Live chat alternatives and how WidgetChat differs
If your team would rather answer from Telegram and not pay for seats, look at WidgetChat and other chats answered from Telegram. If you need your own agent panel, reports and chatbots, Tawk.to, Crisp, Intercom, LiveChat or Tidio fit better. Below is a comparison based on their own sites.
Updated
WidgetChat and popular live chats
Prices and terms from the official pricing pages as of 1 October 2026. Where a service says nothing about answering from Telegram, the table says so.
| Service | Price | Free | Answering from Telegram |
|---|---|---|---|
| WidgetChat | $0, free | Everything | Yes: a topic per visitor in your group |
| Tawk.to | Free, badge removal $29 a month | Unlimited agents | No: Telegram is listed as coming soon |
| Crisp | $45 a month per workspace | Two seats | No: Telegram messages arrive in the Crisp inbox |
| Intercom | $29 per seat, $19 billed annually | No | Not stated |
| LiveChat | $25, $19 billed annually | No | Not stated |
| Tidio | $29, $24.17 billed annually | 50 conversations a month | Not stated |
Website chats answered from Telegram
We are not the only ones who let you answer website visitors from Telegram. This is how others describe it on their own sites as of 1 October 2026.
| Service | How answering works | Price |
|---|---|---|
| WidgetChat | Your group, a separate topic per visitor, group admins answer | $0 |
| TGLiveChat | A group with a topic per visitor on the paid plan | $0 up to 100 conversations a month, $19 a month or $13 a month billed annually |
| Intergram | A private chat with a bot; you answer by replying to the visitor's message | Free, open source, self-hosted |
Where we differ: besides Telegram you can answer from Bitrix24, RetailCRM or your own software over the API, and visitors send annotated screenshots and dictate. Where we do not: TGLiveChat also opens a topic per visitor.
Who WidgetChat suits
- A small team Two to five people who are in Telegram all day anyway: a separate panel only gets in their way.
- A chat that is not staffed around the clock The message arrives in the messenger and finds the person even away from the computer.
- Sites without their own developer One line of code to install, the setup is in the dashboard.
Who should pick something else
- A large contact centre If you need queues, routing, ratings and load reports, take a system with a panel and reports.
- Anyone building bot flows We have no flow builder and no AI auto-replies.
- Anyone who needs a written SLA The service is free and gives no formal availability guarantees.
Frequently asked questions
How is WidgetChat different from Tawk.to?
Both are free. In Tawk.to agents answer in the Tawk.to dashboard or app; in WidgetChat a question from your site lands in your Telegram group as its own topic, and you answer there.
Can I switch from another chat?
Yes. Add our line of code and remove the old one. We do not import history from other services.
Are there agent reports?
No. There are goals in your analytics: the window opened, the first message, the support reply. If you need load reports, a system with analytics is the honest choice.
Read next
Add the chat to your website
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