Kustomer vs Gorgias pricing for a US Shopify brand, with the AI bill at 2,000 tickets a month

Kustomer vs Gorgias pricing is a choice between a bill you can calculate and a bill you have to request. Gorgias prints every plan: $10 to $900 a month for 50 to 5,000 tickets, never per agent, with AI at $0.90 to $1.50 an interaction. Kustomer prints no plan price at all and quotes Enterprise and Ultimate after a sales call. For a US Shopify brand under 5,000 tickets a month, Gorgias is cheaper and faster to buy. Kustomer earns its quote above roughly 50 agents, with voice, many brands and a custom data model.

Gorgias prices were read on gorgias.com/pricing on 9 October 2026, monthly and yearly, with and without the AI Agent. Kustomer prices were read the same day on kustomer.com/pricing, its Comprehensive Pricing Details page and the voice and usage credit rate sheets linked from it. US dollars, before taxes and carrier fees.

Kustomer vs Gorgias pricing at a glance

Is Gorgias cheaper than Kustomer?

For a Shopify brand handling up to 5,000 tickets a month, almost certainly yes, and you can prove it before talking to anyone. Gorgias Pro covers 2,000 tickets a month for $300 billed yearly, with up to 500 users on the account and no charge per agent. A 20-agent team pays the same $300 as a 4-agent team, as long as the ticket count fits.

Kustomer does not let you make that comparison on paper. Its pricing page asks for your industry, company size, number of human agents and monthly conversations, then produces an ROI estimate and books a call. Review sites still repeat $89 per seat for Enterprise and $139 for Ultimate, but neither number appears anywhere on kustomer.com. If your quote lands anywhere near that $89, 20 seats would cost $1,780 a month before AI, about six times Gorgias Pro. Treat that as a reason to get the quote in writing, not as Kustomer's price. Our Kustomer pricing breakdown lists every line Kustomer does publish.

The honest exception is size. Above 5,000 conversations a month Gorgias also stops printing prices and sends you to sales for a custom plan. At that scale both vendors are quotes, and the comparison moves from list price to fit.

How much does Gorgias cost with the AI Agent?

Gorgias sells the helpdesk and the AI Agent as two lines on one bill. Each plan has an AI version that adds a pack of included automated interactions, and the pack price is simply the interaction count times the per-interaction rate: $1.00 month to month, $0.90 billed yearly. The plan comparison table lists $1.00 on Starter, $0.90 on Basic and Pro and $0.85 on Advanced.

Two rules on the Gorgias page change the real bill. First, every automated interaction also counts as one helpdesk ticket, so an AI-handled conversation uses up your ticket allowance as well as your AI pack. Second, interactions above the included pack are billed at $1.50 each, according to the plan descriptions Gorgias publishes, while its FAQ quotes $0.90 yearly and $1.00 monthly per interaction. Ask which rate applies to overage before you sign.

A worked example. A brand with 2,000 tickets a month, 400 of them resolved by the AI Agent, on Pro billed yearly: $300 helpdesk, $171 for the first 190 AI interactions, and 210 more interactions. At the $1.50 overage rate that is $315, for $786 a month. At $0.90 it would be $189, for $660. The ticket count stays inside 2,000 because the AI conversations are part of it.

When should you move from Gorgias Pro to Advanced?

Ticket overage on Pro is $36 per 100 tickets, so the upgrade decision is a single division. Billed yearly, Advanced costs $450 a month more than Pro ($750 against $300). That $450 buys 1,250 overage tickets at $0.36. So Pro stays cheaper until about 3,250 tickets a month, and Advanced wins above it. Month to month the gap is $540, which moves the crossover to about 3,500 tickets.

Black Friday matters here. A brand that runs at 1,800 tickets most of the year and spikes to 4,500 in November pays the overage only in the months it happens, so Pro with a few expensive months often beats Advanced all year. Look at twelve months of ticket history, not the peak.

What does Kustomer actually publish?

More than its pricing page suggests. A small link at the bottom of kustomer.com/pricing opens the Comprehensive Pricing Details page, which compares Enterprise and Ultimate feature by feature and lists the usage fees. Two PDF rate sheets sit behind it. These are the lines with real numbers on 9 October 2026:

• US voice: first line included, extra lines $2 a month, $0.015 a minute local inbound, $0.035 toll-free inbound, $0.022 outbound.
• US SMS: $0.009 a segment, inbound or outbound, local or toll-free.
• WhatsApp: Meta per-message fee plus a Kustomer fee equal to 20 percent of it.
• Usage credits at $1 each: 15 AI QA executions or 50 Conversation Intelligence executions per credit.
• Data storage past the allowance: $50 per GB a month.
• Outbound messages on the conversation pricing program: $0.025 each.

The AI agent rates are the notable gap. When we read the same page on 31 August 2026 it printed $0.60 per engaged conversation for AI Agents for Customers and $40 per user a month for AI Agents for Reps. On 9 October both rows show only a dollar sign, and the page header still says Last Updated December 19, 2025. If AI is the reason you are evaluating Kustomer, that is the first number to get in the contract.

Kustomer's published voice and SMS rates are a real advantage for brands that run phone support in-house. A team taking 1,500 calls a month at four minutes each uses 6,000 minutes, which is $90 on a local number. Gorgias sells Voice and SMS as add-ons on Basic and above, priced by volume tier, but prints no rate, and Starter cannot add them at all.

Which is better for a Shopify brand, Kustomer or Gorgias?

Gorgias is built for Shopify first. Order data, refunds, cancellations and discount codes sit inside the ticket, and from Basic up the AI Agent can take actions such as cancelling an order or applying a discount. BigCommerce is supported from Basic, Magento from Pro, and revenue attribution, which ties support conversations to sales, starts on Pro. For a single-brand DTC store with a support team of 3 to 25, it is the default choice for good reason.

Kustomer is built around a customer timeline and custom objects rather than the Shopify order. Ultimate allows 100 million custom objects, 300 brands, 2,000 API requests a minute and 5 WhatsApp Business accounts. That headroom matters to a multi-brand retailer, a marketplace or a subscription company that keeps loyalty, returns and logistics data in its own objects. It matters much less to a brand whose whole world is one Shopify store.

A practical note for operators. Many "where is my order" tickets are not support problems at all. When a late supplier is behind a wave of WISMO messages, the lasting fix is to find a backup supplier before the next restock, and no help desk pricing plan will solve that for you.

What about a flat AI agent instead of either?

Both vendors meter AI separately from the help desk, so the AI line grows with your success. If the job you are hiring for is an AI that answers, qualifies, books and upsells across text, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, web chat and email, a flat plan is simpler to budget. MessageAgent Growth is $199 a month, or $99 billed yearly, with 5,000 AI conversations, 10 handoff seats and Meta and carrier fees passed through at cost with no 20 percent on top. At the 400 AI conversations in the example above, the Gorgias Pro bill is $660 to $786; MessageAgent Growth stays $199 or $99. See MessageAgent pricing or the Shopify AI chatbot page for what the agent does in a store.

Where we are not the right fit: if you need a full ticketing help desk with Shopify order actions, ticket-level SLAs and a 25-person team in one queue, Gorgias does that better. If you need voice, custom objects and 300 brands on one platform, Kustomer does. Our Gorgias pricing page and the Kustomer vs Zendesk vs Freshdesk pricing comparison cover the neighboring choices.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Gorgias cost per month?

Gorgias costs $10 a month for Starter with 50 tickets, $60 for Basic with 300, $360 for Pro with 2,000 and $900 for Advanced with 5,000 when billed monthly. Billed yearly, Basic is $50, Pro $300 and Advanced $750. Adding the AI Agent raises Pro to $471 a month yearly, with 190 automated interactions included.

How much does Kustomer cost per user?

Kustomer does not publish a per-user price. Its current Enterprise and Ultimate plans are quoted by sales, and the legacy seat-based plans also say Talk to Sales. The $89 and $139 per-seat figures on review sites are not on kustomer.com, so ask for a written quote that separates the platform fee, AI agents and implementation.

Does Gorgias charge per agent?

No. Gorgias prices by ticket volume, not by agent. Starter allows 3 users, and Basic, Pro and Advanced each allow up to 500 users at the same plan price. Extra tickets above the plan allowance cost $0.40 each on Starter, $40 per 100 on Basic and $36 per 100 on Pro and Advanced.

Is Kustomer better than Gorgias for large teams?

For teams above roughly 50 agents with phone support, several brands or a custom data model, usually yes. Kustomer has native voice with published per-minute rates, up to 300 brands and 100 million custom objects on Ultimate. Gorgias caps self-serve plans at 5,000 tickets a month and moves larger brands to a custom quote, so both are sales conversations at that size.