Help Scout

Help Scout is an email-first help desk platform with shared inboxes, live chat, knowledge bases, and a customer portal. The Help Scout APIs expose conversations, customers, inboxes, users, workflows, ratings, reports, Docs (knowledge base), Beacon (in-app messaging), and webhooks.

Help Scout publishes 2 APIs on the APIs.io network: Conversations API and Webhooks API. Tagged areas include Customer Support, Help Desk, Email, Live Chat, and Knowledge Base.

The Help Scout catalog on APIs.io includes 1 event-driven AsyncAPI specification and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Help Scout’s developer surface includes authentication, documentation, API reference, pricing, engineering blog, support, and 18 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

62.3/100 strong ▬ flat Agent 54/100 agent ready Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-21 · rubric v0.4

17 APIs 10 Features

Customer SupportHelp DeskEmailLive ChatKnowledge BaseSaaS

API Rating

API Evangelist Rating How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-21 · rubric v0.4

Composite quality — 62.3/100 · strong

Contract Quality 15.5 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 6.5 / 20

Commercial Clarity 18.4 / 20

Operational Transparency 7.9 / 13

Governance 7.3 / 12

Discoverability 6.8 / 10

Agent readiness — 54/100 · agent ready

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 15 / 15

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 6 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/helpscout: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

Free plan up to 5 users, 1 inbox, 1 Docs site

Standard $25/user/mo, Plus $45/user/mo, Pro $75/user/mo (16% off annual)

AI Answers add-on at $0.75 per resolution

Additional inbox $10/month, additional Docs site $20/month

Account-shared rate limit; write requests count double

X-RateLimit-Limit-Minute / Remaining-Minute / Retry-After headers

Webhooks with HMAC signatures

PHP SDK and Laravel/Lumen adapter

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Login

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

APIReference

APIReference

Agent Surfaces 2

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

LlmsText

LlmsText

Design & Contract 1

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Webhooks

Webhooks

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 5

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

TrustCenter

DomainSecurity

Authentication

OAuthScopes

Authentication

Operate 4

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

StatusPage

Support

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 5

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing

PrivacyPolicy

TermsOfService

Plans

FinOps

Company 3

The organization behind the API

LinkedIn

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Source (apis.yml)

opencollection: 1.0.0
info:
  name: Help Scout Mailbox API
  version: '2.0'
request:
  auth:
    type: oauth2
    flow: client_credentials
    accessTokenUrl: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/oauth2/token
    credentials:
      clientId: '{{clientId}}'
      clientSecret: '{{clientSecret}}'
items:
- info:
    name: Conversations
    type: folder
  items:
  - info:
      name: List conversations
      type: http
    http:
      method: GET
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/conversations
      params:
      - name: page
        value: ''
        type: query
      - name: status
        value: ''
        type: query
    docs: List conversations
  - info:
      name: Create conversation
      type: http
    http:
      method: POST
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/conversations
      body:
        type: json
        data: '{}'
    docs: Create conversation
  - info:
      name: Get conversation
      type: http
    http:
      method: GET
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/conversations/:id
      params:
      - name: id
        value: ''
        type: path
    docs: Get conversation
  - info:
      name: Update conversation
      type: http
    http:
      method: PATCH
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/conversations/:id
      params:
      - name: id
        value: ''
        type: path
      body:
        type: json
        data: '{}'
    docs: Update conversation
  - info:
      name: Delete conversation
      type: http
    http:
      method: DELETE
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/conversations/:id
      params:
      - name: id
        value: ''
        type: path
    docs: Delete conversation
- info:
    name: Threads
    type: folder
  items:
  - info:
      name: Create thread
      type: http
    http:
      method: POST
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/conversations/:id/threads
      params:
      - name: id
        value: ''
        type: path
      body:
        type: json
        data: '{}'
    docs: Create thread
- info:
    name: Customers
    type: folder
  items:
  - info:
      name: List customers
      type: http
    http:
      method: GET
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/customers
    docs: List customers
  - info:
      name: Create customer
      type: http
    http:
      method: POST
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/customers
      body:
        type: json
        data: '{}'
    docs: Create customer
  - info:
      name: Get customer
      type: http
    http:
      method: GET
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/customers/:id
      params:
      - name: id
        value: ''
        type: path
    docs: Get customer
  - info:
      name: Update customer
      type: http
    http:
      method: PATCH
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/customers/:id
      params:
      - name: id
        value: ''
        type: path
      body:
        type: json
        data: '{}'
    docs: Update customer
- info:
    name: Mailboxes
    type: folder
  items:
  - info:
      name: List mailboxes
      type: http
    http:
      method: GET
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/mailboxes
    docs: List mailboxes
- info:
    name: Users
    type: folder
  items:
  - info:
      name: List users
      type: http
    http:
      method: GET
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/users
    docs: List users
- info:
    name: Teams
    type: folder
  items:
  - info:
      name: List teams
      type: http
    http:
      method: GET
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/teams
    docs: List teams
- info:
    name: Tags
    type: folder
  items:
  - info:
      name: List tags
      type: http
    http:
      method: GET
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/tags
    docs: List tags
- info:
    name: Workflows
    type: folder
  items:
  - info:
      name: List workflows
      type: http
    http:
      method: GET
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/workflows
    docs: List workflows
- info:
    name: Webhooks
    type: folder
  items:
  - info:
      name: List webhooks
      type: http
    http:
      method: GET
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/webhooks
    docs: List webhooks
  - info:
      name: Create webhook
      type: http
    http:
      method: POST
      url: https://api.helpscout.net/v2/webhooks
      body:
        type: json
        data: '{}'
    docs: Create webhook
bundled: true