Compare
ChaosDesk vs Freshdesk
A helpdesk that speaks Zendesk instead of a fourth dialect: the same rules, SLAs and API your scripts already use, at $27 per agent instead of $55, with the AI copilot in the price instead of a $29 add-on.
Freshdesk Pro
$55
per agent / month, billed annually, as of 2026-11-09
ChaosDesk Pro
$27
per agent / month, billed annually, AI copilot included
51% lower list price per agent
List prices, USD, per agent per month, billed annually. Freshdesk checked 2026-11-09. freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing
What a team of 20 pays
List prices on annual billing, in USD and excluding tax. Freshdesk checked 2026-11-09.
| Vendor and plan | Per agent / month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Freshdesk Pro | $55 | $13,200 |
| ChaosDesk Pro | $27 | $6,480 |
You keep $6,720 a year
As of 2026-11-09, check freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing for current prices. USD, excluding tax. Full plan details.
At a glance
| Topic | Freshdesk | ChaosDesk |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per agent, per month | Per agent, per month; light agents free |
| Free plan | No (14-day trial) | Yes, 1 agent |
| Generative AI copilot | Freddy AI Copilot add-on, $29 per agent / month annually, $35 monthly (Pro, Enterprise) | Included in every paid plan (fair use) |
| AI agent | 500 sessions once, then $49 per 100 sessions (per session, not per resolution) | $0.50 per resolution |
| EU data hosting | EEA data centre, chosen at sign-up | EU by default on every plan |
| Zendesk-compatible API | No | Yes, /zd/api/v2 |
| Zendesk rules imported as they are | Via migration tools | Built-in importer with an unmapped-rule report |
Freshdesk information from the vendor's public website, checked on 2026-11-09: freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing, freshworks.com/freshdesk/omni/pricing. Check there for current details.
Feature by feature
Every row is something a support team buys on. ChaosDesk answers the same way on every comparison page, so the pages cannot contradict each other; the Freshdesk column describes what the vendor documents publicly.
| Feature | Freshdesk | ChaosDesk |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets and workspace | ||
| Full ticket model: statuses, fields, forms | Yes Tickets with custom fields and statuses, and several ticket forms on the higher plans. | Yes Statuses grouped under New, Open, Pending, On-hold and Solved, custom statuses, custom fields, conditional ticket forms, and custom objects, approvals and ticket layouts from Pro. |
| Shared and personal views with live counts | Yes Ticket views and bulk actions. | Yes Group by, column sorting, CSV export, and bulk edit, merge or macro on hundreds of tickets at once. |
| Macros, keyboard shortcuts and play mode | Partial Canned responses, scenario automations and keyboard shortcuts. We could not confirm a play-mode queue. | Yes Macros on every plan, the keyboard shortcuts and search syntax Zendesk agents already know, and play mode with agent capacity from Growth. |
| Side conversations with other teams | Not confirmed We could not confirm a side-conversation equivalent on the vendor’s public pages. | Yes Email, Slack or Microsoft Teams threads beside the ticket and out of the customer conversation. From Pro. |
| Several brands in one workspace | Yes Several products, each with its own portal, on the higher plans. | Yes Each brand with its own addresses, help centre and forms: 1 on Starter, 5 on Growth, 25 on Pro, 300 on Enterprise. |
| Channels | ||
| Email on your own domain | Yes Support addresses and your own domain. | Yes Any number of support addresses per brand, DKIM and SPF checks, quote stripping, loop and bounce protection, and a suspended queue for mail that should not become a ticket. |
| Web messenger and web forms | Partial Chat and the messenger come from Freshchat, bundled in the omnichannel plans rather than the desk plans priced above. | Yes Messenger with bot flows and verified visitors, plus embeddable contact forms. The snippet keeps the same zE() calls as the Zendesk widget. |
| WhatsApp, SMS and social messaging | Partial WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram through the Freshworks messaging products. | Yes WhatsApp Cloud API, SMS through Twilio or your own gateway, Facebook Messenger and page posts, Instagram DMs and comments, Telegram, Viber, LINE, WeChat and X. Message fees are passed through. |
| Voice: browser phone, menu, recordings | Add-on Freshdesk Contact Center is a separate product with its own price. | Yes Numbers answered in the browser, a phone menu with queues, voicemail, consent-based recording, transcripts and call summaries, or keep Aircall, 3CX or RingCentral. Newer than the rest of the product. |
| Native mobile apps and messenger SDKs | Yes Agent apps in the stores and mobile SDKs for your own app: ahead of us here. | Partial The workspace installs as an app on a phone and sends push today, and the messenger runs full screen in a web view. Native agent apps and iOS, Android, React Native and Flutter SDKs are built and waiting for store review. |
| Automation and SLAs | ||
| Triggers, automations and webhooks | Yes Dispatch’r, supervisor and observer rules, plus webhooks. | Yes Zendesk-shaped conditions and actions, unlimited on paid plans, with signed webhooks, retries with backoff and a delivery log. |
| SLA policies with business hours | Yes SLA policies with business hours, reminders and escalation. | Yes The five standard SLA metrics with business hours and holidays from Growth, and group SLAs (OLAs) from Pro. |
| Routing: round robin, capacity, skills | Yes Round robin and load-based assignment, with skills-based routing on Enterprise. | Yes Round robin and capacity rules from Growth, skills-based routing and a suggested assignee from Pro. |
| Sandbox and rule testing before go-live | Partial A sandbox on the Enterprise plan. | Yes A sandbox workspace, rule simulation, and configuration export and import as files you can review. From Pro. |
| AI | ||
| AI copilot in the plan price | Add-on Freddy AI Copilot add-on, $29 per agent / month annually ($35 monthly), on Pro and Enterprise. | Yes Drafts with their sources, thread summaries, two-way translation and suggested macros in every paid plan, under a fair-use allowance of 50 to 700 actions per agent and month. No per-seat add-on. |
| Autonomous AI agent | Add-on 500 sessions once, then $49 per 100 sessions. Priced per session, not per resolution, so it is not the same unit as ours. | Yes Answers on the messenger, email, WhatsApp and the phone menu, and hands over to a person with a summary. $0.50 per automated resolution. |
| Intent, sentiment and language as rule fields | Add-on Field prediction and suggestions sit inside the Freddy add-ons. | Yes Tagged on arrival and usable in triggers, views and reports. Personal data is redacted before anything leaves the workspace, and AI can be switched off per workspace. |
| Help centre | ||
| Help centre with articles and search | Yes A solutions knowledge base with search. | Yes On every plan, the Free plan included, with AI answers in search, article analytics and searches that found nothing. |
| Help centre per brand on your own domain | Yes A custom portal domain, and one portal per product on the higher plans. | Yes help.yourcompany.com with one DNS record and an automatic certificate, your colours and forms, and a theme code editor. |
| Article translations | Yes A multilingual knowledge base on the higher plans. | Yes Every article in as many languages as you support, with a fallback language and per-language text blocks. |
| Customer portal and community forums | Yes A customer portal with forums and ticket tracking. | Yes Request forms and My requests with magic-link, password or the brand’s own single sign-on, plus topics, posts, votes and moderation. |
| Reporting | ||
| Dashboards and live agent activity | Yes Curated and custom dashboards. | Yes A support-operations dashboard out of the box, shared dashboards for leads and a live agent activity view. From Growth. |
| Build your own reports | Yes Custom reports from the Pro plan. | Yes Pick metrics and attributes, filter, group, drill down to the tickets behind a number, save, schedule by email and alert when a metric crosses a line. From Growth. |
| CSAT, QA scorecards and AutoQA | Yes CSAT surveys. | Yes CSAT with reason codes on every paid plan; QA scorecards, AI scoring of every conversation and workforce management from Pro. |
| Export to your data warehouse | Partial Data comes out through the API or a third-party connector. | Yes Scheduled raw-data export on Enterprise, CSV export and a full workspace export on every paid plan. |
| API and integrations | ||
| Documented REST API | Yes A documented REST API with its own request and response shapes. | Yes An OpenAPI reference with an explorer, cursor pagination and rate-limit headers, at 200 to 2,500 requests a minute depending on the plan. |
| Zendesk-compatible API for your own scripts | No Scripts written for Zendesk have to be rewritten against the Freshdesk API. | Yes Tickets, users, organizations, search, uploads, incremental exports and the help centre at /zd/api/v2, with Zendesk request and response shapes. Change the base URL and the token. |
| Sidebar apps and an app framework | Yes A marketplace app framework with sidebar apps. | Yes Apps compatible with the Zendesk App Framework run in the ticket sidebar, next to OAuth apps and a connector that shows your own customer data in the ticket. |
| Large third-party app marketplace | Yes A large Freshworks marketplace: ahead of us here. | Partial We have our own app framework and marketplace, but a young catalogue. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Linear, GitHub, GitLab, Shopify, Stripe, HubSpot, Salesforce and calendars are built in. |
| Security and compliance | ||
| Single sign-on and user provisioning | Yes SAML and OpenID Connect, with provisioning on the higher plans. | Yes Google and Microsoft sign-in on every plan, OpenID Connect from Pro, SAML and SCIM on Enterprise, and customer single sign-on per brand. |
| Two-step verification, passkeys, audit log | Yes Two-factor sign-in, and an audit log on the higher plans. | Yes TOTP, passkeys and security keys on every plan and enforceable per workspace; an append-only log of admin changes, sign-ins and ticket access, with export and SIEM streaming on Enterprise. |
| GDPR export, erasure, retention, own key | Yes GDPR tooling and a DPA. | Yes Per-person export and erasure with four-eyes approval, retention policies, regional redaction packs, per-workspace encryption keys and a customer-managed key on Enterprise. |
| SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report | Yes SOC 2 and ISO 27001 reports are published: ahead of us here. | No Not yet, and we will not pretend otherwise: an independent penetration test and the SOC 2 programme are planned before launch. The trust centre carries the current status. |
| Data location | ||
| EU hosting on every plan | Yes An EEA data centre, chosen when the account is created. | Yes Every workspace is hosted in the EU, on the Free plan too, with backups in the same region and a published subprocessor list and DPA. |
| Choice of another region | Yes Several regions worldwide, chosen at sign-up: more regions than we offer. | No EU only today. US and Africa regions are planned for Enterprise customers who need them. |
| Migration | ||
| Built-in importer from Freshdesk | Not applicable Freshdesk is the system you are moving from. | Yes Built in and read-only against your old account, with a volume estimate, a dry run, a resumable full import and a report of everything that needs a decision. |
| Getting your data out of Freshdesk | Yes The API exposes agents, roles, SLA policies, fields, forms and solution articles, which is what our importer reads. The key must belong to an account administrator. | Yes A one-click export of the whole workspace, plus the REST API and incremental exports, so the next move is never blocked by us. |
| Delta sync and parallel run until go-live | Not applicable The parallel run happens on the ChaosDesk side. | Yes Repeat syncs every few minutes while your team keeps working, then go live one group at a time with the old system read-only as a way back. |
| Plans and support | ||
| Free plan | No No free plan; a 14-day trial. | Yes One agent, 100 tickets a month, email, web form and a help centre. No card. |
| Trial without a card | Yes 14 days. | Yes 14 days of Pro, then the workspace moves to the Free plan instead of locking you out. |
| No seat caps or ticket limits | Yes Per agent with no ticket cap, and day passes for occasional agents. | Yes Unlimited agents and unlimited tickets on every paid plan. Light agents are free: 5 on Starter, unlimited from Growth. |
| Support and a published uptime SLA | Not confirmed We could not confirm a published uptime SLA on the pages we read. | Yes Email support from Starter, email and chat on Pro, priority support and a named success manager on Enterprise. 99.5 % availability on Pro, 99.9 % on Enterprise. |
| Assisted migration | Not confirmed Migration help is not described in the plans we read. | Yes Free for teams over 20 agents: we plan the waves with you and watch the parallel run. |
Freshdesk information from the vendor's public website, checked on 2026-11-09: freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing, freshworks.com/freshdesk/omni/pricing. “Not confirmed” means we could not find a clear statement on the vendor’s public pages when we read them on 2026-11-09, not that the feature is missing. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Why teams switch from Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a popular, lower-priced helpdesk with its own way of working. ChaosDesk is the closer fit if your team already runs on Zendesk concepts and wants to keep its rules, views and API scripts.
One dialect instead of two
Teams that moved from Zendesk to Freshdesk often rewrote their rules into dispatch’r, supervisor and observer, and their scripts against a new API. ChaosDesk keeps the Zendesk concepts and answers Zendesk-shaped API calls at /zd/api/v2.
AI in the plan, not beside it
Freddy AI Copilot is an add-on at $29 per agent a month on Pro and Enterprise ($35 billed monthly), and the AI agent is billed in session packs of $49 per 100 after the first 500. Our copilot is in every paid plan and the AI agent is $0.50 per automated resolution. A session and a resolution are not the same unit.
Pro features at Growth prices
SLA policies, a report builder, dashboards, several brands and conditional forms start on our Growth plan at $18. For 20 agents, Pro at $27 is $6,480 a year against $13,200.
An importer that reads your setup, not just your tickets
Products become brands, agents keep their roles and groups, and ticket fields, forms, statuses, SLA policies and solution articles come over. Automations are listed one by one for you to rebuild.
One product instead of a suite
Chat, messaging and telephony sit in separate Freshworks products with their own prices. Here email, messenger, WhatsApp, social, voice and the help centre are in the same workspace and the same queue.
What you keep when you move
The Freshdesk importer is built in. It only reads your old account; it never changes anything there.
Comes over automatically
- Products as brands, groups, and companies as organizations
- Agents with their roles and groups, and contacts
- Ticket fields, ticket forms and statuses
- SLA policies
- Canned responses as macros
- Tickets with their conversations
- Solution categories, folders and articles as your help centre
Rebuild by hand
- Freshdesk automations: the report lists each dispatch’r, supervisor and observer rule to rebuild as a trigger, automation or macro
The API key has to belong to an agent with the Account Administrator role, because Freshdesk keys carry that agent’s permissions and a lower role cannot read agents, roles, SLA policies and automations.
Where Freshdesk is strong
Freshdesk may be the better fit if these matter most to you. A fair comparison says this too:
- A broad Freshworks suite (CRM, ITSM) from one vendor.
- A large marketplace and many regional data centres.
Freshdesk list prices
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing |
|---|---|---|
| Growth | $19 | $23 |
| Pro | $55 | $66 |
| Enterprise | $89 | $107 |
As of 2026-11-09, check freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing for current prices. USD, excluding tax.
- The prices above are the Freshdesk desk plans. Freshworks also sells the omnichannel bundle, now called Freshdesk Omni, at $29, $79 and $119 per agent a month on annual billing ($35, $95 and $143 monthly); chat, messaging and telephony sit there rather than in the desk plans. Freshdesk has no free plan, but Freshworks runs a separate free programme for very small teams.
ChaosDesk list prices
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 |
| Starter | $11 | $14 |
| Growth | $18 | $22 |
| Pro | $27 | $33 |
| Enterprise | $39 | annual only |
Per agent per month, USD, excluding tax. Full plan details.
Questions about moving from Freshdesk
Why would a Freshdesk team move to ChaosDesk?
Usually for one of three reasons: the price per agent at the Pro level, AI that is in the plan instead of an add-on, or a Zendesk-compatible API because the team’s older internal scripts were written against Zendesk.
What comes over from Freshdesk?
Products as brands, groups, companies, agents with their roles, contacts, ticket fields, forms and statuses, SLA policies, canned responses as macros, tickets with their conversations, and solution articles as your help centre.
What has to be rebuilt by hand?
Freshdesk automations. The dry-run report lists every dispatch’r, supervisor and observer rule so you can rebuild it as a trigger, automation or macro, usually in an afternoon.
Can we keep working in Freshdesk during the move?
Yes. The import is read-only and supports delta syncs, so it reads only what changed since the last run. Teams run both side by side and go live one group at a time.
What is Freshdesk still better at?
A broad Freshworks suite from one vendor if you also need CRM or ITSM, a large marketplace, more regional data centres than our EU-only hosting, mature mobile apps and SDKs, and published SOC 2 and ISO 27001 reports.
Bring your whole Zendesk history. Keep your way of working.
Import tickets, users, rules and the help centre, run both side by side, and switch when your team is ready.
Zendesk is a trademark of Zendesk, Inc. Freshdesk is a trademark of its owner. ChaosDesk is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Zendesk, Inc. or any other vendor named here. Product names are used only to describe compatibility and to compare publicly available information.