Tidio vs Gorgias for an online shop, and what each AI can do

Tidio and Gorgias both sell to online shops, and both bill by volume rather than by the seat. Tidio charges for the conversations your team answers and sells its AI agent, Lyro, in monthly packages. Gorgias charges for every ticket, and its AI Agent, which can refund and edit orders, adds a charge for each request it settles. Here’s what each costs, what each AI can do to an order, and which shop each one suits. The third column is Deacon, an AI customer support agent for founders who answer support themselves. It has a free plan, and it needs no card.

Prices read on tidio.com/pricing and gorgias.com/pricing on 23 September 2026

What Tidio and Gorgias charge for

Tidio bills for the chats your team answers

A billable conversation is one someone on your team replies in, counted once per thread. Replies from Lyro don’t count, and nor do messages nobody answers. Free covers 50 a month on up to 10 seats, and Starter 100. Lyro is priced apart, by Lyro conversation, meaning any conversation it replies in at least once. Its packages run from 50 a month for $39 to 1,000 for $700 on monthly billing.

Gorgias bills per ticket, and for its AI on top

A ticket is any conversation that gets a message from your helpdesk, whether it comes from a person, AI Agent or a rule. Starter includes 50 a month and Basic 300, and each one past that is $0.40. AI Agent adds a second meter, the automated interaction, a request settled with no person involved within 72 hours. Starter and Basic include 30, each one after is $1.50, and the ticket it arrived on is billed as well.

The figures in these cards are from tidio.com/pricing, gorgias.com/pricing and Gorgias’s billing guide, read on 23 September 2026.

Here’s how that plays out for a small shop with 100 chats a month, where the AI answers all of them first, settles 60 and hands 40 to you. The sums are our arithmetic on monthly billing.

On Gorgias’s Starter, you pay $40 for the helpdesk and AI Agent. All 100 chats are tickets, 50 more than Starter includes, which adds $20. The 60 the AI settled are 30 past its allowance, which adds $45. That’s $105 a month. On Basic, where AI actions start, the tickets fit inside its 300 and the month comes to $135.

On Tidio, Lyro replied in all 100 chats, so you need its 100-conversation package, at $75 a month. The 40 your team answered fit inside the free plan’s 50, so the month is $75, or $104 with Starter underneath. Tidio counts every chat Lyro replies in, solved or not, while Gorgias counts only the ones its AI settles, and bills their tickets too.

Tidio, Gorgias and Deacon, row by row

Free plan

Tidio
Yes, with no end date. Up to 10 seats and 50 billable conversations a month. Lyro’s 50 free conversations come once, for the life of the account
Gorgias
None. A 30-day free trial that needs no payment details
Deacon
50 answers every month on one seat, with every feature and no card. It has no end date and deletes nothing for inactivity

Cheapest paid plan

Tidio
Starter, $29 a month, or $24.17 a month billed yearly, for 100 billable conversations
Gorgias
Starter, $10 a month for the helpdesk, billed monthly only, with 50 tickets. With AI Agent, which the pricing page switches on by default, it’s $40
Deacon
Starter, $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers

What you’re billed for

Tidio
Conversations your team replies in, counted once per thread. Lyro’s conversations are counted on a meter of their own
Gorgias
Tickets, any conversation that gets a message from your helpdesk, whether from a person, AI Agent or a rule. AI Agent’s automated interactions come on top
Deacon
Each reply Deacon writes on your live site. Chats in the Playground and on localhost never count

The AI agent

Tidio
Lyro, bought beside any plan or on its own, from $39 a month, or $32.50 a month billed yearly, for 50 Lyro conversations
Gorgias
AI Agent, $30 a month for 30 automated interactions on Starter and Basic, or $27 on Basic billed yearly. Its FAQ puts an interaction at $1.00 on monthly plans and $0.90 on yearly ones
Deacon
Deacon itself, on every plan. Its answers are what the plan sells

What the AI is counted by

Tidio
Any conversation Lyro replies in at least once, solved or not. One it hands over straight away isn’t taken from the quota
Gorgias
A request settled with no person involved within 72 hours. It counts as one of your tickets as well
Deacon
Each reply Deacon writes, whatever happens next in the conversation

Past the allowance

Tidio
Your team can’t reply to new messages or see their details until the quota resets. A spent free Lyro quota never resets. On a new project billed monthly, a package moves up a level at 95% unless you switch that off
Gorgias
Nothing stops. Each extra ticket costs $0.40 on Starter and Basic, and each extra automated interaction $1.50
Deacon
Nothing more is billed. Visitors get a short reply saying Deacon can’t look into that one right now, and are asked for their email unless they’ve already left it in that conversation

Seats

Tidio
Up to 10 on every self-serve plan, at no charge
Gorgias
3 on Starter, and 500 on every plan above it
Deacon
one seat on Free and three seats on Starter, included in the price

What the AI can do to an order

Tidio
Lyro Actions can check an order’s status, change the address on an unfulfilled order or start a return. The first Action is free, and the rest need a paid Lyro package
Gorgias
From Basic, AI Agent can refund an order in full or in part, cancel or edit it, change the address before it ships, start a return, apply a discount and pause a subscription
Deacon
Nothing. Deacon takes no actions in other systems, and it declines any question about a visitor’s own order, account or data

What your team can do from the chat

Tidio
From Growth, cancel a Shopify order, change its shipping address or offer a refund without leaving the chat window
Gorgias
Answer every channel from one helpdesk, with Shopify and WooCommerce connected on every plan
Deacon
Reply from Deacon’s dashboard, straight into the visitor’s chat while it’s open

Stores it works with

Tidio
Plugins for Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, PrestaShop and Shopware, and Lyro can learn your products from Shopify or WooCommerce
Gorgias
Shopify and WooCommerce on every plan, BigCommerce from Basic and Magento from Pro, in its pricing table
Deacon
Any site that takes a script tag, such as Shopify’s theme.liquid, and it learns from your store’s pages

Channels

Tidio
Live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram, on every plan, Free included
Gorgias
Email, chat, social and a help centre on every plan, with voice and SMS add-ons from Basic
Deacon
The chat widget on your own website

Handing over to a person

Tidio
By default Lyro passes the chat to your inbox. During your hours it offers Talk to a person, and it can create a ticket instead
Gorgias
AI Agent escalates to your team with the conversation’s context. If an agent replies within 72 hours, only the ticket is billed
Deacon
It says when it doesn’t know and asks for the visitor’s email. You’re emailed when they leave it or ask for a person, and your reply appears in their chat while it’s open

What the AI learns from

Tidio
Website pages, up to 60 on a priority scan, Q&A pairs, CSV or PDF files, a Zendesk help centre, and Shopify or WooCommerce products
Gorgias
Your help centre, product catalogue, policies and past conversations
Deacon
A crawl of your website or single pages, files (PDF, Word, Markdown, text, CSV or HTML), pasted text and the answers you write

Seeing what customers ask

Tidio
Basic analytics on every plan and advanced analytics from Growth. AI insights are listed with Premium, which is priced through sales
Gorgias
Support performance, live statistics and automation statistics on every plan, and revenue attribution from Pro
Deacon
Every conversation, searchable by what visitors asked, and Topics that group questions, count who asked and label most of them, on every plan

Removing their branding

Tidio
Not on Free or Starter. A $20 a month add-on on Growth, or $16.67 a month billed yearly, and included on Plus
Gorgias
Not stated on its pricing page
Deacon
No plan shows a “powered by” line, so there’s no badge to pay to remove

Tidio’s prices come from tidio.com/pricing and Gorgias’s from gorgias.com/pricing, both read on 23 September 2026. The pages behind the other rows are listed at the end.

Choosing between Tidio and Gorgias

Pick Tidio if you’re starting out and want to pay nothing until chat takes off. Up to 10 of you can answer live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram on the free plan, and Lyro can answer the common questions from your pages, your Q&A and your Shopify or WooCommerce products. From Growth, your team can cancel a Shopify order, change its address or offer a refund without leaving the chat. Its plugins cover Wix, Squarespace and Shopware as well as the big store platforms.

Pick Gorgias if most of your messages are about orders, and you want the AI to finish them rather than pass them on. From Basic, AI Agent can issue a refund, cancel or edit an order, update an address before it ships and start a return, among more than 130 actions in its library. Every channel lands in one helpdesk, plans above Starter have room for 500 seats, and you pay by the ticket rather than the person. BigCommerce joins on Basic and Magento on Pro.

Both lean towards shops whose support is about parcels, refunds and returns, and both bills grow with how many of those arrive. If your customers mostly ask how your product works, and you’re the one answering, there’s a third option.

Where Deacon fits if you answer support yourself

Deacon answers your customers in seconds, at any hour and in their own language, from the pages and files you give it, such as your product pages, sizing guides, delivery times and returns policy. There’s nothing to build first. It goes in as one script tag, in Shopify’s theme.liquid or anywhere else your site takes HTML. When your content doesn’t cover a question, it says it doesn’t know rather than guessing, and asks for the visitor’s email. You’re emailed when they leave it or ask for a person, and your reply from the dashboard appears in their chat while it’s open.

To be plain about it, Deacon takes no actions in other systems. It won’t look up, refund, cancel or edit an order, and it declines any question about a customer’s own order or account, so those come to you through human handoff. If order questions are most of your inbox, Gorgias or Tidio will serve you better.

For everything else, Deacon gets better the more you answer. A question your content missed gets an Answer this button, and what you write becomes part of what Deacon knows. Save & check asks the question again, shows you the reply Deacon now gives and tells you how many other open questions your answer covers. The more you answer, the less Deacon needs you.

It also shows you what shoppers are stuck on and what they want next. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked, and Topics group the questions, count the people behind each and label most of them, as a how-to, a pricing question, a feature ask and so on. That’s on every plan, free included. The same script runs your website analytics, with visitors, sources, goals and funnels. Every feature is on every plan, nothing is billed past a plan’s answers, no plan upgrades itself, and there’s no badge to pay to remove. The free plan gives you 50 answers every month, with no card and no end date.

What shops ask about Tidio and Gorgias

It depends on what your customers write in about. Gorgias is built for stores whose support is mostly about orders. Its AI Agent can refund, cancel and edit orders from Basic, and its helpdesk connects Shopify and WooCommerce on every plan. Tidio is lighter and starts free, with live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram on the free plan and up to 10 seats at no charge. Its team tools for Shopify orders start on Growth, and Lyro’s order actions need a paid Lyro package after the first.

No. Gorgias offers a free trial that needs no payment details, and its help centre gives it 30 days. During the trial you can send at most 20 outbound email messages a day and 600 in all, and you can’t create a help centre. Tidio’s free plan has no end date, with 50 conversations a month for your team. Deacon’s free plan has no end date either, and it needs no card.

Yes, through Lyro Actions, which call your own systems. Tidio says Lyro can check an order’s status, change the address on an unfulfilled order and start a return, and trigger refunds through your systems’ APIs. The first Action is free, and full access comes with a paid Lyro package. Gorgias lists refunds, cancellations, order edits, address changes, returns, discounts and subscription pauses among its AI Agent’s ready-made actions, from Basic.

Because the conversation is a ticket first. Gorgias’s billing guide says you’re charged a ticket fee and an automation fee when AI Agent answers and doesn’t hand the conversation to a person, and only the ticket fee when it does hand over. Inside your plan’s allowances that just uses up both. Past them, it’s $0.40 for the ticket and $1.50 for the interaction on Starter and Basic. Some accounts created before 28 May 2025 are still on legacy pricing, where a ticket is billed one way or the other, not both.

No. Deacon answers from the content you give it, such as your product pages, shipping and returns policies and help pages, and it takes no actions in other systems. It won’t look up, refund, cancel or edit an order, and it always declines questions about a visitor’s own order or account. Those come to you. If most of your messages are about orders, Gorgias’s AI Agent or Tidio’s Lyro Actions are built for them.

Where each figure was read

Every figure above was read on 23 September 2026, from these pages.

Try Deacon for free

Deacon answers your customers in seconds from your own pages, says so when it doesn’t know, and shows you what they’re stuck on and what they want next. Start on the free plan, with every feature and no card.

Adding Deacon to a store is covered step by step in Shopify AI chatbots, WooCommerce AI chatbots and BigCommerce chatbots, and AI chatbots for ecommerce sorts store chatbots by the job they do. Tidio meets another rival in Tidio vs Intercom, and Gorgias meets Zendesk in Zendesk vs Gorgias. Gorgias is priced beside the other options in Tidio alternatives, and Deacon’s plans are on the pricing page.

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