Helpdesk and support inbox

Open-source alternatives to Zendesk, priced

3 open-source tools that can replace Zendesk, each shown with what it would actually cost to run for a team of 10 people. Zendesk on the Suite Team tier costs $616 a month at that size.

The cheapest way to replace Zendesk here is FreeScout, at $45.54 a month against $616, with your own time already counted.

The final column is the 36-month difference: positive means self-hosting is cheaper.

Which one to pick

FreeScout 4,532 stars

Laravel and MySQL. A shared mailbox rather than a full support suite, which is exactly what most small teams are overpaying Zendesk for.

At 10 people it needs 1.4 GB of memory and 13 GB of disk, which fits the CX23 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud for $6.70 a month. Setting it up is roughly 2 hours of work, then 0.5 hours a month to keep it healthy.

Full Zendesk versus FreeScout breakdown · FreeScout at every team size

Chatwoot 36,724 stars

Rails web process plus a Sidekiq worker, PostgreSQL and Redis. The worker is not optional; skipping it silently breaks outbound email and webhooks.

At 10 people it needs 5.4 GB of memory and 28 GB of disk, which fits the CX33 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud for $10.06 a month. Setting it up is roughly 16 hours of work, then 3 hours a month to keep it healthy.

Full Zendesk versus Chatwoot breakdown · Chatwoot at every team size

Zammad 5,905 stars

Rails with PostgreSQL, Redis and Elasticsearch. Elasticsearch is what makes this the heaviest helpdesk here, and it is effectively required for usable search.

At 10 people it needs 5.4 GB of memory and 33 GB of disk, which fits the CX33 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud for $10.06 a month. Setting it up is roughly 16 hours of work, then 3 hours a month to keep it healthy.

Full Zendesk versus Zammad breakdown · Zammad at every team size

How the pricing was established

Zendesk pricing was read from its own pricing page on 2026-09-12, quoted in euros and converted at 1.1193 dollars to the euro, the Frankfurter, European Central Bank reference rates rate for 2026-10-23. Server prices come from the providers listed on the hosting page. The sizing model and the cost of your time are set out in full on the methodology page.

Related

• All helpdesk and support inbox compared
• Alternatives to Intercom
• Alternatives to Freshdesk
• Alternatives to Help Scout

What you would be running

Tool	Licence	Written in	Setup	Upkeep	GitHub stars
FreeScout	GNU Affero General Public License v3.0	PHP	2 h	0.5 h a month	4,532
Chatwoot	Other	Ruby	16 h	3 h a month	36,724
Zammad	GNU Affero General Public License v3.0	Ruby	16 h	3 h a month	5,905

Questions people actually ask

Is there a free open-source alternative to Zendesk?

There are 3 on this page. 2 of them are open source, published under AGPL-3.0, with no licence to buy. Chatwoot ships its source under its own licence rather than a standard open-source one, so check its terms before commercial use. None of them is free to run: the cheapest, FreeScout, costs $45.54 a month at 10 people once the server, backups and the time to look after it are counted.

How much does Zendesk cost?

Zendesk Suite Team costs $616 a month at 10 people: EUR 55.00 per seat per month. That figure was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-12.

What does it cost to self-host FreeScout?

$45.54 a month at 10 people. That is $6.70 for the CX23 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud, plus backups, plus 0.5 hours a month of your own time priced at the published hourly rate.

How long before FreeScout is cheaper than Zendesk?

Under a month, counting $150 of first-time setup. Over 36 months the difference is $20,373.

Which Zendesk alternative is the easiest to run?

FreeScout, rated easy: about 2 hours to set up and 0.5 hours afterwards.

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