Kayako Pricing 2026: Is It Worth It?

✨ Psst... Looking for a modern & powerful alternative to Kayako? Check out Featurebase →

Kayako claims to offer “one price, one platform.” Sounds refreshingly simple for a help desk software, right?

But once you look closer, that simplicity starts to fall apart.

Kayako pricing is built around $79 per agent per month, plus $1 for every AI-resolved support ticket. That means your pricing scales not just with the size of your support team, but also with how successful your automation is. The more your AI resolves repetitive tickets, the more you pay.

In this guide, I’ll break down Kayako pricing in 2026, explain what that $79 actually includes, how the AI usage fees work, and what the real monthly pricing looks like once your customer support operation starts to scale. Let’s get into it. 👇

Key takeaways

• Kayako offers a single $79/seat/month plan called Kayako One
• The pricing is per seat, not a flat team or workspace license.
• AI usage is billed separately at $1 per fully AI-resolved ticket.
• Your total cost increases with both agent count and AI resolution volume.
• There are many more modern alternatives, including Featurebase, which provides modern AI-powered support for fast-growing teams.

What is Kayako?

Kayako is a customer service platform and help desk software designed to manage customer conversations and customer interactions in one place. It acts as a centralized communication platform for handling customer requests across live chat, email support, and help center workflows.

At its core, Kayako offers:

• A shared inbox and ticketing system
• Live chat and real-time chat via a messenger widget
• Public and private help center functionality
• Reporting tools for tracking support agent performance, customer loyalty, and support tickets

Kayako has traditionally appealed to mid-sized teams and large teams that want a structured help desk for managing assigned tickets and tracking the customer journey. In recent years, Kayako has shifted toward AI-driven workflows focused on resolving repetitive tasks and repetitive tickets faster, which is where the current Kayako pricing model comes in.

Kayako pricing 2026

Kayako no longer offers visible pricing tiers or multiple pricing plans. Everything is bundled into a single plan called Kayako One.

At first glance, Kayako pricing looks simple. But once you factor in per-seat pricing and AI usage fees, the real cost of this help desk software becomes much easier to underestimate.

Let’s break it down properly. 👇

Kayako One ($79/agent/month)

Kayako One is priced at $79 per agent per month. This is a per-seat price, not a flat license for your whole team.

That means:

• 1 agent costs $79/month
• 5 agents cost $395/month
• 10 agents cost $790/month

This pricing structure follows Kayako’s historical approach across Kayako Cloud and Kayako Classic, where pricing plans were always tied to agent count. While Kayako markets this as “one price, one platform,” the pricing still scales directly with your support team size.

What’s included in Kayako One

The Kayako One plan bundles most of Kayako’s core help desk and customer support features into the base price.

According to Kayako’s official documentation, Kayako offers:

• Shared inbox and advanced ticketing system
• Brand messenger and multi-brand messenger
• Multiple team inboxes
• Public and private knowledge base and help center
• Multilingual help center support
• Pre-built reports and advanced reporting
• Tools designed to manage customer conversations and improve customer satisfaction

On paper, this looks fairly generous for a cloud plan. However, usage limits for brands, tickets, or customer interactions are not clearly documented, which makes real-world Kayako pricing harder to predict without contacting the sales team.

Kayako AI pricing ($1 per AI-resolution)

On top of the base Kayako pricing, Kayako charges $1 for every support ticket fully resolved by AI.

In practice, this means:

• If the AI reads, understands, and resolves a ticket without human involvement, that support ticket incurs a $1 charge.
• Tickets handled by human agents or partially assisted by AI do not appear to be billed based on current wording.

This pricing model introduces a usage-based cost tied directly to automation success.

Real-world AI cost examples

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• 100 AI-resolved support tickets adds $100/month
• 300 AI-resolved tickets adds $300/month
• 1,000 AI-resolved tickets adds $1,000/month

A support team with 5 agents paying $395/month can quickly reach $700 to $1,400/month once AI handles a significant share of customer requests.

Best Kayako alternatives

If Kayako pricing feels hard to justify, here are the best help desk software alternatives based on specific team needs:

1. ✨ Featurebase: Best for SaaS teams that want customer support, feedback management, and release updates in one platform, with predictable pricing and built-in AI.
2. Zendesk: Best for growing companies that need scalable ticketing, advanced workflows, and deep reporting, especially at enterprise scale.
3. Intercom: Best for SaaS products that rely on in-app messaging, automation, onboarding flows, and AI-driven conversational support.
4. Freshdesk: Best for teams looking for an affordable help desk with solid automation and true multichannel support.
5. Zoho Desk: Best for businesses already using Zoho CRM or other Zoho tools and wanting tightly integrated customer service workflows.
6. Help Scout: Best for small teams that prefer simple, email-based customer support with a clean and easy-to-learn interface.
7. HappyFox: Best for teams that want structured ticketing, clear automation rules, and strong reporting without excessive complexity.
8. ProProfs: Best for small businesses that need fast-to-deploy live chat without a heavy setup or long onboarding.
9. HelpJuice: Best for teams that focus on documentation and self-service to reduce ticket volume through a powerful knowledge base.
10. Crisp: Best for startups that want multichannel chat, basic automation, and quick setup at an affordable price.

You can also explore our full breakdown of the best Kayako alternatives for a deeper comparison.

So, is Kayako worth it?

Kayako offers a capable, all-in-one support platform, but its pricing is not as simple as it first appears. While there is only one plan, the cost scales with both agent count and AI resolution volume, and several important details are not clearly documented upfront.

Featurebase (👋 that's us) is a modern Kayako alternative with an AI-powered support inbox, automations, Slack integration, and a help center. You get all the same features, plus roadmaps, feedback management, and product updates, in a much more affordable package. It's loved by thousands of companies like Lovable, Polymarket, and Raycast.

What's best is that it comes with a Free plan, and the paid plans start at just $29/seat/mo + $0.29 per AI resolution, which is significantly more affordable than Kayako, so there's no downside to trying it out! 👇

✨ Automate your support with the fastest AI-enhanced Inbox today →