Help Scout Pricing 2026: Plans, Add-ons and the Real Cost

Help Scout sells four plans, and every paid one is billed per user per month. Free costs $0 for up to 5 users, one Inbox, one Docs site and 100 contacts a month. Standard is $25 per user per month billed annually or $30 per user per month billed monthly. Plus is $45 per user per month billed annually or $54 billed monthly. Pro is $75 per user per month billed annually or $90 billed monthly, with a 10-user minimum.^[1] Scout, the AI agent, adds a fee per resolution on top. The verdict is short. Standard fits most small teams, and Plus pays off only for specific features.

Four plans and the line each one draws

The Free plan has a hard edge. A contact is anyone who got a reply from the team, and phone conversations logged in the app count too. At 100 contacts in a month, the team cannot reply on any channel until the next cycle or an upgrade, although incoming email still arrives. A 15-day trial of Standard or Plus needs no credit card, while Pro trials go through sales. Our guide to whether Help Scout is free covers the limits in full.

Plus earns its premium through team structure, not volume: custom fields, Teams, round-robin routing, two SLA policies with conditions, 500 workflows instead of 150, AI Drafts and AI Summarize with no usage fee, and the CRM and Jira integrations. Native SMS through your own Twilio account also starts there, while Standard uses an SMS integration. Phone always runs through integrations. If none of those features is on your list, the step up buys nothing.

What a team really pays

Per-user pricing means every login is a billable user, the Account Owner included; customers never count. Users added mid-cycle are charged pro rata. By our arithmetic, five users on Standard come to $125 a month billed annually, or $1,500 a year. Five users on Plus come to $225 a month billed annually. Ten users on Plus cost $450 a month billed annually, or $5,400 a year.

The plan caps create two cliffs. Standard stops at 25 users, which is $625 a month billed annually. The 26th user moves the whole team to Plus at $1,170 a month billed annually, an extra $545 for one person. Plus stops at 50 users, or $2,250 a month; the 51st user means Pro at $3,825 a month. Pro also has a floor. Ten users at $75 per user per month billed annually come to $750 a month ($9,000 a year), so a six-person team on Pro still pays for ten.

Light users soften the per-login rule. They view conversations and collaborate, see reports and Docs, but cannot reply to customers or be assigned. Plus includes 5 light users (up to 25) and Pro includes 15 (up to 50). Each extra light user costs $10 per light user per month billed annually or $12 billed monthly. The lowest paid plan has none, so every developer or manager who reads conversations there takes a full seat.

Add-ons billed on top of the seats

Scout (formerly AI Answers) is billed through the Envoy add-on at $0.75 per resolution on Standard, Plus and Pro, on top of the per-user price and charged in arrears.^[2] A resolution is one conversation Scout handles without human help, however many questions it holds. New accounts get three months of free, unlimited resolutions from the day the account is created. Existing customers who switch Scout on get no trial. Set a monthly cap in resolutions: at the cap Scout switches off until the next cycle and Beacon falls back to its other options.

For budgeting, 100 resolutions cost $75, 500 cost $375 and 1,000 cost $750. About 33 resolutions a month equal one Standard seat billed annually, and 100 equal one Pro seat. Email warnings arrive before the cap. Raising it applies within an hour and lowering it waits for the next cycle, though Help Scout notes the setting may not be available in all accounts yet. Help Scout also says prepaid resolutions save up to 33%.

Extra Inboxes cost $10 per Inbox per month billed annually or $12 billed monthly, and extra Docs sites cost $20 per site per month billed annually or $24 billed monthly. Inbox count alone rarely justifies moving up. Standard includes 2 Inboxes and Plus includes 5. Three extra Inboxes add $30 a month billed annually, while the step up adds $20 per user per month. At five users, the lower plan with three extras runs $155 a month billed annually against $225 for the higher one.

Messages, the proactive messages shown through Beacon, include 2,000 unique viewers a month on paid plans; above that, tiers start at $20 a month for 2,001 to 4,000 viewers, billed in arrears. Imports through Import2 are free up to 500,000 records, then $500 per 500,000 records counting the first. Several add-ons have no published price: HIPAA on Plus, SSO/SAML and IP restrictions on Standard and Plus, and API rate-limit add-ons. Pro includes HIPAA, SSO/SAML and IP restrictions. At 10 users, Pro costs $750 a month billed annually and Plus costs $450. Set any add-on quote against that $300 monthly gap.

Annual billing, renewal and refunds

Help Scout labels the annual discount 16%, but the yearly figures per user are $300 against $360 on Standard, $540 against $648 on Plus and $900 against $1,080 on Pro (our arithmetic). Annual is about 17% less; monthly costs 20% more. Annual payment is a prepaid credit drawn down each month, so adding users uses it faster.^[3] On every plan a year billed annually equals ten months billed monthly. If the team may leave or shrink within ten months, monthly costs less. Past that, annual wins.

The catch is commitment. Plans renew automatically for the same term unless written notice is given at least 30 days before expiry, and the plan cannot be reduced mid-term.^[4] Refunds come only through the 30-day money-back guarantee on the first payment; after that, no refunds or credits apply to unused months. Cancellation is immediate. Export first, because Help Scout restores a cancelled account only on written request within 14 days, and most data leaves only through the API.

Discounts and the legacy plans

Help Scout for Good gives non-profits and B Corporations a 10% lifetime discount with proof of status. The startup program gives new customers six months free with Scout included, if they are incorporated tech startups under two years old with under $1 million in ARR. Neither is a list price. Treat each as an application, not a plan. Annual prepayments over $2,500 can go by wire or ACH, and taxes are extra.

Older accounts may still sit on a legacy contact-based plan, billed by contacts helped a month. A legacy contact-based plan includes AI Drafts, AI Assist and unlimited light users, and has no SLAs and no AI Topics. Help articles written for those accounts do not describe the plans sold today. A legacy badge means the plan is closed to new accounts and cannot be chosen again after switching.

How the price compares with other help desks

Units differ, so compare five seats billed annually. Help Scout Standard comes to $125 a month with live chat and social channels, while Freshdesk Growth comes to $95 a month without live chat. Zendesk Support Team also comes to $95 a month for five agents and has no live chat. Zoho Desk Standard comes to $70 a month for five agents billed annually.

Gorgias prices per account by billable tickets, not by headcount: its Basic plan is $50 a month billed annually for 300 tickets a month. Model tickets, not people, before comparing it. Agent-side AI tilts the other way: AI Drafts come with Help Scout Plus at no usage fee, while Freddy AI Copilot is $29 per agent per month billed annually on Freshdesk Pro and Enterprise. See Help Scout vs Freshdesk and Help Scout alternatives.

The bottom line

Help Scout's pricing is transparent at the seat level and rewards teams that know their headcount. Standard at $25 per user per month billed annually covers email, chat, social channels and the API. Plus at $45 per user per month billed annually is worth it only when you need custom fields, routing, Teams, CRM integrations or AI Drafts. Pro belongs to teams of ten or more that need SSO, IP restrictions or HIPAA without add-ons. Budget Scout separately, set its cap early, and mark the renewal notice date.