Olark vs Intercom 2026: What Each One Really Costs
· Wallu Team · 7 min read · Comparison
Olark charges a flat $400 a month for unlimited AI answers. Intercom charges $0.99 every time Fin resolves something, plus $29 a seat. The crossover is around 400 answers a month.
Wallu at a glance
- Price: plans from $4.99/month, billed flat — not per agent and not per AI resolution.
- Free trial: 7 days.
- Channels: website chat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Discord and email — answered by one AI agent in one inbox.
- Store integrations: Shopify and WooCommerce, so the agent can answer order, shipping and refund questions from real order data.
- Also included: AI email marketing and short-form video, on the same plan.
Table of Contents
- The short answer
- What Olark charges
- What Intercom charges
- The unit decides your bill
- Which one to pick
- Frequently asked questions
All prices below were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 20 August 2026. Most comparisons of these two still quote figures from 2022, which is why they disagree with what you will see at checkout.
The short answer
Olark charges a flat fee. Intercom charges per result. Olark's AI Website Agent is $400 a month and answers as much as you like. Intercom's Fin charges $0.99 every time it resolves something, on top of a per-seat fee for your humans.
Which is cheaper depends entirely on volume, and the crossover is not where most people guess.
What Olark charges
From olark.com/pricing, 20 August 2026:
- Standard AI Website Agent — $400/month, billed annually ($4,800/yr). One human agent seat is included.
- Additional human agents — +$29/agent/month.
- Human-only live chat, no AI — $29/agent/month.
Their agent trains itself: *"Olark's agent trains on your site in about a minute and keeps itself updated,"* with *"Automatic FAQ & knowledge updates."*
And they make a genuine argument for the flat rate, in their own words: *"Token pricing creates a bad incentive: the more your agent helps, the more you pay, so you start rationing your own success."*
The catch is reach. Olark prices a website agent. Their pricing page names no email, no WhatsApp, no Discord, no Telegram.
What Intercom charges
From intercom.com/pricing, 20 August 2026:
- Fin AI agent — $0.99 per outcome. An outcome counts when *"A customer confirms their issue is resolved, or They don't ask for more help after Fin responds, or Fin completes a workflow."*
- Essential — $29 per seat/mo.
- Advanced — $85 per seat/mo.
- Expert — $132 per seat/mo.
Intercom also offers a 14-day free trial with "No credit card required" — worth saying plainly, because that is better than what either Olark or Wallu offers.
The unit decides your bill
Three vendors, three different billing units. Run the same volume through each:
| Answers per month | Olark (flat) | Intercom (per outcome + 1 seat) | Wallu |
|---|---|---|---|
| 300 | $400 | $326 | $4.99 |
| 1,000 | $400 | $1,019 | $9.99 |
| 5,000 | $400 | $4,979 | $49 |
| 25,000 | $400 | $24,779 | $149 |
*Intercom column is $0.99 x answers plus one Essential seat at $29. Olark is the AI agent tier with its one included seat. Wallu is the Assist plan whose included volume covers that number.*
Read the crossover honestly: above roughly 400 answers a month, Olark's flat $400 beats Intercom's meter, and it keeps beating it, by more, forever. Below that, Intercom is cheaper. Anyone telling you one is simply "cheaper" has not done this arithmetic.
Which one to pick
Pick Intercom if you want a mature agent workspace with reporting, SLAs and a large app ecosystem, your volume is low enough that per-outcome pricing stays small, and you want to try it without a card.
Pick Olark if everything you support happens on your own website, you want the AI to train itself with no work from you, and you would rather pay one predictable number than watch a meter.
Pick Wallu if your customers reach you in more than one place. One knowledge base answers on your website, Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Slack and email, billed per account rather than per seat, from $4.99 a month. You build the knowledge base yourself rather than having it trained automatically, and the allowance is a monthly credit pool rather than unlimited — both real trade-offs against Olark.
Frequently asked questions
Is Olark cheaper than Intercom?
Above about 400 AI answers a month, yes, and by a widening margin. Below that, Intercom's $0.99-per-outcome model costs less. The flat fee only pays off with volume.
Does Olark have AI?
Yes. Olark's agent, Aiden, answers from your site content and updates itself. Older comparisons claiming Olark is human-chat-only are out of date.
What does Intercom's "per outcome" actually mean?
Intercom counts an outcome when the customer confirms resolution, stops asking for help after Fin replies, or Fin completes a workflow. It is not simply per message.
Can either of them answer on Discord or WhatsApp?
Neither prices those channels on its pricing page. Both are website-first products.
