Zulip vs Aircall Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
Free
- 10,000 messages of search history
- File storage up to 5 GB total
- Complete team chat solution
- Hundreds of integrations
- Advanced roles and permissions
- Guest accounts
- Many organizations are eligible for a free Standard plan
Standard
- Unlimited search history
- File storage up to 5 GB per user
- Flexible permissions with custom groups
- Message retention policies
- Brand Zulip with your logo
- Priority commercial support
- Public access option
Plus
- All Standard plan features
- File storage up to 25 GB per user
- SSO with SAML (Okta, OneLogin, etc.)
- SCIM user and group sync
- Custom domain
- Limit user list access for guests
- Priority commercial support
Essentials
- Minimum number of users
- Max number of teams
- Phone number included in the plan
- Price of each additional number, per month
- Inbound calls & internal calls (Toll-free excluded)
- Outbound calls - domestic
- Outbound calls - international
- SMS and MMS business text messaging - domestic
- Access to call recordings
- Analytics data
Professional
- Minimum number of users
- Max number of teams
- Phone number included in the plan
- Price of each additional number, per month
- Inbound calls & internal calls (Toll-free excluded)
- Outbound calls - domestic
- Outbound calls - international
- SMS and MMS business text messaging - domestic
- Access to call recordings
- Analytics data
Custom
- Minimum number of users
- Max number of teams
- Phone number included in the plan
- Price of each additional number, per month
- Inbound calls & internal calls (Toll-free excluded)
- Outbound calls - domestic
- Outbound calls - international
- SMS and MMS business text messaging - domestic
- Access to call recordings
- Analytics data
Zulip vs Aircall FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- Zulip starts lower at $8/mo, compared to $30/mo for Aircall.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Zulip has a free plan. Aircall doesn't — you'll need to pay from day one.
- How do they charge?
- Both use a per-seat model, so the comparison is straightforward — it comes down to features and limits at each price point.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Zulip: They're deliberately undercutting Slack (which runs $7.25–$12.50/seat) and positioning as the scrappy, async-first alternative for technical teams who find Slack too noisy and too expensive. This isn't a premium play — it's a value wedge targeting developer-heavy orgs and mission-driven organizations who are price-sensitive. Aircall: At $30-$50/seat annually, Aircall sits in the mid-market range — more expensive than scrappy alternatives like OpenPhone or Grasshopper, but cheaper than enterprise CCaaS players like Genesys or NICE. They're clearly targeting SMB and mid-market sales and support teams who want a polished product without an enterprise procurement process.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for Zulip and Aircall and let you know when something moves.