Tidio vs tawk.to, two free live chats compared

tawk.to gives its live chat, a shared inbox, ticketing and a knowledge base away to unlimited team members, and sells its AI, AI Assist, by the message, with a small free tier. Tidio’s free plan covers 50 answered conversations a month on 10 seats, and it sells its AI agent, Lyro, by the conversation. The third column is Deacon, an AI customer support agent that answers your visitors so you don’t have to watch the chat. It has a free plan, and it needs no card.

Prices read on tidio.com/pricing and tawk.to/add-ons on 23 September 2026

What Tidio and tawk.to charge for

tawk.to charges nothing for the chat. Live chat, an inbox that takes email, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS and Telegram, ticketing and a knowledge base are free for unlimited team members, with no time limit. The money comes from add-ons, billed per property rather than per seat. Taking the “Powered by tawk.to” badge off is $29 a month, and AI Assist is the AI.

AI Assist has a free Hobby tier with 100 message credits a month, one AI agent and up to 100 web pages to learn from. Its paid plans are $29, $99 and $399 a month, or $290, $990 and $3,990 a year, for 1,000, 5,000 and 20,000 credits. Every message the AI sends spends one credit, and so does each Smart Reply or AI Command your team uses. On a paid plan, more credits cost $30 per 1,000, and those never expire.

Tidio counts billable conversations, the ones someone on your team replies to, once per thread. The free plan covers 50 a month on up to 10 seats, and Starter, at $29 a month or $24.17 a month billed yearly, covers 100. Lyro is sold apart. Every account gets 50 Lyro conversations once, and after that Lyro needs a monthly package, from $39 a month, or $32.50 a month billed yearly, for 50.

So the two AIs are metered differently. tawk.to counts each message the AI sends, and Tidio counts each conversation Lyro replies in, however many times it replies. A chat where the AI answers three times spends 3 tawk.to credits or 1 Lyro conversation. At that length, by our arithmetic, tawk.to’s $29 plan covers about 333 chats a month and Tidio’s $39 package covers 50. tawk.to pricing and Tidio pricing work out a small team’s month on each.

Tidio, tawk.to and Deacon, row by row

Tidio, tawk.to and Deacon, feature by feature
Feature	Tidio	tawk.to	Deacon
Free plan	50 billable conversations a month on up to 10 seats, with live chat, ticketing, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. Lyro’s 50 free conversations come once, for the life of the account	Live chat, an inbox for email, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS and Telegram, ticketing and a knowledge base, for unlimited team members. AI Assist’s free tier adds 100 AI messages a month	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	Starter, $29 a month, or $24.17 a month billed yearly, for 100 billable conversations	None needed for the chat. AI Assist Growth is $29 a month, or $290 a year, for 1,000 AI messages a month	Starter, $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers on three seats
What you’re billed for	Conversations your team replies to, counted once per thread. Lyro’s conversations run on a meter of their own	Nothing for the chat. Add-ons are billed per property, not per seat, and AI Assist spends a credit on each message it sends	Each reply Deacon writes on your live site. Chats in the Playground and on localhost never count
The AI agent	Lyro, sold as an add-on or on its own, from $39 a month, or $32.50 a month billed yearly, for 50 conversations	AI Assist, free for 100 messages a month, then $29 a month for 1,000, $99 for 5,000 or $399 for 20,000. Extra credits are $30 per 1,000 on a paid plan	Deacon itself, on every plan. The answers are what you pay for
When the AI reaches a limit	A spent free Lyro quota never resets. A paid one resets each month. At the conversation limit, your team can’t reply to new messages until the quota resets	AI Assist finishes the chats it’s already in and joins no new ones until you buy credits or they reset. The overrun comes off your next balance	When a month’s answers run out, 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. You can still read and answer every conversation
Paying past the limit	On a new account’s paid monthly plan below Plus, the package moves up a level at 95% of the quota, unless you switch that off	Only if you buy credits, or switch on auto top-up, which buys them when your balance drops below a threshold you set	Never. No plan bills past its answers, and none upgrades itself
Removing their branding	Not on Free or Starter. An add-on on Growth, at $20 a month, or $16.67 a month billed yearly, and included on Plus	Whitelabel, $29 a month per property, which also puts your chat page and knowledge base on your own domain	No plan shows a “powered by” line, so there’s no badge to pay to remove
Handing a chat to a person	Lyro transfers the conversation to your inbox by default, offering “Talk to a person” while you’re online. Offline, you can have it create a ticket instead	Only on paid AI Assist plans. A shortcut transfers the chat to an agent or department, and tawk.to warns that it tries even when nobody’s online	Deacon says when it doesn’t know and asks for the visitor’s email. You get an email when they leave one or ask for a person, and your reply from the dashboard appears in their chat if it’s still open
Seeing what customers ask	Basic analytics on every plan and advanced analytics from Growth. AI insights are listed with Premium, which is priced through sales	Reports on chat volume, missed chats, response times, satisfaction, tickets and the words people searched your knowledge base for	Every conversation, searchable by what visitors asked, and Topics that group questions by themselves, count who asked and label most of them, on every plan. Website analytics come from the same script
What the AI learns from	Website pages, up to 60 on a priority scan, Q&A pairs, a CSV or PDF, Zendesk articles and Shopify or WooCommerce products	FAQs, text, PDF, CSV or TXT files, tables, shortcuts, knowledge base articles and website pages, 100 on the free tier and 500 on Growth	Your website’s main pages, or the whole site on a paid plan, single pages, files (PDF, Word, Markdown, text, CSV or HTML), pasted text and the answers you write
Channels	Live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram, on every plan, Free included	Live chat, email, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS and Telegram in one free inbox. AI Assist answers on one channel per AI agent. Voice agents are on a waitlist	The chat widget on your own website
Getting it on your site	A plugin from your platform’s app market, or one line of code above the closing body tag	One snippet anywhere you can edit HTML, or a one-click installer for Shopify, WordPress, Wix and 50 or more other platforms	One script tag before the closing body tag. Or give your coding agent the install prompt, and it adds the tag and checks it’s live
Seats	Up to 10 on every self-serve plan, at no charge	Unlimited team members, free. AI Assist gives you 1 AI agent on the free tier and 3 on Growth	one seat on Free, three seats on Starter

Free plan

Tidio: 50 billable conversations a month on up to 10 seats, with live chat, ticketing, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. Lyro’s 50 free conversations come once, for the life of the account
tawk.to: Live chat, an inbox for email, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS and Telegram, ticketing and a knowledge base, for unlimited team members. AI Assist’s free tier adds 100 AI messages a month
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
tawk.to: None needed for the chat. AI Assist Growth is $29 a month, or $290 a year, for 1,000 AI messages a month
Deacon: Starter, $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers on three seats

What you’re billed for

Tidio: Conversations your team replies to, counted once per thread. Lyro’s conversations run on a meter of their own
tawk.to: Nothing for the chat. Add-ons are billed per property, not per seat, and AI Assist spends a credit on each message it sends
Deacon: Each reply Deacon writes on your live site. Chats in the Playground and on localhost never count

The AI agent

Tidio: Lyro, sold as an add-on or on its own, from $39 a month, or $32.50 a month billed yearly, for 50 conversations
tawk.to: AI Assist, free for 100 messages a month, then $29 a month for 1,000, $99 for 5,000 or $399 for 20,000. Extra credits are $30 per 1,000 on a paid plan
Deacon: Deacon itself, on every plan. The answers are what you pay for

When the AI reaches a limit

Tidio: A spent free Lyro quota never resets. A paid one resets each month. At the conversation limit, your team can’t reply to new messages until the quota resets
tawk.to: AI Assist finishes the chats it’s already in and joins no new ones until you buy credits or they reset. The overrun comes off your next balance
Deacon: When a month’s answers run out, 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. You can still read and answer every conversation

Paying past the limit

Tidio: On a new account’s paid monthly plan below Plus, the package moves up a level at 95% of the quota, unless you switch that off
tawk.to: Only if you buy credits, or switch on auto top-up, which buys them when your balance drops below a threshold you set
Deacon: Never. No plan bills past its answers, and none upgrades itself

Removing their branding

Tidio: Not on Free or Starter. An add-on on Growth, at $20 a month, or $16.67 a month billed yearly, and included on Plus
tawk.to: Whitelabel, $29 a month per property, which also puts your chat page and knowledge base on your own domain
Deacon: No plan shows a “powered by” line, so there’s no badge to pay to remove

Handing a chat to a person

Tidio: Lyro transfers the conversation to your inbox by default, offering “Talk to a person” while you’re online. Offline, you can have it create a ticket instead
tawk.to: Only on paid AI Assist plans. A shortcut transfers the chat to an agent or department, and tawk.to warns that it tries even when nobody’s online
Deacon: Deacon says when it doesn’t know and asks for the visitor’s email. You get an email when they leave one or ask for a person, and your reply from the dashboard appears in their chat if it’s still open

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
tawk.to: Reports on chat volume, missed chats, response times, satisfaction, tickets and the words people searched your knowledge base for
Deacon: Every conversation, searchable by what visitors asked, and Topics that group questions by themselves, count who asked and label most of them, on every plan. Website analytics come from the same script

What the AI learns from

Tidio: Website pages, up to 60 on a priority scan, Q&A pairs, a CSV or PDF, Zendesk articles and Shopify or WooCommerce products
tawk.to: FAQs, text, PDF, CSV or TXT files, tables, shortcuts, knowledge base articles and website pages, 100 on the free tier and 500 on Growth
Deacon: Your website’s main pages, or the whole site on a paid plan, single pages, files (PDF, Word, Markdown, text, CSV or HTML), pasted text and the answers you write

Channels

Tidio: Live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram, on every plan, Free included
tawk.to: Live chat, email, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS and Telegram in one free inbox. AI Assist answers on one channel per AI agent. Voice agents are on a waitlist
Deacon: The chat widget on your own website

Getting it on your site

Tidio: A plugin from your platform’s app market, or one line of code above the closing body tag
tawk.to: One snippet anywhere you can edit HTML, or a one-click installer for Shopify, WordPress, Wix and 50 or more other platforms
Deacon: One script tag before the closing body tag. Or give your coding agent the install prompt, and it adds the tag and checks it’s live

Seats

Tidio: Up to 10 on every self-serve plan, at no charge
tawk.to: Unlimited team members, free. AI Assist gives you 1 AI agent on the free tier and 3 on Growth
Deacon: one seat on Free, three seats on Starter

Tidio’s prices come from tidio.com/pricing and tawk.to’s from tawk.to/add-ons and its AI Assist billing article, all read on 23 September 2026. tawk.to/pricing now redirects to its “Why is tawk.to free?” page. The help pages behind the other rows are listed at the end.

Choosing between Tidio and tawk.to

Pick tawk.to if people will answer the chats and you want to pay nothing for that. Everyone on your team gets live chat, an inbox for email, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS and Telegram, ticketing, a knowledge base and a CRM, with native apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows. Add AI Assist when you’re ready. The free tier answers 100 messages a month, and $29 a month buys 1,000 with a handover to your team. The badge stays unless you pay $29 a month to remove it.

Pick Tidio if you sell online and want the AI to know your store. Lyro can learn your products from Shopify or WooCommerce, and from Growth your team can cancel a Shopify order, change its shipping address or offer a refund from the chat window. The free inbox takes Instagram as well as email, WhatsApp and Messenger, and Lyro hands a chat to your team from its first free conversation. The 7-day trial of the paid features needs no card.

Both are built around people answering chats. tawk.to gives the seats away, and Tidio caps the conversations they answer for free.

Where Deacon fits if you answer support yourself

A free live chat still needs someone watching it, and when that’s you, the same questions pull you off the product every day. Deacon answers them in seconds, at any hour, from your own docs and in the language your customer writes in, with no flows to build first. When your docs don’t cover a question, it admits it doesn’t know instead of guessing, and asks for the visitor’s email. You hear about it by email when they leave one or ask for a person, and your reply from Deacon’s dashboard lands in their chat if it’s still open. That handover works on the free plan too, where tawk.to’s free AI can’t pass a chat to anyone.

Then you answer each new question once, when it suits you, not live while someone waits in the chat. Deacon lists the questions it couldn’t answer, each with an Answer this button, and what you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it can answer the next person who asks. Save & check asks Deacon the question again, shows you the reply it now gives and tells you how many other open questions your answer covers.

You also see what customers need, not just how busy the chat was. tawk.to’s reports count chats, missed chats and response times, and the words people searched your knowledge base for, and Tidio lists its AI insights with Premium. In Deacon, every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group the questions, count how many people asked and label most of them as a feature ask, a bug report, a how-to and so on, so you can see what to fix and what to build next. That’s on every plan, free included.

And the AI never costs more than your plan. tawk.to spends a credit on every message the AI sends, and auto top-up, if you switch it on, buys more when your balance drops below a threshold you set. Deacon never bills past a plan’s answers or moves a plan up a level, and its free answers come every month, where Lyro’s free 50 come once.

What people ask about Tidio and tawk.to

The chat is. Live chat, the inbox, ticketing and the knowledge base cost nothing, for as many teammates as you like, with no time limit. tawk.to makes its money from four add-ons. They’re AI Assist, the $29 a month Whitelabel that removes its badge, and voice agents and data enrichment, both still on a waitlist. Its “Why is tawk.to free?” page also offers trained chat agents at $1 an hour, though the add-ons page doesn’t list them.

On the published prices, tawk.to, and by a distance. Its AI Assist Growth plan is $29 a month for 1,000 AI messages, and the chat around it is free for everyone on your team. Tidio’s AI is Lyro, from $39 a month for 50 conversations, on top of a free plan that caps your team at 50 answered conversations a month. The two count different things, though. tawk.to spends a credit on every message the AI sends, and Tidio counts a conversation once however many times Lyro replies.

No. tawk.to lists escalations to human agents from the $29 Growth plan, and its guide to transfers says they’re for paid AI Assist plans. On a paid plan, a shortcut passes the chat to an agent or a department, and tawk.to warns that AI Assist tries the transfer even when nobody is online, so your handover message should say when you’ll reply. Lyro hands over on Tidio’s free plan, while its 50 free conversations last.

Lyro’s free 50 conversations never come back, so Lyro stops until you buy a package, and a paid package resets each month. When AI Assist’s credits run out, tawk.to’s help centre says it finishes the conversations it’s in, joins no new ones until you buy more or your credits reset, and takes what it used over the limit off your next balance. On Deacon, nothing is billed past a plan’s answers. When they run out, visitors get a short reply saying it can’t look into that one right now and are asked for their email, unless they’ve already left it, and you can still answer every conversation from the dashboard.

On Tidio, not on Free or Starter. It’s an add-on on Growth, at $20 a month, or $16.67 a month billed yearly, and included on Plus. On tawk.to, Whitelabel removes the “Powered by tawk.to” badge for $29 a month per property, and puts your chat page and knowledge base on your own domain. Deacon has no “powered by” line on any plan.

Plenty, if you need it. tawk.to gives unlimited teammates a free inbox for email, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS and Telegram, with ticketing, a knowledge base and a CRM, and its paid AI can call your own systems through API integrations. Tidio has email, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and ticketing on its free plan, and Shopify order actions from Growth. Deacon is a chat widget for your website. It isn’t a helpdesk, so there are no tickets, routing or departments, it has no CRM or lead forms, and it takes no actions in other systems, so it won’t cancel an order or look one up. If a team of you answers chats all day, or your customers write in on those channels, tawk.to or Tidio is the better fit.

The pages these figures came from

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

Try Deacon for free

Deacon answers your visitors in seconds from your own docs, so nobody has to sit in the chat, and it says honestly when it doesn’t know. When someone needs you, you reply from its dashboard, on the free plan too. Start free, with every feature and no card.

More rivals are priced side by side in Tidio alternatives, tawk.to alternatives and free AI chatbots for your website, and chatbot vs live chat weighs an AI against a person at the keyboard. How Deacon passes a conversation to you is on the human handoff page, and its plans are on the pricing page.

Tidio vs tawk.to, two free live chats compared

What Tidio and tawk.to charge for