Drift vs Intercom in 2026: Pricing, Fin AI, and Why the Comparison Changed

By Patrick Breen, software engineer and AI Stack Guides researcher.

Quick answer: For almost every team comparing these two in 2026, Intercom is the pick, because Drift is being wound down. Clari + Salesloft announced the sunset of Drift on 2026-03-06 and named 1mind as the successor for existing clients (Clari + Salesloft newsroom, 2026-03-06). Standalone Drift signups are gone. Intercom is the live, actively developed product: seats run $29 to $132 per seat per month on annual billing, its Fin AI Agent bills $0.99 per resolution on every plan, and there is a 14-day free trial with unlimited Fin resolutions during the trial (Intercom pricing page as of 2026-06-04). If you are an existing Drift customer reading this, the real decision is migration, and Intercom is one of the two natural landing spots alongside 1mind.

I set out to compare Drift and Intercom the way a buyer would in 2026, and the first thing the research turned up reframed the whole question. Drift is no longer a product you can sign up for on its own. I pulled current pricing from the Intercom pricing page in early June 2026, traced the Drift acquisition and sunset timeline through primary announcements, and cross-checked feature and review claims against G2 and Capterra. Below is what the comparison looks like now, which tool fits which buyer, how the AI agents actually differ, and what existing Drift customers should plan for.

The change that reframes this comparison: Drift is being sunset

Drift was acquired by Salesloft in February 2024. After Clari merged with Salesloft in late 2025, the combined company announced on 2026-03-06 that Drift would be gradually sunset, and it named 1mind as the exclusive successor that existing Drift clients would be referred to (Clari + Salesloft newsroom and BusinessWire, 2026-03-06). No hard end-of-life date has been published, but active product investment has ended and you can no longer buy Drift as a standalone subscription.

That matters for anyone typing "drift vs intercom" into a search box. A year ago this was a real head-to-head between two conversational platforms. In 2026 it is closer to a question of where Drift functionality goes next. Intercom is the obvious continuity option for teams that want a live, supported chat-and-AI platform. 1mind is the path Clari + Salesloft is steering its own customers toward. The rest of this comparison treats Intercom as the live product and Drift as the legacy one, because that is what they are.

Decision rules: which tool for which buyer in 2026

If you are evaluating both tools fresh with no existing contract, choose Intercom. It is the only one of the two you can actually buy and run with confidence that it will be developed next year. Start on the Essential plan at $29 per seat per month annual and add Fin resolutions as volume justifies them.

If you are a current Drift customer on an annual contract, your decision is a migration, not a renewal. Map your live-chat playbooks, routing rules, and bot flows, then evaluate Intercom and 1mind side by side before your contract lapses. Intercom fits if your priority is customer support and self-serve resolution. 1mind fits better if your Drift use was purely top-of-funnel sales qualification and your team is staying inside the Clari + Salesloft stack.

If your main job to be done is customer support deflection, where most inbound questions are repeat issues that an AI can resolve, Intercom plus Fin is the strongest fit in this pair. Fin is built around resolving support conversations and billing only when it does.

If your main job to be done is B2B sales chat that books meetings off your marketing site, this is the use case Drift was famous for. Drift did this well historically, but recommending a sunsetting product for a new build is hard to justify. Intercom can run sales-oriented chat, and dedicated conversational-marketing tools are worth a look if booking demos is the entire point.

Intercom and Fin: the live product and what it costs

Intercom seat pricing per the Intercom pricing page as of 2026-06-04: Essential at $29 per seat per month on annual billing ($39 monthly), Advanced at $85 per seat per month annual ($99 monthly), and Expert at $132 per seat per month annual ($139 monthly). Every plan includes access to the Fin AI Agent.

Fin is where Intercom's pricing gets its reputation. Fin bills $0.99 per resolution on all plans (Intercom pricing page as of 2026-06-04). A resolution counts when the customer confirms Fin solved their issue, when they stop asking after Fin answers, or when Fin completes a procedure that ends in resolution or an intentional handoff. You are charged once per conversation no matter how many questions Fin fields inside it. The Copilot assistant that helps human agents includes 10 conversations per seat per month, and unlimited Copilot usage runs $35 per seat per month beyond that.

What that means in real money: a five-seat support team on Essential pays $145 per month in seats, then Fin resolutions on top. A team resolving 500 conversations through Fin in a month adds roughly $495 in usage, landing the all-in bill near $640 before any Copilot upgrade. The seat cost is the small number here. Fin usage is the line that scales with your ticket volume, and it is the one teams underestimate.

The honest weakness of Intercom's model is exactly that unpredictability. Reviewers across G2 and Capterra consistently flag that per-resolution billing makes the monthly invoice hard to forecast, and that costs climb fast once deflection volume grows (G2 and Capterra review aggregates as of 2026-06-04, where Intercom holds 4.5/5 across 3,200+ G2 reviews). The flip side is that you only pay Fin when it resolves, which aligns the cost with the value better than a flat per-seat bot fee does.

Drift in 2026: what you are actually evaluating

Drift never published transparent self-serve pricing even at its peak. Third-party pricing trackers put Drift's premium tier in the range of $2,500 per month and up, with enterprise contracts commonly reported at $80,000 to $150,000 or more per year (MarketBetter Drift pricing breakdown, 2026). Those figures come from resellers and review sites rather than a vendor pricing page, so treat them as directional rather than exact.

The more important fact is that none of that is purchasable as Drift anymore. Standalone signups are gone, the product sits inside the Salesloft platform, and the 2026-03-06 announcement put it on a sunset path. Drift's chat agents still engage site visitors, qualify leads, and route high-intent buyers to live chat or a booked meeting for existing customers, and that conversational-marketing engine was genuinely good at turning anonymous traffic into pipeline. But buying into it new in mid-2026 means buying into a product with no published roadmap and a vendor actively pointing customers elsewhere.

Drift's review signal reflects a product that earned loyalty before the acquisition turbulence. It holds 4.4/5 across 1,000+ G2 reviews and a comparable 4.4/5 on Capterra (G2 and Capterra as of 2026-06-04). Reviewers praised the playbook builder and meeting-booking flow and criticized opaque pricing and the support changes that followed the Salesloft acquisition.

Fin AI vs Drift AI: how the agents differ

The two AI approaches were built for different ends of the funnel. Fin is a support-resolution agent. It reads your help center, past conversations, and connected knowledge sources, answers customer questions in natural language, and is measured and billed on whether it resolves the conversation. Its whole design points at deflecting support volume away from human agents.

Drift's AI was a conversational-marketing agent. It engaged visitors on marketing pages, qualified them against rules the team set, and pushed high-intent prospects toward a sales rep or a calendar booking. It optimized for pipeline creation rather than ticket deflection. The two were rarely direct substitutes even before the sunset, which is why teams sometimes ran one of each.

In 2026 the practical comparison is lopsided. Fin is live, billed on a clear per-resolution basis, and improving on a published cadence. Drift's AI is frozen in feature terms and steered toward 1mind for anyone who wants continued investment. If the AI agent is the reason you are choosing, Intercom is the only one of these two still investing in it.

Free tiers and trials: what you can test without paying

Neither product offers a permanent free plan in the way a buyer searching "intercom live chat free" might hope. Intercom runs a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and notably it includes unlimited Fin resolutions during the trial window, so you can stress-test the AI agent on real conversations before any usage billing starts (Intercom pricing page as of 2026-06-04). Fin has also been offered with an extended risk-free trial period where unsatisfied customers can request a refund.

Drift had no meaningful free tier historically, and with standalone signups closed there is no self-serve trial path to evaluate it in 2026 at all. For a buyer who wants to try before buying, that gap alone settles the comparison in Intercom's favor.

Drift vs Intercom 2026 at a glance

Dimension	Intercom	Drift
Status in 2026	Live, actively developed	Sunset announced 2026-03-06, successor is 1mind
Self-serve signup	Yes	No longer available
Seat pricing	$29 to $132 per seat per month annual	Not published, bundled into Salesloft
AI agent billing	Fin at $0.99 per resolution, all plans	Bundled, no public per-unit price
AI focus	Support resolution and deflection	Sales qualification and meeting booking
Free trial	14 days, unlimited Fin during trial	None self-serve
Review rating	4.5/5 G2 (3,200+ reviews)	4.4/5 G2 (1,000+ reviews)

The mistakes buyers make comparing these two

The first mistake is comparing Drift and Intercom in 2026 as if both were live products you could buy tomorrow. Drift's sunset is the single most important fact in the decision, and most older comparison articles were written before 2026-03-06 and miss it entirely. Always check the publish date on any "drift vs intercom" piece you read this year.

The second mistake is reading Intercom's $29 seat price as the cost of the platform. The seat fee is the small line. Fin resolution usage at $0.99 each is the number that determines your bill once deflection volume is real. Model your expected monthly resolution count before you sign, not your seat count.

The third mistake is assuming Fin and the old Drift bot do the same job. Fin resolves support tickets. Drift's bot qualified marketing leads. A team that buys Intercom expecting it to replace a top-of-funnel sales-chat motion can be disappointed unless it configures Intercom for that use case deliberately or pairs it with a dedicated conversational-marketing tool.

The fourth mistake, for current Drift customers, is waiting for a forced end-of-life date before planning the move. No hard cutoff has been published, but active investment has ended. Running an Intercom trial and a 1mind evaluation in parallel while your contract still has runway is cheaper than scrambling once a deprecation notice arrives.

Frequently asked questions

Is Drift still available in 2026?

Not as a standalone product. Clari + Salesloft announced on 2026-03-06 that Drift would be gradually sunset and named 1mind as the exclusive successor for existing clients. Standalone signups are closed and Drift now sits inside the Salesloft platform. Existing customers can continue using it for now, but no hard end-of-life date has been published and active product investment has ended.

How much does Intercom cost in 2026?

Intercom seats run $29 per seat per month on the Essential plan (annual billing), $85 on Advanced, and $132 on Expert, per the Intercom pricing page as of 2026-06-04. On top of seats, the Fin AI Agent bills $0.99 per resolution on every plan, and unlimited Copilot for human agents is $35 per seat per month beyond the 10 conversations included per seat.

What is the difference between Fin and Drift's AI?

Fin is a customer-support resolution agent. It answers questions from your knowledge base and is billed when it resolves a conversation. Drift's AI was a conversational-marketing agent built to qualify website visitors and book sales meetings. They sit at opposite ends of the funnel, which is why some teams historically ran both. In 2026 Fin is the live, developed option while Drift's AI is frozen.

Does Intercom have a free version?

There is no permanent free plan. Intercom offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and it includes unlimited Fin resolutions during the trial so you can test the AI agent on real conversations before usage billing begins. Fin has also been offered with an extended risk-free trial that allows a refund if you are not satisfied.

Should existing Drift customers move to Intercom or 1mind?

It depends on what you used Drift for. If your use was customer support and self-serve resolution, Intercom plus Fin is the natural fit. If your use was purely top-of-funnel sales qualification and your team is committed to the Clari + Salesloft stack, 1mind is the path the vendor is steering customers toward. Evaluating both in parallel before your contract lapses is the safe play.

Why is Fin's $0.99 per resolution pricing controversial?

Because it makes the monthly bill hard to predict. Seats are a fixed cost, but Fin usage scales directly with how many conversations it resolves, so a busy month produces a bigger invoice. Reviewers on G2 and Capterra cite this unpredictability as the top drawback. The counterargument is that you only pay Fin when it actually resolves an issue, which ties cost to value more tightly than a flat bot fee.

Which has better reviews, Drift or Intercom?

They are close. Intercom holds 4.5/5 across more than 3,200 G2 reviews and Drift holds 4.4/5 across more than 1,000 G2 reviews, with both near 4.4 to 4.5 on Capterra as of 2026-06-04. The ratings are similar, but Intercom's reflect a live product while Drift's reflect a product that is now in sunset.

Sources and methodology

Intercom pricing verified against the Intercom pricing page on 2026-06-04: Essential $29, Advanced $85, Expert $132 per seat per month on annual billing, Fin AI Agent at $0.99 per resolution, Copilot at $35 per seat per month beyond 10 included conversations, and a 14-day free trial with unlimited Fin resolutions during the trial. The Drift sunset and the 1mind successor designation are drawn from the Clari + Salesloft newsroom announcement and the corresponding BusinessWire release dated 2026-03-06. Drift's acquisition by Salesloft (February 2024) and the subsequent Clari merger provide the timeline context. Legacy Drift pricing estimates ($2,500 per month and up, $80,000 to $150,000+ annual enterprise contracts) come from third-party pricing breakdowns including MarketBetter's 2026 Drift analysis, not a vendor pricing page, and are presented as directional. User-review aggregates were pulled from G2 and Capterra on 2026-06-04: Intercom at 4.5/5 across 3,200+ G2 reviews, Drift at 4.4/5 across 1,000+ G2 reviews, both near 4.4 to 4.5 on Capterra. Where a figure could not be traced to a vendor page or a primary announcement, it is labeled as a third-party estimate.