Business · Updated October 2026
Zendesk is a customer support platform for tickets, live chat, and help centers. If you would rather own your tools, here are 4 open source alternatives to Zendesk, ranked by GitHub stars. Each one is free to use under its license, and you can read, change, and often self-host the code.
Chatwoot is both the most popular, with 38.1k stars, and the most recently updated, with a commit on Oct 21, 2026.
by chatwoot
Open-source live-chat, email support, omni-channel desk. An alternative to Intercom, Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud etc. 🔥💬
by zammad
Zammad is a web based open source helpdesk/customer support system.
by freescout-help-desk
FreeScout — Free self-hosted omnichannel AI-powered helpdesk & shared mailbox
by erxes
Experience Operating System (XOS) that unifies marketing, sales, operations, and support — run your core business seamlessly while replacing HubSpot, Zendesk, Linear, Wix and more.
By GitHub stars, Chatwoot is the most popular open source alternative to Zendesk right now, with 38.1k stars, followed by Zammad and FreeScout. The best fit depends on your setup, so compare their licenses, languages, and recent activity in the table above.
Yes. All 4 projects on this page are open source, so the software itself is free to use, study, and change. Some of them also sell a hosted version or paid support.
Chatwoot (last commit Oct 21, 2026), erxes (last commit Oct 21, 2026), and Zammad (last commit Oct 21, 2026) have the most recent commits. Licenses on this list include AGPL-3.0.
Chatwoot
Zammad
FreeScout
erxes