Will I lose my free plan?
Partly, and it is worth being exact about how much. tawk.to's free plan covers unlimited agents and unlimited chats, with ticketing and a knowledge base. ChatterMate's Free plan on our cloud is one user, website chat and 50 AI replies a month. New accounts get 14 days of Growth with no card, then move to Free unless you choose a plan.
If what you need is ten people answering chats by hand for nothing, tawk.to is the better deal, and no plan of ours beats it.
ChatterMateA month
The Apache-2.0 edition has no plan limits: any number of users, every channel, no reply count. You pay for a server, Postgres, Redis and whichever AI model you use, and you run the upgrades.
Starter adds your whole team, 1,000 AI replies a month and website chat, and drops the Powered by ChatterMate line.
Growth adds tickets, the help center and the other 8 channels, with 2,500 AI replies.
Plus servers and models if you self-host
Side by side
| ChatterMate | tawk.to | |
|---|---|---|
| The chat software | Free to self-host. Cloud plans from $0 to $24.99 a month | Free |
| People who answer chats | Your whole team on every paid plan. Free is one user | Unlimited, free |
| AI agent | Included: 50 replies a month free, 1,000 for $4.99 | AI Assist add-on from $29 a month, with a free plan for low volume |
| Removing the vendor's branding | Included from Starter, $4.99 | $29 a month |
| People for hire | Not offered | Trained chat agents at $1 an hour |
| Tickets and knowledge base | From Growth, $9.99 | Free |
| Channels | 9: website, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, LINE, Slack, email and SMS | Widget, chat pages, Facebook, Telegram, Google RCS and SMS, with calls in beta |
| Source code | Open core, Apache-2.0 | Closed |
| Hosting | Our cloud or your servers | tawk.to's cloud |
| Your own AI key | Yes, on paid plans and self-hosted | Not stated on its site |
| Customer base | Growing, 163 GitHub stars | Millions of businesses, by its own count |
tawk.to details come from its pricing and AI Assist pages on 8 November 2026. Check them before you decide.
Choose ChatterMate or tawk.to
You want the AI to answer first, not as an add-on
ChatterMateYou want a clean widget and AI replies for $4.99 a month
ChatterMateYou want the source code, or to run it on your own servers
ChatterMateYou want escalated chats to become tickets that check your logs
ChatterMateYour chat budget is zero and several people answer by hand
tawk.toYou want to hire people by the hour to answer chats
tawk.toYou want ticketing and a knowledge base at no cost
tawk.toYou want calls and SMS in the same dashboard
tawk.toWho answers at 3am
tawk.to rents trained chat agents at $1 an hour. One agent around the clock is 168 hours a week, about $728 a month. AI Assist, from $29 a month, answers from your knowledge base and saved shortcuts at any hour and passes chats to your team when a person is needed.
The AI answers at any hour from your knowledge. When a chat needs a person outside your office hours, it waits in the queue and the customer is told the team will follow up. That follow-up is yours to send. ChatterMate doesn't sell staffing.
Website chat, 2:40am
- 2:40amCustomer
Do you deliver on Saturdays?
- AI agent
Yes, in the city area, between 9am and 1pm. Orders placed before Friday noon qualify.
- Customer
My last parcel was damaged. Can I get a refund?
- AI agent
I can't decide refunds, so I'm passing this to the team. They're back at 9am and will reply here. Can I take your email?
- 9:00amYour team
The team is back and replies in the same chat.
A person handles judgment calls that an AI shouldn't take, and an AI answers repeat questions in seconds. Read last month's night-time chats and count how many were repeat questions about delivery, prices or opening hours. That number tells you which kind of cover you need.
What the add-ons add up to
A monthly price for one website, by what you want the chat to do.
| What you want | tawk.to | ChatterMate cloud |
|---|---|---|
| People answer, vendor branding stays | $0 for any number of people | $0 for one person, $4.99 for the team |
| AI answers and no vendor branding | From $58: AI Assist from $29 plus $29 for branding | $4.99 on Starter, 1,000 AI replies |
| Also tickets, a knowledge base and messaging apps | From $58, as tickets and the knowledge base are free | $9.99 on Growth, 2,500 AI replies |
| Someone answering around the clock | About $728 for one hired agent | Not offered. The AI covers nights and your team follows up |
| Your own servers | Not offered | $0 for the software, plus servers and model costs |
tawk.to's pricing page gives AI Assist only a starting price, so check how many AI replies each of its tiers covers before you compare at your volume.
What tawk.to does better
Unlimited agents and chats at $0, with ticketing and a hosted knowledge base. Nothing in ChatterMate's cloud matches that for a large team that answers by hand.
Hired chat agents at $1 an hour, and virtual assistants from $7 an hour for other work.
Chat pages turn a link into a conversation, and calls and SMS are in beta in the same dashboard.
tawk.to says more than 1.7 billion people interact with its widget each month. ChatterMate's customer base is growing.
Where ChatterMate goes further
- The AI is the product
It answers from a website crawl, your sitemap, PDFs and plain text. You can read what it learned and edit it, and the edit is learned again at once. The website widget can show the source of each answer.
- Handover with rules
It hands off when it can't answer from your knowledge, when the customer asks for a person or sounds frustrated, or when the question needs judgment. Then it stops replying in that chat.
- Actions in your app
On the website widget, the agent can run functions you register on your page, and journeys guide new users step by step.
- Your code and your model
Read the Apache-2.0 code, self-host it, and use our model or your own key for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and others.
Moving from tawk.to
- Step 1Export what you need
ChatterMate doesn't import past chats or contacts, so export them from tawk.to before you switch.
- Step 2Bring your knowledge base
Add your tawk.to knowledge base address as a knowledge source so the AI learns it. On Growth you can also import it into the help center, one category page at a time.
- Step 3Turn shortcuts into knowledge
Paste your best shortcuts in as plain-text knowledge, so the AI can use those answers. There are no saved replies for your team to import them into.
- Step 4Set handover and hours
Turn on handover, create a group for the people who answer chats and set office hours, so night chats wait for the morning.
- Step 5Swap the widget
Remove the tawk.to script and paste ours in the same place on each page.
- Step 6Read the first week
Read the transcripts each day. Fix any wrong answer by editing what the agent learned, which takes effect at once.
tawk.to alternative questions
Is tawk.to open source?
No, as far as its site shows. It is free to use, but it is a hosted service and the code is closed. ChatterMate's core is Apache-2.0 on GitHub.
Is ChatterMate free?
The self-hosted edition is free with no plan limits. On our cloud, the Free plan is one user, website chat and 50 AI replies a month, and paid plans start at $4.99.
Can I remove the Powered by ChatterMate line?
Yes, on paid cloud plans from Starter at $4.99. The Free plan shows it.
Can I hire chat agents through ChatterMate?
No. ChatterMate doesn't offer staffing. The AI answers first, and your own team takes the chats it hands over.
Will my tawk.to chats and contacts move across?
No. There is no import for past chats or contacts. Your knowledge base can come across as knowledge and, on Growth, as help center articles.
Does the AI answer on WhatsApp and Messenger too?
Yes, from Growth, along with Instagram, Telegram, LINE, Slack, email and SMS. Those channels are text only, and workflows and carousels stay in the website widget.