Help Scout Pricing Plans and AI Answers Cost per Resolution
October 01, 2026
Help Scout pricing is $25 per user a month on Standard, $45 on Plus and $75 on Pro with annual billing, or about $30, $54 and $90 billed monthly. A Free plan covers up to 5 users and 100 contacts a month. On top of any plan, AI Answers costs $0.75 for every conversation the AI resolves on its own, after a free 3-month trial.
That gives a Help Scout bill two meters: how many people are on the team, and how many questions the AI closes. Below are the plans, how AI Answers resolutions are counted, the add-ons, and monthly totals for four real team sizes. Prices come from helpscout.com/pricing and its pricing FAQ, checked in October 2026, in US dollars.
Help Scout pricing plans compared
| Plan | Annual billing (per user, per month) | Monthly billing (approx.) | Users | Inboxes | Docs sites | Contacts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | up to 5 | 1 | 1 | 100 a month |
| Standard | $25 | $30 | up to 25 | 2 | 2 | unlimited |
| Plus | $45 | $54 | up to 50 | 5 | 3 | unlimited |
| Pro | $75 | $90 | unlimited, minimum 10 | 10 | 5 | unlimited |
Help Scout lists a 16 percent discount for annual billing. Standard and Plus come with a 15-day trial with no credit card; Pro is sold through a demo. Plus adds advanced workflows, two SLA policies, a secure customer portal, round robin routing, unlimited AI Drafts and the Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot integrations. Pro adds unlimited workflows and SLAs, SSO, HIPAA compliance and a dedicated account manager. Plus includes 5 light users and Pro 15, for colleagues who only view and comment.
How much does Help Scout cost per month?
A team that uses AI Answers typically pays between $150 and $2,500 a month for Help Scout. Seats are the predictable part. The AI line depends on your volume: at a few hundred resolutions a month it is a small add-on, at a few thousand it is larger than the seat bill.
The four setups below are priced on annual billing, after the free AI Answers trial ends. Each assumes the AI resolves about 40 percent of chat conversations, which is a realistic share for a team with a decent Docs site.
| Team | Plan | Seats | AI resolutions a month | AI Answers cost | Total a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Founder plus 2 support people | Standard | 3 x $25 = $75 | 150 | $112.50 | about $188 |
| Growing SaaS, 8 agents | Standard | 8 x $25 = $200 | 600 | $450 | about $650 |
| Same team on Plus for HubSpot sync | Plus | 8 x $45 = $360 | 600 | $450 | about $810 |
| Support org, 20 agents | Plus | 20 x $45 = $900 | 2,000 | $1,500 | about $2,400 |
Two things move these numbers more than anything else. Every new hire adds $25 to $75 to the invoice, and every month of product growth adds resolutions. Extra inboxes ($10 a month each on annual billing) and extra Docs sites ($20 a month) are small by comparison. If a team needs Pro for SSO or HIPAA, the 10-user minimum puts the floor at $750 a month before AI.
How does Help Scout AI Answers pricing work?
AI Answers costs $0.75 per resolution on any paid plan, billed monthly. A resolution is one conversation that AI Answers closes without human help: the customer got an AI reply and did not escalate, search the knowledge base further, ask more questions or click "I still need help". You pay once per conversation even if the AI answered several questions in it.
The billing rule is fair. You never pay for an answer that failed. The practical issue is predictability. Help Scout lets you set a monthly spending cap, and once you reach it AI Answers is switched off for the rest of the cycle. So either the bill floats with your traffic, or the AI stops answering in your busiest week. New accounts get 3 months of unlimited AI Answers free, which makes the first quarter look cheaper than the steady state.
Is Help Scout cheaper than Zendesk or Intercom?
For small and mid-size teams, yes. Help Scout's $25 Standard seat is lower than most Zendesk Suite tiers, and its $0.75 AI resolution is cheaper than Intercom Fin at $0.99 per outcome. Our Intercom Fin pricing breakdown shows the same 4-size math for Intercom. Help Scout also has a usable free plan, which Intercom does not.
Where Help Scout stops being cheap is when chat becomes the main channel. Every per-user tool scales cost with headcount, and every per-resolution AI scales cost with volume. A flat-price AI chatbot scales with neither. That is why a team whose growth is in website chat often ends up comparing Help Scout with chat-first tools, the same way LiveChat pricing buyers do.
Does Help Scout charge per user?
Yes. Every paid Help Scout plan is priced per user per month: $25, $45 or $75 on annual billing. Contacts are unlimited on paid plans, so you are not charged for how many customers write in, only for how many teammates answer them. Light users on Plus and Pro can view and comment without a full seat.
Per-user pricing is easy to forecast, which is why many email-first teams like it. Just remember that support hiring tends to come in steps. Going from 4 to 8 agents doubles the seat line overnight. If your agents send a lot of email from Help Scout, it is also worth keeping their replies consistent with one email signature template for every support agent, since customers see the signature on every reply.
What is a cheaper alternative to Help Scout for website chat?
For website chat with AI answers, InChat is the cheaper alternative: Starter is $24 a month billed yearly with 500 AI conversations and 3 team members, Plus is $74 with 2,000 AI conversations and 10 team members, and Pro is $249 with unlimited conversations and unlimited team members. There is no per-resolution fee and no per-seat line.
Here is the same comparison as the table above, on InChat's yearly plans:
| Team | Help Scout total | InChat plan | InChat total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 people, 150 AI resolutions | about $188 | Starter | $24 |
| 8 agents, 600 AI resolutions | about $650 to $810 | Plus | $74 |
| 20 agents, 2,000 AI resolutions | about $2,400 | Pro | $249 |
The comparison is fair only for the chat part of the job. Help Scout is a full email help desk with a polished Docs product, a customer portal, HIPAA on Pro and a free plan. InChat is an AI chatbot with human handoff and a shared inbox (email, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram are on Plus). Many teams keep Help Scout for email and move website chat to InChat, which trains on your existing Help Scout Docs articles. The full side-by-side is on our Help Scout alternative page, and every InChat plan is listed on the AI chatbot pricing page.
How to estimate your own Help Scout bill
Take three numbers from your current reports: how many people answer customers, how many chat conversations you get a month, and what share of them a good AI could close from your docs (30 to 50 percent is common). Then:
- Seats: team size x $25, $45 or $75, depending on whether you need Plus integrations or Pro security.
- AI: chat conversations x expected AI share x $0.75.
- Add $10 per extra inbox and $20 per extra Docs site.
Example: 5 agents on Standard with 1,000 chats a month and a 40 percent AI share is 5 x $25 = $125, plus 400 x $0.75 = $300, so about $425 a month. On InChat the same volume fits Plus at $74 a month billed yearly. If you want to see how well the AI would actually answer, paste your Docs URL into the tool at the top of this page and ask it your ten most common questions.
Help Scout pricing FAQ
Is Help Scout free?
Help Scout has a Free plan for up to 5 users with 1 inbox, 1 Docs site and 100 contacts a month, including email, live chat and AI Assist. It suits very small teams. Once you pass 100 contacts a month or need more inboxes, workflows or integrations, you move to Standard at $25 per user.
How much is Help Scout per user?
Help Scout costs $25 per user a month on Standard, $45 on Plus and $75 on Pro with annual billing, about $30, $54 and $90 on monthly billing. Pro requires at least 10 users, so its minimum is $750 a month billed annually.
Does Help Scout AI Answers have a free trial?
Yes. Every new Help Scout account gets 3 months of unlimited AI Answers resolutions at no cost, starting the day the account is created. After that, each resolution costs $0.75, and you can set a monthly cap that switches AI Answers off when reached.
Can I cancel Help Scout anytime?
Monthly plans can be cancelled at the end of the billing month. Annual plans are paid for the year up front at the discounted rate, so check your renewal date before switching tools and plan the move for the weeks before it.