Tidio alternatives priced with the AI switched on

A Tidio alternative usually goes on the list once one of four things bites. Lyro, Tidio’s AI agent, isn’t part of any self-serve plan, so the AI is a second purchase, from $39 a month. The 50 Lyro conversations every account gets for free come once, and Lyro stops when they’re gone. When a month’s conversations run out, Tidio says you can no longer reply to incoming messages or see their details until the quota resets. And the Tidio logo stays on the widget until Growth, where taking it off is a $20 a month add-on.

Below are eight alternatives, each priced with its AI switched on, next to its free plan, what happens when its AI runs out and what it charges to take its badge off. Every figure was read on the vendor’s own pages on 23 September 2026, and each price links to its source.

Deacon leads because it’s our product, and because it was made for founders who handle support on their own. It’s an AI customer support agent, and the AI is the product rather than an add-on. It answers your customers in seconds from your own docs, and shows you what they’re stuck on and what they’re asking for. The free plan needs no card and has no end date.

Eight Tidio alternatives with the AI on

Tidio is the last row, priced with Lyro bought on its own beside the free live chat. That’s the least Tidio charges for an AI that keeps answering after the free 50.

What Tidio counts, and where it stops

Tidio sells three products, and each can be bought alone or together. Customer Service is the live chat and helpdesk, Lyro is the AI agent and Flows are the automated chat paths you build yourself. Each has a meter of its own, all read from Tidio’s pricing page.

Customer Service counts billable conversations. A conversation counts once someone on your team replies in it, and replies from Lyro or Flows don’t count as yours. Free covers 50 a month with 10 seats. Starter is $29 a month, or $24.17 billed yearly, for 100, and Growth starts at $59, or $49.17 billed yearly, for 250. Flows count the visitors they reach, 100 a month on Free, and more start at $29 a month for 2,000.

Lyro counts Lyro conversations, any conversation with at least one reply from Lyro. Here’s what Tidio charges for it on monthly billing, and what it comes to beside Starter, by our arithmetic.

The limits bite in three places. The 50 free Lyro conversations are, in Tidio’s words, “a non-renewable quota”, and after them Lyro stops. At the monthly conversation limit, Tidio’s help centre says you can no longer respond to incoming messages or see their details until the quota resets or you upgrade. And on a new project billed monthly, automatic upgrades are on by default. At 95% of a quota, the package moves to its next level, such as from 250 conversations to 400, and the bill moves with it. That doesn’t happen on the free plan, on yearly billing or on Plus.

The Tidio branding stays on Free and Starter. Growth can remove it with an add-on at $20 a month, or $16.67 billed yearly, and Plus, from $300 a month plus usage, includes it. Starter and Growth come with a 7-day trial that needs no card, and the account drops back to Free at the end unless you upgrade. Tidio pricing goes through each plan and Lyro package.

Deacon

Deacon is an AI customer support agent made for founders who handle support on their own. Answering is what every plan sells, so your customers’ chats run on one meter, and it counts Deacon’s answers.

Point it at your help pages, upload files or paste in text, and it answers your customers in seconds, at any hour and in their own language. It goes on your site as one script tag, and there are no flows to draw first. It sticks to what your content says. When a question falls outside it, Deacon tells the visitor it doesn’t know rather than inventing an answer, and asks for their email.

When a visitor leaves their address or asks for a person, you get an email. Open the conversation in the dashboard and reply. If they still have the chat open, your reply appears there under your name, and Deacon stays out of that conversation until you hand it back.

The questions your docs didn’t cover are listed for you, each with an Answer this button. Write the answer and press Save & check. Deacon asks itself the question again and shows you the reply it now gives, along with how many other open questions your answer covers. That’s how it gets better. Every answer you write is one more thing it can answer without you.

It also shows you what your customers need. You can search every conversation by what people asked, and see the page each visitor was on. Topics gather similar questions, count the people behind them and label most of them as a feature ask, a bug report, a pricing question and so on. The same script runs your website analytics, with visitors, sources, goals and funnels, so there’s nothing else to install.

The plans differ only in answers, knowledge, pages from your website and seats, and every feature is on all of them. Free is 50 answers a month for 1 seat, with room for about 67 pages of docs, and it needs no card, never ends and never deletes an idle account. Starter costs $50 a month, or $40 a month on yearly billing, for 1,000 answers a month and 3 seats. Growth costs $150 a month, or $120 a month on yearly billing, for 4,000 answers a month and 10 seats.

No plan moves you up by itself, and nothing is charged past your answers. If the month’s answers run out, a visitor gets a short reply saying Deacon can’t look into it right now and is asked for their email, unless they’ve already left it. You can still read and answer every conversation, and there’s no “powered by” line to pay to remove.

Crisp

Crisp is the closest swap for a team that likes Tidio’s shared inbox. It charges per workspace rather than per conversation, and Hugo, its AI agent, comes inside the plan from Mini instead of as a second purchase. Mini is $45 a month with 4 seats and $5 of AI credits, which Crisp puts at around 90 automated conversations. The free plan has 2 seats and no AI.

The catch is the size of that credit. Once it’s spent, Hugo stops answering and conversations go to your team, unless you switch on Pay-As-You-Go, whose rate Crisp doesn’t publish. WhatsApp and Instagram start on Essentials, at $95 a month, and the “We run on Crisp” watermark comes off on Plus, at $295. There’s more in Crisp chat alternatives, and Tidio vs Crisp sets the two side by side.

tawk.to

tawk.to is the one to look at if cost is why you’re leaving Tidio. Its live chat, ticketing and knowledge base are free for as many teammates as you like, and it charges only for add-ons.

The AI add-on, AI Assist, has a free Hobby tier with 100 message credits a month, and paid plans from $29 a month with 1,000 credits. Each message the AI sends spends a credit, and tawk.to’s billing article lists handing chats to your team from the $29 plan. On a paid plan, once the credits are gone, tawk.to says the AI finishes the conversations it’s in but joins no new ones until you buy more or the month resets. Taking “Powered by tawk.to” off costs $29 a month for each site. There’s more in tawk.to alternatives, and Tidio vs tawk.to sets AI Assist’s message credits against Lyro’s conversations.

Gorgias

Gorgias is a helpdesk for online shops, and the natural move if Tidio’s Shopify tools are why you chose it. It charges by tickets rather than seats, and its pricing page prices every plan with and without AI Agent.

Starter is $40 a month on monthly billing only, $10 for the helpdesk and $30 for AI Agent, with 50 tickets, 30 automated interactions and 3 seats. Email, chat, social and a help centre are on every plan. The AI keeps working past its allowance at $1.50 an interaction, and each interaction also counts as a ticket, at $0.40 for every one past the 50. AI actions such as cancelling an order start on Basic, at $90 a month or $77 billed yearly. There’s no free plan, only a 30-day trial. There’s more in Gorgias pricing, Gorgias alternatives and Tidio vs Gorgias.

ChatBot.com

ChatBot.com now sells Text’s AI Agent, from the company behind LiveChat, with live chat, tickets and the AI in one inbox. The AI is in every plan and counted in resolutions, and a customer who asks several questions in one chat counts once.

Essential is $25 a user a month, or $19 billed yearly, with 10 AI resolutions a month. Growth is $99 a user, or $79 billed yearly, with 200. Past the allowance, packs of 50 resolutions cost $49.50, and Text’s pricing FAQ says one is added automatically so the AI keeps working. Ten resolutions is about one every three days, so on a busy site the packs are the real price. There’s no free plan, only a 14-day trial with no card, and removing “Powered by Text” is for Enterprise. Tidio vs LiveChat explains how LiveChat, Text and ChatBot.com fit together.

Chatbase

Chatbase is an AI agent builder rather than a live chat tool, so it fits if the AI is what you wanted from Tidio in the first place. The AI is on every plan, the free one included, and WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger come with Hobby.

Free gives you 50 message credits a month for one member, and Chatbase deletes a free agent after 14 days without use. Hobby is $40 a month, or $32 billed yearly, for 700 credits, and a reply costs 1 to 6 credits depending on the model. At zero, the agent tells visitors it’s “currently unavailable”. Handing a chat to a person runs through Chatbase’s helpdesk, which starts on Standard at $150 a month, and removing its branding is a $99 a month add-on. There’s more in Chatbase vs Tidio.

Botpress

Botpress is for building your own agent, and it rewards the time you put into it. The free plan has 25 conversations and 3 seats, and its plan table lists WhatsApp and Botpress Desk, its helpdesk, on every plan.

Plus is $189 a month, or $150 billed yearly, for 250 conversations and $25 of AI usage, and it takes the Botpress branding off the webchat. A conversation is any exchange with at least two messages from the visitor in the month. At 95% of the allowance, Botpress adds a pack of 100 conversations for $65 by itself, and its FAQ says you can’t turn that off.

Intercom

Intercom suits a team that already works a shared inbox every day and wants the fullest helpdesk here. There’s no free plan, only a 14-day trial with no card.

Essential is $19 or $29 a seat a month billed yearly, or $29 or $39 month to month, depending on which of two prices Intercom’s current test shows you. Fin, its AI agent, answers on every plan for $0.99 an outcome, and a customer who leaves without asking for more help counts as one. There’s no allowance to run out of, so unless you set a hard limit, the usage is billed at the end of the period. There’s more in Tidio vs Intercom, and Tidio meets the other big helpdesk in Tidio vs Zendesk.

Which one fits you

Choose by what you want the AI to do, and who answers the rest.

If you like Tidio’s shared inbox and want the AI inside the plan, Crisp is the nearest swap. If you want free live chat with a small free AI on top, try tawk.to. If you sell on Shopify and want the AI to act on orders, Gorgias is built for it. If you want live chat, tickets and the AI in one inbox, ChatBot.com puts them together. If the AI was always the point, Chatbase answers across channels and Botpress lets you build your own. And if a whole team works in a helpdesk every day, Intercom is made for that. If it’s Drift you’re leaving, not Tidio, Drift alternatives sets out what replaces it.

If you answer support yourself, start with Deacon. It answers your customers from your docs in seconds, hands you only what needs a person, and shows you what they’re stuck on and what they want next. The AI is the product, every feature is on the free plan, and it needs no card.

Questions about Tidio alternatives

Is there a free Tidio alternative with AI?

Yes. Deacon’s free plan gives you 50 answers a month with every feature and no card, and unlike Lyro’s free 50 they come back every month. Chatbase’s free plan has 50 message credits a month, tawk.to’s free AI tier 100 message credits a month and Botpress’s free plan 25 conversations. Crisp’s free plan has no AI, and Gorgias, ChatBot.com and Intercom offer trials instead.

Is there an open-source Tidio alternative?

Yes. Chatwoot describes itself as an open source, self-hosted alternative to Intercom and Zendesk, and its Community Edition is free to run on your own server, though without Captain, its AI. Its hosted plans start free for 2 agents and 500 conversations a month. Deacon is a hosted service with a free plan, and it isn’t open source.

How does Tidio count a Lyro conversation?

Once. Tidio’s pricing page says a conversation with at least one reply from Lyro counts a single time however many times Lyro replies, even if the customer leaves and comes back. Its help article on the Lyro limit puts it differently. A thread there closes after 15 minutes without a message, and the visitor’s next message starts a new one that counts again. Nothing is taken from the quota when Lyro hands the chat over straight away.

Can Deacon take actions on Shopify orders?

No. Deacon answers questions and hands conversations to you, and it takes no actions in other systems. It won’t cancel an order, change an address or issue a refund, and it always declines questions about a visitor’s own account. Tidio lets your team do those from the chat window on Growth, and Gorgias’s AI Agent takes actions such as cancelling an order from Basic.

Does Deacon answer on WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger?

No. Deacon answers in a chat widget on your website, and you reply from its dashboard. Tidio brings email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger into its inbox on every plan, the free one included, and Chatbase and Botpress list WhatsApp too.

Can I move from Tidio to Deacon?

Yes, by adding your content to Deacon, since there’s no import from Tidio. If Lyro learned from your website, give Deacon the same site when you sign up, and it chooses your home page and main pages to use by itself. You can untick any you don’t want. Your Q&A pairs go in with Add Q&A, and PDFs, Word (.docx) files and CSVs upload as they are, up to 10 MB each. Then swap Tidio’s script for Deacon’s one tag.