Five free helpdesks for 2027 with terms checked on 11 November 2026: user caps, ads, self-hosting costs and what a team of five pays when it outgrows the free plan.
HubSpot's help desk product, built on its CRM. It covers ticketing, a knowledge base, a customer portal and an AI Customer Agent. Built for support teams from 2 users up.
Visit HubSpot Service Hub →
Help desk from Zoho that unifies email, social, chat, phone and web-form tickets, with a knowledge base and Zia AI. Free for 3 agents; paid plans from $7 per agent a month.
Visit Zoho Desk →
Cloud help desk from Spiceworks with ticketing, an end-user portal and unlimited end users. Free for 1–5 technician seats; Premium is $6 per seat per month.
Visit Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk →
Open-source help desk and shared inbox built on PHP and Laravel that you host yourself, with unlimited agents, tickets and mailboxes and 50+ paid or free modules.
Visit FreeScout →
osTicket is an open-source support ticketing system with email, web form and API intake, ticket filters, help topics, SLAs and a customer portal. Hosted plans are sold through SupportSystem.
Visit osTicket →We compared list prices, plan limits and AI pricing on each vendor's pricing page on 11 November 2026, except Zoho Desk, where the price was last checked on 6 October 2026. We kept only products with a free plan or a free open-source version. We dropped free trials. That removed Freshdesk.
We have not run the five side by side, so this page does not claim hands-on test results.
Related lists: best helpdesk software, best open-source helpdesk, best helpdesk for small business.
List prices, checked on 11 November 2026 (Zoho Desk: price last checked on 6 October 2026). Hosted plans on annual billing.
| Helpdesk | What five agents need | Per month | Arithmetic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk | Core, with ads | $0 | 5 seats are free |
| FreeScout | Core, self-hosted | $0 plus hosting | hosting from $2.30 |
| osTicket | Self-hosted | $0 plus hosting | no agent fee |
| Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk | Premium, no ads | $30 | 5 x $6 |
| HubSpot Service Hub | Starter | from $35 | 5 x $7 |
| Zoho Desk | Express | $35 | 5 x $7 |
| osTicket via SupportSystem | Basic | $60 | 5 x $12 |
The four FreeScout modules above cost $46.97 once: $14.99 + $12.99 + $12.00 + $6.99.
User caps. HubSpot Free stops at 2 users, Zoho Desk Free at 3 agents and Spiceworks Core at 5 seats. The sixth Spiceworks seat moves you to Premium at $6.
Feature tiers. Zoho Desk moves from $7 to $14 for live chat and the knowledge base. HubSpot moves from $7 on Starter to $90 on Professional, plus $1,500 onboarding.
Server work. FreeScout and osTicket cost no licence per agent. You install, update and secure the server, or you pay a host. FreeScout names no vendor-run support plan or SLA.
AI credits. HubSpot meters AI features in credits: 500 on Starter, 3,000 on Professional, and extra packs at $0.01 per credit.
Ads. Spiceworks Core shows ads. Only Premium removes them.
Pick two finalists. Route one week of real tickets through each. Note the day you reach the user cap, the number of ads your team sees and the hours spent on the server. If the cap or the server work costs more than the paid plan, move to the paid plan.