Chatwoot vs tawk.to Comparison 2026
Both cover dm & comment automation. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Open-source inbox for every channel at once
Live chat that is free, with paid extras
Why people weigh these two
- tawk.to instead of Chatwoot
- tawk.to gives you free live chat with paid extras, matching Chatwoot's price appeal without the self-hosting work.
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Chatwoot | tawk.to | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $19 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Not stated |
| Data export |
Chatwoot
Open-source inbox for every channel at once
Chatwoot collects website chat, email, Instagram, WhatsApp and the rest into one queue, and it is open source, so the version you self-host costs nothing and keeps the conversation data on your own server. That is the reason most people arrive. The hosted plans are priced per agent for anybody who would rather not run it. Setting up the self-hosted route is a real infrastructure job and the docs do not pretend otherwise.
Our note
Be honest about whether you have somebody who will keep a self-hosted deployment patched, because the free version is only free if that person already exists. If not, the hosted tier at $19 an agent is competitive on its own terms and the open source part is a nice fallback rather than the plan.
Only on this side
- Covers community platforms
- Works with Instagram
- Works with Facebook
- Works with WhatsApp
tawk.to
Live chat that is free, with paid extras
tawk.to gives away the live chat widget itself, with unlimited agents and no seat count, and earns from three things around it: taking the branding off, an AI bot answering from your knowledge base, and hired human agents who answer chats for you by the hour. That last one is unusual enough to be the reason to look. The free product is not a trial and does not expire.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.