a month.

So describing Olark as a single $29 per-agent plan is now out of date: the AI product leads at $400.

Olark vs the main alternatives

Of the six tools below, Olark is the only one whose AI is neither capped nor metered: unlimited AI conversations for $400 a month, billed annually ($4,800 a year); no month-to-month price is published. The others meter AI by reply, resolution, outcome, conversation or credit balance.

Sorted by month-to-month entry price. Vendors' own pricing pages, read 10 October 2026. Intercom was showing most visitors a test price of $29 month-to-month ($19 annually) instead of list.

Verdicts at one human seat (crossovers are our arithmetic from their published rates):

• Olark vs Tawk.to: Tawk.to costs less up to its top AI tier (20,000 AI messages a month: $399 month-to-month, $3,990 a year), but it counts every AI reply, and removing its badge costs $39 a month ($348 a year).
• Olark vs LiveChat: the like-for-like pick for human chat teams, $4 a seat cheaper in both cycles; one Growth user billed annually plus six AI packs covers 500 resolutions for $376 ($79 + 6 × $49.50), and more passes $400.
• Olark vs Tidio: Starter plus 500 Lyro conversations is $379 month-to-month ($29 + $350); the next step, 750, is $554, so above 500 AI conversations Olark's flat fee is cheaper.
• Olark vs Intercom: one Essential seat plus Fin passes $400 at about 375 outcomes a month billed annually ($29 + 375 × $0.99 = $400.25), or 365 month-to-month; below that, Intercom is cheaper. Full working: Intercom vs Olark.
• Olark vs Crisp: Crisp never meters conversations, and its $295-a-month Plus plan includes 20+ seats and about 1,350 AI conversations; beyond that there is no published rate (a Crisp help article estimates $0.05 to $0.10 per AI conversation).

Free plans: Tawk.to, Tidio (50 conversations a month) and Crisp (no AI); none at Intercom or LiveChat, and none on Olark's pricing page.

The alternatives, at a glance

*Sorted by month-to-month entry price: the cheapest paid plan, or $0 where the platform itself is free. Read 10 October 2026, except Smartsupp and Userlike (31 August 2026, not re-read). Seat and flat prices are not directly comparable; quote-only top tiers are not shown.*

The headline price is usually the annual one. LiveChat, Zendesk, Help Scout, Intercom and Tidio open their pricing pages on annual billing. Month-to-month costs 20-34% more on the 10 October figures (Help Scout and Tidio 20%, Freshchat 21%, Wallu 25%, LiveChat and Zendesk 32%, Intercom 34%; our arithmetic) and 41% on Smartsupp's 31 August figures. Olark's AI tier is the sharpest case: annual only.

AI at the entry price is always capped or metered. Every allowance in the fourth column runs out, Wallu's 350 replies and LiveChat's 10 resolutions included, and Intercom and Help Scout meter from the first answer. Olark's uncapped $400 tier is the honest version of solving this - you genuinely stop counting - it is just priced for a company with the volume to justify $4,800 a year.

The pricing contradiction worth knowing

Olark's pricing page argues hard against usage-based AI billing - "No token costs, ever," "Unlimited AI conversations," "Pay for agents, not usage" - and makes the case directly:

> "Token pricing creates a bad incentive: the more your agent helps, the more you pay, so you start rationing your own success."

That is a genuinely good argument, and the strongest thing about Olark's AI offer: a flat $400 is easy to budget, and above a few hundred answers a month it beats every per-resolution meter in this comparison.

The wrinkle is that Olark's own SMS and WhatsApp product is priced in message buckets, the usage-metered model its pricing page criticises, and Olark's AI runs there too. So the principle holds on the website and not off it. If your volume is high and predictable, flat pricing genuinely is safer; if it is low or spiky, you are paying $4,800 a year for headroom you may not use.

Channel coverage

The $400 Standard AI Website Agent covers the website. Olark's pricing page contains no mention of email, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Slack, Discord, Telegram, Messenger, inbox, ticketing, omnichannel or multichannel. But Olark's AI is not website-only: it runs on SMS and WhatsApp through the separately priced add-on above.

If your customers reach you on a website widget, Olark covers it. If they are on Discord, Telegram, Instagram and email, its published plans cover none of those. Among the alternatives, Intercom bills WhatsApp, SMS and phone by usage; Freshchat's Growth plan adds social messengers and WhatsApp; Crisp goes omnichannel from its $95 Essentials plan; Zendesk's Suite plans add messaging and telephony; and Wallu, our product, answers website chat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Discord, Slack and email from one shared inbox on every plan.

The eleven alternatives in detail

In the same order as the table. Watch what happens when the AI starts answering, not the sticker price.

Tawk.to - $0, free forever. No limit on agents, no caps on conversations or chat history, and not a trial. AI Assist counts every AI response, per property: free for 100 a month, then $29 ($290 a year) for 1,000, $99 ($990) for 5,000 and $399 ($3,990) for 20,000. Removing the badge is $39 month-to-month, or $29 a month billed annually ($348 a year). For free human live chat, nothing here beats it.

Wallu - $4.99/mo month-to-month, $3.99 billed yearly. Our product. Priced per account, never per seat or per resolution: one credit is one AI reply sent, and Mini includes 350 a month (about 110 conversations), with plans up to $149 ($119 yearly) for 25,000. Against our own interest: the free account is only 10 AI replies a month, and its other limits are listed below.

Freshchat - $23/agent/mo month-to-month, $19 billed annually. An unusually generous free plan for up to 10 agents, without AI. On Growth, Freddy AI Agent costs $49 per 100 sessions after the first 500, which come once per account, not monthly. The agent-side copilot is not sold on the entry plan.

Smartsupp - $24/mo month-to-month, $17 on an annual commit (read 31 Aug 2026). Flat with one operator and 50 agent-facing AI reply assists a month; the customer-facing shopping assistant is a separate add-on. Good value for mostly-human support.

LiveChat - $25/user/mo month-to-month, $19 billed annually. Still the cleanest live chat product here, and no longer AI-free: new trials are sold as Text plans, with 10 AI resolutions a month on Essential and 200 on Growth ($99, or $79 annually), then $49.50 per 50. Legacy LiveChat plans have no AI agent.

Zendesk - $25/agent/mo month-to-month, $19 billed annually, email only. The enterprise default, with a catch: Support Team is email ticketing, and live chat starts at Suite Team, $69 ($55 annually). Five automated resolutions per agent a month are included, then $1.50-$2.00 each; Copilot is $50/agent/mo, paid yearly, and cannot be added below Professional.

Olark - $29/agent/mo, or $400/mo billed annually for the AI agent. The most predictable AI rate here, and the least flexible commitment.

Tidio - $29/mo month-to-month, $24.17 billed annually. Metered on conversations your team replies to, not seats, with ten seats included and a free tier of 50 conversations. Starter's 50 Lyro AI conversations are a one-off grant; after that Lyro is a separate subscription from $39 a month ($32.50 annually), more than doubling the sticker. Monthly plans upgrade automatically at 95% of the limit unless you switch that off.

Help Scout - $30/user/mo month-to-month, $25 billed annually. The nicest shared inbox here, with a free plan for up to 5 users. Customer-facing AI Answers is $0.75 per resolution on Standard, Plus and Pro, with a spend cap and a free three-month trial.

Intercom - $39/seat/mo month-to-month, $29 billed annually (list). Most visitors were shown a test price of $29 ($19 annually). Fin is the strongest AI agent in this group, at $0.99 per outcome on top of seats: a thousand resolved conversations a month is $990 before seats. For the full crossover, see Olark vs Intercom.

Crisp - $45/mo per workspace, no annual price published. Four seats, a flat price and unmetered conversations, excellent for small teams. AI is capped at $5 of credits a month (about 90 conversations), then opt-in pay-as-you-go at an unpublished rate.

Userlike - EUR 105/mo month-to-month, EUR 87 on an annual commit (read 31 Aug 2026). German, GDPR-focused, three-seat minimum, prices excluding VAT. AI is extra from EUR 99/mo, so a realistic entry with AI is north of EUR 200/mo before tax.

When Olark is still the right choice

A comparison page that cannot name a case for the incumbent is a sales page. Here are the real ones.

Your volume is high and steady. A flat $400 a month billed annually, with unlimited AI answers, is predictable: it beats the meters at Intercom, Tidio and LiveChat above roughly 375 to 500 AI answers a month at one seat (our arithmetic, above), and never produces a surprise invoice.

You are website-only and want to stay that way. Multi-channel coverage would be a feature you pay for and do not use.

You already run Olark and it works. Olark has been doing this since 2009 and, when we checked on 31 August 2026, had 4.5 stars from 471 Capterra reviews (4.7 for ease of use, 4.4 for value for money). Switching costs real staff time, and "it works and the team knows it" is a legitimate reason to stay.

You want one vendor for chat plus SMS and WhatsApp. The add-ons are metered, but they exist and are integrated.

Where Wallu is the wrong choice

Wallu is our product, so here is where it loses.

• High, steady AI volume. Wallu bills per AI reply; its largest published plan is 25,000 replies a month ($149, or $119 billed yearly), about 7,800 conversations at 3.2 replies each (our arithmetic). Above that no published plan covers you, which is where Olark's unlimited tier is strongest.
• Paying only for resolutions. Wallu uses a credit for every reply, resolved or not; Intercom charges for Fin only on outcomes.
• A free plan to run on. A free account gets 10 AI replies a month, enough to test, not to run support. Tawk.to, Freshchat, Crisp, Tidio and Help Scout have real free plans.
• A full help desk. No workforce management, multi-brand help centre, SLA policy engine, phone contact centre or skills-based routing for large teams.
• An established vendor. No app marketplace, far fewer integrations than Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk or HubSpot, no published uptime SLA below Enterprise, and a young company.

Migrating off Olark

If you do move, do it in this order:

• Export your chat transcripts first, while the account is still active.
• Build the knowledge base before you switch the widget. An AI agent's quality is mostly what it can retrieve: point it at your help centre, FAQ and policy pages.
• Run both in parallel for a week, on a subset of traffic, and read the new agent's answers before it carries the whole load.
• Turn on a knowledge-base-only mode if the tool has one, so the agent stays silent rather than guessing when your content does not cover a question. This setting decides whether customers trust it.
• Cancel only after a full billing cycle of clean logs. On an annual Olark commit, check your renewal date first; the money is already spent, so there is no rush.

Sources and read dates

Every figure was read from the vendor's own pricing page, not from a comparison article; quote-only prices are marked "not published".

Carried over from our 31 August read, not re-checked: the Smartsupp and Userlike figures; Olark's SMS and WhatsApp buckets, PowerUps and Visitor Cobrowsing prices, "Talk to sales" checkout, quoted wording and Capterra rating; Zendesk's rule that Copilot cannot be added below Professional; and Freshchat's copilot availability.

An out-of-date figure here is a bug, and we would rather hear about it.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Olark cost in 2026?

Live chat with no AI is $29 per agent a month ($23 on a one-year contract paid in full, $19 on two years). The Standard AI Website Agent is $400 a month billed annually ($4,800 a year), with unlimited AI conversations and one human seat; extra seats are $29 a month each. The Custom plan is quote-only.

Is Olark's $400 AI plan available month-to-month?

Not that Olark publishes. The AI tier is listed only as billed annually, so the smallest commitment is $4,800 for a year, and there is no self-serve checkout: the call to action is "Talk to sales."

Does Olark have a free plan or free trial?

Live Chat has a 14-day free trial, no card required. Olark's pricing page lists no free plan, but its older FAQ describes one after the trial: one agent, at most 20 chats a month. No trial is stated for the AI tier.

Why do other comparison articles say Olark is $29?

Because $29 per agent is Olark's live-chat-only plan, which has no AI, and a legacy pricing page (olark.com/pricing-tiers/) still showed only that plan when we checked it on 31 August 2026. The figure is real; it is just not the price of the AI agent.

What should we consider when replacing Olark?

Whether you need AI at all (Olark's $29 plan has none); your monthly AI volume, since Intercom, Tidio and LiveChat cost less than Olark's $400 below roughly 375 to 500 AI answers a month at one seat; which channels your customers use; and whether a tool bills per seat, conversation, outcome or reply. Then export your transcripts and run both tools in parallel for a week.

What is the cheapest Olark alternative with AI included?

Tawk.to: the platform is free, and its AI Assist add-on includes 100 AI messages a month per property at no cost, then 1,000 for $29 a month ($290 a year). Wallu's Mini plan is $4.99 a month ($3.99 billed yearly) for 350 AI replies. Both are capped; only Olark's $400 tier publishes unlimited AI conversations at a flat price.

Does Olark work on WhatsApp, SMS, Slack or Discord?

SMS and WhatsApp, yes: a separate add-on priced by message volume, from $100 a month for 1,000 messages when we read it on 31 August 2026, and Olark's AI runs on both. Slack, Discord and Telegram are not mentioned on Olark's pricing page.

Is Olark still a good choice in 2026?

For a website-only team with high, steady AI volume, yes: its flat AI price is predictable, and it rated 4.5 out of 5 across 471 Capterra reviews when we checked on 31 August 2026. It is a poor fit for multichannel support, for fewer than a few hundred AI answers a month, or if $4,800 a year is out of proportion to your support volume.