Short answer: pick Chatwoot if you want to run the software yourself. It is open source and self-hostable, and Help Scout is not — if your requirement is that customer data stays on infrastructure you control, that single fact ends the evaluation. Pick Help Scout if you want a managed, email-first help desk with the best agent writing experience in this tier and you are willing to pay per user plus per AI resolution. The two products are not really competing on features; they are competing on whether you want to own the stack or rent it.
Evaluation summary
| Chatwoot | Help Scout | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per agent (cloud), or self-hosted. Hacker $0 (2 agents, 500 conversations/mo) · Startups $19 · Business $39 · Enterprise $99 — per agent/month billed annually | Per user, plus a separate per-resolution AI meter. Standard $25 · Plus $45 · Pro $75 per user/month |
| AI billing | Captain AI runs on credits at $20 per 1,000. Chatwoot does not publish a credits-per-conversation conversion | AI Answers add-on at $0.75 per resolution. AI Inbox assistant included from Standard; unlimited AI Drafts from Plus |
| Self-hosting | Yes — open source, self-hosted, separate self-hosted plans | No. Managed SaaS only |
| Channels | Live chat, email, social, WhatsApp, voice (channel availability varies by tier; the free Hacker tier is live chat and voice only) | Email, live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger from Standard |
| Knowledge base | Help centre included | Docs sites — 1 on Free, 2 on Standard, 3 on Plus, 5 on Pro; additional sites $20/month |
| Governance | SSO/SAML and audit logs from the Business tier; data retention 30 days / 1 year / 2 years / 3 years by tier | SSO/SAML available as an add-on; HIPAA compliance on Pro; up to 50 light users on Pro |
| Support | 15-day free trial on cloud plans; community and paid support tiers | Free trials on paid tiers; dedicated onboarding specialist and strategic account manager on Pro |
| Best for | Teams with a self-hosting, data-residency or source-access requirement | Email-first B2B teams who care about tone and want zero infrastructure work |
Pricing, side by side
Chatwoot (pricing), all figures per agent per month billed annually:
- Hacker — $0. Up to 2 agents, 500 conversations/month, live chat and voice, 30-day data retention. Captain AI not included.
- Startups — $19. Unlimited conversations, all channels, 1-year retention.
- Business — $39. Adds SSO/SAML and audit logs, 2-year retention.
- Enterprise — $99. 3-year retention.
- Captain AI credits: $20 per 1,000, tracked in the billing dashboard.
- Self-hosted plans are listed separately.
Help Scout (pricing), per user per month:
- Standard — $25. Multiple inboxes, live chat and SMS, WhatsApp/Instagram/Messenger, multiple knowledge bases, one basic SLA policy, basic workflows, AI Inbox assistant.
- Plus — $45. Advanced workflows, two advanced SLA policies, secure customer portal, unlimited AI Drafts, round-robin routing, Salesforce/Jira/HubSpot integrations.
- Pro — $75. Unlimited workflows and SLA policies, multiple routing types, SSO/SAML, HIPAA compliance, up to 50 light users, dedicated onboarding.
- AI Answers add-on: $0.75 per resolution.
- Additional inboxes $10/month; additional Docs sites $20/month. Annual billing saves 16%.
Worked example: 5 agents, 1,000 conversations a month, 400 AI resolutions
Inputs, stated: 5 people with logins · 1,000 customer conversations per month · 400 of those resolved by AI · annual billing · no add-ons beyond the AI meter · US pricing. These are modelled totals from list prices, not invoices.
| Seats | AI | Modelled monthly total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chatwoot Startups | 5 × $19 = $95 | Captain AI credits — no published per-conversation conversion, so unquantified | $95 + credits |
| Chatwoot Business | 5 × $39 = $195 | as above | $195 + credits |
| Help Scout Standard + AI Answers | 5 × $25 = $125 | 400 × $0.75 = $300 | $425 |
| Help Scout Plus + AI Answers | 5 × $45 = $225 | 400 × $0.75 = $300 | $525 |
The seat difference between the two products is modest. The AI meter is what separates them. Help Scout's AI cost at this volume is larger than its entire seat cost, and it grows every time your AI gets better at resolving things. Chatwoot's AI cost is genuinely hard to forecast from the published page, which is its own kind of problem — you should ask Chatwoot for a credits-per-conversation figure before you commit.
And on self-hosted Chatwoot, the licence cost can be zero while the real cost is infrastructure, upgrades, backups and someone's attention. Chatwoot does not publish that number and neither will we. Budget it honestly; it is not free, it is unpriced.
The difference that actually decides it: open source and self-hosting
Chatwoot's own site describes it as "the modern, open source, self-hosted customer support platform," and the project carries over 36,000 GitHub stars. You can read the code, run it on your own servers, and keep every customer message inside your own perimeter.
Help Scout is managed SaaS. There is no self-hosted edition.
If self-hosting or data residency is a requirement — a regulator, a security review, a customer contract, a jurisdiction — Chatwoot is the right answer and nothing else in this comparison substitutes for it. That is worth saying plainly rather than working around, and it is the single most useful sentence on this page.
If it is not a requirement, be equally honest with yourself about what you are taking on. Self-hosting means you own uptime, upgrades, database backups, TLS certificates and the pager. Plenty of teams choose Chatwoot Cloud precisely so they do not have to, at which point the open-source licence is a nice-to-have rather than the reason you bought.
Where each one is genuinely better
Chatwoot is better if:
- You need to self-host, or you need to read and modify the source.
- You want a real free tier to start on — 2 agents and 500 conversations a month at $0 is generous.
- You want voice alongside chat from the same product.
- Your seat count will grow faster than your AI usage. Chatwoot's per-agent step from $19 to $39 is small compared with a per-resolution meter.
Help Scout is better if:
- Your support is mostly email and the quality of the writing experience matters to you. This is Help Scout's actual strength and it is underrated in feature-grid comparisons.
- You need HIPAA compliance without building it yourself — it is on Pro.
- You have many occasional responders. Up to 50 light users on Pro is a direct answer to the per-seat problem, and few competitors at this price have an equivalent.
- You want SLA policies, round-robin routing and a secure customer portal without configuring anything.
Where neither is the right answer
Two situations send you elsewhere, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise on a page published by a competitor.
If your bill needs to stop moving. Both products bill on two axes: people, and AI usage. Help Scout's per-resolution meter in particular means the invoice rises as the AI improves — you pay a success tax on your own knowledge-base work. If the thing you actually need is a number you can put in a budget twelve months out, neither model gives you that.
That is the gap Corebee is built for: $99 per month for the account, unlimited AI conversations, unlimited team members, all features, 14-day free trial, 30-day money-back guarantee, no annual contract. There is no per-seat charge and no AI meter, so adding your sixth agent and doubling your AI resolution rate both leave the invoice at $99.
Be clear about what Corebee is not. It is not open source and cannot be self-hosted — if that was your requirement, Chatwoot remains the answer and Corebee is not a substitute for it. Corebee is a younger product without Help Scout's decade of email-workflow polish. SOC 2 compliance and certification are in progress, not complete; it is GDPR compliant, data is encrypted at rest and in transit, and audit logs and approval workflows are included on the single plan.
If you want to pay only for AI and keep your existing help desk, a usage-priced layer such as eesel.ai ($0.40 per ticket, no subscription) sits on top of what you already run and neither of these products competes with that shape.