Tawk.to alternative
Tawk.to alternative: OpenAgent vs Tawk.to when free live chat stops being free
If you are scoping a Tawk.to alternative because the AI Assist quota started biting, this is the parity comparison. Tawk's free tier is genuinely free for human-only chat, and that is exactly why so many teams start there. The interesting question is what happens when you want AI on the same widget.
Javad PK· CEO & Product Strategy5 min read
TL;DR
Tawk.to runs the largest free chat product on the web. If you need a chat bubble on a side project and the AI question doesn't apply, Tawk is a perfectly good answer.
The trouble starts when AI enters the picture. Tawk's AI Assist add-on bills after a small free quota; their paid hires (humans Tawk staffs on your behalf) bill per hour; the “Remove branding” add-on is $19/month. The free tier is a real onramp, but the upsells compound fast.
Pricing
| What you pay for | Tawk.to | OpenAgent |
|---|---|---|
| Live chat (human) | Free, unlimited | from $3/site/month (billed annually), $5 billed monthly |
| AI Assist (per AI message after quota) | ~$1 per response after the free quota | Your LLM's list price (~$0.0011/ticket on Gemini) |
| Remove “Powered by Tawk” branding | $19/month per property | Business tier (no per-property add-on) |
| Paid Tawk-staffed agents | From ~$1/hour, hired through Tawk | Bring your own team, unlimited seats |
| BYO LLM (your own keys, your account) | No | Yes |
The classic Tawk break-even moment is “we want AI on the widget.” The per-AI-response cost dominates everything else within a few hundred AI messages a month.
Feature parity
| Feature | Tawk.to | OpenAgent |
|---|---|---|
| Live chat | Yes | Yes |
| AI agent | Tawk AI Assist (paid) | Yes, on your keys |
| RAG (custom data) | Limited to FAQ-style training | Yes (PDF, URL, text, citations) |
| Slack / Google Chat alerts | Slack only | Slack + Google Chat |
| Smart routing | Basic | Per-agent SLA, escalation policy |
| Embeddable widget | Yes (iframe-based) | Yes (Shadow DOM, no CSS collisions) |
| White-label / custom domain | Paid add-on | Business tier |
When Tawk is the right call
- You're a one-person shop running a hobby project. Free chat is hard to beat.
- You don't want AI on the widget. If you're happy with a notification-pinged human-only inbox, Tawk handles that fine without sending you a bill.
- You want Tawk-staffed agents at $1/hour. That's a unique offering. We don't replace it.
When teams switch from Tawk to OpenAgent
- They turned on AI Assist and the bill grew faster than the team. Per-AI-response pricing hits hardest exactly when AI is working well.
- They want grounded RAG, not Tawk's FAQ-style canned answers. A 200-page help center fits into our knowledge base as a single import.
- They want their own LLM keys. Either for cost reasons or because their procurement signed an enterprise agreement with a model vendor.
- They're tired of paying $19/month to hide “Powered by Tawk.” We don't sell branding removal as a per-property add-on.
Migrating from Tawk
Two things move easily: the embed snippet (one-line replacement in your site footer) and your operators (we don't charge per seat on Pro, so bring everyone). Conversation history doesn't move cleanly because Tawk doesn't expose a clean export API for non-Enterprise accounts; most teams treat the switch as a clean cut rather than a migration.
Try it on your own LLM keys from $3/mo.
$36 per site per year billed annually, or $5 per site per month billed monthly. No card on file, just paste your model key and your widget is live.