Intercom vs Sierra
A side-by-side comparison of Intercom and Sierra on what each one charges, what it meters, and which plan every capability actually sits on.
Capability by capability
Nothing we track differs between them.
Channels
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| IncludedAll plans | IncludedNo plans are published, so plan gating cannot be assessed. | |
| Live chat | IncludedAll plans | IncludedNo plans are published, so plan gating cannot be assessed. |
| In-app messenger | IncludedAll plans | Not published |
| Voice | IncludedAll plans, pay-as-you-go | IncludedNo plans are published, so plan gating cannot be assessed. |
| SMS | IncludedAll plans, pay-as-you-go | Not published |
| IncludedAll plans, pay-as-you-go | IncludedNo plans are published, so plan gating cannot be assessed. | |
| Community forum | NoNo community product. Nothing in the plan comparison offers forums, member profiles or moderation, so a team that wants customers answering each other buys that elsewhere. | Not published |
Ticketing
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| Shared inbox | IncludedAll plans. Multiple team inboxes arrive at Advanced, so the entry plan is a single shared inbox. | Not published |
| Ticket queues | IncludedAll plans carry the ticketing system. The customer-facing tickets portal is Advanced and above. | Not published |
| SLA policies | IncludedExpert | Not published |
| Business hours | IncludedExpert only, as team office hours, alongside team reply time settings. Neither is available on Essential or Advanced. | Not published |
Routing & automation
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| Round-robin assignment | IncludedAdvanced | Not published |
| Load balancing | IncludedExpert only, as workload management. Advanced gets round-robin assignment but not capacity-aware distribution. | Not published |
| Triggers | IncludedSimple automations are on every plan; the Workflows automation builder starts at Advanced. | Not published |
| Workflow builder | IncludedAdvanced | Not published |
| Escalation rules | IncludedAll plans, and they carry billing consequences that are published: an escalation triggered by workspace-level guidance or escalation rules is not charged as an outcome, while a handoff written into a Procedure is. | Not published |
AI resolution
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| Autonomous resolution agent | IncludedAll plans, metered | IncludedThe whole product. Sierra bills only on outcomes such as "a resolved support conversation", which presupposes autonomous resolution. |
| Resolution over knowledge base | IncludedAll plans. Fin answers from the help centre and the Procedures a team writes, and the vendor is explicit about the boundary: "Fin trains only on your knowledge and Procedures, never on data you haven't approved". | Not published |
| Action-taking (API calls) | IncludedAll plans, through Procedures, which Fin executes and which can end in a configured handoff to a workflow, a team or a teammate. A successful Procedure handoff is itself a billable outcome at $0.99. | Included"Enable your agent to take action to assist customers by securely connecting it with any internal or external system", including systems of record from order management to CRM. |
| Handoff to human | IncludedAll plans | IncludedEscalation exists and is usually not billed: "if a case needs to be escalated, in most cases, there's no charge". The exceptions are unpublished. |
| Guardrails & citations | IncludedAll plans. Fin can be tested before it reaches anyone: "Before Fin ever talks to a real customer, run realistic Simulations against edge cases, including vulnerable-customer and compliance scenarios." Fine-tuning is opt-out, with data deleted within 30 days. | IncludedGuardrails are published as "supervisory layers to reduce hallucinations, ensure security, and prevent abuse", and PII is "automatically encrypted and masked". Citation behaviour is not addressed anywhere, so half of this attribute is Unknown. |
| Multilingual AI | IncludedAll plans | IncludedSierra publishes "voice, chat, email, and WhatsApp in 59 languages", available 24/7/365. |
AI assist
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| Reply drafting | Paid add-onCopilot, sold per seat on any plan at $29 per agent per month billed annually or $35 billed monthly. Every full seat gets 10 conversations a month included; unlimited use is the paid add-on. | Not published |
| Translation | IncludedAll plans, metered: 10 AI auto-translation conversations per agent per month are included free, matching the 10 free Copilot conversations. | Not published |
AI voice
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| Voice agent | IncludedFin Voice exists and is the one part of Fin with no published price: "To use Fin Voice and for pricing details, please contact Sales." Outcome pricing at $0.99 is stated to cover chat and email only. | IncludedVoice is listed as a first-class agent channel alongside chat, email and WhatsApp. No per-minute rate or telephony passthrough is published. |
Knowledge base
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| Public help center | IncludedAll plans | Not published |
| Multi-brand | IncludedExpert | Not published |
| Localization | IncludedAdvanced | Not published |
| In-product widget | IncludedAll plans. The Messenger is included everywhere, and the pricing page bundles "free, unlimited live chat, support email, in-app chats, banners, and tooltips" into every tier. | Not published |
| AI answers over KB | IncludedAll plans. Fin is included on every tier and answers from help centre content; only the outcomes it produces are charged. | Not published |
Self-service
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| Chatbot flows | IncludedAdvanced and above, as the Workflows automation builder. Essential is limited to simple automations, so scripted multi-step flows are the main reason to leave the entry plan. | Not published |
QA & workforce
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| Conversation QA scoring | Paid add-onThe Pro add-on, from $99 a month, covering analysis of 1,000 conversations a month plus 2,000 credits, with extra credits at $0.01. Sold on any plan. | Not published |
| Automated QA coverage | Paid add-onSame Pro add-on, pitched at full coverage rather than sampling: "see and continuously improve 100% of your customer conversations" and "check if quality meets your standards". | Not published |
| Forecasting | NoNo workforce management product. Workload management at Expert distributes conversations against capacity; it does not forecast contact volume or build a staffing plan. | Not published |
| Scheduling | NoNo shift scheduling. Team office hours at Expert set when a team is open, which is not the same as rostering people against a forecast. | Not published |
| Adherence tracking | NoNo adherence tracking. Nothing in the plan comparison measures agents against a schedule, because there is no schedule to measure against. | Not published |
Reporting
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| Prebuilt dashboards | IncludedAll plans, as pre-built reports. | Not published |
| Custom reports | IncludedAdvanced and above. Essential is limited to the pre-built set. | Not published |
| Raw data export | IncludedAll plans, and self-serve, but split by object: contacts export to CSV from the UI, while conversations are reachable only through the API or the S3 export. | Not published |
| Data warehouse sync | IncludedBulk conversation export to Amazon S3 as JSON is documented with no plan condition, which is a stronger position than the UI export it sits beside. | Not published |
| Real-time reporting | IncludedExpert only. The real-time dashboard sits with SSO, HIPAA and SLAs behind the top tier. | Not published |
Collaboration
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| Assignment | IncludedAll plans have assignment; the automation around it is gated. Round-robin arrives at Advanced with multiple team inboxes, and capacity-aware workload management at Expert. | Not published |
Enterprise
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| SAML SSO | IncludedExpert | Not publishedNot addressed on the trust and reliability page or any product page. |
| SCIM provisioning | IncludedExpert in effect | Not published |
| Role-based access control | IncludedTeammate roles exist and can be mapped from identity provider groups, which ties the useful version of this to SCIM and therefore to Expert. | Not published |
| Custom roles | IncludedTeammate roles, mappable from identity-provider groups. The plan gate is not published. | Not published |
| Audit logs | IncludedTeammate Activity Logs exist as a feature. Intercom does not publish which plan they require, and they have no documented export path. | Not publishedAI audit logging is not addressed on the trust and reliability page or any product page. |
| IP allowlist | IncludedIP restrictions are listed on the security page alongside SSO, 2FA and SCIM. No plan gate is published. | Not published |
| Multi-brand | IncludedExpert | Not published |
| HIPAA / BAA | IncludedExpert | IncludedNot assessable; no plans are published. |
| SOC 2 | IncludedNot plan-gated | IncludedNot assessable; no plans are published. |
| ISO 27001 | IncludedNot plan-gated | IncludedNot assessable; no plans are published. |
| GDPR | IncludedNot plan-gated | IncludedNot assessable; no plans are published. |
| Data residency | IncludedNot published | Not publishedNo region list appears on the trust and reliability page or anywhere else on sierra.ai. PCI cardholder data runs on "dedicated PCI certified infrastructure" segregated from the core platform, which is infrastructure segregation rather than a residency or VPC option. |
| Data retention policy | IncludedPublished for AI data specifically rather than as a general policy: fine-tuning is opt-out "with data deleted within 30 days", and third-party model providers are "contractually barred from training on your data, with zero retention once a response is generated". | Not publishedNo retention window is published. One third-party directory says "configurable per DPA"; unverified and not merged. |
| Right-to-erasure tooling | IncludedDocumented as a GDPR workflow, covering both export and deletion of a contact's data on request. | Not published |
Developer
| Capability | Intercom | Sierra |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | IncludedAll plans | Not publishedNo public API reference is published on sierra.ai. The Agent SDK page describes extensibility without documenting an API. |
| SDKs | IncludedAll plans. The Messenger ships as a web and in-app component, and "in-app chats" are bundled free into every tier alongside banners and tooltips. | IncludedThe Agent SDK is a published product surface, described as extensible so customers can write and connect their own integrations. No public API reference is published. |
| App framework | IncludedAn app store exists and apps can be built against it. Intercom does not publish an app count on any page that renders, so the size of the ecosystem is unverified. | Not published |
| Published rate limits | IncludedAll plans | Not published |
Both entries last checked Sep 9, 2026.
What Intercom costs
$29/seat/month
4 published plans, billed annually- Billing unit
Seat + usage hybrid - Free tier
No, 14-day trial - AI pricing
$0.99 per AI resolution - Vendor calls it
Outcome - Human handoff
Still billed - Reopened chat
Refunded - AI billing window
1d of inactivity - Data export
Self-serve - Automation export
Not offered
What Sierra costs
- Billing unit
Per outcome - Free tier
Not published - AI pricing
Not published - Vendor calls it
Outcome - Human handoff
Not published - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
Not published - Data export
Not published - Automation export
Not published
7 of 9 not published by Sierra, checked