Crisp Chat API
Crisp's REST API and real-time messaging (RTM) WebSocket API for managing live chat conversations, contacts, campaigns, and automated messaging across websites and mobile apps. Offers both REST for CRUD operations and a WebSocket RTM layer for real-time event streaming.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Data hosted in EU, satisfying GDPR requirements. API keys have no fine-grained scopes — a compromised pair provides full account access. Key pairs should be stored securely. No OAuth or token rotation tooling.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
An agent needs to participate in or automate live chat conversations on a website, particularly for small-to-mid sized businesses seeking an affordable Intercom alternative.
Avoid When
You need advanced enterprise ITSM features, complex SLA management, or multi-channel support beyond chat and email.
Use Cases
- • Building AI chatbot integrations that respond to customer chat messages automatically
- • Querying and updating conversation status and metadata from support automation agents
- • Syncing contact data between Crisp and CRM systems programmatically
- • Triggering outbound chat campaigns or proactive messages based on user behavior
- • Routing conversations to the right team based on agent-evaluated conversation content
Not For
- • Teams needing enterprise ticketing with complex SLA management (use Zendesk or Freshdesk)
- • Email-only support workflows where live chat is irrelevant
- • Large call centers requiring voice or omnichannel queue management
Interface
Authentication
Uses HTTP Basic Auth with an Identifier (API key ID) as the username and a Key (secret) as the password. These are two separate values generated per operator or website level. No OAuth, no token scoping. Compromised key pair provides full account access.
Pricing
Generous free tier by live chat standards. Pricing is per website, not per seat, which is unusual and beneficial for larger teams. Pro adds unlimited active agents and automations. Unlimited adds CRM, campaigns, and analytics.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Real-time events require RTM WebSocket connection, not REST polling — REST alone will miss live messages
- ⚠ API key pair is two separate values (identifier + key); many agents fail to split them correctly for Basic Auth
- ⚠ Rate limit of 600 requests/hour is low for active chat automation — use webhooks or RTM instead of polling
- ⚠ Message sending requires a session_id which must be fetched first; no shortcut to send without a prior lookup
- ⚠ Webhook event types are not fully documented; some events are only discoverable by inspection of live traffic
- ⚠ Website-scoped vs operator-scoped API keys have different conversation visibility — choose correctly for the use case
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for Crisp Chat API.
Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.