Best Free Help Desk Software in 2026: Free Plans and Open Source Tools Compared

The short answer: if you want a free help desk that someone else hosts, start with the free plans from Zoho Desk (up to 3 users), Help Scout (up to 5 users on one inbox) or HubSpot Service Hub (up to 2 users). If you have someone who can run a server, open source tools such as osTicket, Zammad and FreeScout have no per-agent fee at all. For an internal IT help desk, the free tier of Jira Service Management (up to 3 agents) or the open source GLPI are the usual starting points.

“Free” means two different things in this category. A free plan is a hosted product with a capped number of users or features, and the catch is the price of the next tier. Open source software is free to license, and the catch is the time and infrastructure it takes to run it well. This guide compares both, explains where each one breaks down, and tells you when it is time to pay.

Free Help Desk Software Compared

Free plan user limits are taken from vendor pricing pages as recorded in Spotsaas’ September 2026 pricing review. Vendors change free tiers often, so confirm on the vendor’s pricing page before you plan around a limit.

For every free and freemium option in our catalogue, with user ratings, see the list of free help desk software. For the paid market, read our best help desk software guide.

What Is the Best Free Help Desk Software?

It depends on who will run it and who it serves:

• Customer support, no IT help: Help Scout’s free plan if you work from one shared email address; Zoho Desk’s free plan if you want a more traditional ticket queue with statuses and priorities.
• Customer support, sales on HubSpot: HubSpot Service Hub’s free tools, because tickets sit on the same contact record as deals.
• Customer support, technical team, zero budget: FreeScout or Zammad on a small cloud server. Both give unlimited agents.
• Internal IT help desk: Jira Service Management’s free tier for small IT teams already using Atlassian, or GLPI if you also need hardware and software inventory.
• Chat before email: Crisp or Tidio, whose free plans are built around a website chat widget.

Free Plan or Open Source: Which Is Actually Cheaper?

An open source help desk has no license fee, but it is not free to run. Before you choose it over a hosted free plan, count these costs:

• Hosting: a virtual server, backups and, for Zammad, enough memory for its search index.
• Admin time: installation, upgrades, PHP or Ruby version changes, and fixing things when an upgrade breaks a plugin.
• Security: a help desk stores customer names, emails and often account details. You own patching, TLS, access control and backups.
• Email deliverability: outbound replies need proper SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, or they land in spam.
• Paid extras: several open source projects fund themselves with paid modules, hosting or support contracts.

A hosted free plan moves all of that to the vendor, but caps users and features. The rule of thumb: if nobody on the team is comfortable running a Linux server, pick a hosted free plan. If you have that skill and expect more than five agents, open source usually wins on total cost.

The Best Free Plans From Commercial Help Desks

Zoho Desk: Best Free Plan for a Traditional Ticket Queue

Zoho Desk’s free edition gives up to three users email ticketing, a customer portal and basic reporting. It feels like a real help desk, with statuses, priorities and assignment, and upgrading to paid tiers adds automation, SLAs and the Zia AI assistant. It fits naturally if you already use Zoho CRM. Check current pricing on Zoho Desk’s pricing page or our Zoho Desk pricing breakdown.

Help Scout: Best Free Plan for Email-First Teams

Help Scout’s free plan covers up to five users with one shared inbox and one Docs knowledge base site. Agents work in something that looks like email, and customers never see ticket numbers. The limit that bites first is the single inbox: once you need separate queues for billing and support, you are on a paid plan. See Help Scout’s pricing page to check current pricing.

HubSpot Service Hub: Best Free Option for HubSpot CRM Users

HubSpot’s free customer service tools give up to two users ticketing, a shared inbox and live chat on top of the free HubSpot CRM. The value is context: support sees the same contact timeline as sales. The catch is the jump in cost and onboarding fees at Professional, where SLAs, a customer portal and more automation live. Details are in our HubSpot Service Hub pricing guide.

Jira Service Management: Best Free Tier for Internal IT

Atlassian’s free tier supports up to three agents with request queues, a self-service portal and SLAs, which is enough for a small IT or DevOps team. Tickets can be linked to Jira Software issues, so engineering escalations stay in one system. It is a service desk first, so external customer support takes more configuration. See our Jira Service Management free vs paid guide.

Crisp and Tidio: Best Free Plans for Chat-First Support

Crisp offers a free plan for two seats with a website chat widget and shared inbox, and Tidio has a free plan built around live chat for small online stores. Both are good if most questions arrive while visitors are on your site. Neither replaces a full ticketing system once email volume grows. Check current pricing on Crisp and Tidio.

The Best Open Source Help Desk Software

osTicket: The Classic Free Ticketing System

osTicket is one of the longest-running open source ticketing systems. It runs on PHP and MySQL, turns incoming emails and web forms into tickets, and supports help topics, departments, SLA plans, canned responses, internal notes and a customer portal. It is reliable and well documented, and it runs on inexpensive hosting. The interface looks dated next to modern SaaS tools, and there is no native chat or social channel. A paid hosted version is available if you do not want to self-host. Compare it with other options on our osTicket alternatives page.

Zammad: Best Modern Open Source Help Desk

Zammad is a newer open source help desk with a clean, real-time interface. It handles email, web forms, chat and several social and messaging channels in one queue, and includes a knowledge base, SLAs, triggers, reporting and full-text search. It needs more infrastructure than osTicket (a database, a search engine and background workers), so Docker or a vendor-hosted plan is the easiest route. The company behind it sells hosted plans and support; check Zammad pricing before you compare it with self-hosting.

FreeScout: Best Free Alternative to a Shared Inbox Tool

FreeScout is a self-hosted, open source help desk modelled on the shared-mailbox approach of Help Scout. The core app is free with unlimited users and mailboxes, and it runs on ordinary PHP hosting. Features such as knowledge base, satisfaction ratings, time tracking and some integrations come as paid add-on modules, so total cost depends on which modules you need. It is a strong choice for technical founders who want an email-style inbox without a per-seat bill.

Znuny and the OTRS Question

OTRS was for years the default open source service desk in Europe, with deep process management and ITSM modules. OTRS Group no longer publishes a free community edition, so the OTRS product is now commercial. The open source codebase continues in community forks, most notably Znuny (and also OTOBO). These keep the familiar queue, ticket and process model, and suit IT and service teams that need structured workflows. They take real effort to configure, so budget admin time or a support partner. Our OTRS profile and OTRS alternatives list cover the commercial product and its competitors.

GLPI: Best Free Help Desk for IT Teams That Also Track Assets

GLPI combines ITIL-style ticketing (incidents, requests, problems and changes) with hardware and software inventory, licence tracking and a basic CMDB. That makes it popular with schools, public sector bodies and IT teams that want one free tool for the help desk and the asset register. It is not designed for external customer support. For dedicated asset tools, see our IT asset management software guide.

UVdesk: Open Source Help Desk With E-commerce Roots

UVdesk is an open source help desk built on the Symfony PHP framework, with ticketing, a knowledge base, a customer portal and connectors aimed at online stores and marketplaces. A hosted SaaS version is also sold. Its community is smaller than osTicket’s or Zammad’s, so test the extensions you rely on before committing.

Request Tracker and HESK: Lightweight, Long-Lived Options

Request Tracker (RT) is a mature, email-driven ticketing system used by universities, ISPs and IT departments. It is extremely flexible but expects Perl and database skills. HESK is a small PHP help desk that is quick to install on shared hosting; it is free to use, with a paid licence to remove its branding and a hosted option. Both are good for small internal queues; neither is a modern omnichannel platform.

Is There a Free Version of Freshdesk or Zendesk?

Not at the moment. Zendesk offers a free trial but no free plan, and Freshdesk no longer lists a free help desk plan: new accounts get a 14-day trial, then a paid plan. Teams searching for a “free Zendesk alternative” are usually best served by Zoho Desk’s or Help Scout’s free plans, or by Zammad if they can self-host. See our Zendesk alternatives guide and Freshdesk alternatives guide, or browse free Zendesk alternatives and free Freshdesk alternatives.

Is osTicket Really Free?

Yes. The self-hosted software is free and open source, with no limit on agents or tickets. What you pay for is the server, your time, and any paid hosting or support you choose to buy. For a small team with basic email ticketing needs, that can be the cheapest help desk there is. For a team that needs live chat, social channels or AI features, the savings disappear quickly once you add integrations and admin work.

What About a Free IT Help Desk?

Internal IT support has different needs from customer support: asset records, change approvals, onboarding and offboarding requests, and integration with device management. Free options that fit are Jira Service Management’s free tier, GLPI, Znuny and osTicket. Spiceworks Help Desk was long the default free choice for small IT teams; Spiceworks has changed its IT tools lineup over time, so confirm current availability on the Spiceworks Help Desk profile and the vendor’s site before you plan a rollout. For paid IT service desks, see our best IT service desk software guide. If you are building out a full IT operations stack, our guides to IT management software and RMM software cover the adjacent tools.

How to Choose a Free Help Desk

1. Count agents honestly. Include part-time helpers such as founders, engineers on escalation and finance for billing questions. Free plans cap users, not tickets.
2. List your channels. Email only, email plus chat, or email, chat, phone and social. Most free plans and older open source tools are email-first.
3. Decide who hosts. No server skills means a hosted free plan. Server skills and more than five agents make open source attractive.
4. Check the first paid tier. The next plan up, and what triggers it, matters more than the free plan itself.
5. Test export. Make sure you can export tickets, contacts and knowledge base articles, so you can move later without losing history.

When to Move From a Free Help Desk to a Paid One

Upgrade when the free tool starts costing you customers or time. Typical signals: you need SLAs because customer contracts include response times; you need more inboxes, brands or languages; you want automation rules and routing so nobody triages by hand; you want AI answers or agent assist; or the admin time on a self-hosted tool exceeds what a paid plan would cost. When that happens, compare the paid options in our best help desk software guide, the startup-focused picks in help desk software for startups, and the ticket-management features in our ticketing system guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

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