Crisp vs PepoChat (2026): AI Agent, Pricing and Which to Pick

This comparison is for small teams choosing between Crisp and PepoChat because they want an AI agent on the website and cannot tell the bill from the plan cards. Crisp is a customer messaging platform built around a shared inbox, with an AI agent called Hugo on its paid plans. PepoChat is an AI support agent first, with a team inbox behind it for the moments a person should take over.

We read Crisp's pricing page and help center on 12 November 2026 and checked PepoChat against its own product and docs the same day; we did not run paid trials of either. PepoChat is our product; we include it where it fits and say where other tools are the better choice. Facts below were checked on vendor pages on 12 November 2026.

If a third tool is on your list, Tidio vs Crisp vs PepoChat covers the three-way picture, and Crisp vs Intercom prices Crisp against Intercom's Fin.

Crisp vs PepoChat at a glance

Prices and features from Crisp's pricing page and help center and from PepoChat's product and docs, checked 12 November 2026.

How does Crisp pricing differ from PepoChat pricing?

Crisp charges one flat price per workspace and meters only its AI, in dollars of token usage, while PepoChat charges a flat plan that meters the AI in replies and includes seats up to a limit.

The Crisp pricing page says "you pay a single, consistent price regardless of the number of conversations you have each month." Mini is $45 with 4 seats and $5 of AI credits, Essentials $95 with 10 seats and $25, and Plus $295 with 20 or more seats and $75. Only Plus can add agents, at $10 a month each, so a fifth person moves you from Mini to Essentials. Yearly billing is switched on in the app, paid in advance with no refund, and has no published price. Crisp takes 30% off Essentials or Plus for young startups and 50% for nonprofits.

Hugo credits are Crisp's AI meter: a dollar allowance that each Hugo conversation draws down by the tokens it uses. In the words of Crisp's Hugo billing article, "Hugo credits are token-based. The more context Hugo needs to read and the more detailed the conversation becomes, the more credits are consumed." A Hugo conversation runs "from the first AI-handled message until the conversation is resolved, routed, or escalated", and "on average, a full Hugo-handled conversation costs around $0.05 to $0.10 USD, but this remains only an estimate."

When the credits run out, "Hugo stops answering automatically and incoming conversations are escalated to human operators until credits become available again." Pay-As-You-Go with a billing limit keeps Hugo going, though not during a trial, and Crisp publishes no per-unit rate for it beyond that estimate.

PepoChat meters one thing. An AI reply is one answer the agent sends; replies your team types in the inbox are free. Free includes 100 a month, Starter ($39) 1,000, Growth ($149) 5,000 and Scale ($499) 17,000, and paid plans bill extra replies at $39 per 1,000. Starter includes 3 members, Growth 10 and Scale 20, with extra seats at $15 a month. Starter plus overage passes Growth's price at about 3,800 replies a month. There is no self-serve spend cap, and when a Free workspace uses its 100 replies, new conversations go to the team inbox with a friendly message instead of failing.

A long exchange costs more on both, but Crisp's cost also moves with the AI model and how much knowledge Hugo reads, while every PepoChat reply costs the same.

What does a month cost on Crisp and on PepoChat?

At monthly list prices, a two-person team with 100 AI conversations pays $45 to $50 on Crisp and $39 on PepoChat, a four-person team with 500 pays $65 to $90 on Crisp and $73.50 on PepoChat, and a ten-person team with 2,000 pays $170 to $270 on Crisp and $188 on PepoChat.

The three months rest on these assumptions:

• Monthly list prices before tax, no discounts, and the AI takes every conversation first.
• Crisp's AI line uses Crisp's own estimate of $0.05 to $0.10 per Hugo conversation, minus the included credits, with the rest on Pay-As-You-Go, which Crisp's Mini guide says an owner can enable "when available".
• We assume 3 AI replies per conversation on PepoChat, the figure our Tidio pricing breakdown uses. Your own number is the AI replies on the Plans & Billing page divided by the conversations on the Analytics page.
• Each product's cheapest plan with the seats in the scenario and an AI agent that answers from your website.
• The first two Crisp months use Mini, which rests on two points Crisp's pages leave open: Pay-As-You-Go on Mini, and website training on Mini (see the knowledge section). If either is missing, those teams need Essentials: $95 for 100 conversations and $95 to $120 for 500.

Prices from Crisp's pricing page and Hugo billing article and from PepoChat's pricing, checked 12 November 2026. Crisp's AI line uses Crisp's own per-conversation estimate, not a published rate. Estimates from list prices, not quotes.

Two people, 100 conversations. Crisp Free has no AI, so the plan is Mini at $45. Hugo uses 100 × $0.05 to $0.10 = $5 to $10; the included $5 covers the low end, so Pay-As-You-Go adds $0 to $5: $45 to $50. On PepoChat, 100 × 3 = 300 replies, past Free's 100 and its one member, so Starter: $39.

Four people, 500 conversations. Mini includes exactly four seats. Hugo uses 500 × $0.05 to $0.10 = $25 to $50, minus $5 included, so $20 to $45 more: $65 to $90. On PepoChat, 500 × 3 = 1,500 replies: Starter is $39 + 500 × $0.039 = $58.50, and the fourth person adds a $15 seat, for $73.50.

Ten people, 2,000 conversations. Ten seats means Essentials. Hugo uses 2,000 × $0.05 to $0.10 = $100 to $200, minus $25 included, so $75 to $175 more: $170 to $270. If Hugo must look up orders, which Crisp's plan guides place on Plus, it is $295 plus $25 to $125, or $320 to $420. On PepoChat, 2,000 × 3 = 6,000 replies: Growth's $149 covers 5,000 replies and 10 members, plus 1,000 × $0.039 = $39, so $188.

Crisp is cheaper when a team fills a plan's included seats and the AI does less. Ten people with only 300 AI conversations pay $95 to $100 on Crisp Essentials (300 × $0.05 to $0.10 is $15 to $30, against $25 included), while PepoChat needs Starter plus seven extra seats, $39 + 7 × $15 = $144, or Growth at $149. An eleventh person moves Crisp to Plus at $295, where PepoChat Starter plus eight seats, $39 + 8 × $15 = $159, is cheaper again. A team where people answer most conversations is Crisp's home ground.

What can you test before you pay?

Crisp gives you a 14-day trial of every feature with no card and a free plan without AI, while PepoChat gives you a free plan with the AI agent, the team inbox and every chat feature, with no time limit and no card.

Crisp Free is a real two-seat inbox: chat widget, contact form, mobile apps and 100 customer profiles, but no AI credits. The trial unlocks everything for two weeks, with three catches: Hugo's testing and training still consume credits, Pay-As-You-Go stays off until the trial ends, and the "We run on Crisp" label stays during a Plus trial.

PepoChat's free plan includes 100 AI replies a month, 5 knowledge sources and one member, with the team inbox, human handoff, all 22 prebuilt actions, booking, analytics, the API and webhooks. Voice and phone calls and new-lead emails to the team start on Starter. You can start a free PepoChat workspace and run it on real traffic while 100 replies cover you.

How do Hugo and PepoChat learn your content?

Hugo learns from crawled web pages, Crisp knowledge base articles, TXT, CSV and PDF files and Q&A snippets, while PepoChat learns from a site crawl, sitemap, links, files, Q&A pairs, Notion, Google Drive and its own Help Center.

A knowledge base is the private set of pages and documents an AI agent searches before it answers. Crisp's Hugo training article allows 1 domain and 1 file on Mini, 3 domains and 5 files on Essentials, and 10 domains and 100 files on Plus, although the pricing table ticks "AI Knowledge training" only from Essentials, so ask Crisp what Mini allows. The crawler does not run JavaScript, and Crisp says: "We do not automatically track and update your web content automatically." Articles in Crisp's own knowledge base, which starts on Essentials, sync to Hugo when you publish them.

PepoChat crawls up to 200 pages, three levels deep, respects robots.txt and takes path filters; a sitemap import takes up to 200 URLs. Files can be PDF (scanned pages included), DOCX, Markdown, HTML, TXT, CSV, JSON or images, and Notion and Google Drive sync daily. A whole crawl, sitemap or connected app counts as one source: 5 on Free, unlimited from Starter. On paid plans URL sources re-fetch weekly and only changed pages are re-indexed; on Free you press "Sync website pages". The add your website guide covers the crawl settings.

How do human handoff and the team inbox compare?

Both hand conversations from the AI to people in a shared inbox on every plan; Crisp's is the bigger inbox, with more channels, routing and mobile apps, and PepoChat's the simpler one.

Human handoff is the moment the AI stops and a person takes over the same conversation. Crisp's escalation article describes three routes: automatic ("Offer human when Hugo can't find an answer" and "Automatically escalate when the user is frustrated or asks for a human"), routing rules for situations you describe, and manual takeover, where an operator's reply interrupts Hugo. Shortcuts and private notes start on Mini; round-robin routing, ratings and sub-inboxes on Essentials; a customer ticket portal on Plus.

PepoChat's team inbox shows conversations live as unresolved, escalated or resolved, with assignment, tags, priority, saved views, macros, internal notes with @mentions and an "Enhance" button that rewrites a draft. A Team availability setting chooses whether your team answers live, only during business hours, or follows up by email, and the AI keeps answering in every mode. Handoffs email the team and fire a webhook, and a prebuilt action can post them to Slack. Replies typed in the inbox are not emailed to the visitor, there is no native mobile app (the dashboard works in a phone browser), and PepoChat is not a help desk: no shared mailbox, email ticketing or SLA timers. Our human handoff guide covers trigger design.

Which actions and integrations can each AI agent use?

PepoChat's agent can call 22 prebuilt actions across 13 providers on every plan, while Crisp's Hugo calls tools through MCP integrations that Crisp's plan guides place on its $295 Plus plan.

Crisp's Hugo integrations article lists an MCP Store of "26,000+ MCP servers", with Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Stripe, Notion, HubSpot and Zapier among the examples, a "Require user identity verification" switch, and your own MCP server as an option. Crisp says Hugo can act, "checking account details, tracking orders, or issuing refunds". The Plus plan guide lists "Hugo task automation" as a Plus feature, and the Essentials guide says to "Explore Plus when you want Hugo to retrieve information or perform actions through connected tools." The pricing page's Plus card also lists "Unlimited Task automations", but its comparison table ticks an "MCP Server" row from Essentials, so confirm with Crisp which plan your tools need.

PepoChat's actions are prebuilt and on Free. Stripe finds a customer, checks a subscription and cancels at period end; Shopify checks an order by order number only, and WooCommerce by number or full email address. Zendesk, Freshdesk and Zoho Desk create and check tickets, HubSpot and Salesforce find contacts and file tickets or cases, and Slack, Discord, Jira, Mailchimp and Zapier take alerts, issues, subscribers or data. Custom actions call any HTTPS endpoint with up to 10 inputs, and Procedures give the agent playbooks of up to 15 steps. No action moves money, and execution is at-least-once, so never wire refunds or payments as actions.

Can either one book meetings from the chat?

PepoChat books meetings itself through Cal.com or PepoSmart on every plan; Crisp documents no calendar booking by Hugo, though its Workflows can run a booking flow.

Crisp's getting-started article says Hugo can start Workflows for "booking meetings and demo requests", and Workflows are on Essentials and Plus only.

PepoChat connects to Cal.com with an API key, which works on Cal.com's free plan. You switch on the event types the agent may book, with a "when to offer this" note for each. The agent checks live availability up to 14 days ahead, offers slots in the visitor's local time, re-checks the slot before booking, and Cal.com sends the confirmation. It cannot book paid, recurring or team event types, ones that require sign-in, or ones with required questions, and it cannot move or cancel a booking; there is no Calendly or Google Calendar booking. Our Cal.com and Calendly booking guide covers the setup.

Which channels does each one cover?

Crisp covers far more channels: its pricing page lists 12 that feed one inbox, while PepoChat answers on your website and, on paid plans, by voice and phone.

Crisp Free has the chat widget and contact form; Mini adds email, Telegram, Messenger and X; Essentials adds Instagram, SMS, Viber, phone, Line and WhatsApp Business. Crisp also sends campaigns: its help center allows 1,000 recipients per one-shot email campaign on Mini, 10,000 on Essentials and 20,000 on Plus from its shared sending IP (more with a dedicated IP), plus automated and WhatsApp campaigns.

PepoChat is a web widget, installed with one script tag or the WordPress plugin, plus a hosted chat page: web widget and phone today, WhatsApp and Messenger in limited rollout. It has no email or SMS channel and sends no outbound campaigns. If your customers write on WhatsApp, Instagram or email, Crisp wins this row outright.

Can Crisp or PepoChat answer phone calls?

PepoChat's AI agent answers voice calls in the widget and on your own phone number on paid plans; Crisp documents no AI voice agent, and its calling features are for your team.

Crisp's audio and video chat article describes browser calls between agents and visitors from Essentials and lists "regular phone numbers or standard phone calls" as not supported; for phone support it points to integrations such as Aircall, which needs Essentials or Plus.

PepoChat's voice runs on Starter, Growth and Scale. Visitors start a call in the widget, or you connect a Twilio number or SIP trunk, and the agent answers with the same knowledge base, actions, booking and handoff as chat; an optional transfer number passes a caller who asks for a person to a human. A started minute counts as 6 AI replies, so Starter's 1,000 replies are about 166 minutes, and a minute past the allowance is about $0.23. Your carrier bills the line, calls are inbound only, and transcripts, not recordings, land in the team inbox. The voice setup guide has the settings.

Where each product is stronger

Crisp is stronger on:

• Channels: 12 in one inbox, including WhatsApp Business, Instagram, email, SMS and Telegram.
• Seats per dollar: 4 for $45, 10 for $95 and 20 or more for $295.
• Mobile and desktop apps on every plan; on 12 November 2026 the iPhone app was rated 4.4 from 522 ratings on the US App Store.
• Campaigns, customer profiles and help desk depth: Workflows, routing rules, sub-inboxes and a ticket portal on Plus.
• Maturity: "Trusted by 10,000 companies worldwide", a WordPress plugin with 10,000+ active installs rated 4.6 out of 5 on WordPress.org as of 12 November 2026, EU hosting and a DPA on every plan, and a choice of AI models.

PepoChat is stronger on:

• The AI agent on the free plan: 100 replies a month with the team inbox and handoff, no time limit, no card.
• One countable unit: replies, $39 per 1,000 past a paid allowance, with no token arithmetic.
• 22 prebuilt actions across 13 providers on every plan, plus custom HTTPS actions.
• Calendar booking through Cal.com or PepoSmart on every plan.
• An AI agent that answers phone calls, from $39 a month.

PepoChat is also a young product with few public reviews and no published compliance certifications, hosting region or DPA.

Which one should you pick?

Solo founder or two-person SaaS with website questions. PepoChat. The free plan runs the whole chat workflow, and Starter at $39 costs less than Crisp Mini plus Hugo usage.

Store whose customers write on Instagram, WhatsApp and email. Crisp Essentials. Those channels land in one inbox at $95, and PepoChat cannot answer them.

Team of eight to ten where people answer most conversations. Crisp Essentials. Ten seats are part of the $95 workspace price, while PepoChat Starter with extra seats at $15 comes to $114 to $144 for that team.

Clinic, agency or consultancy that books calls. PepoChat. The agent books Cal.com or PepoSmart meetings from live slots on every plan.

Business that wants AI to answer its phone line. PepoChat on Starter or above, because Crisp routes calls to people through Aircall or similar tools.

EU company that needs EU hosting and a DPA. Crisp, which lists both on every plan; PepoChat publishes neither.

What to do next

• For a table-first summary and how a move from Crisp works, read the Crisp alternative page.
• Compare allowances, seats and overage on the PepoChat pricing page against your own monthly volume.
• If your customers are on your website, start a free PepoChat workspace, add your site as one knowledge source, and run it beside Crisp's 14-day trial before you pay for either.
• Weighing other tools as well? Read Intercom vs PepoChat, Tidio vs PepoChat and Chatbase vs PepoChat, or see every comparison on one page.