Chatwoot vs Intercom
Side by side, as alternatives to Intercom. Rows that differ are highlighted; the strongest value in a row is marked. Unknown means no source yet.
Cost and coverage
Price
$0 software; you run it
Essential $29, Advanced $85, Expert $132 per seat per month billed annually; Fin AI Agent $0.99 per outcome source ↗
Shared inbox for email
Partial: Partly
Confirmed: Yes
Live chat widget on your website
Partial: Partly
Confirmed: Yes
AI agent that answers customers from your docs
Partial: Partly
Confirmed: Yes
Help center articles
Partial: Partly
Confirmed: Yes
Jobs covered
4 of 4 jobs
All 4
Popularity and activity (from GitHub)
Stars
38,072
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Gain this week
Unknown
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Signal
Building history
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Commits / 4 wk
116
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Latest release
v4.19.0 · 2026-10-20
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Commits / 12 wk
448
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People committing / 12 mo
31+
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Issues opened / closed, 30 days
87 / 42
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Facts, with sources on each project page
Runs on my machine?
Confirmed: Self-hosted on your own server (Linux VM script, Docker, Kubernetes); Chatwoot Cloud also offered
Hosted by the vendor
Code licence
Partial: MIT for most code; the enterprise/ folder is under the Chatwoot Enterprise licence (production use needs a paid subscription)
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Model weights licence
Confirmed: No separate model weights
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Commercial use
Partial: MIT core can be used commercially; enterprise/ code may only be used in production with a valid Chatwoot Enterprise licence
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Paid services needed?
Partial: The core inbox is free to self-host; the Captain AI agent needs a paid Premium or Enterprise self-hosted licence and your own OpenAI key (an OpenAI-compatible endpoint for a self-hosted model is optional)
Subscription
Hardware
Confirmed: Minimum 2 CPU cores, 4 GB RAM and 20 GB SSD; 4+ cores and 8 GB+ RAM recommended for production
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Operating systems
Partial: Linux servers (Ubuntu install script, Docker, Kubernetes); running on Windows or macOS is not documented
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Setup effort
Confirmed: Medium; install script on an Ubuntu server or Docker Compose, then set environment variables (mail, storage, domain)
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Stars over time
Switch to Growth % to compare projects of different sizes fairly.
The chart appears after a few nightly checks.
Notes for a video or post
A plain summary with today's date and a link to the sources. Check each project page before you publish.
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Numbers: GitHub, fetched nightly. Facts: read from each project's own documentation, with the source on its page. How we check. chatwoot/chatwoot ↗