When a store owner first looks for a website chat, tawk.to is almost always the first result — and for good reason: the core product is free forever, you can add as many agents as you like, and setup takes a few minutes. tawk.to makes money on add-ons: removing the branding, unlocking full AI, hiring agents by the hour. Looma comes at it from the other side: it's not a "free chat" but an AI salesperson + smart search that know your catalog and take the conversation all the way to a lead. Below: a quick take on each, two things that set Looma apart, a full feature table, an honest pricing comparison and a verdict on which fits whom.

The main difference

tawk.to answers the question "how do I add a chat and pay nothing". It's a mature support tool where live agents talk to visitors, while tickets and a knowledge base help work through requests. As a free starting point for any website — from a blog to a service business — it's excellent.

Looma answers a different question — "how do I get visitors to buy more". It doesn't wait for an agent to read the message; it immediately picks products from your catalog, helps shoppers find them in search and captures the order. It's a sales tool for online stores, not a universal chat for any site. Two things set Looma apart fundamentally.

1. Smart search — what chat platforms don't have

Chat services, tawk.to included, work with people who write in. But most shoppers never message anyone — they just type into the search bar. And that's exactly where a store quietly loses money.

A customer searches for "nike runers 42" with a typo, in another language or in their own words — and gets "nothing found". The product is in stock, but for the shopper it doesn't exist. They close the tab and go to a competitor, and you never even learn they were there.

Looma adds a separate smart search widget to your site: it forgives typos, understands synonyms and queries in other languages, and searches by meaning rather than exact word match. In analytics you see the zero-result searches — so you know exactly what people looked for and didn't find. tawk.to has no on-site product search, so that leak stays open no matter how many agents sit in the chat.

2. AI that knows your catalog and drives to an order

Free tawk.to is first and foremost a live agent. When no agent is around, the visitor waits or leaves. tawk.to does have a full AI Assist, but it's a separate paid add-on, trained on FAQs, help articles, website pages and documents. Product-level work comes through WooCommerce and Shopify integrations — and only on paid AI Assist plans.

Looma is built around the product feed from day one. It imports your catalog (via a feed, Google Merchant or an OpenCart or Horoshop integration), works out attributes, synonyms, categories and ratings on its own — and answers requests like "a quiet vacuum under $200 with good reviews" with specific products. And the conversation doesn't stop there: Looma captures the order or lead right in the chat, and when a human is needed it hands the conversation to an agent with full context — which products and pages the customer viewed, plus an AI lead score (temperature and mood).

For the team, that means less routine: chat and lead statuses, an automatic "Unanswered" status after 5 minutes, one inbox for the website, Telegram, Viber, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and email, plus "Ask AI" to learn in seconds what customers asked about this week.

Where tawk.to is strong

Let's be fair: on price, tawk.to is hard to beat. Live chat, ticketing, a knowledge base, CRM and automations — free, with unlimited agents and chats. The product is mature, used by millions of businesses, with native apps for phones and desktops, plugins for popular CMSs (including OpenCart, WooCommerce and Shopify) and even the option to hire tawk.to agents by the hour. If all you need is live chat and you're ready to answer yourself, it's one of the best options on the market. Looma focuses narrower: online store sales through AI, search and lead handling.

Full feature comparison

tawk.to data is as of 2026-10-03; verify current features and prices on tawk.to's official site.

Pricing

tawk.to (as of 2026-10-03): live chat, ticketing, knowledge base and CRM — free, with unlimited agents. Full AI Assist is separate: a free Hobby tier with 100 message credits per month, Growth at $29/mo (1,000 credits), Business at $99/mo (5,000), Enterprise at $399/mo (20,000); extra credits cost $30 per 1,000. Removing tawk.to branding from the widget costs from $29/mo. Hired agents start at $1/hour for round-the-clock coverage. So in practice a "free" chat with AI and without someone else's logo starts at around $58/mo, and AI store integrations are only available on paid AI Assist plans.

Looma: fixed plans — Starter $29/mo (4,142 credits per month, up to 5,000 products, 1 site), Growth $59, Business $149, Enterprise on request. Agents are unlimited on every plan — no per-seat pricing. Unused credits roll over to the next month, yearly billing adds bonus credits, and you get 200 free credits to test. The key point — catalog-aware AI, smart search and lead capture are already in the plan, not bought separately. Setup takes about 5 minutes — a feed or store integration plus one script tag. Current plans are on the pricing page →

Which to choose

Comparing several tools? See also Looma vs Tidio →