Published August 16, 2026

Zendesk Light Agents

A free seat type for people who need to help with tickets without owning them. Underused, and it saves real money.

What a light agent can do

Read tickets in the groups they belong to.
Add private notes, which is the point: engineers, product managers and finance can contribute expertise without a full licence.
View reporting, depending on configuration.

What they cannot do is reply publicly to the customer, own a ticket, or change most ticket properties. If someone needs to talk to customers, they need a full agent seat.

Who should be a light agent

Anybody who occasionally knows the answer but does not work the queue.

Engineers who need to explain a bug on a ticket.
Product managers tracking what customers are hitting.
Finance answering a billing question internally.
Account managers watching their customers tickets.

The alternative, screenshots pasted into Slack, loses the context and leaves the ticket without the answer attached.

The licence maths

Light agents are included in the plans that offer them, and the number varies. For a company where fifteen people occasionally contribute and five actually work tickets, that is a large difference in annual cost.

Audit your agent list once a quarter. Full seats held by people who have not replied to a customer in six months are the easiest saving available.

Frequently asked questions

Are Zendesk light agents free?+

They are included on the plans that support them, with the count varying by tier.

Can a light agent reply to the customer?+

No. Private notes only. Public replies need a full agent seat.

The other way to cut seat cost

Removing duplicate tickets frees capacity on the full seats you already pay for.

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