Helpdesk and support inbox · cost comparison
Help Scout vs self-hosted FreeScout: what each actually costs
Help Scout on the Standard tier against FreeScout running on the smallest server that fits it. Every figure below is computed from the sizing model and the dated prices at the foot of this page, and includes the part most comparisons leave out: your own time.
At 10 people, self-hosting FreeScout costs $45.54 a month against $300 for Help Scout. You are ahead after under a month and $9,011 better off over 36 months, with your own time already priced in.
- Help Scout
- $300per month, Standard
- Self-hosted
- $45.54server, backups and your time
- Server and backups
- $8.04CX23 (cost-optimized), 4 GB RAM
- 36-month difference
- $9,011 saved by self-hosting
- Break-even
- under a monthafter $150 of setup time
The same comparison at every team size
Self-hosting has a floor and almost no slope, while per-seat software has no floor and a steep slope. That is the whole story, and it is why the answer flips somewhere in this table rather than being the same for everyone.
| Team size | Help Scout | Self-hosted | Without valuing your time | Server needed | 36-month difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| solo | $0.00 | $45.54 | $8.04 | CX23 (cost-optimized) (4 GB) | -$1,789 |
| 5 people | $0.00 | $45.54 | $8.04 | CX23 (cost-optimized) (4 GB) | -$1,789 |
| 10 people | $300 | $45.54 | $8.04 | CX23 (cost-optimized) (4 GB) | +$9,011 |
| 25 people | $750 | $45.54 | $8.04 | CX23 (cost-optimized) (4 GB) | +$25,211 |
| 50 people | $1,500 | $45.54 | $8.04 | CX23 (cost-optimized) (4 GB) | +$52,211 |
| 100 people | $3,000 | $45.54 | $8.04 | CX23 (cost-optimized) (4 GB) | +$106,211 |
| 250 people | $7,500 | $59.65 | $22.15 | CX43 (cost-optimized) (16 GB) | +$267,703 |
The balance tips in favour of self-hosting at around 10 people.
Where the self-hosted money actually goes at 10 people
| Line item | Per month | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Server | $6.70 | CX23 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB disk |
| Backups | $1.34 | Provider snapshots at 20% of the server price. Skipping this is not a saving, it is a bet. |
| Your time | $37.50 | 0.5 hours a month of updates, upgrades and the occasional broken thing, at $75 an hour |
| Total | $45.54 | Plus $150 once, for roughly 2 hours of first-time setup |
Help Scout at this size costs $300 a month. 10 seats at $30.00 each.
Read this before you price anything
Help Scout's Free plan covers up to 5 users with one inbox and one Docs site. A small team that fits inside it pays nothing.
What FreeScout needs to run at 10 people
Laravel and MySQL. A shared mailbox rather than a full support suite, which is exactly what most small teams are overpaying Zendesk for.
| Resource | Required | How it is derived |
|---|---|---|
| Memory | 1.4 GB | 1 GB for the stack at rest, plus 8 MB per active user, plus 25% headroom |
| Disk | 13 GB | 10 GB base, plus 0.3 GB per user |
| vCPU | 1 | The project's own baseline. For this workload memory runs out before the processor does. |
These base figures are an estimate. FreeScout does not publish a minimum specification we could cite, so the base memory and disk are derived from the services in its own reference Docker Compose file. Treat them as a starting point and watch the first week of metrics.
What you give up, stated plainly
- Uptime is now yours. Help Scout has an operations team on call. Self-hosted, a failed upgrade at 18:00 on a Friday is your evening.
- Backups only exist if you test restoring them. The $1.34 line above buys snapshots, not a rehearsed recovery.
- FreeScout is a light lift: one container and no scheduled work beyond image updates. That is why the maintenance line is 0.5 hours a month rather than zero.
- Feature parity is never exact. FreeScout covers the core of what teams use Help Scout for; the long tail of integrations and enterprise controls is where the gap shows.
Where to put FreeScout
1.4 GB of memory and 13 GB of disk is what this needs at 10 people. The cheapest plan that fits, among the providers whose prices we have read ourselves, is the CX23 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud for $6.70 a month.
Go to Hetzner Cloud Compare hosts
We are not claiming this is the cheapest server on the internet. It is the cheapest one we can honestly quote. Vultr and PikaPods publish prices we could not read programmatically, and may well undercut it. Price them yourself before you commit.
FreeScout at a glance
| Licence | GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 |
|---|---|
| Written in | PHP |
| GitHub stars | 4,532, checked 2026-09-12 |
| Latest release | 1.8.240 |
| Last commit | 2026-09-12 |
| Ships Docker images | Yes |
| Project | freescout.net · freescout-help-desk/freescout |
Get the migration checklist for this tool
A one-page pre-flight list: data export path, sizing, backup plan, and the rollback step most people skip.
Questions people actually ask
How much does Help Scout cost?
Help Scout Standard costs $300 a month at 10 people: USD 30.00 per seat per month; free for up to 5 users. That figure was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-14.
What does it cost to self-host FreeScout?
$45.54 a month at 10 people: $6.70 for the CX23 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud, $1.34 of backups, and $37.50 for the 0.5 hours a month it takes to look after.
Is FreeScout cheaper than Help Scout?
Yes, after under a month, once $150 of first-time setup is counted. Over 36 months the difference is $9,011 in favour of self-hosting.
What server does FreeScout need?
At 10 people, 1.4 GB of memory and 13 GB of disk. The cheapest plan that fits, among the providers whose prices we have read, is the CX23 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud for $6.70 a month.
How much work is FreeScout to run?
It is rated easy: about 2 hours to set up and 0.5 hours a month afterwards, priced at $75.00 an hour in the figures above.
Every figure on this page, and where it came from
| Input | Value used | Source | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Help Scout Standard | USD 30.00 per seat per month; free for up to 5 users | vendor pricing page | 2026-09-14 |
| Hetzner Cloud CX23 (cost-optimized) | $6.70 per month | provider pricing page | 2026-10-25 |
| Engineer time | $75 per hour | our published assumption | — |
| FreeScout sizing | 1 GB base, 8 MB per user | derived from its reference Compose stack | — |
Prices move. If the vendor has changed theirs since 2026-09-14, the figures above are stale and the source links are the authority, not us. How we handle that.