Intercom vs Zendesk
A side-by-side comparison of Intercom and Zendesk on what each one charges, what it meters, and which plan every capability actually sits on.
The short answer
8 of the 51 capabilities tracked on both differ, mostly in Channels and Enterprise. Intercom starts at $29/seat/mo, Zendesk at $19/seat/mo.
| Measure | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $29/seat/mo | $19/seat/mo |
| Charged per | Each agent seat | Each agent seat |
| AI billed at | $0.99 per AI resolution | $1.50 per AI resolution |
| Included, where the other says no | 0 capabilities | 1 capability |
Capability by capability
8 of the 51 capabilities tracked on both products differ.
Channels
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| IncludedAll plans | Included | |
| Live chat | IncludedAll plans | IncludedSuite Team and above; Support Team is email ticketing only |
| In-app messenger | IncludedAll plans | IncludedWeb widget and the iOS, Android and Unity SDKs are on every plan; the live conversation behind them is not. Messaging and live chat start at Suite Team, so on Support Team the widget submits a ticket rather than opening a chat. |
| Voice | IncludedAll plans, pay-as-you-go | Paid add-onContact Center add-on, $83/agent/mo. Not available on Support Team. |
| SMS | IncludedAll plans, pay-as-you-go | Paid add-onAn add-on from Suite Team. The "Text messages" row is unavailable on Support Team and an add-on on Suite Team and Suite Professional, with "Additional fees apply". Inbound texts create tickets automatically. |
| IncludedAll plans, pay-as-you-go | IncludedSuite Team and above, listed among the messaging apps in the social and business channels row, with additional fees. | |
| Instagram / Facebook | Not published | IncludedSuite Team and above, inside one "Social and business channels" row covering Facebook, Instagram and X alongside WhatsApp, Slack, WeChat and LINE. Unavailable on Support Team, and the row carries "Additional fees apply". |
| X / Twitter | Not published | IncludedSuite Team and above, same social row, with a published cap: "With Zendesk Suite, you can add up to five X handles. Additional fees apply." |
| 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. | IncludedSuite Professional only. The whole community forums block (user profiles, integrated search, similar posts, escalate posts to tickets, moderator groups, moderation queue, AI spam protection, user badges) is unavailable on both cheaper plans. |
Ticketing
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Shared inbox | IncludedAll plans. Multiple team inboxes arrive at Advanced, so the entry plan is a single shared inbox. | IncludedAll plans. The unified agent workspace is the one row in its block available on Support Team. |
| Ticket queues | IncludedAll plans carry the ticketing system. The customer-facing tickets portal is Advanced and above. | IncludedAll plans, as "Custom & group views": collections of tickets by status, assignee, group or condition, with pre-configured views shipped. |
| 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. | IncludedSuite Professional only, and only one schedule: the row reads "Single" there and is unavailable on the two cheaper plans. Multiple schedules are not offered on any publicly priced plan. |
| Macros / saved replies | Not published | IncludedAll plans. Pre-defined responses (macros) are available on every tier. AI-suggested macros are a separate row and sit behind the Copilot add-on at Suite Professional. |
| Side conversations | Not published | IncludedSuite Professional only. Loops teammates in by email or Slack with the thread linked back to the ticket. |
| Custom fields | Not published | IncludedAll plans, for both user and organization fields, with workflows buildable on them. |
| Custom objects | Not published | IncludedGated by count: unavailable on Support Team, up to 3 objects with 5 lookup fields each on Suite Team, up to 30 objects with 10 lookup fields on Suite Professional. |
| Ticket forms | Not published | IncludedSuite Professional only. Multiple ticket forms and conditional ticket fields are both unavailable on Support Team and Suite Team. |
Routing & automation
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Skills-based routing | Not publishedNot published. Round-robin assignment and workload management are named; routing on agent skill is not. | IncludedSuite Professional only, and listed twice (under messaging and under workflows), unavailable on both cheaper plans. This is one of the three capabilities the vendor's own upgrade path leans on. |
| Round-robin assignment | IncludedAdvanced | Not publishedNot published. Routing is described by agent status, capacity, skill and priority; round-robin is not named as a distribution method anywhere in the matrix. |
| Load balancing | IncludedExpert only, as workload management. Advanced gets round-robin assignment but not capacity-aware distribution. | IncludedAll plans, but the basis changes: conversation routing runs "Based on agent status and capacity" on Support Team and Suite Team, and adds skill and ticket priority at Suite Professional. |
| Triggers | IncludedSimple automations are on every plan; the Workflows automation builder starts at Advanced. | IncludedAll plans. Triggers run on ticket create or update; time-based automations sit in the same row set, both shipped pre-configured. |
| Workflow builder | IncludedAdvanced | IncludedAll plans as Action builder, metered rather than gated: up to 40K actions a month on Support Team and Suite Team, 100K on Suite Professional, with extra credits at $200 per 100K actions per subscription term. |
| 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 | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Autonomous resolution agent | IncludedAll plans, metered | IncludedAll plans, with the allowance stepping 5, 5 and 10 automated resolutions per agent per month and a hard ceiling of 10,000 a year. Beyond that, $1.50 per AR committed or $2.00 pay-as-you-go. |
| 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". | IncludedAll plans. Generative search answers from the knowledge base at the top of help centre results, and the AI agent resolves against the same connected knowledge. |
| 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. | IncludedAll plans through Action builder, which automates "multi-step action flows across Zendesk and third-party systems" with prebuilt connectors. Copilot's Auto assist can additionally "take approved actions across systems", but that is a Suite Professional add-on. |
| Handoff to human | IncludedAll plans | Not published |
| 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. | Not publishedNot published. The matrix describes what the AI agent resolves and how resolutions are verified, and says nothing about citation of sources or configurable guardrails on answers. |
| Multilingual AI | IncludedAll plans | IncludedAll plans: "Automatically translate AI agent responses into 80+ supported languages". The agent-facing UI is separately localised into 28 languages. |
AI assist
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | Paid add-onCopilot add-on at $50 per agent per month, and only from Suite Professional: suggested first replies are unavailable on the two cheaper plans. |
| Tone rewrite | Not published | Paid add-onCopilot. "Rewrite in Your Tone" and "Communication guidelines" are both Add-on at Suite Professional. Basic writing tools are included there at 5 uses per agent per month, pooled across the team and capped at 500 per instance. |
| Summarization | Not publishedNot published. Copilot is described as an assistant for agent efficiency without an itemised feature list, so which of drafting, summarising and rewriting it covers cannot be read off a published page. | Paid add-onCopilot writing tools and ticket summaries at Suite Professional, metered at 5 uses per agent per month, pooled: "10 agents = 50 total uses", capped at 500 a month however large the team. |
| Translation | IncludedAll plans, metered: 10 AI auto-translation conversations per agent per month are included free, matching the 10 free Copilot conversations. | IncludedSuite Team and above. Conversations are auto-translated in the dashboard via Google Translate, and knowledge base articles have a generative translate action. |
| Next-best-action | Not published | Paid add-onCopilot's Auto assist, an add-on at Suite Professional and unavailable below it: proactive guidance that "suggests next steps, drafts accurate responses grounded in your procedures and knowledge" and walks agents through complex workflows. |
| Auto-tagging | Not published | Paid add-onIntelligent triage at Suite Professional, and only partly even there: the row gives "Classifications only" and is unavailable on the two cheaper plans, with the triage dashboard unavailable on all three. |
AI voice
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | IncludedAI agents run on voice, and the billing documentation is where that is confirmed: the automated-resolution tiers article defines the end of a voice conversation as "immediately upon hangup", alongside email and messaging. |
| IVR replacement | Not publishedNot published. Fin Voice is sales-gated and no IVR or phone-tree capability is described on any reachable page. | IncludedSuite Professional only. Multi-level IVR phone trees are unavailable on Support Team and Suite Team, as are priority numbers, callback requests and call monitoring. |
Knowledge base
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Public help center | IncludedAll plans | IncludedSuite Team and above. The entire help centre block is unavailable on Support Team, which is email and ticketing only. |
| Custom domain | Not published | IncludedAll plans, as host mapping: point a subdomain of your own domain at the help centre with an SNI-based SSL certificate. |
| Multi-brand | IncludedExpert | IncludedGated by count: unavailable on Support Team, 1 help centre on Suite Team, up to 5 on Suite Professional, all inside one account. |
| Versioning | Not published | IncludedSuite Professional only. Content and revision history with restore of deleted articles. Approval and publishing workflows and scheduled publishing are unavailable on every publicly priced plan. |
| Localization | IncludedAdvanced | IncludedGated by count: unavailable on Support Team, one default language on Suite Team, 40+ languages on Suite Professional. A single-language help centre on the $55 plan is easy to miss. |
| Article analytics | Not publishedNot published in the plan comparison. | IncludedSuite Team and above, via the Google Analytics integration for the help centre rather than a first-party article report. |
| 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. | IncludedSuite Team and above. Contextual self-service embeds the help centre and suggests articles through the web widget and mobile SDK. |
| SEO controls | Not published | IncludedSuite Team and above: structured markup so search engines can parse articles, plus a generated sitemap. |
| 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. | IncludedAll plans. Generative search surfaces answers above the article list, drawing on connected knowledge sources. |
Self-service
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| 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 publishedNot published as a row. Third-party chatbots can be integrated through Sunshine Conversations at Suite Professional, and Action builder covers scripted multi-step flows, but no first-party conversational bot builder appears in the matrix. |
QA & workforce
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | Paid add-onRequires the Quality Assurance add-on on all three publicly priced plans, and the add-on carries no published price. |
| 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". | Paid add-onSame QA add-on, described by the vendor as "automatic human and AI agent scoring". Unpriced. |
| Agent scorecards | Not published | Paid add-onPart of the same unpriced QA add-on rather than the Suite. The Agent Productivity Dashboard is separate again and sits behind Copilot at Suite Professional. |
| Forecasting | NoNo workforce management product. Workload management at Expert distributes conversations against capacity; it does not forecast contact volume or build a staffing plan. | Paid add-onWorkforce Engagement Bundle at $50 per agent per month, one of only four add-ons Zendesk prices publicly. |
| 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. | Paid add-onSame Workforce Engagement Bundle: "Forecast, staff, and manage agent schedules with AI-powered precision". |
| Adherence tracking | NoNo adherence tracking. Nothing in the plan comparison measures agents against a schedule, because there is no schedule to measure against. | Not publishedNot published. The workforce bundle is described as forecasting, staffing and scheduling; adherence tracking is not named and has no matrix row. |
Reporting
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Prebuilt dashboards | IncludedAll plans, as pre-built reports. | IncludedAll plans, with the refresh rate as the real gate: 24 hours on Support Team and Suite Team, 1 hour on Suite Professional. |
| Custom reports | IncludedAdvanced and above. Essential is limited to the pre-built set. | IncludedSuite Professional only. Custom data exploration builds metrics, charts, filters and dashboards point-and-click; scheduled delivery and sharing arrive at the same tier but only to Zendesk users. |
| 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. | IncludedAll plans for report output in CSV, Excel, image or PDF. This is not the same thing as the account data export, which must be enabled by a support ticket and is unavailable on Team plans entirely. |
| 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. | Paid add-onAWS Events Connector, Suite Professional add-on only, streaming Zendesk events into AWS in real time. Carries a hard floor of 10 agent seats to purchase. |
| CSAT / NPS | Not publishedNot published in the plan comparison. Conversation ratings are widely used in the product but appear on no reachable pricing or plan page, so the tier gate cannot be established. | IncludedSuite Professional only. CSAT ratings and follow-up surveys are unavailable on Support Team and Suite Team, so satisfaction measurement cannot be bought below $115 per agent per month. |
| Real-time reporting | IncludedExpert only. The real-time dashboard sits with SSO, HIPAA and SLAs behind the top tier. | IncludedSuite Professional only, and partially: the live agent activity dashboard is limited to a default view and prebuilt live dashboards are included, while customisable live dashboards and visual alerts are unavailable on every publicly priced plan. |
Collaboration
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Internal notes | Not publishedNot published as a plan-matrix row. Lite seats are included at 20 and 50 on Advanced and Expert, which implies a collaborator class, but Intercom does not state what a Lite seat can do on any page reached here. | IncludedAll plans. Private comments are the mechanism light agents use, and whisper mode lets several agents collaborate silently during a live conversation from Suite Team. |
| 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. | IncludedAll plans, through groups, views and conversation routing on agent status and capacity. |
| Approvals | Not published | IncludedSuite Professional only. Approval requests are made and tracked from the ticket interface for compliance. The broader approval workflows row is unavailable on every publicly priced plan. |
Enterprise
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| SAML SSO | IncludedExpert | IncludedShown on Support Team, Suite Team and Suite Professional |
| SCIM provisioning | IncludedExpert in effect | Not publishedNot listed in the published plan matrix or the trust center. |
| 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. | IncludedAll plans carry role-based access with IP restrictions, password complexity and session length controls. Defining your own roles is the gated part: custom agent roles are unavailable on all three publicly priced plans. |
| Custom roles | IncludedTeammate roles, mappable from identity-provider groups. The plan gate is not published. | IncludedSuite Enterprise + Copilot. Unavailable on all three publicly priced plans. |
| Audit logs | IncludedTeammate Activity Logs exist as a feature. Intercom does not publish which plan they require, and they have no documented export path. | IncludedSuite Enterprise. The row reads as unavailable on all three publicly priced plans. |
| IP allowlist | IncludedIP restrictions are listed on the security page alongside SSO, 2FA and SCIM. No plan gate is published. | Not published |
| Sandbox environment | Not publishedNo test workspace is published in the plan comparison. Fin Simulations let a team rehearse AI behaviour before launch, which is narrower than a sandbox of the whole workspace. | Paid add-onSuite Professional add-on, unpriced. Replicates configuration and metadata into a non-production space; additional sandboxes are a further purchase. |
| Multi-brand | IncludedExpert | IncludedGated by count alongside the help centre: unavailable on Support Team, 1 brand on Suite Team, up to 5 on Suite Professional, all centralised in one account. |
| HIPAA / BAA | IncludedExpert | Paid add-onTriple-gated: buy the Advanced Security or Advanced Compliance add-on, enable a set of security configurations, and execute a BAA. Suite Professional only of the three public plans. |
| SOC 2 | IncludedNot plan-gated | IncludedNot plan-gated. Type II, available on request under NDA. |
| ISO 27001 | IncludedNot plan-gated | IncludedNot plan-gated. ISO 27001:2022, plus 27017, 27018, 27701 and 42001. |
| GDPR | IncludedNot plan-gated | IncludedNot plan-gated. DPA plus Binding Corporate Rules approved by EU DPAs. |
| Data residency | IncludedNot published | Paid add-onData Center Location add-on. US, EEA, UK and APAC. Unavailable on Support Team and Suite Team. |
| 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". | IncludedSuite Enterprise only. Advanced data retention policies are unavailable on Support Team, Suite Team and Suite Professional alike. |
| Right-to-erasure tooling | IncludedDocumented as a GDPR workflow, covering both export and deletion of a contact's data on request. | IncludedSplit across tiers. Credit card redaction arrives at Suite Professional. Advanced redaction of email, phone and card data, data masking and advanced encryption are all unavailable on every publicly priced plan. |
Developer
| Capability | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | IncludedAll plans | IncludedAll plans, and the vendor's stated route out for accounts that cannot use the export UI: "customers on all Zendesk plans can use the Zendesk REST API to export data". |
| 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. | IncludedAll plans. iOS, Android and Unity SDKs for embedding support natively in an app, plus the web widget. |
| 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. | IncludedBuilding your own apps is Suite Professional only, capped at 5 App Builder conversations, using App Builder or the Channel Framework. Consuming the 1,800+ Marketplace apps is not gated. |
| Published rate limits | IncludedAll plans | IncludedPublished per plan and unusually specific: 200 requests a minute on Team, 400 on Growth and Professional, 700 on Enterprise, 2,500 on Enterprise Plus, against a 100,000 a minute account ceiling. Incremental export endpoints are the exception at 10 a minute, or 30 with the High Volume add-on. |
Our take
Both sit in customer service platforms and both bill a seat plus an AI unit, so the shortlist is real. The split is which unit you can predict. Zendesk publishes $19, $55 and $115 an agent against automated resolutions at $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay-as-you-go, with 5 to 10 included per agent per month; Intercom publishes $29, $85 and $132 an agent against outcomes at a flat $0.99 with no included allowance on the seat plans. Zendesk verifies each resolution with its own LLM and bills what passes. Intercom bills on the customer walking away satisfied, refunds a resolution if they come back, and never charges when the customer asks for a human. On capability the gates decide it: CSAT surveys, skills-based routing, ticket forms, side conversations, IVR and custom reports are all Suite Professional at $115 on Zendesk, and audit logs, custom agent roles and data retention policies are unavailable on every publicly priced Zendesk plan. Intercom holds SSO, HIPAA, SLAs and the real-time dashboard at Expert. The honest summary is that Zendesk is the deeper platform sold in more pieces, and Intercom is the cheaper annual seat with the more predictable AI bill and the shorter feature list underneath it.
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 Zendesk costs
$19/seat/month
3 published plans, billed annually- Billing unit
Seat (agent) + usage hybrid - Free tier
No, 14-day trial - AI pricing
$1.50 per AI resolution - Vendor calls it
Automated Resolution (AR) - Human handoff
Not billed - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
2h of inactivity - Data export
Support ticket required - Automation export
Not offered
1 of 9 not published by Zendesk, checked