Short answer: This Tidio review is about a customer service tool that bills for conversations a human answers, not for seats, and gives away the rest. The free plan covers 50 answered conversations a month with 10 seats and never expires; Starter is $29 a month for 100; Growth starts at $59 for 250 and runs to $349 for 2,000; the Lyro AI agent is priced separately from $39 for 50 AI conversations; and Flows, the proactive chat automation, from $29 for 2,000 visitors reached. It is the right buy for a small online shop or service business with one to ten people answering chat, email, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp from one inbox, and the wrong buy for a large team that answers thousands of conversations a month, where per-seat rivals become cheaper.
- Stay on Free if you answer under 50 conversations a month and want live chat, ticketing and the social channels for nothing.
- Pick Growth at $59 to $349 if a small team answers 250 to 2,000 conversations a month and needs assignment, macros, permissions and analytics.
- Add Lyro from $39 if repetitive questions eat the team’s day; it is metered per AI conversation and can be bought without the help desk.
- Skip it if you answer more than 2,000 conversations a month, need departments and SSO without the $300 Plus base fee, or want an AI agent priced per resolution rather than per conversation on the entry plans.
Free forever; Starter $29; Growth $59 to $349; Plus from $300 plus usage; Lyro AI from $39; Flows from $29; annual billing gives two months free · Free plan: yes · Prices checked September 7, 2026.
Table of contents
What is Tidio and who is it for?
Tidio is a customer service platform built around a website chat widget: live chat, a ticketing and email inbox, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp channels, an AI agent called Lyro, and a no-code automation builder called Flows, sold from a website that says 300,000+ businesses use it and shows ratings of 4.6 on G2 and 4.7 on Capterra, the Shopify App Store and WordPress. The pricing page splits the product into three things you can buy together or separately: the help desk for human conversations, Lyro for AI conversations, and Flows for proactive automation. Its homepage claims Lyro resolves up to 67 percent of customer questions, and a case study on the same page cites an 80 percent resolution rate across 10,000 chats a month.
The customer it is built for is a small online business, and the platform pages make that explicit: Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace and Magento apps, e-commerce chatbot templates, and a free plan that a one-person shop can live on. This Tidio review reads the pricing calculator, the plan comparison and the FAQ on September 7, 2026, prices the three rivals a small business usually shortlists, and explains the one thing that decides whether Tidio is cheap for you: what a billable conversation is.
How much does Tidio cost?
Tidio’s pricing page is a calculator with three sliders, one per product, and a set of named plans underneath. Read on September 7, 2026 with monthly billing, the help desk goes Free for 50 billable conversations, Starter at $29 for 100, and Growth from $59 for 250 up to $349 for 2,000. Plus starts at a $300 base fee plus usage and adds departments, multiproject, custom branding, ticketing automations, OpenAPI, a dedicated success manager and discounted usage rates; Premium is quoted and adds a guaranteed 50 percent Lyro resolution rate, pay-per-resolution billing, SSO and a mobile SDK. Annual billing gives two months free, which is how the page’s $24.17 and $49.17 figures arise: $29 and $59 times ten, divided by twelve.
| Billable conversations per month | Plan | Monthly price | Annual, per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | Free | $0 | $0 |
| 100 | Starter | $29 | $24.17 |
| 250 | Growth | $59 | $49.17 |
| 400 | Growth | $89 | about $74 |
| 600 | Growth | $129 | about $108 |
| 800 | Growth | $159 | about $133 |
| 2,000 | Growth | $349 | about $291 |
| Custom | Plus | $300 base plus usage | quoted |
| Custom | Premium | quoted | quoted |
From the Tidio pricing calculator on September 7, 2026. Monthly figures are read from the calculator; the annual column applies the page’s “2 months free” to them, and the two the page prints itself are $24.17 and $49.17.
Every plan up to Growth includes 10 seats, the comparison table says, and that is the number to hold against per-seat rivals: ten agents on Growth at $59 is $5.90 a seat, and the meter only ticks when one of them replies. The trial is seven days of every feature with no card, after which the account drops to Free rather than dying. Run your own numbers in Tidio’s calculator with last month’s answered conversations, because the bill is a function of that and nothing else.
What counts as a billable conversation
The FAQ is precise, and it is the most important paragraph on the page. A conversation is any live chat, ticket, email or social media thread, started by a visitor, an operator or a Flow. A billable conversation is one that includes a message from a human agent, or that a human agent starts proactively. A visitor’s message you never answer, whether spam or not worth a reply, is not billed. A thread with a hundred messages in it is one billable conversation. And replies from Flows or from Lyro do not count as agent replies, so a question the automation handles end to end costs nothing against the human quota.
| Case | Billed? |
|---|---|
| Visitor writes, nobody replies | No |
| Visitor writes, an agent replies | Yes, once, however many messages follow |
| Agent opens a proactive chat with a visitor | Yes |
| A Flow answers and closes the thread | No (counts against the Flows visitor quota) |
| Lyro answers and closes the thread | No (counts as one Lyro conversation, even across many replies) |
| Lyro answers, then hands off to an agent who replies | One Lyro conversation and one billable conversation |
From the pricing page FAQ on September 7, 2026; the last row follows from the two definitions.
This is why Tidio’s meter suits a small shop. Most inbound chat is either noise or a question a bot can answer; you pay only for the threads where a person typed. It is also why the meter stops suiting a large team: at 2,000 human-answered conversations a month you are at $349, and above that you are on Plus with a $300 base fee before usage.
Lyro AI Agent: what it does and what it costs
Lyro is Tidio’s AI agent. The pricing page describes it as learning from your support content, an uploaded FAQ, a scraped website, imported Zendesk articles, and answering with natural language rather than scripted paths; it hands off to a human, can be given a name and a communication style, and on the Plus and Premium tiers can be run as a managed service with a guaranteed resolution rate and pay-per-resolution billing. It can also be bought on its own and plugged into Zendesk, Salesforce or another help desk, which the page calls the “Lyro AI Agent only” option.
The meter is Lyro conversations: any customer interaction on a Tidio-connected channel with at least one AI reply, counted once even if Lyro replies a dozen times or the customer comes back later. Every account gets 50 Lyro conversations free, once, for life. Paid quotas on the calculator on September 7, 2026 run from $39 for 50 conversations a month to $700 for 1,000, which is $0.78 to $0.70 per AI conversation.
| Lyro conversations per month | Monthly price | Per conversation |
|---|---|---|
| 50 (one-time) | $0 | free for life |
| 50 | $39 | $0.78 |
| 100 | $75 | $0.75 |
| 150 | $110 | $0.73 |
| 200 | $140 | $0.70 |
| 300 | $210 | $0.70 |
| 500 | $350 | $0.70 |
| 750 | $525 | $0.70 |
| 1,000 | $700 | $0.70 |
From the Tidio pricing calculator on September 7, 2026, monthly billing. Above 1,000 the page sends you to sales.
The comparison to make is with Intercom’s Fin, which charges $0.99 per resolved outcome on top of a seat, and with Crisp, which bundles a number of automated conversations into its workspace price. Lyro is cheaper per conversation than Fin per outcome, but Lyro bills every AI conversation whether or not it resolved anything, while Fin bills only the ones it closed; the guaranteed resolution rate and pay-per-resolution billing that fix that live on Tidio’s Premium tier.
Flows: proactive chat automation by visitors reached
Flows is the rules-based side of Tidio: drag-and-drop paths that trigger on a visitor’s behaviour, greet them, collect an email, offer a discount, take a quote request or catch a missed conversation when the team is offline. The FAQ’s own contrast is that Flows follow user-defined scripts and are perfect for simple, pre-defined questions and for marketing, while Lyro handles open questions from support content. Flows are metered by unique visitors reached per month: 100 on every plan for free, then $29 for 2,000, $49 for 5,000, $69 for 10,000, $99 for 20,000, $169 for 50,000 and $299 for 100,000 on September 7, 2026, and above that Plus with a custom number. The homepage claim is a 26 percent lift in conversions; treat it as Tidio’s number.
The useful detail is that a Flow’s replies are not agent replies, so a Flow that answers “where is my order” and closes the thread costs Flow visitors, not billable conversations. A shop that gets most of its questions from a handful of templates can keep the human quota small by letting Flows and Lyro take the first pass.
The help desk: channels, seats, inbox and ticketing
The comparison table lists what the human side includes. Free and Starter get live chat and ticketing, a live visitors list, operating hours and basic analytics; Growth adds advanced analytics, user permissions, automatic chat assignment, automatic reply, live typing preview, viewed pages history and macros. Channels on the table are Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and email, plus app integrations, with desktop and mobile apps. Live video calls, an email management system, departments, multiproject and ticketing automations sit on Plus and above, as does custom branding; removing the “Powered by Tidio” line on the widget is a $16.67 a month add-on below that.
Ten seats on every plan through Growth is the quiet advantage. A shop with an owner, two assistants and a weekend helper pays nothing extra for the fourth login, and the table shows the same ten seats on Free. The limits that bite are the conversation quota, the single widget configuration across all your sites (the FAQ says you can add Tidio to several stores, but the widget shares one appearance and one set of hours), and the features held back for Plus.
Integrations, apps and the API
Tidio’s platform pages cover Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace and Magento, and the pricing table lists native Shopify actions and app integrations on the paid plans. OpenAPI access is a Plus feature, and the public Tidio developer documentation covers the API and the JavaScript widget for anyone building on it. Lyro can be connected to Zendesk, Salesforce or another help desk as a standalone AI agent, and Zendesk articles can be imported as Lyro’s knowledge. Apps exist for browser, Android, iOS, Windows and Mac, according to the homepage.
How Tidio compares with Intercom, LiveChat and Crisp
For this Tidio review we read the three rival pricing pages on September 7, 2026. Each meters differently, so the table shows the meter and the entry point rather than pretending the plans line up.
| Tool | Meter | Entry price | Next tier | AI agent | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tidio | Human-answered conversations; 10 seats included | Starter $29 for 100; Growth $59 for 250 | Growth to $349 for 2,000; Plus $300 base plus usage | Lyro from $39 for 50 conversations, $0.70 to $0.78 each | Yes: 50 conversations, 10 seats, forever |
| Intercom | Per seat plus usage | Essential $29 per seat | Advanced $85 per seat; Expert $132 per seat | Fin from $0.99 per resolved outcome | No, trial |
| LiveChat | Per agent | Starter $19 per person annual ($25 monthly) | Team $49 ($59); Business $79 ($89) per person | AI agent features by plan | No, trial |
| Crisp | Per workspace with seats included | Mini $45 with 4 seats | Essentials $95 with 10 seats; Plus $295 with 20+ | Automated conversations bundled per tier | Yes, limited |
From tidio.com/pricing, intercom.com/pricing, livechat.com/pricing and crisp.chat/en/pricing on September 7, 2026.
The arithmetic favours Tidio for small teams with modest volume. Three agents on Intercom Essential are $87 a month before a single Fin outcome; on LiveChat Team they are $147 billed annually; on Crisp Mini the fourth seat is already included at $45; on Tidio the same three people are on Growth at $59 for 250 answered conversations, or on Free if they answer fewer than 50. The picture flips with volume: a team answering 2,000 conversations a month pays Tidio $349 while LiveChat charges the same three agents $147 regardless of volume, and Intercom’s per-seat price does not move either. Crisp is the closest model, a workspace fee with seats and some automated conversations inside, and its $95 Essentials with ten seats is the one to price against Growth.
Where Tidio falls short
The first weakness is the ceiling on the self-serve plans: 2,000 billable conversations, and then a $300 base fee before usage on Plus, which is a cliff for a growing team. The second is that Lyro bills every AI conversation, resolved or not, on the entry tiers; the pay-per-resolution model exists but sits on Premium. The third is that departments, multiproject, ticketing automations, live video and custom branding all wait for Plus, and even the widget’s “Powered by Tidio” costs $16.67 a month to remove below that. The fourth is the shared widget: several stores get one look and one set of operating hours unless you talk to sales. The fifth is the marketing numbers, 67 percent resolution, 26 percent conversion lift, which are Tidio’s figures and not independently checked here. The sixth is that Tidio’s help centre sits behind a bot check, so the details in this Tidio review come from the pricing page and the developer docs rather than the support articles.
Who should buy Tidio, and who should not?
Scenario one: a Shopify store with one owner answering chat
Free. Fifty answered conversations a month, ten seats, live chat, ticketing, Messenger and Instagram, and Flows for the first 100 visitors. Add Lyro at $39 when the same five questions arrive every day.
Scenario two: a service business with three people on support
Growth at $59 for 250 conversations, or $89 for 400, with assignment, macros and permissions; $16.67 to remove the branding if it matters. Cheaper than three seats anywhere in the table until volume passes roughly 800 answered conversations.
Scenario three: a shop that wants automation first
Flows at $29 for 2,000 visitors reached plus Lyro at $75 for 100 AI conversations, on top of Free for the human side. Both are metered on their own quotas, so the human quota stays small as long as the bots close threads.
Scenario four: a support team answering thousands a month
Not on Growth. Either Plus with the $300 base and discounted usage, or a per-seat tool such as LiveChat where volume is free. Price both before deciding.
Common buying mistakes
Counting every chat as billable when only answered ones are. Assuming Lyro’s price is per resolution on Growth. Expecting departments or custom branding below Plus. Running several stores through one widget and wondering why the hours match. Comparing Tidio’s $59 to Intercom’s $29 without multiplying Intercom by seats.
Tidio pros and cons
Tidio
- A free plan that lasts: 50 answered conversations a month, 10 seats, live chat, ticketing and social channels.
- Billing per human-answered conversation, with unanswered threads, Flow replies and Lyro replies excluded.
- Ten seats included on every plan through Growth, so small teams never pay per login.
- Lyro AI at $0.70 to $0.78 per conversation, purchasable without the help desk and connectable to Zendesk or Salesforce.
- Flows metered by visitors reached from $29 for 2,000, with templates for sales and FAQ automation.
- Self-serve plans stop at 2,000 conversations; Plus starts at a $300 base fee plus usage.
- Lyro bills every AI conversation on entry tiers; pay-per-resolution is a Premium feature.
- Departments, multiproject, ticketing automations, live video and custom branding wait for Plus; branding removal is $16.67 a month below that.
- One widget configuration across all your sites.
- Help centre is behind a bot check, so support articles could not be cited here.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Tidio cost?
On September 7, 2026, monthly: Free for 50 billable conversations, Starter $29 for 100, Growth $59 for 250 rising to $349 for 2,000, Plus from a $300 base plus usage, Premium quoted. Lyro AI is $39 for 50 conversations to $700 for 1,000; Flows is $29 for 2,000 visitors reached to $299 for 100,000. Annual billing gives two months free.
Is the free plan really free?
Yes. The seven-day trial of every feature ends by downgrading to Free, which keeps 50 billable conversations a month, 10 seats, live chat and ticketing, 100 Flow visitors a month and 50 Lyro conversations once, with no card required.
What is a billable conversation?
Any live chat, ticket, email or social thread that a human agent replies to or starts. A thread nobody answers is not billed; a thread with many messages is billed once; replies from Flows and Lyro do not count.
How is Lyro billed?
Per Lyro conversation: a customer interaction with at least one AI reply, counted once even across many replies or a return visit. Quotas run from $39 for 50 to $700 for 1,000 a month; the first 50 are free for life. Pay-per-resolution billing and a guaranteed 50 percent resolution rate are Premium features.
How many seats do I get?
Ten on Free, Starter and Growth, according to the comparison table. Plus and Premium have a custom number of seats.
Can I use Tidio on more than one website?
Yes, but the widget shares one appearance, one set of operating hours and one offline message across all of them; a different setup per site means talking to Tidio.
Is Tidio cheaper than Intercom?
For a small team, yes: Intercom Essential is $29 per seat plus $0.99 per Fin outcome, so three agents are $87 before AI, while Tidio’s Growth is $59 for 250 answered conversations with ten seats. For a large team with high volume, Intercom’s per-seat model can be cheaper than Tidio’s $349 for 2,000 conversations.
Is this Tidio review based on hands-on testing?
No. It is built from the Tidio pricing calculator, plan comparison and FAQ, the homepage, the developer documentation and the Intercom, LiveChat and Crisp pricing pages, all read on September 7, 2026.
Which should you choose?
The conclusion of this Tidio review: choose Tidio when a small team answers a modest number of conversations and wants chat, tickets, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp in one inbox without paying per seat. Start on Free, let Flows and Lyro take the first pass so the human quota stays small, and move to Growth when the answered-conversation count says so.
Do not choose it for a support operation that answers thousands of threads a month, where the $349 ceiling and the $300 Plus base fee make per-seat tools cheaper, and do not expect pay-per-resolution AI below Premium. For the shop or the service business with a handful of people on chat, Tidio is the one whose free plan is real and whose paid plans bill only for the conversations a person actually had.
8.4 Score
Pros
- A real free plan: 50 answered conversations a month, 10 seats, chat, tickets and social channels, no expiry.
- Billing per human-answered conversation; unanswered threads and bot replies are free.
- Ten seats on every plan through Growth, so small teams never pay per login.
- Lyro AI at $0.70 to $0.78 per conversation, sold standalone and connectable to other help desks; Flows from $29.
Cons
- Self-serve plans stop at 2,000 conversations, then a $300 Plus base fee plus usage.
- Lyro bills every AI conversation on entry tiers; pay-per-resolution is Premium only.
- Departments, multiproject, ticketing automations and custom branding wait for Plus.
- One widget configuration across all your sites.
Final Verdict
Tidio is the customer service tool for small teams that answer a modest number of conversations: a free plan that lasts, ten seats on every plan through Growth, and a meter that counts only the threads a human answered, with Flows and Lyro AI metered separately so the bots can keep the human quota small. It gets expensive past 2,000 conversations, holds departments and branding for Plus, and bills AI per conversation rather than per resolution below Premium. For a shop or a service business with a handful of people on chat, it is the best value in its shortlist.