The Crisp alternative with an MCP server on every plan

Crisp and miniDesk both charge a flat price per workspace. The difference is what that price covers: miniDesk includes AI on the free plan (75 conversations a month) and an MCP server and REST API on every plan, with no AI credits to track. Crisp is the better buy if you need WhatsApp, a CRM or campaigns.

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  • Free plan, no card
  • AI on every plan
  • One flat price per workspace

Crisp is the nearest competitor on this site and the comparison to read carefully. Both bill flat, per workspace. The gap is that Crisp's AI pulls from a credit pool that depletes with every conversation Hugo processes, at Crisp's own ballpark of $0.05 to $0.10 apiece. Mini bundles $5 of those credits, which Crisp estimates at roughly ninety conversations, and its MCP server plus public knowledge base both kick in at Essentials, $95 a month. Ours is bundled in the plan on every tier including the free one. Crisp is the stronger pick if you want its CRM, its campaigns, or the lengthy roster of channels it connects to.

The nearest rival on this site, and we will not pretend otherwise

Crisp bills flat, is built by a compact European team, is EU-hosted with a data processing agreement on every plan, and at low AI volumes it produces the lowest bill on this page after ours. Three things set them apart. Their AI credits deplete with every conversation Hugo touches, so the AI is metered even though the plan is flat, and Crisp's help centre labels the $0.05 to $0.10 per conversation an estimate rather than a fixed rate. Their tier is constrained by that volume and not solely by seat count: their own AI calculator caps Essentials at 1,000 AI conversations monthly and recommends Plus at $295 above that, so the flat plan shifts beneath you as AI volume climbs. And their MCP server is listed from Essentials at $95, while ours is available on the free tier. If none of those bother you, Crisp is a solid product worth buying.

The full comparison

Arranged in four groups, following the sequence a buyer follows. Capabilities come before costs, because cheaper than what is the first question a pricing comparison must settle.

Channels

  • Live chat widget on your site

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included

  • Shared email inbox

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included

  • Web form, separate from the chat widget

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included

AI

  • AI that answers customers on its own

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included

  • Answers drawn from your own documents

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included

  • Agent-assist copilot in the inbox

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included, on a higher planhigher plan

Developer

  • REST API

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included

  • MCP server, published and supported

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included, on a higher planhigher plan

What the price covers

  • The AI costs nothing beyond the plan price

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included, then billed by usebilled by use

  • A free plan with the AI on it

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Not available

  • Unlimited free conversations

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included

  • Adding a teammate costs nothing

    miniDesk
    Included
    Crisp
    Included
  • included
  • costs more than the plan
  • not available

Checked against each vendor's own published documentation, September 2026.

What you actually pay at scale

Three actual teams, both sides priced from published pages on the identical day. Crisp is costed the way Crisp's own AI calculator costs it: the cheapest tier that satisfies both your seats and your AI volume, plus $0.05 for every conversation beyond what that tier bundles. Drag the sliders to plug in your own figures.

Your numbers

$39miniDesk$0.104 each$95Crisp$0.253 each

miniDesk Starter, one flat price per workspace, sized by the 375 AI conversations you set above. Crisp is priced on the cheapest tier that fits these seats and has an AI agent answering customers, at their month-to-month rate wherever they publish one, because we sell no annual plan to hold an annual rate against. Crisp is cheaper on a yearly commitment, so this is the dearer of their two rates and the only one comparable to ours.

Three real teams

Startup

5 seats, 375 AI conversations a month

miniDesk Starter, all in
$39
Crisp
~$95
+145%

Growing team

8 seats, 2,250 AI conversations a month

miniDesk Growth, all in
$99
Crisp
~$333
+235%

Large support team

25 seats, 12,000 AI conversations a month

miniDesk Scale, all in
$349
Crisp
~$870
+150%

Each vendor's own list prices, September 2026, in USD, on the cheapest plan that fits the seats and includes an AI agent. Monthly rates where published, so no annual discount. Volumes count the conversations the AI handles. Crisp is $0.05 a conversation, from their own calculator, which caps Essentials at 1,000 before quoting Plus. Check their pricing pages before you decide.

Checked against: Crisp pricing

Which one should you actually buy?

You want the AI functioning before you spend a cent

miniDesk's free tier handles 75 AI conversations monthly with AI sourced from your own documents. Crisp's free tier bundles zero AI credits, so Hugo begins at Mini, $45 a month, and Mini's $5 in credits covers roughly ninety conversations by Crisp's own estimate.

Pick miniDesk

An AI client should be able to operate your inbox

miniDesk bundles an MCP server on every plan, so Claude or Cursor can triage, draft, and reply in natural language. Crisp ships one as well, and their pricing table lists it from Essentials at $95, one tier above where their AI agent begins. Below that you receive the REST API, rated at 10,000 requests daily on a self-serve token, plus the glue code to accompany it.

Pick miniDesk

You need WhatsApp in the same inbox

Crisp connects WhatsApp along with a lengthy roster of other messaging channels. We accept email, live chat, web forms, Telegram, Instagram, Messenger, and the API, and WhatsApp is not there yet. If your customers contact you on WhatsApp, Crisp is the product that already supports it.

Pick Crisp

You want a CRM and outbound campaigns alongside the inbox

Crisp bundles contact management and campaigns into the same fixed cost. We are a support inbox with AI and an API, and we have no plans to add a CRM. If you want a single tool for support plus lifecycle messaging, Crisp delivers more for the spend.

Pick Crisp

Questions, answered honestly

At the volumes in the chart above, no, and below a thousand AI conversations the cause is seats rather than AI. Crisp's cheapest tier with Hugo is Mini at $45 a month for up to four seats; ours is Starter at $39 for 5 seats. Above four seats Crisp shifts to Essentials at $95. Beyond a thousand AI conversations the cause becomes the AI: their own calculator caps Essentials there and recommends Plus at $295, regardless of seat count, so a five-person team on 3,000 conversations pays $370 against our $349. Where Crisp does prevail is a free tier permitting more than one seat, which ours does not.

Hugo is bundled by default from the Mini plan, and it consumes credits. Crisp's own help centre states the credits are token-based and labels the figure on its pricing page an estimate: roughly $0.05 to $0.10 for a full Hugo-handled conversation. We price it at $0.05 throughout this site, the bottom of their own range, because splitting their band to appear precise would not be defensible.

Yes, and this page previously stated otherwise, which was incorrect. Crisp operates a first-party MCP server and documents it, so an AI client such as Claude can read and act on a Crisp workspace. What to verify is the plan: Crisp's pricing table lists MCP Server as its own row, crossed out on Free and Mini and checked from Essentials at $95, even though their developer docs mention no plan requirement anywhere. Ours is on every plan, including the free one, with no call quota.

Crisp's plan is flat and their AI is metered within it. Ours is flat and the AI is part of the quota you already purchased. In practice, a month where Hugo processes twice as many conversations costs Crisp customers more and costs ours nothing, until the conversation allowance is reached and the tier steps up. Which is preferable depends entirely on whether your AI volume is stable.

Yes, and your conversation history can come with you. Paste a read-only Crisp key at app.minidesk.ai/migrate/crisp and we count what would move before you sign up; once your workspace exists, conversations and contacts are copied across with their original dates, and nothing in Crisp changes. Help-centre articles do not come across: the knowledge base here is built from your own documents, which takes an afternoon. The free plan keeps the last 30 days of history and paid plans keep 2 years or more, so pick the plan before you import a long history.

This one, on every plan including the free one, with no call quota. Crisp has a server of its own, but their pricing table places it a tier above where Hugo begins. Here you aim Claude or Cursor at the workspace and ask it to triage today's conversations, draft replies, and leave a note on what it cannot handle, and that functions identically on the free tier and on Scale.

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