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Solo-fit verdictSolo-ReadyThe budget default: free human chat forever, and honest AI answering from $0 to $29 a month — if you can live with credit counting.
True solo cost · low$0/mo$0/month — 1 operator on the free core platform plus AI Assist Hobby (100 credits/month, roughly 33 AI replies at 3 credits per reply on the Auto model) for about 30 AI-answered conversations/month
True solo cost · typical$29/mo$29/month — AI Assist Growth (1,000 credits/month, roughly 330 AI replies on the Auto model) on top of the free core platform for about 200 AI-answered conversations/month; heavier models burn credits faster
Rank #19 of 21 in CustomersFree start Free plan availableSetup Under 1 hourControl Acts + logs everythingNo-code 5/5Checked · prices checked 2026-11-07
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The short version
Tawk.to gives the whole human support stack away free and charges only for automation: AI Assist is free at 100 credits a month and $29 a month at 1,000 credits, with the Auto model spending 3 credits per reply.
Buy it if
Your budget is the constraint and you want live chat, ticketing and a knowledge base with no seat bill at all. Your AI volume is light to moderate — tens to a few hundred AI replies a month. You are happy answering in the same free inbox the AI hands off into.
Skip it if
You need verified order-status lookup or deep commerce actions. You do not want to count message credits per AI reply. You need the Powered by branding gone free — removal is a paid add-on.
What Tawk.to does — the jobs it finishes
Workflows are built only from verified capabilities in our listing research — no vendor copy, nothing invented.
Answer repeat questions free on the Hobby plan
Starts A visitor asks a question your knowledge base or shortcut FAQs cover.
- AI Assist matches the question against your knowledge base, FAQs, documents and crawled pages.
- It replies in the visitor's language, spending 3 credits per reply on the Auto model.
- Anything outside its knowledge escalates to you in the free inbox.
You get An instant answer at no software cost, inside your free credit allowance.
The first tier of automation costs nothing while you learn your real volume.
Cover nights and weekends with Growth
Starts Chat arrives outside your working hours and would otherwise wait until morning.
- AI Assist on Growth (1,000 credits/month) answers from your trained sources around the clock.
- Sensitive or unknown topics follow your escalation rules to a human.
- You review the overnight transcripts in the inbox when you return.
You get Overnight questions answered or cleanly queued, never lost.
A $29/month tier replaces the missed-chat pile for a solo operator.
Top up instead of upgrading in a spike month
Starts A launch or seasonal spike burns through your monthly credit allowance.
- Buy extra credits at the published $30 per 1,000.
- The credits never expire and carry over, unlike the monthly allowance.
- Drop back to your normal plan when the spike passes.
You get Headroom for the spike without a permanent tier jump.
Non-expiring top-ups make spiky solo volume cheap to absorb.
Hand off to a human with the thread intact
Starts The AI cannot answer, or the visitor asks for a person.
- AI Assist escalates the conversation inside the same dashboard.
- You see the full transcript and contact history on one record.
- You reply in the same thread — the customer never repeats themselves.
You get A warm handoff instead of a dead end.
AI handles volume; you inherit context, not confusion.
Where it stops
- The free Hobby plan is a test allowance — 100 credits is roughly 33 replies at the Auto model's 3 credits per reply
- No verified native order-status lookup in Shopify or WooCommerce from the pages checked
- Removing the Powered by tawk.to branding is a paid add-on, not a setting
Getting started
Before you start
- A website you can paste one snippet into
- A short FAQ list or help pages for AI Assist to learn from
The ongoing admin
- Reading AI transcripts weekly and adding FAQs where it missed.
Step 1Install the free widget
Paste the snippet or use a platform integration; live chat, inbox and ticketing work immediately at $0.
Step 2Build the knowledge base
Add your help articles and shortcut FAQs — these are AI Assist's training sources.
Step 3Switch on AI Assist Hobby
Train the free agent on your content and run its 100 monthly credits on real traffic.
Step 4Step up to Growth when credits bind
$29/month raises the allowance to 1,000 credits and three agents; top-ups are $30 per 1,000.
Time to first useful result: Under 1 hour · no-code 5/5
Full pricing — checked 2026-11-07
Core platform free forever ($0, no seats charged). AI Assist is the paid layer: Hobby free (100 message credits/month, 1 agent), Growth $29/month or $290/year (1,000 credits, 3 agents), Business $99/month or $990/year (5,000 credits, 5 agents), Enterprise $399/month or $3,990/year (20,000 credits, 10 agents). The Auto model costs 3 credits per AI reply; extra credits are $30 per 1,000 and do not expire. Annual billing equals two free months.
Core platform
$0 — free forever
Flat / month · $0/mo for one person
- Live chat, shared inbox, ticketing and knowledge base
- No per-seat charge
- Contacts CRM
Limit Paid add-ons (AI Assist, branding removal, hired agents) are separate
AI Assist Hobby
$0 — 100 message credits/month, 1 AI agent
Per credit bundle
- 100 message credits/month
- 1 AI chat agent
- Crawls up to 100 web pages
- Escalations to human agents
Allowance 100 message credits / month
Limit Auto model costs 3 credits per reply — roughly 33 replies/month
Solo pickAI Assist Growth
$29/month billed monthly, or $290/year — 1,000 message credits/month, 3 AI agents
Per credit bundle · $29/mo for one person
- 1,000 message credits/month
- 3 AI chat agents
- 500 crawled web pages
- API integrations (up to 1,000 API calls)
Allowance 1,000 message credits / month
Limit Heavier AI models cost more credits per reply than Auto
AI Assist Business
$99/month billed monthly, or $990/year — 5,000 message credits/month, 5 AI agents
Per credit bundle
- 5,000 message credits/month
- 5 AI chat agents
- 2,000 crawled web pages
- Assisted setup
Allowance 5,000 message credits / month
Limit Priced for high-growth sites, beyond most solos
AI Assist Enterprise
$399/month billed monthly, or $3,990/year — 20,000 message credits/month, 10 AI agents
Per credit bundle
- 20,000 message credits/month
- 10 AI chat agents
- 10,000 crawled web pages
- Dedicated account manager
Allowance 20,000 message credits / month
Limit Far beyond solo volume
Add-onExtra AI Assist message credits — $30 per 1,000 credits. Purchased credits do not expire and carry over between billing periods; paid plans only.
Add-onRemove branding — $29/month on the pricing page (the help centre lists $39/month or $348/year). Removes the Powered by tawk.to branding; the two official pages state different monthly figures, so check in-dashboard before buying.
Add-onHired chat agents — From $1/hour. The vendor's own trained human agents answer chats for you 24/7; a services add-on, not software.
What could make the bill jump?
Credits, not seats: the core stays free, but AI replies burn 3 credits each on the Auto model and more on heavier models, so a busy month can exhaust a plan's allowance and push you to top-ups at $30 per 1,000 or the next tier.
Billing unitper message credit (AI Assist); core chat free
Free tier / trialYes — the core platform is free forever, and AI Assist Hobby is free with 100 message credits/month.
Pricing clarityUsage-based but predictable
Price record · 2026-11-07: Checked 2026-11-07 on tawk.to/pricing (the vendor's why-free pricing page, read in full): core live chat free forever; branding removal $29/month; AI Assist from $29/month with a forever-free plan for low volume; hired agents from $1/hour. The AI Assist tier detail (Hobby free / 100 credits / 1 agent; Growth $29 monthly, $290 annually / 1,000 credits / 3 agents; Business $99 / $990 / 5,000 / 5; Enterprise $399 / $3,990 / 20,000 / 10; Auto model 3 credits per reply; extra credits $30 per 1,000, non-expiring; annual billing = two free months) comes from the vendor's own help centre billing guides on help.tawk.to, read the same day — the pricing page itself does not tabulate the AI tiers. One inconsistency disclosed: the help centre's add-on page lists branding removal at $39/month ($348/year) against the pricing page's $29/month.
At a glance — the standard checklist
The same fields on every deep listing in this job, so agents compare field by field. “Not verified” means our research has not confirmed it yet — it never means “doesn't have it.”
- Platforms✓ IncludedWeb · WordPress · Shopify · WooCommerce
- Key integrations✓ IncludedPlatform integrations plus API integrations on paid AI Assist tiers
- Languages✓ IncludedAI Assist provides AI-backed, multi-lingual chat support on every plan
- Support channels✓ IncludedThe vendor advertises 24x7-365 live support for its own users on the pricing page
- Help centre / documentation✓ IncludedA free hosted knowledge base is part of the core product, and a help centre documents AI Assist billing and setup
- Free plan✓ IncludedCore platform free forever; AI Assist Hobby free with 100 credits/month
- Free trial? Not verifiedNo time-limited trial of paid plans was stated on the pages checked; entry is the permanent free tiers
- Human control model✓ IncludedActs + logs everything: AI Assist answers autonomously within your sources and escalates to humans in the same inbox
- Approval controls? Not verified
- Data export / exit route? Not verified
- Setup model✓ IncludedSelf-serve and no-code — one snippet, dashboard configuration; no-code score 5/5
- Website chat✓ IncludedWebsite live chat is the core product and the channel AI Assist answers in
- Email channel✓ IncludedForms, chat, email and channels are brought into one dashboard per the product page
- WhatsApp / social channels✓ IncludedThe product page describes social messages pouring into the same connected dashboard
- Order lookup? Not verified
- Actions beyond answers✓ IncludedTicketing, contacts/CRM records and workflow-style automations sit alongside answering in the same platform
- Human handoff✓ IncludedAI Assist plans include escalations to human agents
Best for
- Solo founders who want live chat and ticketing at $0 with no seat meter
- Very light AI volume that fits the free Hobby allowance
- Owners who want published, non-expiring top-up credits for spike months
Not for
- Businesses needing verified order-status lookup from the AI
- High AI volume on heavier models, where credit burn accelerates
- Anyone who needs branding removal included rather than as an add-on
Our assessment of Tawk.to
As of November 2026, Tawk.to is the outlier in this category: the core product — live chat, a shared inbox, ticketing, a hosted knowledge base and a contacts CRM — is free forever with no seat charges, and you only pay for optional add-ons. The part that answers without you is AI Assist, an AI agent trained on your knowledge base, your shortcut FAQs, documents you add and pages it crawls from your site. Its free Hobby plan includes 100 message credits a month and one AI agent; because the default Auto model spends 3 credits per AI reply, that is roughly 33 replies a month — enough to test, not to run a busy shop. The first paid step, Growth at $29 a month, raises the allowance to 1,000 credits and three agents, and extra credits cost a published $30 per 1,000 and never expire. AI Assist answers around the clock, escalates to a human agent under rules you set, and every conversation stays in the same free inbox where you already work. The honest catches are the credit maths — heavier AI models burn credits faster than Auto — and the extras: removing the small Powered by tawk.to branding is itself a paid add-on, and the vendor's famous $1-an-hour hired human agents are a separate service, not part of the software price.
Pros — our take
- The only genuinely free core in this set — chat, inbox, ticketing and knowledge base with no seat meter
- AI Assist starts free and its first paid tier is $29/month with published top-up pricing
- Extra credits never expire, so a quiet month is not wasted money
Cons — our take
- Credit maths needs care: 3 credits per Auto reply means 100 free credits is only about 33 replies
- No verified native order lookup — it answers from your content, not your store's order system
- The vendor's own pages disagree on the branding-removal monthly price ($29 vs $39)
Solo Fit input · no-code5/5 — can a non-technical owner run it?
Solo Fit input · setupUnder 1 hour to the first useful result
Solo Fit input · human controlActs + logs everything
Solo Fit input · pricing clarityUsage-based but predictable
No-code 5: one snippet and dashboard setup, no developer needed per the vendor. Setup mirrors the listed under-one-hour rating. Human control mirrors 'acts + logs everything': AI Assist answers autonomously within your knowledge and escalates to humans in the same inbox. Pricing clarity mirrors the legacy rating: figures are published, but credits-per-reply maths governs the real cost.
Three to compare before you decide
The difference: Smartsupp charges per operator for its inbox (Solo $17 billed annually) with Mira priced linearly per AI conversation; Tawk.to's inbox is free and its AI runs on message credits.
The difference: JivoChat bundles chat, calls and messengers into per-agent plans from $19; Tawk.to charges no seat price at all and monetises only add-ons.
The difference: Tidio meters Lyro per conversation joined on top of a paid helpdesk plan; Tawk.to's helpdesk layer is free and AI Assist starts free.
Questions buyers ask about Tawk.to
Is Tawk.to really free?
The core platform is: live chat, inbox, ticketing, knowledge base and contacts carry no seat charge and no time limit. Money only enters through optional add-ons — AI Assist paid tiers, branding removal and the hired-agent service. As of November 2026 the pricing page still leads with that free-forever model.
What does AI Assist actually cost a solo site?
Hobby is free with 100 message credits a month; Growth is $29 a month (or $290 a year) with 1,000 credits. The default Auto model spends 3 credits per AI reply, so Growth covers roughly 330 replies a month, and extra credits cost $30 per 1,000 and never expire.
How many real answers is 100 free credits?
About 33 AI replies, because each Auto-model reply costs 3 credits and transcription and other AI features also draw on the same allowance. Treat Hobby as a free test on real traffic, then size Growth from what you observe.
What is the $1-an-hour offer on the pricing page?
It is a service, not software: Tawk.to's own trained human agents answer your chats 24/7 from $1 an hour. It is separate from AI Assist and from the free platform, and priced by hours and coverage rather than by subscription.
Stacks & next steps
Tawk.to is not in a published stack yet — stacks are edited buying guides, and memberships are added only when the combination has been worked through.
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Provenance — where this page’s facts came from