Bytedesk vs Crisp
Bytedesk and Crisp are both live chat software. Bytedesk is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 530 GitHub stars. Crisp is a commercial product from Crisp IM.
Which to pick
- Pick Bytedesk when
- You want a self-hosted Intercom-style chat with AI agents and can operate a Java service.
- Pick Crisp when
- A small startup wants chat and shared inbox for the whole team without per-seat pricing.
Side by side
Team chat plus omnichannel customer service with live chat, email, tickets and LLM-based chatbots using RAG.
Customer messaging with website chat, shared inbox, knowledge base, chatbots and campaigns, priced per workspace rather than per seat.
Chinese-first project and community, AGPL licence, and some features sit in a commercial edition.
It is a small vendor and AI features are limited on lower plans.
Usable
Production-ready
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Cloud service, mobile app and desktop app
Java and JavaScript
Not published
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
Closed source, sold by Crisp IM
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
530 GitHub stars
No Wikipedia article of its own
Established: started 3 years ago, latest release v5.0.0.
Not known
Other comparisons
More live chat and customer messaging tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.