Chatbase vs Tidio

Both put a chat window on your site and answer from your own material. They disagree about what you are buying. Chatbase sells you requests to a language model. Tidio sells you an inbox, and sells the AI separately.

Prices read 18 September 2026

What each one actually counts

Chatbase meters the model, not the conversation. Its own pricing page puts it plainly: each request made to the AI model costs a certain number of message credits depending on your chosen model. Every model it names costs between two and six credits a reply, with the newest Opus models at the top; one credit is the unnamed rest. Enable an action and a single question can take more than one request, and Chatbase works an example at twice the credits. So the headline number on the plan card is not a number of answers, and how far it stretches is something you choose in a model dropdown.

Tidio meters people. A billable conversation, in Tidio’s words, is one that includes a message from a human agent — you. A visitor who asks something and gets an answer from Lyro or from a Flow has not cost you a billable conversation at all. That is a generous meter if the AI is doing the work, which is exactly why the AI is not in the plan. Lyro conversations are counted on a second meter, one per thread however many times it replies, and a renewing quota of them is an add-on.

The practical difference is which number you can predict a month in advance. Tidio’s you can, because you know roughly how often you personally reply. Chatbase’s depends on model choice and on whether actions fire, and it renews on the first of the calendar month with nothing carried over.

Side by side

Free plan

Chatbase
50 message credits a month, one member, one agent, 1 MB of training content. An agent is deleted after 14 days of inactivity
Tidio
50 billable conversations a month and ten seats, plus a one-off 50 Lyro conversations that never renew
Deacon
50 answers a month on one seat, and no card is asked for

Cheapest paid plan

Chatbase
Hobby, $40 a month for 700 credits and two members. The $32 a month billed annually is worked out from the page’s own payload rather than printed
Tidio
Starter, $24.17 a month billed annually, for 100 billable conversations. The monthly rate of $29 is in the page’s own pricing data rather than its printed text
Deacon
Starter, $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers

What the meter counts

Chatbase
A request to the model. Every model Chatbase names costs two to six credits a reply; one credit is the unnamed rest. An action can make the agent send more than one request
Tidio
A conversation a person replied to. Replies from Lyro and from Flows are not counted as agent replies
Deacon
An answer. One question, one reply, one unit

Where the AI sits in the price

Chatbase
In the plan. Credits are what the plan sells you
Tidio
Outside it. Starter carries the one-off 50 Lyro conversations and nothing renewing; a monthly Lyro quota starts at $32.50 a month billed annually for 50 conversations
Deacon
In the plan. The answers are the product

When the allowance runs out

Chatbase
The agent stops and shows the visitor "This AI Agent is currently unavailable. If you are the owner, please check your account."
Tidio
You can no longer reply to incoming messages or see their details until the quota resets on the first of the month
Deacon
The widget keeps answering, and nothing locks you out of your own dashboard. It says it cannot look into that one and asks for an email address

Buying your way past it

Chatbase
Auto recharge, switched on in advance, at $40 per 1,000 credits
Tidio
An automatic upgrade of your subscription at 95% of the quota, which is off on the free plan, on annual plans and on Plus
Deacon
The next plan up, chosen by you

Getting it on your site

Chatbase
Copy the embed script from the dashboard and paste it in the head, or before the closing body tag
Tidio
Install the plugin from your platform’s app market, or paste one line of code above the closing body tag
Deacon
One script tag before the closing body tag

What it can read

Chatbase
Files up to 20 MB, a whole site by crawl or sitemap, single links, text snippets, question and answer pairs, Notion pages, and closed Salesforce or Zendesk tickets
Tidio
Website addresses, with the priority-pages scan capped at 60 pages, question and answer pairs, a CSV or PDF, a Zendesk import, and a webstore product sync
Deacon
Your documentation, pages to crawl, uploaded files, and answers you write by hand

Channels

Chatbase
Sixteen, including the chat bubble, a hosted help page, email, inbound phone through Twilio or SIP, Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Shopify
Tidio
Five. Live chat, email inboxes, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram
Deacon
One. The widget on your own site

Seats

Chatbase
One on Free, two on Hobby, and $25 a month for an extra member, a figure in the page’s payload rather than its printed text — the printed $25 card next to it buys an extra agent, not a person
Tidio
Ten, on the free plan and on Starter alike
Deacon
one seat free, three seats on Starter

Which one you should actually buy

Chatbase wins on reach. The same agent runs on sixteen channels, including inbound phone calls through Twilio or your own SIP trunk, and it takes actions in connected systems rather than only answering — refunds, order lookups, API calls against Stripe and Shopify. It also ships a helpdesk with routing, assignment and manual takeover, so a team that grows into one does not have to move. Read the plan cards before you budget for any of it, though: the helpdesk and the phone channel start on Standard at $150 a month, and training on closed tickets starts on Pro at $500, none of it on the $40 tier.

Tidio wins on the first month. Ten seats on a free plan is more than most small teams will ever need, and you get live chat, ticketing and four channels without paying anything. The trial takes no card. If you want people answering customers now and AI later, Tidio is the cheaper way to start and the easier one to staff.

Both of them assume somebody will be replying — Tidio openly, because that is what makes a conversation billable, and Chatbase quietly, because its help desk is where the escalations land. If nobody will be, Deacon is built for that: no inbox to staff, the answers in the plan rather than beside it, and a spent allowance that leaves the widget talking instead of showing your visitors a fault notice.

Questions people ask about these two

It depends on who answers. Tidio only bills a conversation once a person replies to it, so a founder whose visitors are handled entirely by the AI can sit on the free plan for a long time. But the AI itself is the thing you then have to buy: a renewing Lyro quota starts at $32.50 a month billed annually for 50 conversations. Chatbase puts the AI in the plan at $40 a month for 700 credits, and credits go further or less far depending on which model you pick. Work out roughly how many questions a month you expect, then price both.

On the free plan, near enough. Chatbase charges a credit for every request made to the model rather than for every answer, and the rate runs from one credit up to six depending on the model — but the free plan carries no AI Actions and what its own card calls limited access to models, so neither of the two things that multiply credits is available to you there. It is on the paid tiers, where you can pick a heavier model and switch actions on, that fifty credits stops meaning fifty answers.

Yes, and plenty of people do. Tidio began as live chat and the free plan still gives you ten seats, a shared inbox, and email, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram alongside the widget. Lyro is the AI layer on top of that. Every account gets 50 Lyro conversations once, as a lifetime allowance rather than a monthly one, and when those are gone Lyro stops until you buy a quota.

The two fail differently, and it is worth knowing which you can live with. Chatbase shows your visitors a notice saying the agent is unavailable and asking the owner to check their account. Tidio locks you out of your own inbox: you cannot reply to incoming messages or see their details until the first of the next month. Neither is a quiet overage.

Where these figures came from

Every figure above was read on 18 September 2026, from these pages.

Try Deacon for free

Deacon answers from your own material, links to the page it used where there is one, and hands you the questions it could not answer. There is no inbox underneath it and no AI to buy separately.

Nine of these tools priced in one place, in the Chatbase alternatives rundown. If a help desk is what you are really weighing, the Deacon and Fin AI comparison covers that shape, and the plans and prices page has ours.

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