The short answer: published AI rates, August 2026
Intercom Fin charges $0.99 per resolved outcome. Gorgias charges $1.00 per AI resolution on monthly billing, $0.90 on annual, on top of the ticket. Help Scout AI Answers charges $0.75 per resolution. Freshdesk includes 500 Freddy sessions, then charges $49 per 100 ($0.49 each). Zendesk includes a small per-agent allowance and quotes the overage per contract. Relay charges nothing per resolution — AI reply drafts are in the seat price on every plan. All rates read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 25 August 2026.
Every AI help desk promises the same thing: deflect more tickets, resolve faster, spend less. But read the pricing pages closely and a pattern emerges — the AI that is supposed to save you money is often billed in a way that quietly takes those savings back. Before you sign, it is worth understanding exactly how AI gets billed, because the model matters far more than the headline seat price.
The published rate card
Start here, because the seat price is the number vendors advertise and the AI rate is the number that decides your invoice. Rates below are as published on each vendor’s own pricing page on 25 August 2026.
AI billing units and published rates, verified 25 August 2026
| Vendor | Entry seat price | AI billing unit | Published rate | Included before the meter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intercom | $29/seat/mo (Essential, annual) | per resolved outcome | $0.99 | none — a monthly outcome minimum applies on third-party help desks |
| Gorgias | $10/mo for 50 tickets | per AI-resolved conversation | $1.00 monthly / $0.90 annual | none — and the same conversation also consumes a ticket |
| Help Scout | $25/user/mo (Standard; $21 annual) | per AI Answers resolution | $0.75 | none on paid plans after the promotional period |
| Freshdesk | $19/agent/mo (Growth, annual) | per Freddy AI session | $49 per 100 ($0.49 each) | 500 sessions |
| Zendesk | $19/agent/mo (Support Team, annual) | per automated resolution | quoted per contract, not published | a small monthly allowance per agent |
| Front | $25/seat/mo (Starter, annual) | per Autopilot conversation | from $0.05 | none; Copilot is a separate $20/seat/mo |
| Relay | $9/user/mo (Starter) | not metered | no usage fee | AI reply drafts on every plan |
Two things fall out of that table immediately. First, published per-unit rates span 20× — $0.05 to $1.00 — and the unit is not the same unit, so the rates are not directly comparable. Second, one vendor does not publish a rate at all, which means you cannot price an AI-heavy month from Zendesk’s public rate card before you talk to sales.
A "resolution" is not a shared unit
Intercom bills a Fin "outcome" when the customer confirms resolution, does not ask for further help, or a workflow completes — once per conversation regardless of how many questions were answered. Gorgias bills when its AI Agent fully resolves an interaction, and that interaction also consumes a ticket from your plan allowance, so one AI-resolved conversation produces two charges. Freshdesk bills per session rather than per resolution, so an unsuccessful AI attempt still costs you. Zendesk bills per "automated resolution," defined as a request resolved without escalation to a human. Four vendors, four different billable events. Comparing $0.99 to $0.49 without reading those definitions compares nothing.
How AI help desks actually bill for AI
There are four common models, and most vendors use some combination of them:
- Per-resolution: you pay a fee each time the AI "resolves" a conversation (Intercom Fin is the best-known example). What counts as a resolution is defined by the vendor.
- Per-ticket: you pay by ticket volume regardless of how it is handled (Gorgias bills primarily this way), so AI savings do not lower the line item.
- AI add-on tier: AI is a paid upgrade on top of the seat price (Zendesk sells Advanced AI as an add-on; Freshdesk gates Freddy AI to higher plans).
- Included per-seat: AI is bundled into the per-user price with no usage meter — the model Relay uses.
Why per-resolution pricing punishes the thing you want
Per-resolution pricing sounds fair — you only pay when the AI does work. The problem is the incentive it creates for your budget. The whole point of buying AI is to deflect more tickets. But under per-resolution billing, every deflected ticket is a charge. The better your knowledge base gets, the more the AI resolves, and the bigger your bill grows. You are effectively penalized for success, and your costs become hardest to predict in exactly the months that matter most — a product launch, an outage, or a Q4 sales spike.
The question to ask every vendor
What, precisely, counts as a billable "resolution"? A closed conversation? A deflected article view? An AI reply the customer did not follow up on? The definition determines your bill, and it varies widely between vendors.
Worked example: 2,000 tickets a month
Say your team handles 2,000 support conversations a month with 5 agents, and AI handles 40% of them (800 conversations). Every rate below is the vendor’s own published rate, read from their pricing page on 25 August 2026. Seat cost is the entry per-seat plan × 5 agents; the AI column is 800 × the published per-unit rate.
Monthly cost at 2,000 conversations, 5 agents, 800 AI-handled. Published rates, verified 25 August 2026.
| Vendor | Seat cost (5 agents) | AI meter | AI cost at 800 | Monthly total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intercom Essential | $145 (5 × $29) | $0.99 per Fin outcome | $792 | $937 |
| Help Scout Standard | $105 (5 × $21 annual) | $0.75 per AI Answers resolution | $600 | $705 |
| Gorgias Pro | $360 (2,000-ticket tier) | $0.90 per AI resolution (annual) | $720 | $1,080 |
| Freshdesk Growth | $95 (5 × $19) | $49 per 100 sessions past 500 | $147 (300 metered) | $242 |
| Zendesk Suite Team | $275 (5 × $55) | per automated resolution, contract-quoted | not published | $275 + AI |
| Relay Starter — AI included | $45 (5 × $9) | none | $0 | $45 |
The AI line item is the bill. At 800 AI-handled conversations, Intercom’s Fin charges $792 against $145 of seats — the AI costs 5.5× the seats. Help Scout’s $600 is 5.7× its seats. Gorgias charges twice for the same conversation: once against the ticket allowance and again at $0.90. Under a flat per-seat model, 800 conversations and 8,000 conversations cost the same, because cost scales with your team rather than with how hard the AI works. The honest limit: below roughly 50 AI-handled conversations a month the meters barely register, and a metered vendor’s cheaper seats can win.
The flat-rate, AI-included alternative
Relay bundles AI into the seat price. AI reply drafts and a free, built-in AI knowledge base are included on every plan at $9/user/month (and the free plan covers up to 2 users), with no per-resolution or per-ticket meter. One honest distinction to set expectations: Relay’s AI drafts replies for an agent to review and approve before sending — agent-assist, not unattended auto-resolution. For most teams, keeping a human in the loop is the point: it protects brand voice and avoids shipping a hallucinated answer to a customer, while still cutting response time dramatically.
If you are weighing specific tools, the head-to-head pages break down pricing line by line: Relay vs Intercom, Relay vs Zendesk, and Relay vs Gorgias.
Questions to ask any AI help desk vendor
- Is AI metered, and if so, by what unit (resolution, ticket, message)?
- What exactly counts as a billable "resolution"?
- Is the knowledge base included, or a separate product/add-on?
- Does my bill go up when deflection improves or volume spikes?
- Can I forecast next quarter’s cost from headcount alone?