Tidio alternatives: what else does live chat plus an AI agent
Tidio is one of the better-value chat widgets on the market, so people usually leave it for a specific reason — conversation caps, AI pricing, or needing something heavier. Here are the honest options.
Tidio combines live chat, a helpdesk and the Lyro AI agent in a widget you install on your site. It is free for 50 billable conversations a month; Starter is $290 a year, Growth from $590 a year, and Plus from $300 a month plus usage, with Lyro conversations from $32.50 a month. The closest alternatives are Crisp (per workspace, $45–$295/month), LiveChat ($19–$79 per seat/month), Intercom ($29–$132 per seat/month plus $0.99 per Fin resolution) and Chatbase for AI answering alone. Checked August 2026.
Why teams look for a Tidio alternative
Tidio’s pricing (checked August 2026) is built around billable conversations rather than seats: the free plan covers 50 a month with 10 seats, Starter is $290 a year for 100, Growth starts at $590 a year for up to 2,000, and Plus starts at $300 a month plus usage. Lyro, the AI agent, is metered separately from $32.50 a month for 50 conversations.
That model is generous at the bottom and gets sharp in the middle. The most common reason to leave is a conversation cap arriving faster than expected — a seasonal spike or a successful campaign turns a $290-a-year plan into a Growth or Plus conversation.
The second reason is the AI meter. If most of your volume is Lyro answering the same questions, you are paying per AI conversation on top of the plan, and a flat-rate AI agent priced by message bucket can work out cheaper.
The third is scope in the other direction: teams that need advanced routing, deep reporting or enterprise compliance tend to move up to Intercom, and teams that only ever wanted a human inbox move sideways to LiveChat or Crisp.
In fairness, nothing here is a knock on Tidio. Of the products on this page it is among the cheapest ways to put live chat and an AI agent on a website, and its free tier is real.
Tidio alternatives, compared
All of these are website chat products you install on your own site, apart from Chatbase, which is the AI answering layer on its own. Prices are as published by each vendor in August 2026.
Tidio (opens in a new tab)
Live chat, helpdesk and the Lyro AI agent, installed as a widget on your site.
- Pricing
- Free (50 billable conversations/month). Starter $290/year, Growth from $590/year, Plus from $300/month plus usage. Lyro conversations from $32.50/month.
- Best for
- The baseline you are comparing against — low entry price, capped by conversations.
Crisp (opens in a new tab)
Shared inbox and website chat widget, priced per workspace instead of per seat.
- Pricing
- Free (2 seats). Mini $45/month, Essentials $95/month, Plus $295/month — per workspace, extra seats $10/month. 14-day trial.
- Best for
- Small teams that would rather not pay per seat as the team grows.
LiveChat (opens in a new tab)
A long-established human-first website chat product with ticketing.
- Pricing
- Starter $19/month billed annually ($25 monthly). Team $49 and Business $79 per person/month billed annually ($59 / $89 monthly). 14-day trial, no free plan.
- Best for
- Teams whose chat is answered by people, with AI as a helper rather than the product.
Intercom (opens in a new tab)
Customer messaging and support platform with Fin, its AI agent, on every plan.
- Pricing
- Essential $29, Advanced $85, Expert $132 per seat/month. Fin is $0.99 per resolution. 14-day trial, no free plan.
- Best for
- Teams that want support, marketing chat and a strong AI agent in one platform.
Chatbase (opens in a new tab)
Build AI support agents trained on your own content and deploy them across chat, email and messaging apps.
- Pricing
- Free (50 messages/month, 1 agent). Hobby $32, Standard $120, Pro $400 per month; 20% off annual. Extra credits $40 per 1,000 messages.
- Best for
- Replacing the "answers repeat questions from our docs" job without a full support suite.
Every price above was read off the vendor’s own pricing page in August 2026. Where a vendor publishes no price, this table says so rather than guessing. Vendors change pricing — check theirs before you buy.
How to choose between them
You hit the conversation cap
Move to a model that meters something you control. Crisp charges per workspace with no conversation cap on the plan itself, and LiveChat charges per seat. Both make a traffic spike a support problem rather than a billing one.
The AI meter is most of your bill
If Lyro conversations dominate, price a dedicated AI agent instead: Chatbase is free to $400 a month by message bucket. Compare it against your actual Lyro volume, not the headline plan price.
You are outgrowing the platform, not the price
Advanced routing, workforce reporting and enterprise compliance are where Intercom earns its $29–$132 per seat. If those are on your requirements list, the cheaper tools will not stretch.
You want people, not deflection
LiveChat is unapologetically human-first, with AI as a helper: $19 a month flat for Starter, then $49 and $79 per person per month for Team and Business on annual billing. Some teams simply answer chats themselves and want a fast inbox.
You want to stay free
Crisp’s free plan (2 seats) and Chatbase’s free tier (50 messages, 1 agent) are the only other genuinely free options here. Intercom and LiveChat offer 14-day trials instead.
When Bl1nk is the right answer instead
Bl1nk is not a Tidio alternative in the normal sense — you cannot install it on your website, so it cannot take over the job Tidio is doing. We are on this page for the reader who looks at their Tidio dashboard and realises almost none of those conversations came from cold website traffic: they came from people who met someone, scanned something, or clicked a link that was shared with them.
- It lives on your Bl1nk profile — the page someone opens after tapping your card, scanning your QR code, or clicking your link. There is no script tag and no way to embed it on your own website.
- It is text only. It does not answer phone calls and it does not make them.
- It never prospects. Nothing here sends cold email or works an outbound list.
- It answers only from the knowledge you give it — your website pages, uploaded documents, and Q&A pairs — and says it does not know rather than guessing. That is deliberate, but it does mean you have to feed it.
- Free plan: 300 AI credits a month. Pro: 10,000 credits at $5 per seat per month, or $48 per seat per year. There is no free trial of Pro — the free plan is the trial.
- Your conversations start with a person, not a page — you handed over a card, someone scanned your QR code, or they clicked the link in your signature.
- You are a small team or a solo professional and a per-conversation meter feels like the wrong thing to be watching.
- The questions are the same every time and are already answered in your website, a PDF, or a short list of Q&A pairs.
- You want the assistant to end the conversation by capturing the person’s details with a summary, so you can follow up.
See it working before you believe any of this
The link below is a real Bl1nk profile with the assistant switched on — not a mockup. Open it, use the chat button, and ask it something. Then decide whether a card-based assistant solves your problem or whether you need one of the website tools above.
More detail on how the assistant is trained and what it refuses to do: Bl1nk AI.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Tidio cost?
Checked August 2026: Tidio is free for 50 billable conversations a month with 10 seats. Starter is $290 a year (about $24.17 a month) for 100 conversations, Growth starts at $590 a year (about $49.17 a month) for up to 2,000, and Plus starts at $300 a month plus usage. Lyro AI conversations start at $32.50 a month for 50.
Is there a free alternative to Tidio?
Crisp has a free plan with 2 seats, the website chat widget and a shared inbox, though it includes no AI credits. Chatbase has a free tier with 50 messages a month and one agent, but it is an AI agent rather than a live-chat inbox. Intercom and LiveChat have no free plan — both offer a 14-day trial.
Tidio or Crisp — which is cheaper?
It depends on what drives your usage. Tidio meters billable conversations (free 50/month, $290/year for 100, $590/year for up to 2,000); Crisp charges per workspace ($45, $95 or $295 a month with 4, 10 or 20+ seats included). High conversation volume favours Crisp; a big team on low volume can favour Tidio. Checked August 2026.
What is a cheaper alternative to Tidio’s Lyro?
Chatbase is the closest like-for-like: free for 50 messages a month, then $32 (Hobby), $120 (Standard) or $400 (Pro) a month, with 20% off annual billing. Compare its message buckets against your actual Lyro conversation count — Lyro starts at $32.50 a month for 50 conversations.
Can Bl1nk replace Tidio?
No. Tidio is a widget you install on your website; Bl1nk’s AI assistant lives on a digital business card profile and cannot be embedded on your site. Bl1nk is only worth considering if your conversations come from people you meet or from links you share, rather than from website traffic.