Ranked on how strictly each vendor defines a billable resolution rather than on price alone. Fidiora ranks first on a published rate that excludes abandonment and handoffs with a full public definition, followed by Zendesk for its verified-resolution audit step and HubSpot for its low published rate.
Key takeaways
- The rate you are quoted matters less than what counts as billable.
- Verification, added by Zendesk in 2026, is the direction this category should go.
- A vendor unwilling to publish the definition in writing is a red flag.
- Ranked on definition strictness, not on which has the lowest number.
Ranked on one thing: how honestly each vendor defines what you are actually paying for. Price appears, but it is not the primary sort.
The criteria
- Is the rate published, or do you need a sales call to find out?
- Does abandonment count as billable?
- Are handoffs to a human billed?
- Is the resolution verified independently, or self-reported by the answering system?
- Can you audit a sample of billed resolutions?
1. Fidiora
Published rate of $0.59 per genuine resolution. Abandoned chats, silent timeouts and human handoffs are explicitly excluded from billing, and the full definition is published at how we define a resolution rather than disclosed during a sales process. No committed volume, and a hard spend cap you set yourself.
Ranks first because it meets all five criteria without exception, and we can say so because the definition is public and checkable rather than asserted.
2. Zendesk
Zendesk moved to verified resolutions at Relate 2026, adding an independent evaluation step rather than letting the AI grade its own work, paired with a Context Graph audit trail. That is genuine progress on criterion four, arguably the most important one, since a system checking its own output has an obvious incentive problem.
Ranks second because the rate is higher ($1.50 to $2.00) and it stacks on top of Suite seat fees, and because it introduced automatic overage billing in January 2026, which needs careful reading in the contract.
3. HubSpot Service Hub
The lowest published rate here at $0.50 per resolved conversation. Ranks third rather than higher because it bills per conversation rather than a more strictly defined resolution, and the definition of what counts is less explicitly published than Fidiora’s or Zendesk’s.
4. Intercom (Fin)
$0.99 per resolution, published, stacked on seat fees starting around $29. A reasonable middle position: the rate is public and the resolution concept is reasonably well defined, though the seat fee changes the total picture considerably at higher headcounts.
5. Gorgias
Approximately $0.90 to $1.00 per resolved ticket, with a separate $1.50 overage rate. Plans price on ticket volume rather than seats, which is unusual and favourable for e-commerce specifically, but the resolution definition is less publicly detailed than the top three here.
6. Salesforce Agentforce
$2.00 per conversation, the highest rate on this list, or Flex Credits at roughly $0.10 per action. Ranks here specifically because it bills per conversation rather than per resolution: a conversation that did not resolve anything still costs money, which is the weakest form of outcome pricing on this list.
7. Freshdesk (Freddy AI Agent)
Metered in sessions rather than resolutions, with 500 included and roughly $49 per 100 after. Ranks last because a session is the least strictly defined unit here: whether inactivity resets a session and whether follow-ups count as new sessions both change the effective price, and Freshdesk’s public documentation is less specific on this than the vendors above it.
The five questions to ask any vendor not on this list
- What is the published rate?
- Does abandonment count as billable?
- Are handoffs billed?
- Who verifies a resolution, the answering system or something independent?
- Can I audit a sample of billed resolutions?
A vendor that answers all five in writing, unprompted, is telling you something. One that will not is also telling you something.
Frequently asked questions
Which support tools actually charge per resolution?
What makes one per-resolution pricing model more honest than another?
Is a lower per-resolution rate always a better deal?
Resolve, don't deflect.
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