How Much Does Tidio Actually Cost?

Tidio's free plan includes 50 billable conversations a month for up to 10 seats. If you go over that limit, the chat widget stops working until your next month begins. Paid plans start with the Starter tier at $24.17 per month for 100 conversations. AI features like Lyro cost an extra $32.50 per month for 50 conversations.

I spent nearly twenty years managing front desks and restaurant floors. I know what it is like to look at a software budget and try to guess how many people will actually click that little bubble on the website. Pricing that fluctuates based on how many people talk to you is a specific kind of stress. You want more customers, but you also do not want a surprise bill because a marketing campaign actually worked.

Tidio is built mainly for ecommerce stores. They do a great job with visual flow builders that let you drag and drop logic for things like tracking a package. If you run a shop on Shopify and want to automate those "where is my order" questions, the tool is very capable. But you have to be careful with the math.

What is included in the Tidio free plan?

The free tier allows for 10 seats. Compared to the other 11 tools I have looked at, that is quite high. For context, of the 12 tools in our market research, 8 offer a free tier. Among those, Crisp, Chatwoot, Freshdesk, and HubSpot all limit their free plans to just 2 seats. Zoho Desk limits it to 3. Only Help Scout comes close with 5 seats.

So, if you have a large team but very few customers reaching out, Tidio looks like a win. You get 50 billable conversations a month. You also get 50 one-off Lyro AI conversations to try the technology.

There is a catch I have seen trip up the shops I worked with. When Tidio says the widget stops, they mean it. If you are a busy dental practice and 51 people try to chat with you in the first two weeks of the month, the 51st person sees nothing. There is no fallback to a simple contact form on the free tier once that limit is hit. You are essentially dark until the month rolls over or you enter a credit card.

How does the Starter plan work?

The first paid step is the Starter plan. It costs $24.17 per month. This covers 100 conversations. Unlike many other tools, Tidio does not charge per seat on this plan. It is a flat fee for the workspace.

If you are comparing this to the rest of the market, the pricing model is different. Out of the 12 competitors we track, 7 charge per seat on their entry-level plans. For example, LiveChat starts at $19 per seat. If you have five people, you are paying $95 a month. On Tidio Starter, those same five people cost $24.17 total.

This makes Tidio attractive for a small office that needs everyone to have a login but does not have a massive volume of chats. If you are running a regional dental practice with eleven front desks like I used to, having everyone logged in without paying $20 per person is a major benefit.

What will a team of five actually pay?

Let us look at a real-world example for a team of five agents.

If this team handles about 100 chats a month and does not use AI, they stay on the Starter plan. Their total cost is $24.17 per month.

If that same team wants to use the Lyro AI to handle basic questions, the cost jumps. Lyro starts at $32.50 per month for 50 AI conversations. Now the total is $56.67 per month.

If the team grows and needs 500 conversations a month, they would likely move past the Starter plan. At that point, the pricing moves into different tiers that often involve per-seat costs or much higher workspace fees.

I always tell people to check the official pricing page because these numbers change often. You can find the latest at https://www.tidio.com/pricing/.

The cost of AI and Lyro

AI is not included in the base price of the paid plans. Tidio uses a system called Lyro. It is billed as an add-on.

The entry price for Lyro is $32.50 per month for 50 conversations. If the AI answers a question, it counts toward that 50. If it cannot answer and hands the chat off to a human, it still used one of your AI credits.

In my experience, 50 conversations is a very small number for a business that is actually growing. In the restaurant group I managed, we would get 50 questions about our Friday night specials before the sun went down. If you rely on AI to do the heavy lifting, you might find yourself hitting these caps much faster than you expect.

How does this compare to other free tools?

When you look at the 12 main tools in this space, the "free" labels mean very different things.

Tawk.to is the only one in the group that has no limits on agents or chat history for free. They make their money on add-ons like removing their branding.

Zoho Desk is free for 3 users, but it only includes email ticketing. You get no live chat at all on their free version.

Crisp and Chatwoot give you a free seat or two, but they lock away the automation and the email inbox. Tidio is more generous with the seats and the channel access, but they are much stricter on the volume of customers you can talk to.

I have watched good leads die in a voicemail box because someone was afraid of a per-minute or per-message charge. That is the danger of conversation-based pricing. You start looking at your customers as a cost center. You start hoping fewer people chat so you do not hit your limit. That is the opposite of how a service business should run.

Where Tidio is the right choice

I am not here to tell you Tidio is bad. I am here to tell you what it costs.

If you are running an ecommerce shop on Shopify or Wix, Tidio is genuinely better at those specific integrations. They have a flow builder that a shop owner can use without needing a developer. You can build a logic tree that says: if the customer wants a refund, ask for the order number, then check the shipping status.

For a business where every chat is worth a lot of money, like a high-end furniture store, paying $24.17 for 100 chances to sell a $2,000 sofa is a great deal. The cost per lead is pennies.

The case for a different model

The reason I joined LastWorker is that I grew tired of the "gotcha" moments in service software. I spent 18 years writing phone scripts and hiring receptionists. I know that business volume is unpredictable.

At LastWorker, we do things differently because I know what it is like to manage a budget for a regional dental practice. We do not charge a subscription fee. We do not charge per seat.

Live chat and email support are free forever on our platform. You get unlimited conversations and unlimited teammates. You do not even have to put in a credit card to start. We include the shared inbox, the contacts, the tickets, and a public help center for free.

We handle AI differently too. Most tools, including Tidio, have AI components that you have to configure and pay for upfront. At LastWorker, AI is OFF by default. Everything is manual and human-driven until you decide otherwise.

If you do choose to use AI, you pay for what you use. An AI reply on chat, email, or SMS is $0.04. That is it. There is no $32 monthly minimum. If the AI only answers three questions in a month, you pay 12 cents.

If you want the AI to answer a phone call, it is $0.01 per minute, and that includes the carrier cost. A phone number is $1 a month. Outbound SMS is $0.03 per segment.

I prefer this because it is honest. If you have a slow month, your bill is nearly zero. If you have a huge month, you pay for the volume you actually handled, but you never have to worry about your chat widget disappearing because you were too successful.

Before you commit to a monthly subscription with conversation caps, look at your historical volume. If you are consistently under 50 chats and need 10 people to see them, Tidio's free plan is a solid option. If you are growing, or if you hate the idea of your website's front door locking itself after the 50th visitor, you might want a different approach.--- title: "How Much Does Tidio Actually Cost?" description: "A breakdown of Tidio pricing for small businesses. We look at the free tier limits, AI costs for Lyro, and what a team of five pays." date: "2026-07-25" author: "Jerry Holt" takeaways:

• "Tidio's free plan allows 50 conversations per month for up to 10 seats."
• "The paid Starter plan begins at $24.17 per month for 100 conversations."
• "If you exceed the monthly conversation limit on the free plan, the chat widget stops working."
• "AI features through Lyro are billed separately, starting at $32.50 for 50 conversations." faq:
• q: "Is Tidio actually free?" a: >- Tidio has a free version that includes 50 conversations per month and up to 10 seats. Once you hit the 50-conversation limit, the chat widget will stop appearing on your site until the next billing cycle.
• q: "How much does Tidio Lyro cost?" a: >- Lyro, which is Tidio's AI chatbot, is billed as an add-on. It starts at $32.50 per month for 50 AI-generated conversations.
• q: "Does Tidio charge per seat?" a: >- No, Tidio's Starter plan is priced per workspace rather than per seat. This means you do not pay extra for adding more team members on that specific plan. related:
• free-live-chat-software
• free-support-tools-hidden-costs
• how-many-support-agents-do-you-need
• ai-receptionist-vs-virtual-receptionist

---

Tidio's free plan includes 50 billable conversations a month for up to 10 seats. If you go over that limit, the chat widget stops working until your next month begins. Paid plans start with the Starter tier at $24.17 per month for 100 conversations. AI features like Lyro cost an extra $32.50 per month for 50 conversations.

I spent nearly twenty years managing front desks and restaurant floors. I know what it is like to look at a software budget and try to guess how many people will actually click that little bubble on the website. Pricing that fluctuates based on how many people talk to you is a specific kind of stress. You want more customers, but you also do not want a surprise bill because a marketing campaign actually worked.

Tidio is built mainly for ecommerce stores. They do a great job with visual flow builders that let you drag and drop logic for things like tracking a package. If you run a shop on Shopify and want to automate those "where is my order" questions, the tool is very capable. But you have to be careful with the math.

What is included in the Tidio free plan?

The free tier allows for 10 seats. Compared to the other 11 tools I have looked at, that is quite high. For context, of the 12 tools in our market research, 8 offer a free tier. Among those, Crisp, Chatwoot, Freshdesk, and HubSpot all limit their free plans to just 2 seats. Zoho Desk limits it to 3. Only Help Scout comes close with 5 seats.

So, if you have a large team but very few customers reaching out, Tidio looks like a win. You get 50 billable conversations a month. You also get 50 one-off Lyro AI conversations to try the technology.

There is a catch I have seen trip up the shops I worked with. When Tidio says the widget stops, they mean it. If you are a busy dental practice and 51 people try to chat with you in the first two weeks of the month, the 51st person sees nothing. There is no fallback to a simple contact form on the free tier once that limit is hit. You are essentially dark until the month rolls over or you enter a credit card.

How does the Starter plan work?

The first paid step is the Starter plan. It costs $24.17 per month. This covers 100 conversations. Unlike many other tools, Tidio does not charge per seat on this plan. It is a flat fee for the workspace.

If you are comparing this to the rest of the market, the pricing model is different. Out of the 12 competitors we track, 7 charge per seat on their entry-level plans. For example, LiveChat starts at $19 per seat. If you have five people, you are paying $95 a month. On Tidio Starter, those same five people cost $24.17 total.

This makes Tidio attractive for a small office that needs everyone to have a login but does not have a massive volume of chats. If you are running a regional dental practice with eleven front desks like I used to, having everyone logged in without paying $20 per person is a major benefit.

What will a team of five actually pay?

Let us look at a real-world example for a team of five agents.

If this team handles about 100 chats a month and does not use AI, they stay on the Starter plan. Their total cost is $24.17 per month.

If that same team wants to use the Lyro AI to handle basic questions, the cost jumps. Lyro starts at $32.50 per month for 50 AI conversations. Now the total is $56.67 per month.

If the team grows and needs 500 conversations a month, they would likely move past the Starter plan. At that point, the pricing moves into different tiers that often involve per-seat costs or much higher workspace fees.

I always tell people to check the official pricing page because these numbers change often. You can find the latest at https://www.tidio.com/pricing/.

The cost of AI and Lyro

AI is not included in the base price of the paid plans. Tidio uses a system called Lyro. It is billed as an add-on.

The entry price for Lyro is $32.50 per month for 50 conversations. If the AI answers a question, it counts toward that 50. If it cannot answer and hands the chat off to a human, it still used one of your AI credits.

In my experience, 50 conversations is a very small number for a business that is actually growing. In the restaurant group I managed, we would get 50 questions about our Friday night specials before the sun went down. If you rely on AI to do the heavy lifting, you might find yourself hitting these caps much faster than you expect.

How does this compare to other free tools?

When you look at the 12 main tools in this space, the "free" labels mean very different things.

Tawk.to is the only one in the group that has no limits on agents or chat history for free. They make their money on add-ons like removing their branding.

Zoho Desk is free for 3 users, but it only includes email ticketing. You get no live chat at all on their free version.

Crisp and Chatwoot give you a free seat or two, but they lock away the automation and the email inbox. Tidio is more generous with the seats and the channel access, but they are much stricter on the volume of customers you can talk to.

I have watched good leads die in a voicemail box because someone was afraid of a per-minute or per-message charge. That is the danger of conversation-based pricing. You start looking at your customers as a cost center. You start hoping fewer people chat so you do not hit your limit. That is the opposite of how a service business should run.

Where Tidio is the right choice

I am not here to tell you Tidio is bad. I am here to tell you what it costs.

If you are running an ecommerce shop on Shopify or Wix, Tidio is genuinely better at those specific integrations. They have a flow builder that a shop owner can use without needing a developer. You can build a logic tree that says: if the customer wants a refund, ask for the order number, then check the shipping status.

For a business where every chat is worth a lot of money, like a high-end furniture store, paying $24.17 for 100 chances to sell a $2,000 sofa is a great deal. The cost per lead is pennies.

The case for a different model

The reason I joined LastWorker is that I grew tired of the "gotcha" moments in service software. I spent 18 years writing phone scripts and hiring receptionists. I know that business volume is unpredictable.

At LastWorker, we do things differently because I know what it is like to manage a budget for a regional dental practice. We do not charge a subscription fee. We do not charge per seat.

Live chat and email support are free forever on our platform. You get unlimited conversations and unlimited teammates. You do not even have to put in a credit card to start. We include the shared inbox, the contacts, the tickets, and a public help center for free.

We handle AI differently too. Most tools, including Tidio, have AI components that you have to configure and pay for upfront. At LastWorker, AI is OFF by default. Everything is manual and human-driven until you decide otherwise.

If you do choose to use AI, you pay for what you use. An AI reply on chat, email, or SMS is $0.04. That is it. There is no $32 monthly minimum. If the AI only answers three questions in a month, you pay 12 cents.

If you want the AI to answer a phone call, it is $0.01 per minute, and that includes the carrier cost. A phone number is $1 a month. Outbound SMS is $0.03 per segment.

I prefer this because it is honest. If you have a slow month, your bill is nearly zero. If you have a huge month, you pay for the volume you actually handled, but you never have to worry about your chat widget disappearing because you were too successful.

Before you commit to a monthly subscription with conversation caps, look at your historical volume. If you are consistently under 50 chats and need 10 people to see them, Tidio's free plan is a solid option. If you are growing, or if you hate the idea of your website's front door locking itself after the 50th visitor, you might want a different approach.