Help Scout vs Freshservice

Two customer support tools side by side. Prices are the starting plan a small business would pick, in USD.

Compare	Help ScoutHelp Scout	FreshserviceFreshworks
In one line	Shared inbox that feels like email, plus a help center	IT help desk for your own staff's requests, not your customers
Starting price	From $25/person	From $19/person
Six-person team	$150/mo	$114/mo
Plans	Free (5 users, 100 contacts/mo); Standard $25/user/mo; Plus $45/user/mo; Pro $75/user/mo; 16% off annual	Starter $19/agent/mo; Growth $49/agent/mo; Pro $99/agent/mo, billed annually ($29, $59 and $119 month to month); Enterprise by quote; Freddy AI Copilot $29/agent/mo extra
Pricing model	Free tier	Free trial
Free trial	15 days	14 days
Users	Per user; 5 on free	Per agent
Integrations	Shopify, HubSpot, Slack, Jira, 100+	Microsoft Teams, Slack, Workday, Freshworks Marketplace apps
Team size	2–10 people · 11–50 people	11–50 people · 51–200 people
Available in	US · UK · CA · AU	US · UK · CA · AU
Phone support	None listed	Plans not stated
Live chat	None listed	None listed
Support hours	Not published	Not published
Incidents posted	6 incidents posted on Help Scout's status page in the 90 days to Oct 27, 2026; 0 marked major or critical by Help Scout. Status page	Freshworks has a public status page. Status page
Capterra score	4.6 / 5 from 226 reviews	Not listed
Trustpilot score	3.0 / 5 from 40 reviews	Not listed
Fit: Retail shop	60	15
Fit: Restaurant or café	40	10
Fit: Service business	80	35
Fit: Agency or studio	75	40
Fit: Trades or contractor	55	15
Fit: Online store	90	25
Why people pick it	Simple for the team Docs site included	Gives staff one place to ask for IT help instead of messaging whoever knows computers 14-day free trial
Where it falls short	Per-user pricing adds up Light on automation	Not for customer support SLAs and the service catalog start on Growth at $49 per agent
	Visit Help Scout ↗	Visit Freshservice ↗

Six-person prices are what a team of six would pay on the published plans; "Not listed" means those plans don't cover six. How we calculate prices

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