Chatwoot vs Intercom
Chatwoot and Intercom are both live chat software. Chatwoot is open source under a license set out in its repository, with 39k GitHub stars. Intercom is a commercial product from Intercom, Inc.
Which to pick
- Pick Chatwoot when
- You want to self-host a shared inbox, especially one that handles WhatsApp or chat beside email.
- Pick Intercom when
- A SaaS or app business wants in-product chat and AI-first support with handoff to human agents.
Side by side
A customer messaging inbox for email, website chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS and social, with assignment, private notes, collision warnings, canned responses, rules, reports, contact profiles and mobile apps.
Customer messaging platform with in-app and web chat, helpdesk, help centre, product tours and the Fin AI agent.
Reply-time policies are in the paid Enterprise edition, and the chat-style screen handles long email threads less naturally than an email client.
Seat prices plus per-resolution AI fees make costs hard to predict.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server, cloud service and mobile app
Cloud service and mobile app
Ruby, Rails, Vue, PostgreSQL and Redis
Not published
Open source, license unclear on GitHub
Closed source, sold by Intercom, Inc.
GitHub could not read the license. Check it in the repository before reusing any code.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
39k GitHub stars
No Wikipedia article of its own
Established: started 7 years ago, latest release v4.19.1.
Not known
Other comparisons
More live chat and customer messaging tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-06 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.