Help Scout Pricing
- Support pricing
- $25/mo at the smallest
Help Scout pricing starts at $25 a month, which is $300 over twelve months. There is no free plan, but there is a trial: 15 days. Every figure below was read from the vendor's pricing page on 20 August 2026, and 2 charges that the headline price does not include are set out below.
Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 20 August 2026.
Help Scout ranking and coverage
- In Support
- #5 of 7 tied
- Overall
- #109 of 122 tied
- Terms score
- 4.2 /10
- Referenced here
- 3 pages
Cost position 1.7 · Portability 5 · Subscription flexibility 6 - Ranked on published terms only: entry price against category peers, portability and subscription flexibility, equally weighted. This is not a quality score.How the rank is calculated.
Help Scout pricing at a glance
| Entry price | Standard from $25 per user/month billed annually |
|---|---|
| Smallest invoice | $25 a month, or $300 a year |
| How that is reached | Standard at $25 a month |
| Seat minimum | None on the entry plan |
| Free plan | No |
| Free trial | 15 days |
| How it charges | subscription |
| Priced plans published | 6 rows on the vendor's page |
| Affiliate programme | No |
| Prices read from | The vendor's own pricing page |
| Last checked | 20 August 2026 |
Every Help Scout plan and what it costs
Read from the vendor's own pricing page on 20 August 2026. Charged as subscription. Free trial: 15 days.
| Plan | Price | Billing | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $25 | per month | per user, billed annually - $25 is the annual rate; the page's toggle advertises 16% off annual. Two inboxes, live chat and SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, multiple knowledge bases, one basic SLA policy, basic workflows and the AI inbox assistant |
| Plus | $45 | per month | per user, billed annually - Five inboxes, advanced workflows, two advanced SLA policies, a secure customer portal, unlimited AI Drafts, round-robin routing and Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot integrations |
| Pro | $75 | per month | per user, billed annually - Ten inboxes, plus enterprise security, HIPAA support and a dedicated account manager |
| Additional inboxes Add-on | $10 | per month | Each, beyond the two, five or ten included by tier |
| Additional knowledge base sites Add-on | $20 | per month | Each, beyond the two or three included by tier |
| AI Answers | From $0.75 | per usage | Per resolution, billed monthly on top of the plan |
What Help Scout costs beyond the advertised price
Each of these is a figure you can check on the vendor's own page. The arithmetic is shown so you can redo it rather than take our word for it.
- Charged on top of a plan$240 a year
Additional knowledge base sites is charged on top of a plan rather than instead of one: $20 a month, which is $240 a year on top of whichever tier you hold.
Working$20 a month x 12 = $240 a year, added to a tier price rather than replacing it.
Computed from the plan table on Help Scout pricing , read 20 August 2026
- Charged on top of a plan$120 a year
Additional inboxes is charged on top of a plan rather than instead of one: $10 a month, which is $120 a year on top of whichever tier you hold.
Working$10 a month x 12 = $120 a year, added to a tier price rather than replacing it.
Computed from the plan table on Help Scout pricing , read 20 August 2026
Fixed mechanics above add $360 a year to the advertised price. Usage-dependent charges are listed but not summed, because a figure that depends on how much you use cannot be added to one that does not.
What Help Scout actually costs over a year
A monthly price is not the same thing as a monthly contract. These are the plans above resolved both ways, per seat or unit where the plan is charged that way. Where a vendor quotes only a yearly figure it is divided by twelve rather than left out, and the Quoted column says which figure the vendor actually publishes.
| Plan | Quoted | Monthly | Over 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standardper user, billed annually | per month | $25 | $300 |
| Plusper user, billed annually | per month | $45 | $540 |
| Proper user, billed annually | per month | $75 | $900 |
| Additional inboxes add-on | per month | $10 | $120 |
| Additional knowledge base sites add-on | per month | $20 | $240 |
Help Scout pricing over time
Read from 20 archived captures of the vendor's pricing page , spanning January 2019 to September 2026. Every figure below links to the capture it came from, so you can check it against the page as it stood on the day.
- Plus changed 3 times between 14 January 2022 and 7 September 2026, from $35 per user to $45 per user, up 28.6% overall.
- Pro changed once between 16 February 2023 and 7 September 2026, from $65 per user to $75 per user, up 15.4% overall.
- Standard changed once between 14 January 2022 and 7 September 2026, from $20 per user to $25 per user, up 25% overall.
- AI Answers has been published at $0.75 in every capture we read, from 14 December 2025 to 7 September 2026.
Plus
| Published price | Charged | Seen from | Last seen | Capture |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $35 | per user | 14 January 2022 | Single capture | Archive |
| $40 | per user | 16 February 2023 | Single capture | Archive |
| $50 | per user | 7 March 2024 | Single capture | Archive |
| $45 | per user | 14 December 2025 | 7 September 2026 | Archive |
Pro
Standard
AI Answers
| Published price | Charged | Seen from | Last seen | Capture |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $0.75 | Not stated | 14 December 2025 | 7 September 2026 | Archive |
4 archived captures with no price we could read
The capture exists, but the figures on it could not be extracted - usually a page that renders prices in JavaScript, or a currency selector the archive did not record. Listed rather than dropped, because a gap in a price history reads as "nothing changed" and these are not that.
- 29 January 2019 - capture - no plan name sat next to a published figure in this capture
- 26 April 2020 - capture - no plan name sat next to a published figure in this capture
- 7 February 2021 - capture - no plan name sat next to a published figure in this capture
- 16 February 2025 - capture - no plan name sat next to a published figure in this capture
Compiled 18 September 2026 from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Plan names were matched against the archived page text and the first currency-anchored figure within 160 characters was recorded, rejecting any figure with a competing plan name standing between it and the name it was matched to. The currency and the unit were read from each capture rather than assumed: captures served in a currency other than $, and captures where no plan name sat beside a figure, are listed as unread rather than dropped. Archived pages show the price as served to the archive's crawler, which may differ by region from the price you are shown.
Help Scout pricing against its competitors
Compared on the smallest invoice each vendor will accept, not on the advertised per-seat rate. Where a product has a seat minimum, the figure below is the minimum times the rate, because that is the cheque you would actually write.
| Product | Cheapest paid entry | Free plan | Against Help Scout |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zendesk | $19 a month | No | −$6 a month (−24%) |
| Freshdesk | $19 a month | No | −$6 a month (−24%) |
| Help Scout | $25 a month | No | This product |
| Intercom | $29 a month | No | +$4 a month (+16%) |
Which Help Scout plan should you buy?
| Your situation | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You are replacing a shared Gmail inbox | Standard | $25 per user for shared inboxes, knowledge base and chat. This is the tier Help Scout is designed around. |
| You need custom fields and Salesforce integration | Plus | $45 per user, bought for data structure rather than for support features. |
| You need HIPAA support or enterprise security review | Pro | $75 per user, and generally a compliance requirement rather than a support one. |
| You want AI deflection | Budget AI Answers separately | From $0.75 per resolution on top of the plan, so cost follows volume rather than seats. |
| You need SLA management and complex routing | Consider Zendesk or Freshdesk instead | Help Scout deliberately keeps routing simple, which is a limit as you scale. |
Verdict by who you are
Small company outgrowing a shared inboxYes
The best product in this category at making support feel like a person rather than a ticket number.
SaaS team of under about twenty agentsYes
Fast to set up, pleasant to use, and the knowledge base needs no project to launch.
Enterprise support organisationNo
Routing, SLA management and customisation are deliberately shallower than Zendesk's.
Internal IT service deskNo
Wrong tool. This is customer support, not ITSM.
Should you buy Help Scout?
Buy Help Scout if…
- Small and mid-sized teams wanting support to feel personal
- Companies replacing a shared Gmail inbox with something real
- Teams who want a knowledge base without a project
Do not buy Help Scout if…
- Enterprise support needing deep routing and SLA management
- Internal IT service desks
- Organisations requiring extensive customisation
What leaving Help Scout would cost
moderate lock-in
Help Scout scores on public API. Portability 5/10 ; lock-in is the inverse. How this is calculated.
The design decision that defines it
Most help desks send replies that look like they came from a system: a ticket reference in the subject, a signature block, a portal link and a warning not to reply below the line. Help Scout sends an email. The customer sees a message from a person, and replying works the way replying always works.
For a company whose support is part of its product experience, that difference is the entire reason to choose it, and it does not appear on any feature comparison.
It is priced above its feature set, deliberately
Standard is $25 per user per month. Freshdesk Growth is $19 and includes more: more channels, more automation, more reporting. If you build a comparison table, Help Scout loses.
The honest case for paying more is that you are buying restraint. There is less to configure, less for the team to learn, and less opportunity to make support feel bureaucratic. Whether that is worth $6 per user per month is a judgement about your company rather than about software.
Where it stops being enough
Three signals that you have outgrown it: you need skills-based routing to get the right issue to the right specialist; you need SLA tracking with escalation; or you need reporting cuts the built-in dashboards cannot produce. All three point at Zendesk, and none of them arrive until support is a department rather than a rota.
AI Answers, priced sensibly
AI Answers costs from $0.75 per resolution on top of the plan. Compared with per-seat AI add-ons elsewhere, notably Freshdesk’s $29 per agent, this suits a small team far better: you pay for deflection you actually get rather than capacity you might use.
Help Scout questions, answered
- Is Help Scout worth it?
- Help Scout is a deliberately small product and better for it.
- How much does Help Scout cost?
- Standard from $25 per user/month billed annually. The cheapest paid tier we recorded is Standard, published at $25 a month, which works out at $25 a month or $300 over a year. Verified against the vendor's pricing page.
- Does Help Scout have a free plan or free trial?
- Help Scout has no free plan. A free trial is available: 15 days.
- What is the best Help Scout alternative?
- It depends on the job. Freshdesk: Cheaper with more features, and a more conventional ticketing feel. Zendesk: The right answer once volume, channels and reporting all scale up. Front: Closest philosophical rival, stronger for shared team email generally.
- Can I self-host Help Scout?
- No. Help Scout is a hosted service only, so your data lives on the vendor's infrastructure.
Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 20 August 2026.
What this profile is based on
Every claim below is about our work, not about Help Scout. A "no" is recorded rather than omitted, because the difference between a tested review and careful desk research is the reader's to weigh. How we research a profile.
-
Prices read from the vendor : yes
Read from Help Scout's own pricing page on 20 August 2026
-
Plans and terms recorded : yes
6 rows, each with its billing period
-
Original screenshots : yes
2 captured by us: pricing page, homepage
-
Sources cited and dated : yes
1 primary source, each with the date it was read
-
Product used first-hand : no
Not tested. This profile is desk research from primary sources
-
Alternatives used first-hand : no
None, so comparisons here rest on published facts rather than use
-
Vendor contacted : no
Not contacted for this profile
Desk research from Help Scout's own pricing page, read on 20 August 2026 through a United States egress. The billing basis was established by inspecting which toggle carried the active state in the rendered page, because "$25 per user/mo" beside a "-16%" annual badge does not say which period it is. Nobody here has answered a customer in Help Scout, and the claim that it feels more human than a ticket queue is a judgement about its design rather than a measurement.
Where Help Scout appears on this site
3 other pages here reference Help Scout. Every one is listed below, so the figure can be checked rather than taken.
- Another profile Chatwoot names it as a competitor
- Another profile FreeScout names it as a competitor
- Another profile Front names it as a competitor
Counts pages on this site that name the product by choice - price guides, pricing question pages, deal records and other profiles. Category and directory indexes list everything automatically and are not counted.
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Provenance and freshness
When each fact was last checked
- Pricing ·
- Plans ·
- Free trial
- Features
- Platforms
- Integrations
- Affiliate programme
- Company details
Individually sourced claims
-
Standard is $25 a user a month, Plus $45 and Pro $75, with the page's annual toggle active and advertising 16% off annual billing
Help Scout pricing ↗ · checked
-
Standard includes live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, multiple knowledge bases, one basic SLA policy and the AI inbox assistant
Help Scout pricing ↗ · checked
-
Inboxes are capped by tier at two, five and ten, with additional inboxes at $10 a month and additional knowledge base sites at $20 a month
Help Scout pricing comparison table ↗ · checked
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AI Answers is charged at $0.75 per resolution, billed monthly on top of the plan
Help Scout pricing ↗ · checked
What has changed
-
August 2026
- Prices re-read and unchanged - Standard $25, Plus $45, Pro $75 a user a month
- Established that those are the annual rates by reading the toggle state, and recorded the 16% annual discount the page advertises
- Recorded the per-tier inbox caps and the $10 and $20 add-on prices for extra inboxes and sites
-
August 2026
- Per-user pricing verified, including per-resolution AI Answers pricing
- Added plan picker and verdicts
Sources & verification
Facts on this page were read from the sources below on the dates shown. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we record it as not disclosed rather than estimating it.
- Help Scout pricing - checked 20 August 2026
Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will re-check it. Corrections are logged on the page.