Free Freshdesk Alternatives in 2026: What's Actually Free After the Free Plan Change
Is Freshdesk still free? No. Here are the free Freshdesk alternatives left in 2026, hosted and open source, with verified limits and the real cost of free.
On this page 8 sections
Freshdesk is no longer free beyond a six-month, two-agent Free Program. The free alternatives in 2026 are capped hosted plans from Help Scout (5 users, 100 contacts a month), Zoho Desk (3 users, email only), HubSpot (2 users) and Chatwoot (2 agents, live chat only), or self-hosted open-source tools such as FreeScout, osTicket, Zammad and UVdesk.
Key takeaways
- Freshdesk's pricing page now lists a 14-day trial and paid plans. The Free Program is two agents for six months, Freshdesk only.
- Hosted free plans are free up to a cap: users, contacts, conversations, channels or data retention. Know which cap you will hit first.
- Self-hosted open source has no licence fee and no user cap, but you pay in hosting, patching, backups and on-call time.
- FreeScout's core is free, but features like workflows and a knowledge base are paid modules.
- If the real problem is ticket volume, a free helpdesk does not shrink the queue.
Freshdesk is no longer free in any lasting sense. Its pricing page lists a 14-day trial and paid plans from $19 per agent per month billed annually, and the remaining Free Program covers up to two agents for six months, for Freshdesk only. The free alternatives that remain in 2026 fall into two groups: hosted tools with capped free plans (Help Scout, Zoho Desk, HubSpot, Chatwoot cloud) and self-hosted open-source help desks (FreeScout, osTicket, Zammad, UVdesk) that cost nothing to license but something to run.
This post is only about free and open-source options. For the full ranked list including paid tools, see best Freshdesk alternatives. For what changed with Freshdesk’s plan, see Freshdesk’s free plan is effectively gone. We checked every free tier below on the vendor’s own site in October 2026.
Is Freshdesk still free in 2026?
Not as a plan you can stay on. Three facts, from Freshworks’ own pages:
- The pricing page lists no free plan. It offers a 14-day trial of Enterprise, after which you choose Growth ($19), Pro ($55) or Enterprise ($89) per agent per month billed annually, or the account is suspended.
- The Free Program is time-limited. Up to two agents, free for six months, then paid. It applies to Freshdesk customers, not Freshdesk Omni.
- Freshchat still has a free plan. Freshworks’ messaging product lists a free plan for up to ten agents with a chat widget, shared inbox and email connection. It excludes Freddy AI Agent and social and messaging channels, and it is chat software rather than a ticketing help desk. We explain the difference in what is Freshchat.
So if “free forever” was the reason you chose Freshdesk, that reason has gone. The question is which kind of free you can live with.
Free Freshdesk alternatives compared
| Tool | Free tier limits | Hosting | Best for | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Help Scout | Up to 5 users, 1 inbox, 1 Docs site, 100 contacts a month | Hosted | Very small teams with low volume | The contact cap is the limit you hit first. Next step is $25 per user. |
| Zoho Desk | 3 users, email ticketing | Hosted | Tiny teams that only need email | No automation, SLAs, multi-department or AI on free. |
| HubSpot free tools | Up to 2 users, ticketing, shared inbox, live chat | Hosted | Teams already in HubSpot CRM | Knowledge base and portal sit on paid tiers. Professional carries an onboarding fee. |
| Chatwoot cloud | 2 agents, 500 conversations a month, live chat only, 30 days retention | Hosted | Trying Chatwoot before self-hosting | Email and other channels need a paid plan. |
| Chatwoot community edition | No licence cost | Self-hosted | Teams wanting open-source omnichannel | You run Rails, Postgres and Redis, plus upgrades. |
| FreeScout | Free core, unlimited agents and mailboxes (AGPL-3.0) | Self-hosted, PHP and MySQL | Help Scout-style shared inbox on a budget | Workflows, knowledge base, saved replies and live chat are paid modules. |
| osTicket | Free, open source (GPL-2.0), community support only | Self-hosted | Classic email and web-form ticketing | Dated interface. Hosted version starts at $12 per agent. |
| Zammad | Free to self-host (AGPL-3.0) | Self-hosted | Modern open-source ticketing | Support contracts start at €2,999 a year if you want a vendor to call. |
| UVdesk | Free open-source edition (OSL-3.0), unlimited agents | Self-hosted | PHP shops and e-commerce stores | Smaller community. SaaS plans have a 2-agent minimum. |
| Freshdesk Free Program | 2 agents, 6 months | Hosted | Trying Freshdesk properly | It ends. Then it is a paid plan. |
Hosted free plans: which cap do you hit first?
A hosted free plan costs nothing until one number crosses a line. Before choosing, work out which line you will cross first.
Help Scout
Help Scout’s pricing page lists a free plan for up to five users with one inbox, one Docs site and 100 contacts a month, plus small caps on saved replies, tags and articles. For a five-person team, the user cap is generous; the 100 contacts a month is not. Any business receiving more than three or four new conversations a day will outgrow it quickly. Paid plans start at $25 per user per month. Help Scout’s AI Answers is a separate add-on at $0.75 per resolution.
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk’s free edition gives three users email ticketing, described as free forever. Zoho states that upgrading unlocks automation, multi-department support, SLAs, AI features and custom roles, which tells you what is missing on free. It is a clean option for a two- or three-person team handling email only.
HubSpot free help desk
HubSpot’s Service Hub pricing lists a free tier for up to two users, and its help desk page describes essential ticketing, a shared inbox, live chat and basic integrations on free. Customer portals, the knowledge base and feedback surveys are on Professional. It is the right free choice if your sales team already lives in HubSpot. If you later move up, see our Freshdesk to HubSpot migration guide.
Chatwoot cloud
Chatwoot’s cloud free plan covers two agents and 500 conversations a month, but only live chat, with 30 days of data retention. Email, social and other channels start on paid plans from $19 per agent per month. Treat the cloud free plan as a trial of the product; the real free option with Chatwoot is self-hosting.
Open-source Freshdesk alternatives: free licence, real costs
Self-hosted tools remove the licence fee and every user cap. They add an operations job.
FreeScout
FreeScout is a free, open-source help desk modelled on Help Scout, built on PHP and Laravel with MySQL, and light enough for shared hosting. It advertises unlimited agents, tickets and mailboxes. The catch is that several features you would expect from Freshdesk, including workflows, a knowledge base, satisfaction ratings, saved replies and live chat, are paid modules. FreeScout describes these as lifetime licences per instance rather than subscriptions, which keeps them cheap over time, but price your module list before assuming the total is zero. We compare it directly in FreeScout vs Help Scout.
osTicket
osTicket is the long-standing open-source ticketing system: email piping, web forms, help topics and SLAs, with community support only on the free edition. It is stable and well understood, and the interface shows its age. If you want osTicket without running it, SupportSystem hosts it from $12 per agent per month.
Zammad
Zammad is a more modern open-source help desk, free to self-host. Its pricing page is candid that on self-hosted you are responsible for updates, backups and availability. Hosted plans start at €7 per agent per month, and self-hosted support contracts start at €2,999 a year, which is a useful reference point for what keeping a help desk running is worth.
UVdesk
UVdesk’s open-source edition is free with unlimited agents on your own server, built on PHP and Symfony, with an e-commerce lean. It has a smaller community than FreeScout or Zammad, which matters when you hit an obscure bug.
Chatwoot community edition
The self-hosted Chatwoot community edition brings open-source omnichannel: website chat, email and messaging channels in one inbox. It runs on Ruby on Rails with Postgres and Redis, which is more to operate than a PHP app on shared hosting.
What does “free” actually cost?
Free help desks are free in licence only. The costs move elsewhere:
- Hosting. A small server or managed host for the app, the database and file storage, plus email deliverability set up properly.
- Maintenance. Upgrades, PHP or Ruby version changes, and dependency updates. Skipping them is how a support system becomes a security incident.
- Backups and recovery. Tested backups of the database and attachments. Your ticket history is customer data.
- On-call. When the help desk is down, customers cannot reach you. Someone has to own that.
- Paid modules and add-ons. FreeScout modules, AI add-ons, extra inboxes.
- The seat jump. Hosted free plans move straight to per-user pricing when you add a sixth user or the hundred-and-first contact. A five-person team on Help Scout’s free plan becomes a $125-a-month team on Standard the day it outgrows the cap.
- The next migration. Picking a free tool you will outgrow in a year means paying the migration cost twice.
Estimate monthly hours for items 2 to 4, multiply by a realistic internal rate, and compare with a paid plan. For teams that already run infrastructure, self-hosting is often genuinely cheaper. For teams that do not, it often is not. The hidden costs of helpdesk software breaks this down further.
Which free option fits?
- One to three people, email only: Zoho Desk free.
- Up to five people, low volume, want polish: Help Scout free, while under 100 contacts a month.
- Already on HubSpot CRM: HubSpot free tools.
- No user caps, someone comfortable with a Linux server: FreeScout for simplicity, Zammad for richer ticketing.
- Open-source chat and messaging: Chatwoot self-hosted.
- Still deciding on Freshdesk itself: the Free Program, knowing it ends after six months.
The Freshdesk alternatives overview has the short version for paid tools.
When free is not the real problem
Many teams searching for a free Freshdesk alternative are not short of a help desk. They are short of agent time, and the bill reflects how many agents they need. A free help desk does not change how many tickets arrive.
Fidiora is not a free help desk and does not replace one. It runs alongside whichever help desk you pick, free or paid, answers repetitive questions from your own docs with cited sources, and hands everything else to your agents with the conversation attached. It charges $0.69 per genuine resolution, dropping to $0.45 above 1,000 a month, with no seat fees, free handoffs and a spend cap, so a quiet month costs little. On a free help desk with a user cap, resolving the repetitive questions first is often what keeps a small team under that cap for longer.