Intercom Pricing in 2026: What It Actually Costs (Honest Breakdown)

TL;DR: Intercom costs $29-132/seat/month + $0.99 per AI resolution + usage fees for SMS/phone/tours. Your real monthly bill depends on team size, support volume, and which add-ons you need. Here's exactly how it breaks down.

If you've tried to figure out Intercom's pricing, you've probably felt the confusion. Seats? Resolutions? Usage-based channels? Lite seats?

We built TranslateDesk as an Intercom integration, so we've helped hundreds of customers navigate this. Here's the honest breakdown of what Intercom actually costs.

Base Plan Pricing (Per Seat)

Intercom offers three plans, all with per-seat pricing:

Plan	Monthly (Billed Annually)	What's Included
Essential	$29/seat/month	Core support tools. No lite seats. Basic reporting.
Advanced	$85/seat/month	Automation, better reporting, 20 lite seats included.
Expert	$132/seat/month	Full feature access, 50 lite seats, priority support.

Key point: This is just the base. The real cost comes from what you add on top.

Fin AI Agent: $0.99 Per Resolution

Every time Intercom's AI agent "resolves" a customer conversation, you pay $0.99.

What counts as a resolution? If Fin handles a conversation and the customer doesn't need human help, that's a resolution.

Example scenario:

• 500 AI resolutions/month = $495/month on top of your seat costs
• 2,000 AI resolutions/month = $1,980/month additional

For high-volume support teams, AI fees can exceed seat costs.

Usage-Based Add-Ons

Beyond seats and AI, Intercom charges separately for:

• SMS messages: Per-message pricing
• Phone calls: Per-minute pricing
• Product tours: Usage-based
• Email campaigns: Included in most plans but with limits

These are harder to predict because they scale with customer activity, not team size.

Why Bills Spike Unexpectedly

From what we've seen (and heard from our customers), the most common surprise cost increases come from:

1. AI resolution growth: As your AI gets better and handles more conversations, costs increase
2. Plan migrations: Intercom has changed pricing structures, moving users to new plans
3. Add-on creep: Features that were included becoming paid add-ons
4. Team growth: Each new support agent adds $29-132/month

One Reddit user reported going from $119/month to $854/month after a plan change.

What Intercom Doesn't Include

Some things you might expect to be included:

• Help Center translation: Intercom's native translation is limited to chat. Full Knowledge Base translation requires third-party tools.
• Advanced glossary control: Maintaining consistent terminology across languages needs additional tooling.
• Bulk translation management: Managing translations across 500+ articles at scale isn't natively supported.

This is why tools like TranslateDesk exist: to fill gaps that would otherwise require expensive Intercom Enterprise plans or manual workarounds.

How to Estimate Your Real Cost

Here's a rough calculator:

Monthly Cost = (Seats × Plan Price) + (AI Resolutions × $0.99) + Usage Fees

Example (10-person team on Advanced):
10 × $85 = $850 base
1,000 AI resolutions × $0.99 = $990
Usage (estimate) = $200

Total: ~$2,040/month

Your actual cost will vary, but this gives you a starting point.

The TranslateDesk Approach to Pricing

We took a different approach with TranslateDesk:

• Credits, not subscriptions: Buy credits when you need them. No monthly minimums.
• One credit = one article translation: You know exactly what you're paying for.
• No surprise fees: Translation 50 articles? That's 50 credits. Done.

We're not a replacement for Intercom. We're a specialized tool that handles one thing (Help Center translation) and does it well. You keep Intercom for support while we handle the multilingual content gap.

Bottom Line

Intercom is a powerful platform, but its pricing requires careful planning. The seat costs are just the starting point. AI resolutions, usage fees, and add-ons can double or triple your effective cost.

If you're evaluating Intercom or trying to optimize your current spend:

1. Calculate your AI resolution volume: This is often the biggest variable.
2. Audit your add-ons: Are you paying for features you don't use?
3. Consider specialized tools: For specific needs like translation, purpose-built tools often cost less than Intercom's enterprise features.

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Related Reading

• Does Intercom Support Translation?: Complete guide to Intercom's native translation options
• How TranslateDesk Works with Intercom: See the integration in action
• Translation Credits Explained: Our transparent pricing model