Freshdesk pricing, price hikes and cheaper alternatives
Freshdesk (freshdesk.com) is a help desk. Per agent per month on three paid plans (Growth, Pro, Enterprise), billed monthly or annually, with AI Agent sessions and other usage add-ons extra.. No free plan.
What Freshdesk costs
- 1 agent: $23/mo (Growth $23/agent/mo billed monthly x 1 agent. Growth includes ticketing and shared inbox; no ticket or contact caps are listed.)
- 3 agents: $69/mo (Growth $23 x 3 agents = $69/mo. No seat minimum or cap is listed for Growth.)
- 10 agents: $230/mo (Growth $23 x 10 agents = $230/mo. No seat cap is listed for Growth, so it qualifies; no volume caps are listed either.)
Plan compared: Growth plan, 1 agent, billed monthly. Cheapest paid hosted plan, billed monthly, that gives every agent a full seat and covers the month's conversations (1 agent / 100, 3 agents / 600, 10 agents / 2,000), plus overage when that is cheaper. Free plans, AI-agent usage fees, phone minutes and messaging carrier fees are not counted.
What Freshdesk does
Core: Human handoff & escalation, AI copilot for support agents, Email ticketing & shared inbox, Workflows & routing, SLAs, reporting & CSAT.
Important: AI answers for customers, Website chat widget, Grounded answers & guardrails, Runs in your help desk (partly), Email ticket automation, WhatsApp & social messaging, Actions & customer data, Visual flow builder, Conversation analytics, Security & compliance, Public help center & docs, Customer profiles & context, Integrations & API.
Also has: AI phone agent (partly), Lead capture & qualification (partly), Testing & answer correction, Multilingual answers, In-app support SDK, API & webhooks (partly), Built-in business calling, In-app announcements (partly), Agent mobile apps (partly), E-commerce order actions (partly), Slack & Teams customer channels (partly), Multiple brands & stores, Team email client (partly), Security & compliance (partly).
Freshdesk price hikes
- Freshdesk cut its free tier · Jul 2026
PricingSaaS logged the removal of the free starter program (1-2 agents at $0 for 6 months) on 2026-07-20; the official pricing page now shows no free plan. - Freshdesk raised annual per-agent prices 12-27% · Jan 2026
Annual-billed per-agent prices rose on all three paid plans: Growth $15 to $19 (+27%), Pro $49 to $55 (+12%), Enterprise $79 to $89 (+13%). - Freshdesk cut its free tier · Dec 2022
The free plan gained a 10-agent cap: a Jan 2021 archived snapshot has no cap and a Dec 2022 snapshot has one, and the article dates the change to 2022, so the exact month is unknown.
Alternatives to Freshdesk
Freshdesk is the cheapest help desk we track at 1 agent. The others:
Freshdesk alternatives: 2 help desks compared, at every size.
Other kinds of products that cover part of Freshdesk
- Salesforce (CRM): covers 100% of Freshdesk
- HubSpot (CRM): covers 94% of Freshdesk; missing or partial: SLAs, reporting & CSAT (partly), Multiple brands & stores (partly)
- Fin (Intercom) (AI support agents): covers 56% of Freshdesk; missing or partial: Email ticketing & shared inbox, Workflows & routing (partly), SLAs, reporting & CSAT (partly), Public help center & docs (partly), Customer profiles & context
- Chatbase (AI support agents): covers 55% of Freshdesk; missing or partial: AI copilot for support agents, Email ticketing & shared inbox (partly), Workflows & routing (partly), SLAs, reporting & CSAT (partly), Public help center & docs (partly)
- Aircall (Business phone): covers 45% of Freshdesk; missing or partial: AI copilot for support agents (partly), Email ticketing & shared inbox, Workflows & routing (partly), SLAs, reporting & CSAT (partly), Website chat widget
- Sprout Social (Social media tools): covers 33% of Freshdesk; missing or partial: AI copilot for support agents (partly), Email ticketing & shared inbox, Workflows & routing (partly), SLAs, reporting & CSAT (partly), AI answers for customers
Every change we logged
- Jul 2026 · Free tier cut: PricingSaaS logged the removal of the free starter program (1-2 agents at $0 for 6 months) on 2026-07-20; the official pricing page now shows no free plan.
- Jan 2026 · Free tier cut: PricingSaaS logged, dated 2026-01-10, a cut in the free plan's agent cap from 10 to 2 (an 80% drop) and a 6-month limit on the freemium tier; the entries do not name Freshdesk, but its free plan had the 10-agent cap, and the diff links point to earlier quarters, so the month may be off.
- Jan 2026 · Price increase: Annual-billed per-agent prices rose on all three paid plans: Growth $15 to $19 (+27%), Pro $49 to $55 (+12%), Enterprise $79 to $89 (+13%). PricingSaaS captured the change between Dec 29, 2025 and Jan 5, 2026 (it filed the entry under Apr 2026); monthly prices before the change are not sourced.
- Dec 2022 · Free tier cut: The free plan gained a 10-agent cap: a Jan 2021 archived snapshot has no cap and a Dec 2022 snapshot has one, and the article dates the change to 2022, so the exact month is unknown.
Sources
Pricing page: freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing. Prices last checked Oct 16, 2026. Monthly rates were read on the official page after selecting Monthly (Growth $23, Pro $66, Enterprise $107), and the annual rates match the page. The Jan 2026 increase date rests on PricingSaaS's Dec 29, 2025 to Jan 5, 2026 capture window (its entries are filed under Apr 2026) and a Jan 18, 2026 analyst note; pre-increase monthly prices are unsourced, so history holds only the current point.