Comparison

Kelu vs Help Scout AI

Last reviewed:

Help Scout's AI agent is called Scout. It answers customers in Beacon and in Help Scout inboxes, and costs $0.75 per resolution. Kelu does not connect to Help Scout as a helpdesk. It is a separate knowledge assistant: one knowledge base answers on a docs widget, Slack and Microsoft Teams bots, and an MCP server, and in Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, Front and Linear tickets.

Short answer

Choose Help Scout's Scout if Help Scout is your helpdesk and you want AI answers in Beacon and your inboxes from the same vendor, priced per resolution. Choose Kelu if you want one knowledge base, on a flat plan, that answers on your docs site, in Slack and Teams, and in AI coding tools, or tickets in Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, Front or Linear.

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Feature comparison

Help Scout details come from Help Scout's own pricing, product and docs pages, listed under the table.

Feature
Kelu
Help Scout AI
Where it answers
Docs widget, support form deflector, Slack and Teams bots, MCP, REST API; tickets in Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, Front and Linear. No Help Scout integration
Beacon (on your website or in your app) and Help Scout email inboxes
Pricing model
Flat monthly: Free ($0, 100 questions), Pro ($99/mo or $79/mo billed yearly, 1,000 questions), Enterprise custom
Scout: $0.75 per resolution, with a spend cap you set; new accounts get 3 months free. Help Scout plans are priced per user
Public web widget
Yes: floating chat, Cmd+K search bar or docked sidebar; themeable, reCAPTCHA, hide-branding on Enterprise
Beacon
Deflection before contact
Support form deflector: answers when your form is submitted, from one script tag
Beacon's Self Service mode shows help articles before contact options
Slack bot
Yes: @mention, DMs, /kelu, forum auto-reply, thumbs feedback
Help Scout's Slack integration sends notifications; Slack is not a support channel
Microsoft Teams bot
Yes
Not documented on their site as of Oct 2026
MCP
An MCP server per knowledge base, so Cursor, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT and Windsurf can search and ask it
A read-only MCP server that gives your own AI tools access to Help Scout data (conversations, customers, Docs, reports)
Knowledge sources
24 source types: websites, GitHub (docs, code, issues, PRs, discussions), Notion, Confluence, Google Drive, OneDrive, Zendesk Help Center and solved tickets, Jira, Jira Service Management, Linear, Salesforce Knowledge and Cases, Discourse, Stack Overflow, YouTube, OpenAPI, S3, files, curated Q&A
Help Scout Docs, public web pages (re-synced by hand), PDF, Word and Excel files, Google Docs and Sheets by link, and text. Past conversations are listed as coming soon
AI for agents
In supported helpdesks, Draft only mode leaves confident answers as private notes
AI Drafts and AI Summarize on Plus and Pro plans, and AI Assist for tone and translation
Retrieval
Hybrid: pgvector + full-text, RRF fusion, LLM query rewrite, cross-encoder reranking, abstention
Not described on their site as of Oct 2026
Free tier
Yes: 100 questions/month, no credit card
Free plan (5 users, 1 inbox); Scout is free for the first 3 months on new accounts
Sources, checked October 29, 2026: Help Scout pricing · Help Scout AI agent · Set up Scout · Scout sources · AI resolutions pricing · Free plan · Beacon modes · Help Scout MCP · Help Scout and Slack · AI Drafts

Where Kelu focuses differently

01

Answers beyond the helpdesk

Scout answers in Beacon and your Help Scout inboxes. Kelu answers on your docs site (chat, Cmd+K search or sidebar), in Slack and Teams, and in AI coding tools through MCP, all from one knowledge base.

02

Broader source coverage

Scout reads your Help Scout Docs, web pages, files and text. Kelu indexes 24 source types, including GitHub, Notion, Confluence, Google Drive, OneDrive, Salesforce and Discourse, and keeps them in sync on a schedule. A public Help Scout Docs site can be added as a website source.

03

Flat pricing instead of per resolution

Scout costs $0.75 per resolution, so the bill follows your volume. Kelu is a flat monthly plan with included question quotas, emails as you approach the limit, and no overage fees.

04

Says when it doesn't know

When your sources don't cover a question, Kelu's abstention gate withholds both the excerpts and the citations, so the reader gets a clear "I don't know" and the question shows up in your gap report.

Got questions?

Frequently asked questions

Can I use both Help Scout and Kelu?

Yes. Keep Help Scout as the helpdesk, and use Kelu for the docs widget, a Slack or Teams bot for your team or community, and MCP for AI coding tools. Kelu does not answer Help Scout conversations.

Does Kelu replace Help Scout Beacon?

For answers on the page, it can: Kelu's widget gives cited answers from hybrid retrieval, and the form deflector answers a support form before it is sent. Beacon is also how customers start a Help Scout conversation, which Kelu does not do.

How does answer quality compare?

Kelu layers PostgreSQL full-text search and reciprocal rank fusion on top of vector search, rewrites the query with an LLM before search, and reranks with a cross-encoder. An abstention gate stops it answering when your sources don't cover the question. Help Scout does not describe Scout's retrieval publicly.

How does pricing compare?

Scout costs $0.75 per resolution on top of your Help Scout plan, with 3 free months for new accounts. Kelu is priced separately from your helpdesk: Free (100 questions/mo), Pro $99/mo or $79/mo billed yearly (1,000 questions, 5 knowledge bases), Enterprise custom.

How is data handled?

Your content and end-user conversations are never used to train models. PII masking can replace personal data in your content and in widget and API questions; zero-retention mode is a per-workspace toggle.

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