Chatbase vs Tidio, compared for founders

Chatbase sells message credits, and a credit isn’t an answer. Each request to the AI model costs credits, and how many depends on the model you pick. A reply costs 1 credit on smaller models such as GPT-4o Mini or Claude 4.5 Haiku, and up to 6 on Claude 4.7 or 4.8 Opus. With an action switched on, one question can take two requests, so it costs twice as much. Credits renew on the first of each calendar month, and what you don’t use is lost. So the 700 credits on Hobby, at $40 a month, buy up to 700 replies, and fewer on a bigger model or with actions on.

Tidio sells live chat and a helpdesk, and counts billable conversations. A conversation becomes billable when someone on your team replies, and it counts once however long the thread runs. Messages you never answer don’t count, and nor do replies from Lyro. Lyro has its own meter. Every account gets 50 Lyro conversations once, and when they’re gone, Lyro stops until you buy a monthly quota, from $32.50 a month billed yearly.

So the bills follow different things. Tidio’s follows how often your team replies, which is easy to predict, and the AI is an extra you add when you want it. Chatbase’s follows how much the AI does, which suits you if the AI does most of the work, but the model you choose changes how far a month’s credits go. Chatbase pricing and Tidio pricing go through each plan and meter.

Choose Chatbase if you want the AI to do more than answer. The same agent runs on 16 channels, including phone calls through Twilio or your own SIP trunk. It can take actions, such as refunds and order lookups, in systems like Stripe and Shopify. And it has a helpdesk with routing and manual takeover for when a person needs to step in. Check the plan before you budget, though. The helpdesk, voice, phone and integrations such as Stripe and Zendesk start on Standard at $150 a month, and training on closed tickets starts on Pro at $500 a month.

Choose Tidio if you want people answering customers first and AI later. The free plan gives you 10 seats, live chat, ticketing, and email, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram in one inbox. The 7-day trial needs no card. Your bill grows only when your team replies more, and Lyro is there to add when you’re ready for it.

Both assume a team is there to reply. Tidio bills for the replies your team sends, and Chatbase hands conversations to a helpdesk, its own or one you already use. If it’s just you, answering support between building, there’s a third option.

If you answer support yourself, the same questions keep pulling you away from building. Deacon answers them in seconds, at any hour, from your own docs and in the language your customer writes in. When your docs don’t cover a question, it says it doesn’t know instead of making something up, and asks for the visitor’s email. You get an email when they leave one or ask for a person, and you reply from Deacon’s dashboard. There’s no helpdesk or inbox to staff.

Then you write the answer once. Every answer you write becomes a source Deacon answers from, so it can answer the next person who asks. The more you answer, the less it needs you.

It also shows you what customers need. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group the questions, count how many people asked and label most of them, for example as a feature ask, a bug report or a how-to, so you know what to fix and what to build next. That’s on the free plan too, where Chatbase records no analytics at all. And the same script counts your visitors, where they came from and which goals they reach, while Chatbase’s and Tidio’s analytics stop at the chat.

The price stays plain too. Every feature is on every plan, the free one included, and the plans differ only in answers, knowledge, pages from your website and seats. Every plan answers with the same model, so no credits run out faster on a better one. Nothing is billed past your plan’s answers, and no plan upgrades itself. There’s no badge to pay to remove, and the free plan needs no card, has no end date and deletes nothing for inactivity.