The Help Scout alternative for when AI Answers starts to add up
Help Scout is a well-made, friendly helpdesk, and its drafting and summarising AI is included in the seat. The part that's metered is AI Answers: $0.75 for every resolution. Kerux prices per agent and lets you connect your own AI key, so an answer costs a few cents paid to your provider, however many the AI handles.
| Dimension | Kerux | Help Scout |
|---|---|---|
| AI pricing | Bring your own API key. Pay your AI provider directly, at cost | AI Assist and Drafts included; AI Answers is $0.75 per resolution |
| Seat pricing | Flat per agent, from $29/month | $25–$75 per user/mo across Standard, Plus and Pro |
| AI reply control | Auto-resolves above your confidence threshold, hands everything below it to your team, on every plan | AI Answers replies to customers from your Docs content |
| Bill predictability | Priced per agent only. AI volume never changes your bill | Seats are fixed; AI Answers charges move with volume |
What it costs in practice
5 people, 1,000 customer questions a month answered by AI
- 5 Plus users × $45
- $225
- 1,000 AI Answers resolutions × $0.75
- $750
- 5 Growth seats × $49
- $245
- 1,000 AI replies on your own key
- ≈ $30 to your provider
- Help Scout priced at Plus ($45 per user), its middle tier. Standard is cheaper and Pro costs more.
- A team that only uses Help Scout's included drafting AI pays no AI Answers charges at all, and this comparison doesn't apply to them.
- AI cost on your own key is measured at roughly 3¢ per reply on a small, fast model, and realistically runs 1–5¢ depending on provider, model, ticket length and how much help-centre content the AI reads.
- Every Help Scout figure verified on Help Scout's own pricing page; see the date at the foot of this page.
Which one should you actually pick?
We'd rather you chose correctly than chose us.
Stay with Help Scout if…
Help Scout's drafting, summarising and tone tools come with the seat. If you never want the AI answering customers on its own, you'd pay nothing extra for AI there.
Help Scout has a free plan for small teams. Kerux has a 30-day free trial, then a flat price per agent.
Help Scout has been refining its inbox and Docs product for years. Kerux is new and says so.
Switch to Kerux if…
Every AI Answers resolution is metered. On Kerux, answering twice as many questions costs the same per agent and a few cents more to your AI provider.
Kerux connects to Groq, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Google Gemini, Mistral, DeepSeek, OpenRouter or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, and you can switch whenever you like.
Kerux imports your Help Scout conversations, customers and notes through Help Scout's API, with their original dates.
How switching actually works
- 1Forward your support address to your Kerux forwarding address.
- 2Import your Help Scout history from Settings → Import tickets: conversations, customers and internal notes come across with their original dates. The AI never answers imported tickets.
- 3Bring your Docs articles over as .md files. The AI answers from them.
- 4Start with a high confidence threshold so the AI only sends what it's sure of, then lower it as you build trust.
Questions people ask
On seats, they're close: Help Scout runs $25–$75 per user and Kerux $29–$79 per agent. The difference is AI answering customers: Help Scout bills $0.75 per AI Answers resolution, and Kerux runs it on your own key for a few cents each. If you only use AI to draft, Help Scout includes that.
Yes. Create an app in Help Scout (Your Profile → My Apps), paste its App ID and secret into Settings → Import tickets, and Kerux copies your conversations, customers and internal notes with their original dates. Running it again skips anything already imported.
Kerux has a live chat widget you add to your website with one line of code. Chats arrive as tickets, the AI can answer them, and replies show live while the visitor is there and go by email once they've left.
Export them and import the articles into Kerux as Markdown. That help centre is what the AI answers from.
Try it on your own tickets
30 days free, no credit card. Forward one address and see how it does.