Zoho Desk pricing: from free to $40 an agent, and where each plan stops

Zoho Desk plans and prices

Prices are in US dollars per agent per month, read from Zoho Desk’s pricing page on 27 September 2026. Yearly billing takes between 20% and 34% off, depending on the plan. The trial is 15 days of any plan, no card needed; the account drops to the free plan afterwards.

What Zoho Desk costs per year

Two jumps catch people. The first is agent number 6: Express stops at 5, so 5 agents pay $420 a year and 6 agents, who have to be on Standard, pay $1,008. The second is Professional, which is where Zia, round robin and multi-department routing live: for ten agents that is $1,680 on Standard against $2,760 on Professional.

What the free plan covers

Free for up to 3 users on one email channel.

The limit that matters is the single email channel. If all your support arrives at one address, three people can work it for nothing. A second email channel, say a billing address next to support, means Express, which has two, and live chat or a knowledge base means Standard. The trial ends on the free plan rather than a locked account, so trying a paid tier costs nothing even if you decide against it.

Add-ons and AI costs

• Light agents (view and comment only): $6 a month on Professional and Enterprise.
• Generative AI uses your own OpenAI key. No per-resolution fee.

A worked example. A team of 3 agents on Professional, plus 4 colleagues in sales or engineering who only need to read tickets and leave comments. As light agents they add $24 a month, for $93 in total; as full agents all 7 would cost $161. Enterprise includes 50 light agents free, which changes the sum for a company where most people only watch.

AI has no meter on Zoho’s side. Generative features use your own OpenAI key, so the AI line on your bill comes from OpenAI and scales with how much you use it, not with how many tickets get resolved.

What Express leaves out

Express caps you at 5 users and a single workflow rule, with no knowledge base and no live chat.

For a small team answering email, that is a sensible cut. A knowledge base and live chat are channels you add when the volume asks for them, and a single rule only pinches once you have several kinds of request to sort. Standard at $14 is where Zoho Desk becomes a full help desk, with unlimited users, five channels and five workflow rules per module, and it still costs less than the entry plan of most help desks we track.

Is Zoho Desk worth it for one person?

Zoho Desk is the cheapest way to run a real ticketing help desk, and at one seat that includes being cheaper than Moorline. Express is $7 an agent on yearly billing, $84 a year, against Moorline’s $9 a month, $108 a year. Billed monthly, Express is $9, level with Moorline, and the free plan is cheaper than both.

Per-seat pricing costs one person more further up the ladder. A knowledge base or live chat starts at Standard, $168 a year, and Zia AI at Professional, $276: each rung is priced for the team you might become. Moorline does not win this on price. It is for one person on a Mac who would rather keep their own mailbox than forward it into a ticket queue; the honest trade-off is in Moorline as a Zoho Desk alternative.

Questions people ask about Zoho Desk pricing