Front and Help Scout both put $25 per person per month on the front of their pricing pages, which makes them look interchangeable until you read the rows underneath. Front's Starter is $25 per seat per month with a cap of 10 seats, Professional is $65 per seat per month with a cap of 50 seats, and Enterprise is $105 per seat per month. Billed annually the same plans save 24 percent. Help Scout's Standard is $25 per user per month, Plus is $45 and Pro is $75, with annual billing saving 16 percent.
TL;DR
The entry prices match exactly and the ladders then diverge. Front sells Starter at $25 per seat per month for up to 10 seats, Professional at $65 for up to 50 and Enterprise at $105, with annual billing saving 24 percent, and charges for AI separately: Autopilot from $0.05 per conversation, Copilot at $20 per seat per month, Smart QA at $20 per seat and Smart CSAT at $10 per seat, with heavy add-ons like Smart QA bundled into Enterprise. Help Scout sells Standard at $25 per user per month, Plus at $45 and Pro at $75, with annual billing saving 16 percent and one AI line item, AI Answers at $0.75 per resolution. Pick Front when one shared inbox spans support, sales and operations; pick Help Scout when support is the team and the budget needs to stay in one number.
The real difference sits in what the base price excludes. Front's AI is a family of add-ons: Autopilot, its customer-facing agent, starts at $0.05 per conversation, Copilot for human agents is $20 per seat per month, Smart QA is $20 per seat per month and Smart CSAT is $10 per seat, with a Smart QA plus Smart CSAT bundle at $25 per seat per month. Copilot, Smart QA and Smart CSAT are included in Enterprise rather than billed on top. Help Scout puts its AI in one line, AI Answers at $0.75 per resolution, and publishes a three-year model on its own pricing page showing new hires of $135,200 in year one without AI Answers against $0 with the add-on, alongside $7,870 of AI Answers cost across the three years.
That difference in structure tells you who each product is built for. Front is designed for support that is really customer operations, where conversations start in sales or logistics and end in support, which is why its higher tiers advertise cross-team workflows, SSO and SCIM, and why its add-on list includes things like an API rate limit increase at $200 per month per 100 additional API requests per minute. Help Scout is designed for a support team with a knowledge base, and its Pro tier sells security, a dedicated specialist and a strategic account manager rather than a broader workspace. One detail worth flagging before you compare: Front states that for contracts over $25,000 it requires an onboarding package to be purchased, so the largest deployments carry a professional services line the plan prices do not show.
| Feature | Front | Help Scout |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid plan | Starter $25/seat/month, up to 10 seats, single-channel support | Standard $25/user/month for growing teams moving beyond email |
| Middle plan | Professional $65/seat/month, up to 50 seats, omnichannel, SSO and SCIM | Plus $45/user/month for higher volume across multiple inboxes |
| Top published plan | Enterprise $105/seat/month with advanced AI tools included | Pro $75/user/month with security features and a strategic account manager |
| Annual discount | 24 percent | 16 percent |
| Seat structure | Per seat with published caps per tier (10 on Starter, 50 on Professional) | Per user, no public seat caps on the pricing page |
| AI for customers | Autopilot from $0.05 per conversation, sold as an add-on (included in Enterprise) | AI Answers at $0.75 per resolution, sold as an add-on |
| AI for agents | Copilot $20 per seat per month, or included in Enterprise | Not sold as a separate seat-priced product; AI Answers covers resolutions |
| Quality and reporting AI | Smart QA $20 per seat per month, Smart CSAT $10 per seat per month, bundle at $25 | No separately priced QA or CSAT AI product listed |
| Richer tiers add | Cross-team workflows, SSO and SCIM, AI command centre features | Integrations with Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot, security tooling, specialist support |
| Published ROI model | Add-on prices only | Three-year example with $7,870 of AI Answers cost and $701,009 of savings |
| Contract threshold | Onboarding package required for contracts over $25,000 | Not stated on the pricing page |
| Best fit | Customer operations that span support, sales and logistics | A support team that wants one predictable per-user price plus resolution-priced AI |
Pick Front if
Front is the one to pick when support is not the only team in the inbox. Its Starter tier at $25 per seat per month is deliberately single-channel, and the product becomes interesting at Professional, $65 per seat per month with omnichannel support, workflows, SSO and SCIM, which is what cross-team coordination needs. The AI menu is built the same way: Autopilot at $0.05 per conversation for the customer-facing agent, Copilot at $20 per seat per month to help human agents, Smart QA and Smart CSAT at $20 and $10 per seat for quality work. Buy Front if you will use those add-ons and if a 10-seat or 50-seat cap fits your team. If the AI add-ons are not on your roadmap, you are paying a premium for workspace features a smaller product would cover.
Pick Help Scout if
Help Scout's appeal is that the arithmetic stays short. Per user it is $25, $45 or $75 per month, and per AI resolution it is $0.75 whether you are on Standard, Plus or Pro. Standard already includes multiple inboxes, live chat and the messaging channels, so a small team gets channel breadth without moving up a tier, and Plus at $45 adds the Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot integrations that make a support desk part of a wider stack. The pricing page even publishes its own three-year model for AI Answers, including $7,870 of add-on cost against $701,009 of savings in its example, which is more assumption transparency than most vendors offer. The gap appears at scale: no SSO or SCIM until Pro at $75 per user per month, and no customer-facing agent product priced per conversation.
Neither Front nor Help Scout publishes third-party review data we are willing to restate as fact, and we did not run either product ourselves. Every figure here is taken from the two vendors' own pricing pages as published when this comparison was written. If a plan price or add-on has moved since, tell us and we will re-check it.
Both entry plans list at $25 per seat or user per month, so the base price is identical: $125 per month. They diverge above that. Front's Starter caps at 10 seats and single-channel support, and its AI add-ons cost extra, while Help Scout's Standard includes multiple inboxes, live chat and the messaging channels with AI Answers at $0.75 per resolution.
Front sells three AI products: Autopilot from $0.05 per conversation, Copilot at $20 per seat per month and Smart QA at $20 per seat per month, with Smart CSAT at $10 per seat and a $25 per seat bundle. All three are included in Enterprise. Help Scout sells AI Answers at $0.75 per resolution as its only AI line item.
Front, at 24 percent off for annual billing, against Help Scout's 16 percent. On a five-person team at the entry tier that is a slightly different effective monthly rate for the same list price.
Front publishes caps: Starter up to 10 seats, Professional up to 50, and Enterprise for larger teams. Help Scout does not publish seat caps on its pricing page, so its three tiers are distinguished by features and volume rather than headcount limits.
Front. Its positioning is customer operations rather than support alone, and its tiers advertise cross-team coordination, multi-step workflows and an AI command centre, with Enterprise at $105 per seat per month for the full set. Help Scout's internal-teams features arrive at Plus, $45 per user per month, alongside its Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot integrations.
Two are documented. Front requires an onboarding package for contracts over $25,000 and charges $200 per month per 100 additional API requests per minute for rate limit increases. Help Scout's cost model is simpler: plan price per user plus $0.75 per AI-resolved conversation.
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