Aircall vs LiveAgent: A Phone System or a Help Desk With Calls

The short answer: if most of your customers ring rather than write, and three or more people take those calls, Aircall is built for it: Essentials costs €40 per licence a month on monthly billing, or €30 billed annually, with a three-licence minimum and one number included (Netherlands prices on the Aircall pricing page, checked on 26 October 2026). If calls are one channel among email, chat and WhatsApp, LiveAgent's Team plan puts a call center inside the same help desk for $35 per agent a month, or $29 billed annually (LiveAgent pricing, same date). Choose Aircall to run a phone line; choose LiveAgent to run a queue in which the phone is one door.

Disclosure: I may earn a commission through some links on this site. It does not change what this page says.

Before you pick a phone line:

1. Four people, priced three ways. For example, Aircall Essentials for four is 4 x €40 = €160 a month; LiveAgent Team is 4 x $35 = $140; and the split setup, LiveAgent Starter for email and chat plus Aircall for the phones, is 4 x $19 = $76 on one invoice and €160 on another. Figures from the Aircall and LiveAgent pricing pages, monthly billing.
2. The phone setup you already pay for. LiveAgent's call center connects to VoIP providers over SIP trunk and lists more than 60 provider integrations (call center page), so a carrier you already use can stay. Aircall brings its own numbers: one local or toll-free number per plan, more at €6 a month (Aircall pricing).
3. Last month's call log. Export it from whatever you use today and count two things: calls that rang outside opening hours, and calls nobody answered. Those two counts are the baseline for every feature below.

The phone jobs, side by side

Read on 26 October 2026 from Aircall's pricing page with the Netherlands selected and LiveAgent's pricing page and call center page.

Where they differ

Who owns the line

Aircall is the carrier and the software in one: numbers in 100+ countries, carrier switching, and inbound calls included in the licence (AI Voice Agent page). LiveAgent is a help desk that answers the phone through a provider you choose. That keeps your carrier and its rates, and it also makes you the one who sorts out a bad line.

One queue or two

LiveAgent turns every email, chat message, social message and call into a ticket in one inbox, with SLA rules and reporting on Team (LiveAgent pricing). Aircall syncs calls to a CRM or help desk through 250+ integrations, Zendesk, HubSpot and Salesforce among them (Aircall pricing). A team with a help desk it likes adds Aircall beside it; a team without one gets both from LiveAgent.

Where the AI sits

Aircall's AI answers the phone: a voice agent that takes routine calls, books, updates the CRM and hands over (AI Voice Agent page). LiveAgent's AI answers chat and works tickets, and it runs on your own OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini or FlowHunt account, with no AI fee from LiveAgent (LiveAgent pricing). If the after-hours gap is on the phone, only one of them documents an answer.

The price lists

Aircall, per licence a month with the Netherlands selected, checked on 26 October 2026 (Aircall pricing): Essentials €40 on monthly billing or €30 annually; Professional €70 or €50, adding Power Dialer, queue callback and unlimited domestic outbound calls; Enterprise quoted from 25 licences. AI Voice Agents on their own start at €125 a month, or €100 on annual billing. The US list carries the same figures in dollars.

LiveAgent, per agent a month in US dollars, checked the same day (LiveAgent pricing): Starter $19 or $15 annually, without call center or social channels; Team $35 or $29; Business $59 or $49, with an MCP server; Enterprise a flat $3,999, or $3,199 annually, for 80 agents.

One agent step: the calls that come in after six

Aircall documents the whole job (after-hours guide). Create an inbound AI Voice Agent, keep its knowledge base to your most frequent questions, and write a guideline for when it cannot answer: say so, offer a callback, then ask no more than five intake questions, such as name, the problem and a good time to ring back. Test it in the Test call panel along a happy path, a vague question and a caller who interrupts and contradicts it; the panel touches neither your team nor your CRM. Then place it on the after-hours branch of the number's time rule, where it replaces voicemail. The human check comes next morning: a person reads every logged callback request and makes the call. Billing runs to the decimal minute, and calls under 15 seconds are free (charges article). The agent speaks to callers as an AI, so Article 50 of the EU AI Act applies to its greeting; the LiveAgent entry explains what to say.

Choose Aircall if your job is

• Running a sales or support line where the phone carries most of the work.
• Calling out at volume, with Power Dialer and outbound campaigns on Professional.
• Answering after-hours calls with an AI voice agent and a callback list.

Choose LiveAgent if your job is

• Working email, chat, social messages and calls as tickets in one queue.
• Keeping the VoIP provider and numbers you already have.
• Running AI on chat and tickets without per-resolution fees.

The free route, and the 2,500-minute default

Start with the call log from the list above: it costs nothing and shows whether the phone deserves its own system. Then trial both: LiveAgent for 30 days without a card, Aircall through its free access with 100 AI minutes at sign-up and 50 every month after (Aircall pricing FAQ).

The AI cost calculator on Aircall's pricing page opens at 2,500 minutes a month, with the prepaid bundle flagged SAVE $500/MO on the US list. Bundles are billed at the start of each cycle and unused minutes expire when it closes (charges article). For example, a shop taking 300 after-hours minutes pays 50 free plus 250 x $0.49 = $122.50 on pay as you go, against $725 for the bundle the calculator starts from. Move the slider to your own log before you buy minutes.

FAQ

Does a team of two pay for three Aircall licences?

Yes. Every Aircall plan has a minimum of 3 licences, whatever the billing cycle, so two people on Essentials pay 3 x €40 = €120 a month on monthly billing (Aircall pricing FAQ).

Does LiveAgent come with phone numbers?

Its call center page describes connecting VoIP providers over SIP trunk, and its pricing page lists no numbers or call minutes (call center page, pricing). Ask which provider fits your country before the trial ends.

What happens to my LiveAgent setup when the trial ends?

It stays only if you move to a paid plan; the 30 days need no card, and every plan can be paid monthly and cancelled at the end of the paid period (LiveAgent pricing FAQ). For the full plan list, see the LiveAgent entry.