Tidio vs Intercom

Two help desks with an AI agent attached, aimed at different ends of the same market. Tidio gives ten people a free inbox and charges for the AI. Intercom charges for every person and gives the AI away with the plan, then bills it by result.

Prices read 18 September 2026

Side by side

Free plan

Tidio
50 billable conversations a month, ten seats, live chat, ticketing, email, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram
Intercom
None
Deacon
50 answers a month on one seat

The trial

Tidio
Seven days on everything, and Tidio says it does not ask for card details. It drops to the free plan afterwards
Intercom
Fourteen days, cardless, with every feature, Fin and the add-ons included
Deacon
There is no trial, because there is a free plan

Cheapest paid plan

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
Intercom
Essential, $19 or $29 a seat a month on annual billing — the page runs a live price experiment and serves one or the other. The $39 in its structured data is the monthly rate
Deacon
Starter, $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers

How the price scales

Tidio
By conversation volume. Seats are a cap of ten, not a multiplier
Intercom
By headcount and by usage together. Every teammate who talks to customers needs a paid seat
Deacon
By answers used

What counts as one unit

Tidio
A conversation a person replied to. A visitor message nobody answered is not billable, and neither is one Lyro or a Flow handled
Intercom
An outcome. Intercom counts one when a customer confirms the issue is resolved, or does not ask for more help after Fin replies, or Fin completes a workflow
Deacon
An answer given

Where the AI sits

Tidio
Outside the plan. Every account gets 50 Lyro conversations once, as a lifetime allowance; a renewing quota starts at $32.50 a month billed annually for 50
Intercom
Inside every plan and billed by result, at $0.99 an outcome, with at most one outcome a conversation
Deacon
Inside the plan. The answers are the product

When the AI cannot answer

Tidio
The conversation goes to a person, which is when it becomes billable
Intercom
You are not charged. Intercom says you pay nothing if Fin cannot answer or the customer asks for a person
Deacon
It says so, offers to take an email address, and marks the conversation unanswered so you can write the answer once

When you run out

Tidio
You cannot reply to incoming messages or see their details until the quota resets on the first of the month
Intercom
There is nothing to run out of. Usage bills as you go unless you set a hard limit, and Fin switches off at the limit
Deacon
You keep your inbox either way. The widget says it cannot look into that one and takes an email address so you can follow up

Channels

Tidio
Five. Live chat, email inboxes, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram
Intercom
Ten, including voice, email, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, SMS, Slack, Discord and an agent API
Deacon
One. The widget on your own site

If you have just raised

Tidio
Nothing published. The free plan is the offer
Intercom
Early Stage: 93% off in year one, the help desk from $33 a month with 300 Fin outcomes, for companies under $10 million raised with fewer than 15 employees and no existing account
Deacon
Nothing published. The free plan is the offer

What the free plan actually gets you

Tidio’s free tier is the most substantial in this whole set, and it is worth being precise about why. Ten seats, a shared inbox, ticketing, and email, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram alongside the widget, for nothing. The meter is 50 billable conversations a month, and Tidio defines a billable conversation as one that includes a message from a human agent. A visitor who asks something nobody answers does not cost you one.

The catch is the AI. Every Tidio account gets 50 Lyro conversations as a lifetime allowance, not a monthly one, and when they are gone Lyro stops and the quota does not reset. So the free plan is generous about people and strict about automation, which is the opposite way round from what most founders assume when they sign up.

Intercom has no free plan and does not pretend otherwise. What it has instead is Early Stage, and the terms are good enough to change the answer for anyone who qualifies: 93% off in the first year, the help desk from $33 a month, and 300 Fin outcomes a month included. The gate is raising under $10 million, having fewer than fifteen employees, and not already being a customer.

Who should buy which

Intercom is the better product and it costs what a better product costs. Ten channels including voice, an outcome meter that does not charge you when the AI fails or when the customer asks for a person, and a knowledge layer that pulls from Guru, Confluence, Notion and Zendesk as well as your own pages. If you have a support team and the volume to justify one, this is the one to buy.

Tidio is the better buy for a small shop with more hands than tickets. Ten seats free is not a trial allowance, it is the plan, and for a five-person team answering a handful of customers a day the bill can stay at zero for a long time. It is also the easier install, because it ships a plugin for most of the platforms people actually build stores on.

There is one case both of them price badly, and it is the common one for a founder: nobody answering at all. Tidio gives away the seats and charges for the AI, Intercom gives away the AI and charges for the seats, and if you need neither seats nor an inbox you are paying for one to get the other. Deacon has no seats to fill and no outcomes to count, and every question it could not answer comes back to you as one to write once.

What people want to know

More than most. Ten seats, a shared inbox, ticketing, and four channels beside the widget, at no cost and with no card for the trial. The limit that bites is 50 billable conversations a month, and a conversation only becomes billable once a person replies to it, so the ceiling is on your team’s work rather than on your traffic. What is thin is the AI: 50 Lyro conversations once, ever, and then it stops.

Because the product assumes a support team exists to work out of it, and the seat is how that team is priced. One paid seat is the floor. The nearest thing to a free tier is Early Stage, which is not a plan but a qualified programme: 93% off the first year and the help desk from $33 a month, if you have raised under $10 million, have fewer than fifteen people and are not already a customer.

It depends which thing grows. If your headcount grows, Tidio is cheaper, because seats are a cap of ten rather than a multiplier and you are not billed per person. If your ticket volume grows while your team stays small, Intercom’s outcome billing can work out well, because you are charged at most once a conversation and nothing when Fin fails. Work out which of the two numbers is actually going up for you.

Not comfortably. Tidio’s free AI allowance is a one-off fifty and then Lyro stops, so an unattended site goes quiet unless you buy a quota. Intercom’s help centre says the Messenger will not install without a trial or a subscription behind it. Both are built on the assumption that a person is there, which is a reasonable assumption for most buyers and the wrong one for a founder shipping alone.

Where these figures came from

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

Try Deacon for free

No inbox to staff and no seats to count. Deacon answers from your own pages and brings you only the questions it could not.

The Intercom alternatives for startups piece works several of these bills out properly, and Deacon and Fin AI takes on the AI agent itself. Our own figures are on the pricing page.

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