Intercom vs PepoChat (2026): Fin Pricing, Features, Which to Pick

This page is for teams choosing between Intercom and PepoChat, usually because an Intercom invoice has grown faster than the team, or because a small business is buying its first support tool. It covers what each product is, how each charges, what a real month costs, what you can try for free, and who should stay on Intercom.

Everything about Intercom comes from Intercom's own pricing page, Fin pages and help center, opened on 12 November 2026; everything about PepoChat comes from the product and its docs. 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.

Intercom is a customer service platform: the Messenger widget, a shared inbox with tickets, a help center, email and messaging channels, and Fin, its AI agent, which also runs on other helpdesks. PepoChat is an AI support agent for your website: it answers from your knowledge base, acts in your tools, hands conversations to a built-in team inbox and, on paid plans, answers calls. One is a helpdesk with an AI agent; the other is an AI agent with an inbox.

Intercom vs PepoChat at a glance

Prices and features from Intercom's own pricing, Fin and help-center pages and from PepoChat's product and docs, checked 12 November 2026.

How does Intercom pricing differ from PepoChat's?

Intercom charges twice, once per teammate and once per AI result, while PepoChat charges once, per AI reply, with teammates included up to each plan's limit.

On the Intercom pricing page, each plan has a seat price and the same Fin price. A Full seat is a paid login for anyone who replies to customers, with a minimum of one. Billed monthly, Essential is $39 a seat, Advanced $99 and Expert $139, per Intercom's pricing guide; billed annually they are $29, $85 and $132. New customers pay less for Essential: on 12 November the pricing page showed it at $29 a seat billed monthly under "New customers save 25%" and $19 billed annually under "New customers save 35%", for as long as they stay subscribed. Advanced adds 20 free Lite seats and Expert 50, but Lite seats cannot send messages.

A Fin outcome is the unit Intercom bills for its AI agent. In the pricing page's words, an outcome is counted when "A customer confirms their issue is resolved, or They don't ask for more help after Fin responds, or Fin completes a workflow (Procedure), including handoffs," and "You're only charged once per conversation, even if multiple questions are answered." Each costs $0.99. The Fin pricing page adds sales outcomes: disqualifications and self-serve routings at $0.99, qualifications at $9.99.

The "don't ask for more help" clause runs on a clock: Fin's article on resolutions counts a customer who "disengages from the conversation for 24 hours after Fin's last answer" as an assumed resolution. Escalations from Fin's default behaviour or your workspace rules are not billed, and a reopened conversation has its resolution deducted. Our Intercom Fin pricing breakdown works these rules through at three resolution rates.

Around the two meters sit extras: Copilot for human agents at $29 an agent a month billed annually or $35 monthly, the Pro add-on from $100 a month, and pay-as-you-go WhatsApp, SMS and phone. Live chat and support email are included. Fin on another helpdesk is $0.99 an outcome with a 50-outcome monthly minimum and no seats.

An AI reply is PepoChat's unit: one answer the agent sends. Free includes 100 a month, Starter ($39) 1,000, Growth ($149) 5,000 and Scale ($499) 17,000; past a paid allowance each reply costs $0.039, or $39 per 1,000. Team replies are free, Starter includes 3 members, Growth 10 and Scale 20, and extra seats are $15 a month.

So on Intercom a better knowledge base raises the Fin line, because more conversations end in an outcome. On PepoChat it does not, because the agent sends about the same replies whether it resolves a question or hands it over. The flip side: PepoChat bills the AI replies in conversations that end with a person, while Fin bills such a conversation only when one of your Procedures hands it over.

What does a month cost on Intercom and on PepoChat?

Under the assumptions below, a solo founder pays $128 a month on Intercom and $39 on PepoChat, a three-person team $483 and $93.60, and an eight-person team $1,717 and $305.

• Every conversation starts with the AI agent, on the website.
• We assume three AI replies per conversation, the middle of the two to four our Fin pricing breakdown uses. Your own number is AI replies used (Plans & Billing page) divided by conversations (Analytics page).
• We assume half of all conversations end in a billable Fin outcome; the rest go to a person without a Procedure, or end on a clarifying question the customer never answers, which Intercom does not bill.
• Monthly billing at the price a new customer pays: Intercom Essential at $29 a seat, the cheapest plan with Fin, the Messenger and the shared inbox for every seat; PepoChat uses the cheapest plan-plus-overage combination that covers the team's seats. No add-ons, messaging usage or tax.

Solo founder. Intercom: 1 × $29 = $29 in seats, and 200 × 50% = 100 outcomes × $0.99 = $99, for $128. PepoChat: 200 × 3 = 600 replies, more than Free's 100, so Starter at $39 with 1,000 replies.

Small team. Intercom: 3 × $29 = $87, and 800 × 50% = 400 outcomes × $0.99 = $396, for $483. PepoChat: 800 × 3 = 2,400 replies; Starter covers 1,000, the other 1,400 × $0.039 = $54.60, so $39 + $54.60 = $93.60 with three members. Growth would be $149; Starter plus overage stays cheaper until about 3,800 replies.

Growing team. Intercom: 8 × $29 = $232, and 3,000 × 50% = 1,500 outcomes × $0.99 = $1,485, for $1,717. PepoChat: 3,000 × 3 = 9,000 replies; Growth includes 5,000 and 10 members, the other 4,000 × $0.039 = $156, so $149 + $156 = $305. Starter would be $39 + 8,000 × $0.039 = $351 plus five extra seats at $15, $426; Scale is $499.

Four checks. At the 76% average Intercom advertises on its Fin site, instead of our 50%, the eight-person team has 3,000 × 76% = 2,280 outcomes, a Fin line of 2,280 × $0.99 = $2,257.20 and $2,489.20 with seats. At four AI replies per conversation instead of three, that team needs 12,000 replies on PepoChat: $149 + 7,000 × $0.039 = $422. Without the new-customer discount, at the $39 list price, Intercom's monthly totals are $138, $513 and $1,797. On annual billing at the new-customer price, Intercom's seats fall to $19, $57 and $152 and the totals to $118, $453 and $1,637; PepoChat's yearly plans are ten months' price, so its totals become $32.50, $87.10 and $280.17 a month.

Startups change the picture for a year. Intercom's Early Stage page offers companies with up to $10M in funding, fewer than 15 employees and no Intercom account the helpdesk from $65 a month in year one, with 6 Advanced seats and 300 free Fin outcomes a month. Intercom's pricing guide describes year one differently, as $33 a month with 2 full seats, so confirm the package before you budget. On the program page's terms, the solo founder would pay $65, the three-person team $65 + 100 × $0.99 = $164. Years two and three drop to 50% and 25% off with 150 and 75 free outcomes.

Remember what each total buys: Intercom's $483 includes a helpdesk with support email, ticketing and a public help center, while PepoChat's $93.60 buys the AI agent, team inbox and integrations, and nothing for email or WhatsApp.

What can you test before you pay?

Intercom gives you 14 days with everything switched on; PepoChat gives you a free plan with no end date, minus voice.

Intercom's trial needs no credit card, and the Fin pricing page says Fin outcomes are unlimited during it. That is enough time to watch how many conversations end in an outcome, the number your bill will follow. Fin Voice is sold separately, to select customers through sales.

PepoChat's Free plan includes 100 AI replies a month, 5 knowledge sources and one member, with every chat feature on: team inbox, handoff, integrations and actions, booking, analytics, API and webhooks. Voice, phone and new-lead emails need a paid plan. At 100 replies, new conversations go to the team inbox with a friendly message instead of failing. You can start a free workspace without a card.

Knowledge sources and their limits

Both answer from a knowledge base, the private set of articles, pages and files the agent searches before replying, and both learn from websites, documents and Notion.

Intercom's content article lists public and internal articles, snippets, website sync and uploaded documents, plus content from Zendesk, Guru, Notion, Confluence, Salesforce, Box, Freshdesk, Document360 and Amazon S3 (open beta). Websites re-sync weekly. Its documents article allows 100 PDF or DOCX documents per workspace, up to 100 MB each, text format only, so a scan without selectable text will not help Fin.

PepoChat counts sources. A site crawl of up to 200 pages, a sitemap import or a connected Notion or Google Drive is one source; a link or file is one; snippets and Q&A pairs count as none. Free allows 5 sources and 20 MB of text, paid plans unlimited sources (200 MB on Starter). Files can be PDF, including scanned pages, DOCX, Markdown, HTML, TXT, CSV, JSON or images, up to 25 MB. Paid plans re-fetch URLs weekly; on Free you sync by hand. The add your website page covers crawl settings.

Intercom is ahead on connectors to Confluence, Guru, Box and Zendesk. PepoChat is ahead if your manuals are scans or images.

How do human handoff and the team inbox compare?

Human handoff is the moment the AI stops and a person takes over; both products hand off into an inbox included on every plan, but Intercom's is a full helpdesk and PepoChat's is not.

In Intercom you choose the team or teammate that receives what Fin cannot resolve, and the chat deployment article offers a "Collect more information when a customer asks to speak to the team" setting so Fin gathers details first. Essential includes the shared inbox and ticketing; multiple inboxes, Workflows and round robin start on Advanced, SLAs on Expert. Teammates can reply, note, reassign and snooze from the Intercom Conversations app for iOS and Android.

PepoChat hands off when the agent cannot answer from the knowledge base or the visitor asks for a person. The conversation lands in the team inbox, where teammates see it live and reply as themselves, with statuses, assignment, tags, priority, saved views, macros, internal notes and CSV export. A Team availability setting covers live answering, business hours with an away message, or email follow-up only, and the AI keeps answering in every mode. Alerts go out by email, webhook or Slack; the human handoff docs cover the triggers.

PepoChat is not a helpdesk: no shared email mailbox, email ticketing, SLA timers or routing rules, and inbox replies are not emailed to the visitor (teammates use Send Email). There is no native mobile app; the dashboard works in a phone browser. If your team lives in tickets and SLAs, Intercom's inbox is built for it.

Actions and integrations: what can each AI agent do?

Both agents look things up and act in your tools; Fin can do more, including refunds, while PepoChat covers more prebuilt tools on every plan and never moves money.

Fin connects through data connectors, a REST connector, MCP, webhooks and a Zapier MCP template, and Intercom says pre-built connectors are included in all plans. The Shopify connector exposes order status, fulfilment and purchase history; the Stripe connector reads payments, subscriptions and invoices and can "take actions like refunds and subscription cancellations". Both are for US-hosted workspaces only and need JWT or email one-time-code verification in production.

PepoChat ships 22 prebuilt actions across 13 providers on every plan: Stripe (find a customer, check a subscription, cancel at period end), Shopify and WooCommerce order lookups, Zendesk, Freshdesk and Zoho Desk tickets, HubSpot and Salesforce contacts and cases, Slack and Discord alerts, Jira, Mailchimp and Zapier. Custom actions call any HTTPS endpoint with up to 10 inputs. No prebuilt action refunds or charges anyone, and because actions run at least once, payments should never be wired as custom actions.

For booking, Fin uses prebuilt Cal.com templates, and Fin for Sales books Calendly meetings in the web Messenger if you pay for Calendly. PepoChat books through Cal.com or PepoSmart on every plan, showing live slots in the visitor's local time and re-checking before booking; on Cal.com it cannot book paid, recurring or team event types, and there is no Calendly integration. Our Cal.com and Calendly booking guide compares both routes.

Channels: where Intercom is clearly ahead

Intercom answers on far more channels than PepoChat, and for many teams that settles the comparison.

The Fin channels page lists the Messenger on web, iOS and Android, email from your own domain, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, SMS and Discord in 45 languages, Slack communities and Connect channels, voice, and an API. One Fin setup answers in all of them, into one inbox.

PepoChat is a website widget (one script tag or the WordPress plugin), a hosted chat page and, on paid plans, voice and inbound phone. WhatsApp and Messenger are in limited rollout while Meta's app review is pending, and there is no email or SMS channel. If a real share of your customers write by email or WhatsApp, Intercom is the right tool, whatever the price.

Voice and phone: which one answers calls?

Both answer calls with the same AI agent as chat; PepoChat publishes its price, while Intercom sells Fin Voice through sales.

The Fin Voice page says it works with your existing telephony through call forwarding or SIP, naming Twilio, Genesys, RingCentral, Five9, 8x8, Aircall and Mitel. Fin can check order status during a call, and unresolved calls go to a live transfer, a callback or a workflow. The Fin pricing page says Fin Voice "is offered on a custom pricing plan" for select customers.

PepoChat's voice is on Starter, Growth and Scale, not Free. Visitors can call from the widget, and the agent answers your own Twilio number or SIP trunk with the same knowledge base, actions, booking and handoff as chat. A transfer number passes callers who want a person to your team; otherwise the agent takes a message. Transcripts land in the inbox tagged Voice or Phone. A started minute counts as 6 AI replies, so Starter's 1,000 replies are about 166 minutes and an extra minute is about $0.23; your carrier bills the line. No outbound calls, recordings or SMS. See the phone numbers docs.

Where each product is stronger

Intercom is stronger on:

• Channels: email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, SMS, Discord, Slack and voice from one Fin setup, plus the Messenger inside iOS and Android apps.
• Helpdesk depth: ticketing on every plan, Workflows and round robin from Advanced, SLAs, SSO and HIPAA support on Expert.
• Maturity: Intercom says over 12,000 customers use Fin, and its security page lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and HIPAA, with US, EU or Australian hosting.
• A teammate app for iOS and Android.
• Deeper actions, such as Stripe refunds, and Fin on other helpdesks without Intercom seats.
• Branding: the attribution can be removed on Advanced and Expert.

PepoChat is stronger on:

• Price at small and medium volume: $39 to $305 a month in the three worked examples, against $128 to $1,717.
• A free plan with no end date, with the inbox, handoff, actions and booking switched on.
• A flat meter: a better knowledge base never raises the bill, and seats are included.
• Published voice pricing from $39 on the same allowance as chat.
• Scanned PDFs and images as knowledge sources.

Which one should you pick?

Support team answering email and messaging apps. Intercom. One Fin setup across email, WhatsApp, Instagram and SMS, with your people in the same inbox, is what PepoChat does not offer.

Mid-sized team with SLAs, SSO or a procurement checklist. Intercom on Expert. SLAs, SSO, HIPAA support and certifications are on its pages; PepoChat publishes no compliance certifications.

Funded startup that qualifies for Early Stage. Intercom for year one, from $65 a month with 300 free outcomes on its Early Stage page, if you will use its channels. Rerun the numbers before year two, when the discount drops from 93% to 50%.

Small business whose questions arrive on the website. PepoChat. Starter at $39 covers 1,000 AI replies and three people, inbox and booking included.

SaaS or store watching the Fin line grow. PepoChat on the website. You can keep Intercom for email and messaging and move only website chat, which trims the outcomes you pay Fin for.

Clinic, agency or consultancy that books calls and answers the phone. PepoChat, if your calendar is Cal.com or PepoSmart: booking, calls and handoff share one allowance from $39.

What to do next

• Comparing more tools? Our best Intercom alternatives ranks nine for smaller teams.
• Ready to switch? The Intercom alternative page covers moving your knowledge base, integrations and widget.
• Put your volume next to the plans on the PepoChat pricing page, then start free and run it beside Intercom's 14-day trial on the same questions.
• Weighing other tools as well? Read Tidio vs PepoChat, Crisp vs PepoChat and Chatbase vs PepoChat, or see every comparison on one page.