How do Zendesk, Intercom Fin and Gorgias charge for AI resolutions?
All three charge per AI-resolved conversation. Intercom Fin is $0.99 per outcome on a $49 monthly base, Zendesk is US$2.00 per pay-as-you-go automated resolution after a small allowance, and Gorgias is $0.90 to $1.00 per automated interaction, $1.50 over the allowance.
Those are the headline numbers on each vendor's pricing page, read on October 30, 2026. The headline is the easy part. What changes your bill is the small print: what each vendor counts as a resolution, how long it waits before counting, what it refunds when the customer comes back, and what else gets billed alongside. This guide compares those rules side by side. If you want the wider picture, including when a custom agent beats all three, our page on building an AI customer service agent on your helpdesk covers the full build.
| Platform | Billing unit | List price | Base fee or allowance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intercom Fin | Outcome: a resolution or a completed Procedure handoff | $0.99 per outcome | $49 a month base plan with 50 outcomes when Fin runs on your existing helpdesk; unused outcomes are lost |
| Zendesk AI agents | Automated resolution (since May 18, 2026, only the "verified" tier draws on the allowance) | US$2.00 pay as you go; committed resolutions cost less | 5 per agent a month on Support Team and Suite Team, 10 on Suite Professional, up to 10,000 a year |
| Gorgias AI Agent | Automated interaction: a request fully resolved without a person | $0.90 annual, $1.00 monthly; $1.50 overage | 30 on Starter and Basic, 190 on Pro, 530 on Advanced |
What counts as a billable resolution on each platform?
Fin bills a confirmed resolution, a 24-hour silence after its last answer, or a completed Procedure handoff. Zendesk bills a conversation that was not escalated and passes a language-model check. Gorgias bills a request no person touches for 72 hours.
When each vendor bills an AI conversation
The same customer conversation can be billable on one platform and free on another. This table is built from each vendor's own help article, read October 30, 2026.
| Rule | Intercom Fin | Zendesk AI agents | Gorgias AI Agent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counted when | Customer confirms the answer helped, or leaves without asking for more help; or Fin completes a Procedure that ends in a handoff | Conversation was not escalated and an LLM judges the request satisfactorily resolved ("verified resolution") | Request fully resolved by AI Agent or other automation without a person |
| Waiting window | 24 hours of silence after Fin's last answer for an assumed resolution | Email: 72 hours after the first email. Messaging: 2 hours by default, up to 72. Voice: at hang-up | 72 hours with no human involvement |
| Not billed | Customer asks for a person; failed Procedure; escalations by Fin's default rules; unanswered clarifying question; greeting-only replies | Escalated conversations; "contained" and "assisted escalation" tiers; tests in Admin Center; sandbox | Handoffs to a person, which pay the ticket fee only |
| Customer comes back | Resolution deducted and not charged, even across billing periods | Not stated in the articles we read | If an agent replies within 72 hours, billed only as a ticket |
| Also billed | Seats if you use Intercom's helpdesk; none with your own helpdesk | Agent seats on your Zendesk plan | Each automated interaction also counts as one helpdesk ticket |
Zendesk's three resolution tiers
Zendesk changed its model on May 18, 2026. Every AI conversation now lands in one of three tiers. An assisted escalation means the AI helped before a person finished the job. A contained resolution means the AI handled the conversation and the customer did not ask for more help, but the language-model check did not confirm it was solved. A verified resolution passed that check. Only verified resolutions are drawn from your allowance; the other two are not counted against it. In practice, Zendesk bills a stricter definition than "the customer went quiet".
Intercom's assumed resolutions
Fin bills an assumed resolution when the customer stops replying for 24 hours after Fin's last answer. Some of those customers were helped. Some gave up. Intercom's reopen rule protects you when the customer returns to the same conversation, but a customer who gives up and emails instead opens a new conversation, which the reopen rule does not cover. Our guide to resolution, containment and deflection rates shows how to catch those cases in your own numbers.
Gorgias's double meter
Gorgias's billing article says automation and ticket fees can both apply when AI Agent resolves a ticket with no human help. Its pricing page puts it plainly: each automated interaction also counts as one helpdesk ticket. If AI Agent hands off to a person, only the ticket fee applies. So the true cost of one AI resolution on Gorgias is the interaction fee plus one ticket from your plan.
What do you pay at 200, 1,000 and 3,000 AI resolutions a month?
At 1,000 billable AI resolutions a month, list prices give about $990 on Intercom Fin, $1,800 on Zendesk pay as you go for a 10-agent Suite Professional team, and $900 to $1,215 on Gorgias Pro, before seats and tickets.
AI fee at 1,000 resolutions a month
This is our own calculation from the pricing pages and help articles read on October 30, 2026. It covers the AI line only. Seats and helpdesk plans are in the next section.
Assumptions (change them for your case)
- The volumes are billable units on each platform. Because each vendor counts differently, 1,000 Fin outcomes and 1,000 Zendesk verified resolutions are not the same 1,000 conversations.
- Intercom Fin runs on your existing helpdesk: $49 base with 50 outcomes, then $0.99 each.
- Zendesk: a 10-agent Suite Professional team (10 included resolutions per agent, so 100 a month), then US$2.00 pay as you go. On Suite Team with 10 agents the allowance is 50.
- Gorgias Pro on an annual plan. Its pricing page lists $0.90 per interaction, 190 included interactions and $1.50 overage, and does not say how the three relate. We show both readings: A, every interaction at $0.90; B, 190 inside the plan and the rest at $1.50.
| AI resolutions a month | Intercom Fin | Zendesk, Suite Professional, 10 agents | Gorgias Pro, reading A | Gorgias Pro, reading B |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 200 | $49 + 150 x $0.99 = $197.50 | 100 x $2.00 = $200 | 200 x $0.90 = $180 | 10 x $1.50 = $15 |
| 1,000 | $49 + 950 x $0.99 = $989.50 | 900 x $2.00 = $1,800 | 1,000 x $0.90 = $900 | 810 x $1.50 = $1,215 |
| 3,000 | $49 + 2,950 x $0.99 = $2,969.50 | 2,900 x $2.00 = $5,800 | 3,000 x $0.90 = $2,700 | 2,810 x $1.50 = $4,215 |
Two corrections to apply on Gorgias. Each AI resolution also uses one ticket, and Pro includes 2,000 tickets a month. At 3,000 AI resolutions, the AI tickets alone are 1,000 over the allowance, which adds at least 1,000 x $0.36 = $360. On Zendesk, committed resolutions bought in advance (100 or more) cost less than pay as you go. The pricing page we read showed the committed price as £1.30, in pounds, next to US prices elsewhere on the page, so ask Zendesk for a quote in your currency.
One more detail from Intercom's own outcomes article: its worked example says 100 resolutions cost $99.50 ("50 included + 50 additional at $0.99 each"). The arithmetic it describes gives $49 + $49.50 = $98.50. The difference is small, but it is a reason to check your first invoice line by line.
What do seats and helpdesk plans add on top?
Zendesk charges per agent seat, from US$55 a month on Suite Team billed annually. Intercom seats start at $29, with no seats needed when Fin runs on another helpdesk. Gorgias charges by ticket volume, from $50 a month for 300 tickets.
| Platform | Plan prices (per month) | How it scales |
|---|---|---|
| Zendesk | Support Team US$19 annual or $25 monthly; Suite Team $55 or $69; Suite Professional $115 or $149 | Per agent seat; AI agents included in every Suite and Support plan |
| Intercom | Essential $29 per seat ($19 shown for new customers); Advanced $85; Expert $132 | Per full seat; Fin with your existing helpdesk has no seat, setup or platform fees |
| Gorgias | Starter $10 (50 tickets); Basic $50 annual or $60 monthly (300); Pro $300 or $360 (2,000); Advanced $750 or $900 (5,000) | Per ticket; overage $0.40 on Starter and Basic, $0.36 on Pro and Advanced |
A 10-agent Zendesk Suite Professional team pays 10 x $115 = $1,150 a month in seats on annual billing before any AI resolutions. On Gorgias the team size does not change the price; the ticket count does. Seat pricing on all three changes often, so treat these as the numbers on the day we checked.
Which billing rules catch teams out?
Unused Fin outcomes expire each month, Zendesk bills overage monthly even on annual contracts, and Gorgias counts every AI resolution as a ticket too. Each rule is in the vendor's own documents, and each one changes the forecast.
- Fin's base is a floor. The $49 base covers 50 outcomes. If you use 5, you still pay $49, and the rest do not carry over. Intercom also says minimum resolution commitments apply.
- Zendesk overage is monthly. Its help article says overage is billed monthly regardless of your subscription terms. You can choose to allow overage or pause the AI agent when the allocation runs out. Pausing protects the budget and leaves customers without the agent.
- Zendesk allowances expire. Allocations expire annually, or at the end of a shorter term, and there is a cap of 10,000 allocated resolutions a year.
- Gorgias ticket windows. A reply more than 10 days after the last email, or more than 3 days after the last chat message, opens a new billable ticket.
- Testing is free on Zendesk. Its article says no resolutions are counted when you test the AI agent in Admin Center, so test there before going live.
Before you sign. Ask each vendor three questions in writing: what exactly makes a conversation billable, what is refunded if the customer returns, and what happens on the day the allowance runs out. The answers decide your bill more than the headline price.
Which AI agent should you choose?
Stay with the AI agent built into the helpdesk your team already uses, unless the numbers clearly say otherwise. Fin suits teams wanting outcome pricing on any supported helpdesk, Zendesk suits existing Zendesk teams, and Gorgias suits Shopify stores already on it.
| Your situation | Likely fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Team already on Zendesk, moderate volume | Zendesk AI agents | Included allowance, stricter verified-resolution billing, no new tool to learn |
| High AI volume on Zendesk pay as you go | Price Fin on your helpdesk, or a committed Zendesk plan | At 1,000 a month, $0.99 against $2.00 is about $1,000 a month apart |
| Shopify store on Gorgias | Gorgias AI Agent | Order data is already connected; budget for the ticket that each AI resolution also uses |
| Helpdesk outside these three | Fin, if Intercom supports your helpdesk | Intercom says Fin works with your current helpdesk, including Salesforce; confirm yours |
| Thousands of resolutions a month, data in several systems | A custom agent | Model tokens can cost far less than per-resolution fees; see the payback test on our customer service agent page |
The other costs are the same whichever you pick: writing and maintaining the knowledge base, connecting order and account lookups, and a clean handoff to people. Our guide to software costs on top of a build lists the recurring bills to budget for, and API integrations covers lookups that a helpdesk cannot reach on its own.
When is a custom AI agent cheaper than all three?
When AI-resolved volume is in the thousands a month and your data sits in several systems. At that point per-resolution fees grow faster than model token costs, and the build price can pay back within weeks or months.
A custom agent built on an n8n workflow or similar pays for model tokens on every conversation, resolved or not, plus a build price and hosting. It also loses the vendor's reporting and resolution checks, which you then build yourself. Below a few hundred resolutions a month, the helpdesk's own agent is usually the better deal. Our AI agent development service covers custom agents, and the research on AI automation success rates is worth reading before you commit to one.
Want a second opinion on your own numbers? Book a free strategy call and bring last month's ticket counts.
More questions about AI helpdesk pricing
Is Intercom Fin cheaper than Zendesk AI agents?
At list prices, Fin's $0.99 per outcome is about half Zendesk's US$2.00 pay-as-you-go automated resolution. The comparison is not exact. Zendesk includes 5 to 10 resolutions per agent each month, bills only verified resolutions since May 18, 2026, and sells committed resolutions for less. Fin counts assumed resolutions after 24 hours of silence. Compare your own volumes on both definitions before deciding.
Does Zendesk charge for every conversation the AI agent handles?
No. Under the tier model Zendesk introduced on May 18, 2026, assisted escalations and contained resolutions are not counted against your allowance. Only verified resolutions, which pass a language-model check after the conversation ends, are drawn from it. Escalated conversations are not evaluated, and testing in Admin Center does not count.
Why is my Gorgias bill higher than the AI Agent price?
Because each AI Agent interaction that resolves a ticket also counts as a helpdesk ticket. If the AI tickets push you past your plan's ticket allowance, you pay ticket overage of $0.36 to $0.40 each on top of the interaction fee. If a person replies within 72 hours, the interaction is billed only as a ticket.
Can I use Intercom Fin without switching helpdesks?
Intercom says Fin works with your current helpdesk, naming Salesforce, with no setup, integration, platform or seat fees. You pay a $49 monthly base plan that includes 50 outcomes, then $0.99 per outcome. Check that your helpdesk is on Intercom's supported list, because some Fin features, such as Fin for sales, are only available inside Intercom.
What happens if a customer comes back after an AI resolution?
On Fin, if the customer returns to the same conversation for more help, even in a later billing period, the resolution is deducted and not charged. On Gorgias, if an agent replies within 72 hours, the interaction is billed only as a ticket. Zendesk's articles we read describe the evaluation windows but not a refund for later returns.
Do these prices include phone calls?
Not fully. Zendesk AI agents for voice require Zendesk voice, and voice usage is billed on consumption. Gorgias sells voice and SMS as volume-priced add-ons without listing rates on its pricing page. For phone support costs across platforms, our AI voice agent pricing research compares per-minute rates.
Sources and further reading
- Intercom pricing: Fin per outcome, seats, existing-helpdesk terms, checked October 30, 2026
- Fin help: Fin pricing, outcomes, updated September 17, 2026, checked October 30, 2026
- Zendesk pricing: plans and automated resolutions, checked October 30, 2026
- Zendesk help: about automated resolution tiers, checked October 30, 2026
- Zendesk help: about the automated resolutions platform (prior to resolution tiers), checked October 30, 2026
- Gorgias pricing: plans, tickets and AI Agent interactions, checked October 30, 2026
- Gorgias help: how you're billed for using Gorgias, checked October 30, 2026
Vendors change prices and billing rules often. If your contract or the vendor's current page says something different, that wins.
