I run a small helpdesk company, so read this knowing I have a side. That is also why every number below comes straight off the vendor's own pricing page, not a review site or someone's teardown, and why each vendor gets a paragraph on what it does fairly. If a vendor doesn't publish something, I say so instead of guessing.
Four vendors, four different units
The headline rate is only half the story. The other half is the unit: what has to happen for the meter to tick.
| Vendor | How AI is charged | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Intercom | Fin bills $0.99 per outcome, a resolution, a procedure handoff or a disqualification, on top of seats. | 2026-11-05 |
| Zendesk | AI agents bill $1.50 per automated resolution on a committed volume, or $2.00 pay-as-you-go, on top of seats. | 2026-11-05 |
| Help Scout | AI Assist, Drafts and Summarize are included on paid plans; the AI Answers chatbot is an add-on at $0.75 per resolution. | 2026-11-05 |
| Freshdesk | Freddy AI Agent includes 500 sessions once per account, then $49 per 100 sessions on top of seats. | 2026-11-05 |
A few things in that table are easy to miss.
- Intercom bills outcomes, not resolutions. In Intercom's own pricing doc a resolution, a procedure hand-off and a disqualification each count as an outcome at $0.99, and a lead qualification bills $9.99 (checked 2026-11-05). The meter covers more than the tickets Fin closes by itself.
- Zendesk has two rates. $1.50 per automated resolution if you commit to a volume, $2.00 pay-as-you-go (checked 2026-11-05). Commit too low and the extra runs at the higher rate. Commit too high and you have paid for resolutions that never happened.
- Help Scout only meters its chatbot. AI Answers is $0.75 per resolution (checked 2026-11-05). Drafting, summarising and tone editing are in the seat price.
- Freshdesk's free 500 sessions are one-time. They are a single allowance per account, not a monthly one. After that, sessions are $49 per 100 (checked 2026-11-05).
What a month costs at real volume
Here is the AI line alone at three volumes, seats not included. Freshdesk is shown after the one-time free sessions are used up, because that is where a team running it on real volume lands within a month or two. Zendesk is shown at its cheaper committed rate.
| AI answers / month | 500 | 1,500 | 3,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intercom Fin (per outcome) | $495 | $1,485 | $2,970 |
| Zendesk (committed) (per automated resolution) | $750 | $2,250 | $4,500 |
| Help Scout AI Answers (per resolution) | $375 | $1,125 | $2,250 |
| Freshdesk Freddy (per session, in packs of 100) | $245 | $735 | $1,470 |
| Your own AI key, about 3¢ an answer | $15 | $45 | $90 |
The units are not identical, so treat this as one answer per conversation for every row. The 3¢ is a measured cost on a small, fast model and runs 1 to 5¢ depending on the model and how long the ticket is. It is paid to your AI provider, not to a helpdesk.
The complaint behind the numbers
The rate itself is not what people complain about most. It is the shape of the bill. A per-answer meter grows as the AI gets better. Write a sharper help article, tune the bot, and the count goes up. You are rewarded for good work with a bigger invoice.
The second complaint is quieter and, I think, worse. When every answer has a price, stepping in starts to feel like a cost decision. One support lead put it bluntly on Intercom's own community forum in April 2025: "you are incentivising me to let the customer try the wrong answer". That is one person's view, not a fact about the product. But nobody on a support team should ever have to weigh a customer's experience against a line item.
What each vendor does fairly
A comparison that can't name anything good about the other side is an advert. So, from their own pages:
- Intercom: You're charged for at most one outcome per conversation, however many actions Fin takes. Intercom states you're never charged for an outcome that didn't happen. A failed procedure or a handoff to a human isn't billed as a resolution.
- Zendesk: Zendesk only bills an automated resolution when the AI actually resolves the request without escalating to a human.
- Help Scout: The everyday AI features, drafting, summarising, tone editing, are included in the seat price, not metered.
- Freshdesk: A session is a 72-hour window, not a single message. Several exchanges with one customer count once.
These matter. Billing at most once per conversation, or counting a 72-hour window as one session, is much fairer than billing per message. The meter is still a meter, but it is not a trick.
When the meter is fine
At low volume, honestly, it often is. A few hundred AI answers a month is a few hundred dollars at most, and if the rest of the platform earns its seat price, the AI line probably isn't the reason to move. The same goes for a team that only wants AI help writing replies: on Help Scout that is already in the seat price.
The meter starts to matter in the hundreds of answers a month, and becomes the whole decision in the thousands. That is also the point where the AI line can quietly grow past what you pay for the seats themselves.
The other way to pay for AI
The model behind a support answer is cheap. Most of a per-answer price is not the cost of the AI itself (the token maths is here). So the other option is a helpdesk where the AI runs on your own key, from the provider you choose, and the helpdesk charges per agent with nothing per answer.
That is how Kerux works. The AI answers when it is confident above a level you set, and otherwise hands the ticket to your team with a note saying why. You can turn on drafts so a person checks every reply first. You can set a monthly cap on your AI spend in Settings, and the AI stops at the cap. Your provider bills you directly, and the Kerux bill only moves when you add or remove an agent.
It is not the right choice for everyone. Kerux has no phone channel, and Intercom's messenger and product tours go well beyond what we do. But if most of your support is email and the AI line is the part of the bill that keeps growing, it is worth running your own numbers.
See your number on the calculator: put in your monthly volume and it puts each vendor's published rate next to your own-key cost. Kerux's per-agent prices are on the pricing page.
Sources: Intercom pricing (checked 2026-11-05) · Zendesk pricing (checked 2026-11-05) · Help Scout pricing (checked 2026-11-05) · Freshdesk pricing (checked 2026-11-05). Rates change; check each page before you decide.