Bytedesk vs LiveChat
Bytedesk and LiveChat are both live chat software. Bytedesk is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 512 GitHub stars. LiveChat is a commercial product from Text S.A.
Which to pick
- Pick Bytedesk when
- You want a self-hosted Intercom-style chat with AI agents and can operate a Java service.
- Pick LiveChat when
- An online shop or service business wants dedicated live chat on its website with staff answering in real time.
Side by side
Team chat plus omnichannel customer service with live chat, email, tickets and LLM-based chatbots using RAG.
Website live chat software with an AI agent, canned responses, chat routing and sales tracking.
Chinese-first project and community, AGPL licence, and some features sit in a commercial edition.
Per-agent pricing is high for a single channel.
Usable
Production-ready
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Cloud service, desktop app and mobile app
Java and JavaScript
Not published
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
Closed source, sold by Text S.A.
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.
512 GitHub stars
522 Wikipedia readers a month on phones
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.