Chatwoot is a solid open-source customer engagement platform — we won't pretend otherwise. Campfire is also open source. The honest wedge: Campfire ships a productized AI customer service agent with bring-your-own-model support and simple flat hosted pricing ($49/mo Growth), so you do not have to bolt AI onto the helpdesk yourself.
Shared ground
Where Campfire leads
Campfire: Productized AI customer service agent with knowledge grounding
Chatwoot: Strong inbox; AI usually requires separate integration work
Campfire: First-class bring-your-own LLM keys
Chatwoot: Depends on how you assemble the AI layer
Campfire: Flat $49/mo Growth
Chatwoot: Self-host free; commercial hosted offerings available
Pricing model, license, and BYO-model support — HTML table for crawlers.
| Dimension | Campfire | Chatwoot |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat $49/mo Growth hosted (self-host free under MIT + infra) | Open-source self-host free; commercial hosted tiers available |
| License | Open source (MIT) | Open source (MIT-compatible / open core ecosystem) |
| BYO-model support | Yes — built-in AI agent with BYO keys | Typically requires integrating or bolting on AI yourself |
| Built-in AI customer service agent | Yes — productized agent + knowledge grounding | Not the primary product wedge; AI usually added separately |
Yes. Chatwoot is a well-known open-source customer engagement platform. Campfire is also open source (MIT). The comparison is not “open vs closed” — it is about AI agent productization, BYO-model story, and pricing for hosted use.
Start free on Campfire. MIT license, BYO model, flat Growth pricing.