Introduction
Help Scout pricing looks easy to read. Pick a plan, multiply by the number of people on your team, done. For a lot of small support teams, that is the whole story, and it is a fair price for a well-liked shared inbox.
The number that actually moves your bill is smaller and easier to miss: $0.75. That is what Help Scout charges each time its AI chatbot, AI Answers, resolves a customer’s chat. It sits outside your seats, it is billed after the month ends, and it grows as the AI gets better at its job. On a busy team it can end up bigger than the seat bill itself.
This guide covers every Help Scout plan, what each AI feature costs and which plans include it, how a “resolution” is counted, and the fine print that changes the total: the user caps, the trial clock, the spending cap and what AI charges do to an annual prepayment. Then we add it all up for three real-sized teams.
Every figure was checked on Help Scout’s pricing page and in its help docs on 1 October 2026. One disclosure before we start: we make a flat-fee AI chatbot that works alongside Help Scout, so we have flagged our own section clearly at the end, and we say where Help Scout’s AI is the better pick.
Help Scout Pricing at a Glance
Help Scout has a free plan and three paid plans, all priced per user per month. Paying annually saves 16%, so monthly billing costs 20% more.
| Plan | Per user, billed annually | Per user, billed monthly | Users | AI included |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | Up to 5 | None (AI Answers on a 3-month trial only) |
| Standard | $25 | $30 | Up to 25 | AI Assist |
| Plus | $45 | $54 | Up to 50 | AI Assist, AI Drafts, AI Summarize |
| Pro | $75 | $90 | Unlimited (minimum 10) | AI Assist, AI Drafts, AI Summarize |
| AI Answers (add-on) | $0.75 per resolution | $0.75 per resolution | Any paid plan | Billed monthly, in arrears |
Prices from helpscout.com/pricing, checked 1 October 2026. All figures in US dollars.
The short version:
- Seats are predictable. You pay per user, with caps at 25 users (Standard) and 50 (Plus), and a 10-user minimum on Pro.
- Agent AI is included. AI Assist comes with every paid plan; AI Drafts and AI Summarize come with Plus and Pro.
- Help Scout’s customer-facing AI is metered. AI Answers costs $0.75 for each chat it resolves, so the bill grows with volume and with the AI’s success.
- Annual plans don’t cover AI Answers. Its charges are taken from your annual prepayment, which then runs out early.
How Much Does Help Scout Cost? Every Plan in 2026
Help Scout costs $0 on its Free plan, then $25, $45 or $75 per user per month on Standard, Plus and Pro when billed annually ($30, $54 or $90 on monthly billing). Standard and Plus come with a 15-day free trial and no card required; Pro starts with a demo, and a Pro trial is available through sales. Here is what each plan actually gets you.
Free: $0 for up to 5 users
The Free plan gives up to five users one inbox and one Docs site (Help Scout’s knowledge base). The catch is volume: it covers 100 contacts a month, and once you reach that you cannot reply to customers until the next cycle or until you upgrade. Free doesn’t include live chat or ongoing AI. You can try AI Answers for three months, after which Help Scout’s own doc says you’ll “have to upgrade your account”.
Standard: $25 per user ($30 monthly)
Standard is Help Scout’s entry-level paid plan. It allows up to 25 users with two inboxes and two Docs sites, and adds live chat, SMS through an integration, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, one basic SLA policy, basic workflows and API access. On AI, it includes AI Assist (rewrite, shorten, translate and fix the tone of replies you have written) with no usage limit. It doesn’t include AI Drafts.
Plus: $45 per user ($54 monthly)
Plus is the plan Help Scout labels “Popular”. It raises the limits to 50 users, five inboxes and three Docs sites, adds five light users (teammates who can view and collaborate without a full seat), advanced workflows, two advanced SLA policies, a secure customer portal and the Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot integrations. It is also where AI Drafts and AI Summarize arrive, both unlimited.
Pro: $75 per user ($90 monthly), minimum 10 users
Pro removes the user cap, includes 10 inboxes, five Docs sites and 15 light users, and adds unlimited workflows and SLA policies. SSO, HIPAA compliance and a dedicated onboarding specialist are included (they are paid add-ons on lower plans). Because Pro bills at least 10 users, the real starting price is $750 a month on annual billing, or $900 on monthly.
Extras are priced simply, and Help Scout also offers a 10% non-profit discount:
| Extra | Billed annually | Billed monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Additional inbox | $10 a month each | $12 a month each |
| Additional Docs site | $20 a month each | $24 a month each |
| Additional light user (Plus and Pro) | $10 a month each | $12 a month each |
SSO is a paid add-on on Standard and Plus, and HIPAA compliance is an add-on on Plus; both are included on Pro, and Help Scout doesn’t publish the add-on prices. Startups can get six months of Plus and AI Answers free through Help Scout’s startup programme, which is open to new customers that are incorporated tech startups less than two years old, with under $1 million in annual recurring revenue.
Per User or Per Contact? How Help Scout Pricing Changed
If Help Scout pricing seems different from what a colleague told you a year ago, that’s because it changed twice. Help Scout spent about a year on a different model before coming back to per-user pricing.
Until November 2024, Help Scout charged per user. An archived copy of the pricing page from 7 November 2024 shows Standard at $22 per user on annual billing, Plus at $44 and Pro at $65, with AI Drafts sold as an add-on.
In November 2024 it switched to pricing by “contacts helped”. The pricing page from 26 November 2024 promised “no per-seat or AI usage fees”: unlimited users and AI on every plan, with Standard starting at $50 a month for 100 contacts.
It suited some teams, but others found it hard to plan around. When existing customers were moved over in 2025, one wrote in an r/SaaS thread that being charged per customer interaction “makes the costs unpredictable”. The independent Mac developer Daniel Jalkut, quoted on mjtsai.com in April 2025, found that the closest match to his $22-a-month plan “starts at $50/month” (a loyalty discount softened that for him), and worked out that a three-person team helping 500 customers a month would go from $66 to at least $266.
In November 2025 Help Scout went back to per-user pricing. The first archived capture of the new page, on 13 November 2025, shows today’s $25, $45 and $75, and AI Answers’ new price of $0.75 a resolution. In the same change, AI Answers went from included to metered, and AI Drafts and AI Summarize moved to Plus and Pro.
Older accounts can still be on a legacy plan. Contact-based accounts are billed on a three-month average of contacts helped, with AI Answers resolutions counting as contacts. Older user-based plans pay for AI Drafts separately, at $50 per 100 conversations that get an AI draft. If your invoice doesn’t match this page, check which plan you’re on.
Help Scout AI Pricing: AI Answers, AI Drafts and AI Assist
Help Scout’s AI comes in two halves, and they are priced in completely different ways.
The agent-side AI is included in the seat price. AI Assist (polishing replies you have written) is unlimited on Standard, Plus and Pro. AI Drafts, which writes a draft reply in one click (or automatically through a workflow) using OpenAI’s GPT-5.1, learning from your previous conversations and Docs articles, is unlimited on Plus and Pro only, as is AI Summarize. There’s no per-use fee on current plans, which is genuinely good value: if your team lives in the inbox, Plus gives you unlimited AI drafting for $20 more per user than Standard on annual billing ($24 on monthly).
The customer-facing AI is metered. AI Answers is the chatbot that answers customers inside Beacon, Help Scout’s website chat widget. It costs $0.75 per resolution on any paid plan, billed monthly in arrears. New Help Scout accounts get it free for three months; Help Scout’s billing doc says “Existing Help Scout customers do not receive a trial period”. Help Scout also sells prepaid bundles of resolutions through its sales team, and its AI features page says you can “prepay for resolutions to save up to 33%”.
Help Scout has recently started marketing its AI agent as “Compass” on its AI agent page. The pricing page and billing docs still call it AI Answers, so we use that name here.
How well does it work? On the same AI features page, Help Scout says companies “average a 73.19% resolution rate” with AI Answers, and its pricing-page calculator uses 73% (an older self-service page still says 70%). That’s a strong figure, and it’s also the number that drives your bill, which is why the next section matters.
What Counts as an AI Answers Resolution?
Help Scout’s billing doc defines it plainly: “A resolution is a single AI chat session that is resolved without help from a human.”
You’re charged $0.75 when:
- AI Answers gives the customer a response, and
- The customer “doesn’t ask for additional help after the last AI response”
You pay once per chat, even if the AI answers several questions in it. You’re not charged when:
- The AI only greets someone or asks a clarifying question, without a full answer
- The customer asks for more help, in their own words or with the “I still need help” button
- The customer searches your knowledge base after the AI’s reply (per the pricing page FAQ)
Two practical points follow. First, by that definition, a customer who reads the AI’s answer and simply leaves counts as a resolution, whether or not the answer actually helped.
Second, the meter rewards the AI for doing well. Every improvement you make to your Docs (the thing that raises the resolution rate) also raises the bill. That’s fair in one sense, since you pay for results, but it means the AI line never settles into a fixed number you can budget for.
The Fine Print That Changes Your Bill
The seat cliffs at 25 and 50 users
Standard stops at 25 users and Plus at 50. The 26th person forces the whole team onto Plus: 25 Standard seats cost $625 a month on annual billing, while 26 Plus seats cost $1,170, an 87% jump for one hire. The same happens at 51 users, where Plus at $2,250 becomes Pro at $3,825. If you’re close to either line, plan for it.
AI charges come out of your annual prepayment
Few pricing guides mention this one. On annual billing, you prepay for the year and Help Scout holds it as a credit, taking each month’s seats from it. AI Answers charges come out of the same credit. In Help Scout’s words, “your annual credit will be used up faster than a year”.
Take a three-person team on Standard, past its free AI trial, that prepays $900 for the year. Seats use $75 a month. If AI Answers handles 300 chats a month at Help Scout’s 73% average, that adds $164.25 a month, and the credit that was meant to last 12 months covers about four. Then, with Auto-renew on (the default for card payments), Help Scout charges your card for another full year, long before the renewal date you budgeted for.
The spending cap switches the AI off
You can set a monthly cap, counted in resolutions, and Help Scout emails you as you approach it. At the cap, “AI Answers will be disabled in your Beacon until the next cycle or until you raise the limit”, and Beacon falls back to its non-AI mode. That protects your budget, but it also means automation stops mid-month, in the busy months when you would most want it running. Raising the cap takes effect within an hour; lowering it below what you have already used only applies from the next cycle.
The trial clock and the month-four invoice
The pricing FAQ says “When you create your Help Scout account, you will get 3 months of free, unlimited AI Answers resolutions.” So the three months run from when you create your account, not from when you switch the AI on. Month four is your first paid month of AI, and because resolutions are billed in arrears, its charges arrive on the following invoice.
What Help Scout Really Costs: Worked Examples
Here is what Help Scout pricing adds up to for three teams, using Help Scout’s own 73% average resolution rate for AI Answers. “AI chats” means chats that AI Answers handles in Beacon each month.
| Team | Plan and seats | AI chats a month | AI Answers at 73% | Monthly total, annual billing | Monthly total, monthly billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 people | Standard: 3 x $25 = $75 | 300 | 219 x $0.75 = $164.25 | $239.25 | $254.25 |
| 8 people | Plus: 8 x $45 = $360 | 1,000 | 730 x $0.75 = $547.50 | $907.50 | $979.50 |
| 12 people | Pro: 12 x $75 = $900 | 3,000 | 2,190 x $0.75 = $1,642.50 | $2,542.50 | $2,722.50 |
Seats at helpscout.com/pricing (1 October 2026). AI Answers at $0.75 per resolution and Help Scout’s stated 73% average, before any prepaid discount. Extra inboxes and Docs sites not included.
Look at the middle row. For an eight-person team using AI Answers properly, the AI line ($547.50) is bigger than the seat line ($360). For the Pro team it is nearly double. The AI is doing real work in both cases, but the “per user” price on the plan card isn’t a good guide to the bill any more.
The chart shows the same thing from another angle. At Help Scout’s average, AI Answers costs more than a $35 flat chatbot plan from about 64 AI chats a month, which is about two a day. Beyond that, the gap only widens: at 1,000 chats a month, the AI part of the bill is $547.50. If you want to compare that with other providers’ models, our guide to AI chatbot pricing puts flat fees, credits and per-resolution pricing side by side.
Is Help Scout Worth It?
For most small support teams, yes. Help Scout is calm, well designed and reasonably priced per seat, and it does email, live chat and a knowledge base well in one tool. One G2 reviewer, whose five-person team handles 200 to 300 tickets a week, summed it up in December 2024: “the value is there – we just carefully watch the number of seats we need month to month.” Plus is especially good value now that it includes unlimited AI Drafts with no per-use fee, and AI Answers is cheaper per resolution than Fin’s $0.99 per outcome (checked 1 October 2026).
It suits teams that:
- Handle most support by email and want a clean shared inbox with Docs and Beacon built in
- Want AI drafting for their agents, and are happy on Plus or Pro where it is included
- Have modest chat volume, or volume that fits inside a prepaid AI bundle
It suits some teams less well:
- Teams with high or growing chat volume, where the $0.75 meter becomes the biggest line on the bill
- Teams close to 25 or 50 users, where one hire moves everyone up a plan
- Teams on annual billing who budget a fixed yearly figure, since AI charges draw that credit down early
A Flat-Fee AI Chatbot That Works With Help Scout
If the per-resolution meter is the part that worries you, this is where we come in, so treat this section as us making our own case.
Resolve247’s AI chatbot is priced as one flat monthly fee with a fixed allowance of AI messages (each AI reply is one message), rather than a charge per resolution. Plans start at $35 a month for 2,000 AI messages, enough for roughly 800 chats if the average chat takes two or three AI replies. The price doesn’t rise because the bot is doing well, and it doesn’t switch off mid-month. The AI is built to answer only from your own content, shows its sources by default, and comes with a money-backed guarantee: if it ever makes something up, you get that month’s chatbot for free.
You keep Help Scout. Our chatbot runs as its own widget on your website. When a visitor wants a person, they click “Contact a Human” and send a message, which opens a new conversation in your chosen Help Scout mailbox with the full AI chat history included. Your team carries on in Help Scout exactly as before, and our guide to connecting the chatbot to your Help Scout mailbox walks through the setup.
Every plan also includes ResponseAssistant, which drafts replies inside your Help Scout inbox from your past replies and knowledge base. To be straight about it: if you’re on Plus or Pro, AI Drafts is already included and works in a similar way, so you may not need it. It is most useful on Standard, where Help Scout has no AI Drafts. Moving to Plus is the other route there, and it brings more inboxes and workflows too.
To be fair, AI Answers is the better pick if you want the AI inside Beacon itself, your chat volume is low, or a prepaid bundle covers it. Resolve247 is the better pick if you want a predictable AI bill with a fixed monthly allowance that doesn’t rise as the AI gets better. If that sounds like your team, start a free 30-day trial, no card required.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Help Scout cost per user?
Help Scout pricing is $25 per user per month on Standard, $45 on Plus and $75 on Pro when billed annually, or $30, $54 and $90 on monthly billing. Pro has a 10-user minimum, so it starts at $750 a month on annual billing ($900 on monthly). There is also a Free plan for up to five users. AI Answers costs extra, at $0.75 per resolution.
Is Help Scout free?
Yes, for very small teams. The Help Scout Free plan covers up to five users, one inbox, one Docs site and 100 contacts a month. It doesn’t include live chat or ongoing AI: new accounts can try AI Answers free for three months, then need a paid plan to keep it. Standard and Plus also have a 15-day free trial with no card required.
How much does Help Scout’s AI cost?
It depends on the feature. AI Assist is included on all paid plans, and AI Drafts and AI Summarize are included, unlimited, on Plus and Pro. AI Answers, the customer-facing chatbot, costs $0.75 per resolution on top of your plan, billed monthly in arrears, with a three-month free trial for new accounts and discounts for prepaid bundles.
Which Help Scout plans include AI Drafts?
Help Scout AI Drafts is included, with no usage limit, on the Plus and Pro plans. It isn’t available on Free or Standard. Some older user-based plans still pay for it separately, at $50 per 100 conversations where an AI draft is created, so check your plan if your invoice shows a drafts charge.
Does Help Scout still charge per contact?
Not for new customers. Help Scout moved to contact-based pricing in November 2024 and returned to per-user pricing in November 2025. Some existing accounts remain on legacy contact-based plans, billed on a three-month average of contacts helped, where AI Answers resolutions count as contacts.
What happens when you reach the AI Answers spending limit?
AI Answers switches off in Beacon until your next billing cycle, or until you raise the limit, and Beacon falls back to its non-AI support mode. Help Scout emails you as you approach the cap. Raising the limit takes effect within an hour, while lowering it below your current usage only applies from the next cycle.