- The short answer
- Side by side
- What a small team pays
- Why DevReply for mobile apps
- Where HelpCrunch is stronger
- Which one to pick
The short answer
HelpCrunch is an all-in-one customer communication platform: live chat, a shared inbox for email and messengers, a knowledge base, a chatbot, AI agents, email campaigns and popups, with SDKs for iOS, Android and React Native. DevReply does one job: a native “message the developer” chat inside your app, one inbox to answer from, and an MCP server so your own AI agent can work that inbox. HelpCrunch charges per team member and gives AI agents a monthly allowance with paid extensions. DevReply has no per-seat fees and no per-answer AI fees, and the free plan includes the mobile SDKs.
Side by side
List prices from each company's own pricing page, in USD, before tax. Checked October 2026; prices change, so check the sources below before you decide.
| DevReply | HelpCrunch | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Flat monthly or yearly plan. No per-seat fees | Per team member, per month (Basic and Pro); Unlimited is a flat price |
| Free plan | $0: unlimited apps, users and teammates; 50 conversations a month; history kept forever; 500 MB of files, kept 90 days | No free plan; a 14-day free trial, no card needed |
| Paid plans | Pro $49/mo or $490/yr (500 conversations). Scale $199/mo or $1,990/yr (5,000 conversations) | Basic $15 per team member per month ($12 billed annually). Pro $25 ($20 billed annually). Unlimited $620/mo ($495/mo billed annually), unlimited team members |
| AI answers | No per-answer fee: on Pro, your own agent reads, sorts, drafts and replies over MCP | AI agents from Pro, with 50 AI conversations a month included; extensions from $29/mo for 100 more. None on Basic |
| Mobile SDK | Every plan, Free included: native SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose, React Native and Flutter packages that open the same native screens, a web script | iOS and Android SDKs and a React Native component. Pricing counts each differently styled website or app as a widget: 1 on Basic, 5 on Pro |
| Channels | The in-app chat and a web script; email only to reach users who missed a reply | Website and app chat, email (a monthly email volume you add to the plan), Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Viber; WhatsApp from Pro |
| Built for | Developers answering their own app's users | Support, sales and marketing teams across web, apps and messengers |
Sources: helpcrunch.com/pricing, HelpCrunch FAQ, helpcrunch.com/chat-sdk, HelpCrunch mobile SDK docs, and our own pricing. Checked October 2026. HelpCrunch's Basic and Pro prices are for one team member with no email volume added; adding email raises the price (Basic with 1,000 emails a month is $29, or $23 billed annually). DevReply prices are in USD, with VAT added where it applies. Scale's webhooks and in-app nudges are coming, not built yet.
What a small team pays
Take a team of three answering one app for a year, at the list prices above:
- DevReply: $0 on Free while you stay under 50 conversations a month. Pro is $490 a year for the whole team, with your agent working the inbox. A fourth or a tenth teammate costs nothing.
- HelpCrunch Basic: $432 a year billed annually (3 × $12 × 12), or $540 paid monthly. Basic has no chatbot and no AI agents.
- HelpCrunch Pro: $720 a year billed annually (3 × $20 × 12), with 50 AI conversations a month. More AI conversations are an extension: 100 more cost $29 a month.
The gap grows with the team. Ten people on HelpCrunch Pro is $2,400 a year billed annually; on DevReply Pro it's still $490. If three people answer by hand and need more than 50 conversations a month, HelpCrunch Basic costs less than DevReply Pro, though email volume costs extra there.
Why DevReply for mobile apps
- The whole SDK on the free plan, for every teammate. DevReply's native SDKs, push and history kept forever come with Free, and nobody on the team needs a paid seat. HelpCrunch has no free plan after its 14-day trial, and every team member is billed on Basic and Pro.
- Your agent, not a metered bot. DevReply doesn't sell AI answers. On Pro, the AI agent you already use connects over MCP (OAuth, listed in the official MCP Registry), reads conversations with their context, tags and sorts them, drafts replies for your approval or sends them, as each app allows. HelpCrunch's AI agents are its own, with a monthly allowance and paid extensions.
- Native screens on every platform you ship. The chat is SwiftUI on iOS and Jetpack Compose on Android, with no web view, and the React Native and Flutter packages open those same native screens. HelpCrunch's own docs list iOS, Android and React Native SDKs; for Flutter there are community plugins.
- Context made for app bugs. Each message arrives with device, OS, app version and language, plus anything your app passes. Open the chat from a paywall with a draft and an error code, and the conversation shows them as “Opened with”.
- Accounts the way the stores expect. Log in with your own user id, log out on sign-out, and delete a user from the app, the inbox or your backend, as Apple requires. The chat speaks 34 languages, Hebrew and Arabic right to left.
Your coding agent can set DevReply up from the app's setup guide or over MCP. See the guides for SwiftUI, Expo and React Native and Flutter.
Where HelpCrunch is stronger
- Many channels in one inbox. Email, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and Viber, WhatsApp from Pro. DevReply is the in-app chat only.
- A knowledge base. HelpCrunch has a help center your users can search, multilingual from Pro. DevReply has none.
- AI agents built in. On Pro and up, HelpCrunch's AI agents answer from your articles and custom answers around the clock. DevReply has no bot of its own: you bring your agent, and webhooks for round-the-clock answers are still coming.
- Marketing tools. Email campaigns, automated messages and popups for lead generation. DevReply has no outreach yet.
- Webhooks today. HelpCrunch documents webhooks and a REST API. DevReply's webhooks are planned for Scale.
- Years in production. DevReply is new, made by Code Axolot for our own apps first.
Which one to pick
- Pick DevReply if your users are mostly in an iOS or Android app, you or a small team answer them, and you want your own coding agent to help without paying per seat or per AI conversation.
- Pick HelpCrunch if you need one tool for website chat, email, messengers, a knowledge base and marketing messages, and per-seat pricing suits your team size.
Try DevReply free with your own app: no card, unlimited teammates, and the native SDKs on the free plan. Coding agents can read everything about it in llms.txt.