Botsmith vs Freshdesk Freddy AI

Freddy AI Agent is the AI that Freshworks builds into Freshdesk, Freshdesk Omni and Freshchat. It sits inside a help desk: tickets, a shared inbox, routing, reports and seats for your support staff. Botsmith is a single-purpose bot. It reads your website and your files, answers visitors from them, and emails you when someone wants a person. This page compares how each one is priced, what you get for the money, and which kind of business each one fits.

First, which Freshworks product

On Freshworks' pricing pages, Freddy AI Agent is listed as part of the help desk plans, with extra sessions sold as an add-on. Three pricing pages matter here, and they differ in ways that are easy to miss.

• Freshdesk is the email and ticketing help desk. On its pricing page the Growth plan is described as a plan to launch AI-powered service over email, and the Freddy AI Agent features listed are AI Agent Studio, an Email AI Agent and guidance to improve AI resolutions.
• Freshdesk Omni adds chat and messaging channels to the help desk. Its pricing page lists a Conversational AI Agent, described as AI agents that resolve end-to-end queries on chat and messaging apps in 60+ languages.
• Freshchat is the messaging and live chat product. It has a free plan with a chat widget and a shared inbox, and Freddy AI Agent appears from its Growth plan up.

So if what you want is an AI that answers visitors in a chat bubble on your website, the Freshworks options to look at are Omni or Freshchat, not the plain Freshdesk plan.

What each one costs

Freshworks charges per agent, meaning per member of your team who logs in to answer customers. Freddy AI Agent usage is counted in sessions on top of that. Botsmith charges one flat monthly price for the account. The figures below were checked on 28 September 2026 and are the billed-annually prices each Freshworks pricing page shows by default.

Two points to read carefully. The 500 included sessions are not a monthly allowance. The Freshworks FAQ says the 500 free sessions are for trying out Freddy AI Agent, are limited to once per account, and that once they are used you buy more sessions as you need them. After that, the add-on is $49 per 100 sessions.

A session is also not a message. For chat, Freshworks counts all interactions between a customer and the AI agent within 24 hours of the session starting as one session. For email, a session is a 72-hour window from the customer's first email. Botsmith counts messages: Starter's 2,000 is the number of visitor messages the bot will answer in a month.

The seat price is the larger number for most small teams. Each person who answers customers needs a seat, so the monthly bill grows with your headcount. Freshworks does offer day passes, which give an occasional helper access for a day instead of a full licence. Botsmith has no seats at all, because there is no inbox for staff to work in.

What you actually get

With Freshworks you get a customer service system. Even the entry Freshdesk plan includes ticketing, a shared inbox, a customer portal and knowledge base, and reporting. Omni adds chat and messaging channels, and Freshchat's paid plans list SMS, WhatsApp, Line and Google Business Messages. Omni's Freddy AI Agent also lists pre-built integrations with apps such as Shopify, Stripe, PayPal and Wix, so the AI can do more than answer questions. That is real value if you have a team and several channels to run.

With Botsmith you get a bot, and not much else. It crawls your public pages. It also answers from PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and CSV files you upload. It replies in the language the visitor writes in, and when your content does not cover a question it says it is not sure instead of making up a price or a policy. When a visitor leaves a name, phone or email, you get an email with the full transcript.

What Botsmith does not have matters just as much. There is no ticketing, no shared inbox, no team seats, and no live takeover where you type into the chat as a human. It has no helpdesk or CRM integrations and no public API. The channels are a website chat bubble, a shareable chat link with its own QR code, and automatic replies on a WeChat Official Account. That is the full list.

Trying each one

Freshworks says that when you sign up you get its Enterprise plan for 14 days, and then choose a plan and pay by card to keep using it. Botsmith's trial is also 14 days, with 200 messages and no credit card. The practical difference is set-up time. A help desk trial is worth planning: who configures the channels, who writes the knowledge base, who answers the tickets. A Botsmith trial starts with your website address, and the bot is built from pages you already have.

When Freshdesk and Freddy are the better choice

• You already run your support in Freshdesk. Adding Freddy keeps the AI, the tickets and the customer history in one place.
• You have two or more people answering customers and need tickets, assignment, SLAs and reports on how the team performs.
• Customers reach you by email, WhatsApp, SMS or social messengers as well as your website, and you want one inbox for all of it.
• You need the AI to work with other apps you use, through the pre-built integrations Omni lists for tools such as Shopify and Stripe.
• You want your staff to answer chats themselves from a shared team inbox, with the AI working alongside them.

When Botsmith is the better choice

• You are a small business and nobody's job is to watch a support inbox all day.
• Most questions are already answered on your website or in a price list, policy or brochure you can upload.
• You want a fixed monthly cost that does not rise when you hire, and a message allowance that is easy to check.
• You want something working today from a script tag or a link, without designing workflows first.
• You would rather the bot collect a visitor's details and email you than try to resolve every request itself.

To be fair in the other direction: if you grow into needing a help desk, Botsmith will not become one. There is no ticket history to carry across, because it never creates tickets.

Can you use both

Usually you should not put two bots on the same site. If you already pay for Freshdesk Omni, try Freddy on your website first. A Botsmith bot can still make sense for a separate job, such as a campaign page, a printed QR code or a second website, where a full help desk is more than you need. If you are still weighing up per-outcome and seat-based pricing, our comparisons of Botsmith and Zendesk AI agents and Botsmith and Intercom Fin cover the same question for two other help desks. For a wider view, see Chatbase alternatives sorted by how they charge, or read how to handle after-hours enquiries if evenings are the real problem. Botsmith's plans are on the pricing page.

Freshworks figures and quotations on this page come from the Freshdesk, Freshdesk Omni and Freshchat pricing pages and were checked on 28 September 2026. Freshworks shows prices per agent per month billed annually by default, and prices can differ by region and currency, so check the page for your country. Botsmith figures come from our pricing page.