Help Scout Review (2026)Free for 5 Users, Standard $25 a Seat
By Daan Haket · Researched and written with an AI assistant · who does what
The Free plan caps you at 100 contacts a month and one Inbox.
small and mid-sized support teams that want an email-first shared inbox with live chat and a help centre, priced per user without a minimum below Pro.
you run a large contact centre with native phone support, or you need SSO but have fewer than ten agents (SSO is on Pro, with a 10-user minimum).
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Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 10 Oct 2026
Free covers up to 5 users, 1 Inbox, 1 Docs site and 100 contacts a month, with 10 saved replies and 10 tags. A contact is someone who got a reply from your team or the AI assistant; several conversations with the same person count once. Standard is $25 per user a month billed annually or $30 monthly, for up to 25 users: 2 Inboxes, live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, multiple knowledge bases, one basic SLA policy, basic workflows, unlimited tags and saved replies and the AI Inbox assistant.
Plus, marked popular, is $45 annually or $54 monthly, for up to 50 users: 5 Inboxes, advanced workflows, two advanced SLA policies, a secure customer portal, unlimited AI drafts, round-robin routing, Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot integrations and 25 light users. Pro is $75 annually or $90 monthly with unlimited users and a minimum of 10, sold through a demo: 10 Inboxes, unlimited workflows and SLAs, SSO/SAML, HIPAA compliance, 50 light users and a dedicated onboarding specialist.
Extra Inboxes cost $10 a month and extra Docs sites $20 a month. AI Answers, the autonomous assistant, is an add-on at $0.75 per resolution billed monthly, with a 3-month free trial. Annual billing is labelled 16% off; SMS and phone calls run through integrations. Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.
Category context: Customer Support. Across the 13 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is $20 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). Help Scout’s entry price of $25 a month sits above that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →
What the pricing page doesn’t say
Standard stops at 25 users and Plus at 50; Pro has a 10-user minimum and is sold through a demo. Extra Inboxes ($10) and Docs sites ($20) are charged monthly, AI Answers adds $0.75 per resolution, and SMS and phone run through integrations rather than natively. We have not used Help Scout ourselves.
What Help Scout does
Email-first shared inbox for support teams with live chat, social messaging, a knowledge base, workflows and an AI assistant that answers customer questions.
The free plan is real; the 100-contact cap is what you outgrow
Help Scout's Free plan is a working shared inbox for up to 5 people, but it stops at 100 contacts a month, one Inbox and 10 saved replies. A small shop answering a few customers a day can live on it; anything busier hits the contact cap. Standard at $25 per user a month yearly removes the contact limit and adds live chat, social channels and basic automation, which is what most small support teams need.
Plus at $45 is about routing and integrations: round robin, advanced workflows, a customer portal and Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot, plus light users who can read without a full seat. Pro starts at 10 users, so it costs at least $750 a month on annual billing and is aimed at teams that need SSO or HIPAA. AI Answers is charged per resolution on top of any plan, so budget it by volume, not by seat.
How to actually use Help Scout
Start on Free if you are five people or fewer and check how close you get to 100 contacts a month. Count Inboxes: Standard includes 2 and each extra one is $10 a month. Try Standard or Plus on the free trial before committing to annual billing, which saves about 16%. If you test AI Answers, use the 3-month free trial to see the resolution rate on your own questions before paying $0.75 per resolution.
Distilled from Help Scout's own pricing page, read on 2026-10-10 in a headless browser with the monthly and annual toggles (plan prices, user caps, Inbox and Docs limits, contact definition and the AI Answers add-on). Help Scout is a PartnerStack partner of ours. We have not used Help Scout ourselves.
Help Scout vs Zendesk, side by side
Each column shows the vendor’s own published entry price, read on the date shown. Entry prices can cover different services or units, so check what each one buys. We do not average them into a score.
The Help Scout link above is an affiliate link — we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you — and the other column is a plain link. Neither changes what this table says.
The natural comparison is Zendesk — Zendesk is in our dossiers too and is the larger ticketing platform with more routing, reporting and add-ons. Help Scout keeps support closer to a shared email inbox, has a usable free plan for up to 5 users and fewer configuration layers..
Frequently asked questions
How much does Help Scout cost?
Read on 10 October 2026: Free for up to 5 users; Standard $25 per user a month billed annually or $30 monthly; Plus $45 or $54; Pro $75 or $90 with a 10-user minimum.
Is Help Scout free?
There is a Free plan for up to 5 users with 1 Inbox, 1 Docs site and 100 contacts a month.
What does Help Scout AI Answers cost?
$0.75 per resolution, billed monthly on top of the plan, with a 3-month free trial.
Is this a hands-on review of Help Scout?
This is a researched assessment, not a hands-on test — where we've used a tool ourselves, we say so explicitly. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.
- Read 2026-10-10 on helpscout.com/pricing with the monthly and annual toggles, USD.
- A dated screenshot of that pricing page, kept on this site as the receipt.
Others in this category
Reviewed customer support tools that share ground with Help Scout — comparable in what they do, not drop-in swaps:
New reviews, price changes we recorded, and the cost conditions we found. No sponsored placements. Unsubscribe anytime.
This is our researched assessment — not a paid placement. The “Visit” links on this page are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you, and it never changes our take. How we review →