Crisp Pricing Explained: How Much It Really Costs
Crisp looks like flat pricing, and for the chat part it is. But there is a second meter running underneath it, and that meter is the one people misread. Here is the whole picture in plain numbers.
The whole thing in four lines
- Two meters, not one. A flat plan fee, plus a dollar balance for AI.
- Conversations are unlimited on every plan. That part is genuinely good.
- The AI is not. When the balance hits zero, the bot stops.
- Credit costs the same at every tier. You buy more, not cheaper.
Meter one: the plan fee
This part is simple, which is why people like it. You pick a tier, you get a number of seats, and you can have as many customer conversations as you like. No per-chat charge, no surprise on volume.
| Plan | Cost | Seats | AI credit | What that buys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 2 seats | None | No chatbot at all |
| Mini | $45/mo | 4 seats | About $5 | Roughly 90 automated conversations |
| Essentials | $95/mo | 10 seats | About $25 | Roughly 450 automated conversations |
| Plus | $295/mo | Higher tier | About $75 | Roughly 1,350, and the watermark can come off |
Per seat, that is about $11 a month on Mini and $9.50 on Essentials, which is cheap for this category. If you only ever wanted a shared inbox and a chat widget, you could stop reading here and be perfectly happy.
Note what the tiers really sell you: seats and capability, not volume. Moving from Mini to Essentials does not buy you more customers to talk to, because you already had unlimited. It buys you six more people to talk to them with. That is a headcount decision, so the tier you need is set by your rota, not your traffic.
Meter two: the AI credit balance
AI credits means you buy a dollar balance, and when it runs out mid-month the bot stops answering. It is not an allowance of conversations. It is money sitting in an account, drawn down every time the automation replies to someone.
Crisp publishes what its credit converts to, which is helpful, so we can do the division. The last column is the all-in figure: plan fee plus credit, divided by the automated conversations that credit covers.
| Plan | Monthly | AI convos | Credit rate | All-in per AI convo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mini | $45 | ~90 | ~5.6 cents | 50 cents |
| Essentials | $95 | ~450 | ~5.6 cents | 21 cents |
| Plus | $295 | ~1,350 | ~5.6 cents | 22 cents |
Look at the fourth column. It does not move. About five and a half cents an automated conversation, whether you are paying $45 or $295. In most software, buying in bulk gets you a better unit price. Here it does not. You are buying a bigger balance at the same rate, which means the tier you choose is really a decision about how often you want to think about topping up.
The all-in column is the number to actually budget with, and it is much higher, because the plan fee is doing most of the work. On Mini, 90 automated conversations against a $45 bill is fifty cents each. Be fair about this, though: that same $45 is also buying you unlimited human conversations, so the number overstates the case if your bot volume is low and your human volume is high.
What zero looks like
When the balance empties, the bot goes quiet. The inbox still works, your agents still chat, conversations are still unlimited. Only the automation stops, until you top up or the next period begins. The uncomfortable bit is the timing: credit drains fastest in your busiest weeks. A launch, an outage or a delivery problem is exactly the situation where you need the bot on, and exactly the situation that empties the balance early. Ninety automated conversations on Mini is about three a day. One bad Tuesday can take a week of it.
The $200 logo
One more line item worth naming. Removing the Crisp watermark from your widget requires the Plus plan at $295 a month, a $200 jump from Essentials. Part of that buys real capability and more credit. But if a clean widget is the only thing you are missing, you are paying $2,400 a year for it.
What a year looks like
Monthly figures make everything sound small, so multiply by twelve. Mini is $540 a year, Essentials $1,140, Plus $3,540. Then add whatever you spent on top-ups, which is the number nobody forecasts because it depends on how good a year you had.
That last part is the honest difficulty with a credit model. You cannot write next year's support budget as a single line, because one of the two meters is driven by demand you do not control. Finance teams tend to notice this before support teams do.
How a conversation-counted plan compares
The alternative model is to count conversations instead of dollars, so the number you are given is the number you can use. EzyConn works that way: AI is in the plan price, GPT-4o and Claude on every tier, no per-resolution fee and no per-seat fee. Annual billing takes 20% off, so Basic is $566 a year rather than $708.
| Plan | Cost | AI convos/mo | All-in each |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 forever | 100 | $0.00 |
| Lite | $19/mo | 200 | 9.5 cents |
| Starter | $29/mo | 250 | 11.6 cents |
| Basic | $59/mo | 1,000 | 5.9 cents |
| Pro | $89/mo | 5,000 | 1.8 cents |
| Business | $189/mo | 10,000 | 1.9 cents |
Two honest notes on that table. Seats come bundled, up to 10 from Basic, so a ten-person team pays $59, not $59 plus ten of something. And unlike Crisp, those conversation figures are the ceiling rather than a starting balance, so there is nothing to top up. The full grid is on the pricing page, and the structural argument is on the Crisp alternative page. If you have already decided, the migration guide covers the mechanics.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Crisp cost?
There is a free plan with 2 seats and no chatbot. Mini is $45 a month for 4 seats, Essentials is $95 a month for 10 seats, and Plus is $295 a month. Every paid tier also ships a starting balance of AI credits: about $5 on Mini, about $25 on Essentials and about $75 on Plus. Conversations themselves are unlimited on all plans, which is unusual and genuinely valuable. Pricing was checked in July 2026, so confirm current figures before you budget.
What are Crisp AI credits?
AI credits means you buy a dollar balance, and the automated replies draw it down as they happen. It is not a conversation allowance, it is money sitting in an account. Crisp equates roughly $5 to about 90 automated conversations, about $25 to roughly 450 and about $75 to roughly 1,350. That works out to a shade over five cents per automated conversation, and the rate does not improve as you move up the tiers. You buy more credit, not cheaper credit.
What happens when Crisp AI credits run out?
The automated replies stop until you top up the balance or the next billing period begins. The rest of the product keeps working normally: the inbox is fine, your agents can still chat, conversations are still unlimited. Only the automation switches off. The awkward part is timing, because credit drains fastest in your busiest weeks, so the bot tends to go quiet exactly when a launch, an outage or a shipping delay is driving the extra volume.
Does Crisp have a free plan?
Yes, with 2 seats. It has no chatbot and zero AI credits, so it is a live chat widget with humans behind it rather than a way to trial the automation. That matters if AI deflection is the reason you are shopping, because the free tier cannot show you how well the bot handles your questions. You have to pay $45 for Mini to see roughly 90 automated conversations of evidence.
How much does it cost to remove Crisp branding?
Removing the Crisp watermark from your chat widget requires the Plus plan at $295 a month. That is a $200 jump from Essentials at $95. Some of that buys more AI credit and more capability, but for a team whose only unmet need is a clean widget, it is a large monthly amount for a logo.
See the AI before you pay for it
500 messages a month, 2 seats, $0 forever. Enough real traffic to judge the answers rather than the demo.
Start freeCrisp figures reflect published pricing as checked in July 2026 and may have changed. Per-conversation rates are our own arithmetic on those published figures, rounded. Confirm anything budget-critical directly with the vendor.