Customer support
Intercom alternatives
2 open-source projects that already do this job. Free to use - not free to run, which is what the numbers on the right are for.
The projects
chatwoot/chatwoot★35,562 GitHub starslicence unclearOmnichannel live-chat and shared inbox with agent workspace, ticketing, and integrations for customer support.Open on GitHub ↗papercups-io/papercups★6,097 GitHub starsMIT licenceOpen-source live customer chat with an embeddable web widget and agent inbox for real-time support.Open on GitHub ↗
What you give up either way
- Intercom’s proprietary Fin AI Agent and its claimed self-improving behavior
- Out-of-the-box 350+ integrations and their maintained connectors
- Enterprise-grade features (SSO, HIPAA, SLAs) and vendor support
- Polished UX, managed scaling, and platform reliability guarantees
- Built-in pricing/usage billing (per-outcome billing model and seat management)
An open-source project doing the core job proves a replacement is possible. It does not prove it matches Intercom, and it does not prove anyone has run it for a month. How we decide.