Compare
ChaosDesk vs Zendesk
The same tickets, views, macros, triggers, SLAs and API your team uses in Zendesk Suite, for $27 per agent a month instead of $115, with the AI copilot in the plan price instead of a $50 add-on.
Zendesk Suite Professional
$115
per agent / month, billed annually, as of 2026-11-09
ChaosDesk Pro
$27
per agent / month, billed annually, AI copilot included
77% lower list price per agent
List prices, USD, per agent per month, billed annually. Zendesk checked 2026-11-09. zendesk.com/pricing
What a team of 20 pays
List prices on annual billing, in USD and excluding tax. Zendesk checked 2026-11-09.
| Vendor and plan | Per agent / month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Zendesk Suite Professional | $115 | $27,600 |
| ChaosDesk Pro | $27 | $6,480 |
You keep $21,120 a year
As of 2026-11-09, check zendesk.com/pricing for current prices. USD, excluding tax. Full plan details.
At a glance
| Topic | Zendesk | 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 | Copilot add-on, $50 per agent / month, Professional and above; 5 pooled free uses per agent / month without it | Included in every paid plan (fair use) |
| Automated AI resolutions | $1.50 committed, $2.00 pay as you go; 5 to 10 included per agent / month | $0.50 per resolution |
| Data location | Data center location add-on (US, APAC, EEA, UK), not on Team plans | EU by default on every plan |
| Import from Zendesk | Not applicable | Full history: tickets, users, organizations, rules, help centre |
| Zendesk API for your own scripts | Yes (native) | Compatible API at /zd/api/v2, change the base URL |
Zendesk information from the vendor's public website, checked on 2026-11-09: zendesk.com/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 Zendesk column describes what the vendor documents publicly.
| Feature | Zendesk | ChaosDesk |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets and workspace | ||
| Full ticket model: statuses, fields, forms | Yes The model ChaosDesk is built to match: statuses, custom statuses, fields and conditional forms. | 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 Views with counts, bulk actions and CSV export. | 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 | Yes Macros, keyboard shortcuts and play mode. | 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 | Yes Side conversations on the higher Suite plans. | 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 brands on the higher Suite plans, each with its own help centre. | 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, your own sending domain and a suspended queue. | 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 | Yes The Web Widget and messaging, with a visual flow builder. | 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 | Yes WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook, Instagram, X, LINE and WeChat. | 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 | Yes Zendesk Talk, with a long track record in large contact centres. Minutes are billed on top. | 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 mature native 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 The rules engine our compatible API and importer are built against. | 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; group SLAs on the higher plans. | 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, omnichannel routing and skills-based routing on the higher plans. | 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 top Suite tier. | 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 Copilot add-on, $50 per agent / month, on Professional and above. Plans without it get 5 pooled Copilot uses per agent a month. | 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 Automated resolutions at $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay as you go, with 5 to 10 included per agent a month (up to 10k a year). | 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 Intelligent triage is part of the AI add-on on the higher plans. | 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 Zendesk Guide, with AI answers in the newer bundles. | 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 help centre per brand on your own host. | Yes help.yourcompany.com with one DNS record and an automatic certificate, your colours and forms, and a theme code editor. |
| Article translations | Yes Article translations. | 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 community forums on the higher Suite plans. | 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 Zendesk Explore dashboards, with live data on the higher plans. | 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 The Explore query builder; the full builder needs Professional or above. | 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. Quality and workforce management are sold as the Workforce Engagement Bundle at $50 per agent / month on annual billing. | 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 Raw-data export is tied to the Enterprise plan 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 well documented API with the widest client support in this list. | 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 | Yes Native, and the shape our compatible API answers. | 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 The Zendesk App Framework, with its own build tooling. | 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 The largest marketplace in this comparison by a wide margin, built up over more than a decade. | 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 JWT single sign-on, with SCIM provisioning on the Enterprise plan. | 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; advanced data privacy and protection is a paid add-on. | 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 available to customers: 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 | Add-on EEA hosting through the Data Center Location add-on, which is not sold on Team plans. | 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 | Add-on US, APAC, EEA and UK through that same paid add-on: 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 Zendesk | Not applicable Zendesk 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 Zendesk | Yes A complete API with incremental exports, which is exactly what our importer reads. | 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; light agents on the higher plans. | 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 | Partial Support level rises with the plan, and uptime commitments sit in the Enterprise agreement rather than on the price list. | 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 | Partial Professional services and implementation partners, quoted separately. | Yes Free for teams over 20 agents: we plan the waves with you and watch the parallel run. |
Zendesk information from the vendor's public website, checked on 2026-11-09: zendesk.com/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 Zendesk
ChaosDesk works the way Zendesk Suite does: the same ticket model, statuses, views, macros, triggers, automations, SLA metrics and search syntax, plus a Zendesk-compatible API. The difference is the price, and that the AI copilot is part of the plan.
The bill, not the product
Suite Professional lists at $115 per agent a month on annual billing, and Copilot adds $50 on top. ChaosDesk Pro is $27 with the copilot included: $6,480 a year for 20 agents against $39,600.
AI you do not buy twice
The copilot is part of every paid plan under a fair-use allowance, and the autonomous agent costs $0.50 per automated resolution instead of $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay as you go.
Nothing to relearn
The same statuses, views, macros, triggers, automations, SLA metrics and search syntax. The importer brings your rules over and lists every condition it could not map, so nobody rebuilds from memory.
Your own scripts keep their API
The compatible API at /zd/api/v2 answers Zendesk request and response shapes, including search, uploads and incremental exports. Internal services change a base URL and a token, not their code.
EU data without an add-on
Every workspace is hosted in the EU on every plan, Free included, with backups in the same region. Zendesk sells data residency as the Data Center Location add-on, which is not available on Team plans.
What you keep when you move
The Zendesk importer is built in. It only reads your old account; it never changes anything there.
Comes over automatically
- Brands, support addresses, groups, custom roles, schedules and holidays
- Ticket fields, user and organization fields, ticket forms with their conditions, and custom statuses
- Triggers and their categories, automations, macros and views, shared and personal
- SLA policies with the five standard metrics
- Every ticket with its comments, attachments, events, CCs, followers, tags, satisfaction ratings and time spent
- Agents, light agents and admins, end users with their emails and phones, and organizations
- The help centre: categories, sections and articles with their translations
- Webhooks
Rebuild by hand
- Rules that use something we cannot map: they arrive inactive and are listed in the report
- Legacy targets, which become webhooks
- Zendesk marketplace apps, replaced one by one or called through the compatible API
- Answer Bot and Flow Builder flows, rebuilt as answer flows
- Secrets such as the messaging JWT secret: always create new ones
Imported tickets keep their Zendesk ids and imported articles answer on their old Zendesk paths, so links in emails, macros, bookmarks and search results keep working.
Where Zendesk is strong
Zendesk may be the better fit if these matter most to you. A fair comparison says this too:
- A very large marketplace of third-party apps built for zendesk.com.
- Native mobile SDKs and a long track record with large enterprises.
- Zendesk Talk has a long track record in large contact centres. ChaosDesk voice (browser phone, phone menu, recordings) is newer.
Zendesk list prices
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing |
|---|---|---|
| Support Team | $19 | $25 |
| Suite Team | $55 | $69 |
| Suite Professional | $115 | $149 |
| Suite Enterprise + Copilot | Contact sales | Contact sales |
As of 2026-11-09, check zendesk.com/pricing for current prices. USD, excluding tax.
- The public customer-service price list showed four tiers on the date we checked: Support Team, Suite Team, Suite Professional and "Suite Enterprise + Copilot" at "Talk to Sales". Suite Growth and a plain Suite Enterprise had no published price, so we quote none, and the employee-service price list is a separate one.
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 Zendesk
Is ChaosDesk a Zendesk clone?
No. ChaosDesk is an independent helpdesk that follows the same concepts (tickets, statuses, views, macros, triggers, automations, SLAs, help centre) so a Zendesk team can keep its way of working, and offers a compatible API so existing integrations keep running. It is not affiliated with Zendesk, Inc.
How much of my Zendesk account comes over?
Account setup, people, rules, every ticket with its comments, attachments and audits, and the help centre with its translations. Rules we cannot map arrive inactive and are listed in a report, so you decide what to do with each one.
Will my Zendesk apps and integrations keep working?
Your own scripts and services keep working after a base URL and token change. Third-party integrations hard-wired to *.zendesk.com, such as the Zendesk app for Zapier, Fivetran or the Zendesk mobile SDKs, need their ChaosDesk equivalent.
Do my old help centre links break?
No. Imported articles answer on their old Zendesk paths and ticket numbers keep their Zendesk ids, so links and references stay valid after the switch.
How does your AI pricing compare with Zendesk Copilot?
The copilot is included in every paid ChaosDesk plan with a fair-use allowance of 50 to 700 actions per agent and month. Zendesk sells Copilot as an add-on at $50 per agent a month, available on Professional and above, and gives plans without it 5 pooled uses per agent a month (checked 2026-11-09). The autonomous agent is $0.50 per automated resolution here.
What is Zendesk still better at?
A marketplace of third-party apps that is larger than everyone else in this comparison, mature native mobile SDKs and agent apps in the stores, Zendesk Talk’s track record in large contact centres, a choice of data regions, and published SOC 2 and ISO 27001 reports. Our compliance programme has not finished yet.
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. ChaosDesk is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Zendesk, Inc. Product names are used only to describe compatibility and to compare publicly available information.