Krispy vs Tawk.to: free live chat without the catch
Tawk.to is free but charges $19/mo to remove its branding and locks AI behind a paid add-on. Krispy is MIT-licensed, self-hosted on Cloudflare, AI included.
Buttr showed up for a free chat option. found a badge invoice. not his favourite plot twist.
🥐 Buttr: no shade — i'm just free. actually free. badge and all.
Tawk.to and Krispy are both free live chat options for your site, but they get there differently. Tawk.to is closed-source SaaS — free to start, $19/month to remove its badge, and AI behind a paid add-on. Krispy is MIT-licensed, self-hosted on Cloudflare Workers, and ships with AI and no forced branding.
What does "free" actually cost you with tawk.to?
Tawk.to's free tier is real — no trial, no credit card, paste the widget script and go. But three things cost extra once you're in.
Widget branding. The tawk.to widget ships with a "Powered by tawk.to" badge by default. Removing it costs $19 per agent per month (tawk.to pricing). Most people discover this after the widget is already live in production.
AI. AI Assist — the feature that drafts replies and answers questions from your knowledge base automatically — is a paid add-on. In 2026, the thing that makes live chat worth running is not included in the free plan.
Data portability. Tawk.to is closed-source SaaS. Your conversation history and customer data live on their servers. You can export transcripts, but you can't run it yourself, audit the code, or leave cleanly. That's a reasonable business model — it's just worth knowing before you build on it.
How does Krispy compare to tawk.to?
| Krispy | Tawk.to | |
|---|---|---|
| Open source | Yes (MIT) | No |
| Self-host | Yes — Cloudflare Workers | No |
| AI built-in | Yes — Workers AI, no key required | Paid add-on |
| Human handoff to phone | Yes — Telegram | Yes — tawk.to mobile app |
| Widget branding | None | "Powered by tawk.to" — remove for $19/agent/mo |
| Per-seat cost | $0 self-hosted · free tier on Krispy Cloud | $0 basic · $19/agent/mo for AI + no badge |
| Best for | Solo founders, small teams, open-source stacks | Teams needing multi-agent queue routing |
Krispy deploys to your own Cloudflare account. The Workers free tier covers 100,000 requests per day (Cloudflare plans) — enough headroom for most small-to-medium products at zero cost. Workers AI includes a free inference quota (Cloudflare AI pricing), so the bot runs without a separate API key or model subscription.
The honest gap: tawk.to's mobile app for human agents is more polished. It has queue routing, shift scheduling, and an internal inbox with agent notes. Krispy's Telegram handoff is lighter — no routing queue, no read-receipts between agents. If you're managing five agents juggling parallel conversations, tawk.to (or Crisp, which we compared in detail) may fit better. If you're a solo founder or a two-person team, the complexity you're skipping is the point.
🥐 Buttr: tawk.to's agent inbox is genuinely good. just — they charge $19 to take their name off your chat widget. different philosophy.
How does the Telegram handoff work?
When Krispy's AI can't answer — or a visitor explicitly asks for a human — Krispy sends a Telegram message to your configured chat ID. You reply in Telegram and the response appears live in the widget. The visitor sees your message; they don't see the Telegram layer.
Tawk.to routes the same handoff to their mobile app, which has proper agent-side tooling: internal notes, conversation assignment, and read receipts between agents. Krispy's approach trades those inbox features for zero new infrastructure — you're already in Telegram.
For teams that need multi-agent routing, the best open-source live chat alternatives in 2026 covers options with more capability there. For everyone else, replying from a Telegram notification is fast enough to feel human.
How do you deploy Krispy in one command?
Clone the repo, set two secrets, and deploy:
wrangler secret put TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN
wrangler secret put TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID
npx wrangler deploy
That's the full setup. No third-party dashboard to configure, no badge to pay to remove, no per-seat pricing as your team grows. The Worker runs on your Cloudflare account — the code is yours to read, fork, and audit. Tawk.to has been operating since 2013 and the product is stable; there's no question they've shipped more features over time. But the deployment model is the difference: their infrastructure, their code, their terms.
If you'd rather skip the terminal, Krispy Cloud has a free tier — same widget, same Telegram handoff, same zero forced branding, hosted.
🥐 Buttr: took me one wrangler deploy. i'm a croissant. you'll be fine.
When is tawk.to the right choice?
If your team needs queue routing, shift scheduling, and a shared inbox with internal notes across multiple agents, tawk.to is genuinely good at that. It has been around since 2013, the product is mature, and $19 per agent per month is less than most teams spend on Slack. The mobile app is well-built. There is no shame in paying for a tool that fits.
Where it stops fitting: if you're building on open-source principles, if you want conversation data on infrastructure you control, or if the badge-removal fee is the first thing you'd have to expense. Closed-source SaaS also isn't an architecture decision you can reverse without migrating data.
Krispy exists because we kept hitting that ceiling — paid plans, hosted data, branding we didn't own. The full story is in why we made Krispy open source, but the short version is we built the thing we wanted to use.
Self-host it — star the repo at github.com/lonormaly/krispyai and let the bot handle the first shift. Or try Krispy Cloud free for 14 days if you'd rather skip Wrangler entirely ($19/mo flat after that — yes, same as tawk.to's badge fee, except it includes everything).
FAQ
Is there a free live chat alternative to tawk.to that doesn't show a powered-by badge?
Yes. Krispy is open source (MIT) and self-hostable on Cloudflare Workers — no badge, no vendor branding, no per-seat charge on any plan. Krispy Cloud's free tier is also badge-free. With tawk.to, removing the "Powered by tawk.to" badge costs $19 per agent per month (tawk.to pricing). This is the most common thing teams discover after they've already embedded the widget in production. Krispy has no badge by design.
Does tawk.to include AI in its free plan?
No. Tawk.to's AI Assist is a paid add-on, not included in the free tier. Krispy bundles Cloudflare Workers AI out of the box — the bot answers questions automatically without a separate API key or model subscription. The Workers AI free inference quota (Cloudflare AI pricing docs) covers most small-to-medium products at zero cost.
Can I self-host tawk.to on my own servers?
No. Tawk.to is closed-source SaaS with no self-hosted option. Krispy is MIT-licensed and built to run on Cloudflare Workers — you own the deployment, conversation data stays in your Cloudflare account, and the full source is auditable on GitHub. If you need a self-hosted option with more agent tooling, see the best open-source live chat alternatives in 2026.
How does Krispy's human handoff work compared to tawk.to's?
When Krispy's AI can't answer — or a visitor asks to speak to a person — Krispy sends a Telegram message to your configured chat. You reply in Telegram and the visitor sees your message live in the widget. Tawk.to routes the same handoff to their own mobile app, which has a fully-featured agent inbox with queue routing, internal notes, and read receipts between agents. Krispy's Telegram approach is simpler and trades inbox features for zero new tools to install.
Is Krispy actually free, or is there a catch like tawk.to?
Self-hosted Krispy is genuinely free. Cloudflare Workers' free tier covers 100,000 requests per day, and Workers AI includes a free inference quota for the bot. For most small-to-medium products, the real cost is zero — no badge fee, no per-seat pricing, no AI add-on. Krispy Cloud has a 14-day free trial and is $19/month flat after that. The code is MIT-licensed: read it, fork it, run it however you like.