Tidio vs LiveChat (2026): Which Live Chat Tool Costs Less?
Tidio vs LiveChat compared on pricing, AI agents, inbox features and WhatsApp costs, with worked cost examples for 1, 3 and 5 agents at real chat volumes.
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Tidio vs LiveChat comes down to what each vendor counts. Tidio charges by the number of conversations your team answers, includes 10 seats on every plan, has a free plan and sells its Lyro AI Agent by the conversation. LiveChat, which new customers now get as a product called Text, charges per seat with no conversation cap and includes an AI Agent metered by “AI resolutions”. So Tidio is usually cheaper for a solo owner moving off the free plan, for teams of four or more on modest volume, and for buying AI capacity. LiveChat gets relatively cheaper when one to three agents handle hundreds or thousands of chats a month. Prices below were checked on the vendors’ pricing pages on 18 October 2026, re-checked on 28 October 2026 (no changes), and are quoted at the time of writing.
Both tools have full guides in our directory: Tidio and LiveChat. For a scored verdict on Tidio alone, read our Tidio review.
Tidio vs LiveChat at a glance
| Tidio | LiveChat (Text) | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Billable conversations per month, plus Lyro and Flows meters | Seats (every user who answers chats or tickets) |
| Free plan | Yes: 50 conversations/month, 10 seats | No |
| Free trial | 7 days, no credit card | 14 days, no credit card |
| Entry price (monthly / annual) | Starter $29 / $24.17 a month | Essential $25 / $19 per user a month |
| Seats included | 10 on Free, Starter and Growth | One per paid seat |
| AI agent | Lyro, sold by Lyro conversation (from $39 for 50) | AI Agent, included; 10 or 200 AI resolutions/month, then $0.99 each |
| AI help for human agents | Copilot (AI reply assistant) | AI Copilot: reply suggestions, text edits; summaries on Growth |
| Channels | Website, email, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp | Website, in-app, Messenger, SMS (Twilio), WhatsApp, Instagram |
| Ticketing | Yes, all plans | Yes, all plans |
| Chat history | Not stated on the pricing page | 60 days on Essential, unlimited on Growth |
| Ecommerce | Shopify, WooCommerce; Lyro product recommendations | Shopify, WooCommerce; AI Agent product recommendations |
| Voice / phone | No | No |
| Best for | Small businesses wanting a free start and cheap AI | Small sales-led teams with high chat volume |
What happened to LiveChat? (Text explained)
LiveChat’s parent company renamed itself Text in 2023, and livechat.com now signs new customers up for Text, which LiveChat’s site describes as the next product from the team behind LiveChat. Text bundles live chat, a shared inbox, ticketing and an AI Agent in one subscription, on Essential, Growth and Enterprise plans. Existing LiveChat customers keep their plan, price and login, and LiveChat’s help page says nothing changes for them.
That is why third-party pages disagree. Many still list the legacy Starter, Team and Business plans, and some say LiveChat’s AI requires the separate ChatBot product. ChatBot.com is a sister product from the same company, but it is not an add-on on the Text pricing page, because the Text plans include their own AI Agent. In this article “LiveChat” means the Text plans a new customer can buy today.
Pricing compared at the same team size
Tidio plans
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing (per month) | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 50 billable conversations/month, 10 seats, first 50 Lyro conversations (lifetime), 100 Flows visitors |
| Starter | $29 | $24.17 | 100 conversations, 10 seats, 50 Lyro conversations (one-off) |
| Growth | from $59 | from $49.17 | 250 to 2,000 conversations, 10 seats, macros, automatic assignment, advanced analytics |
| Plus | from $300 + usage | same | Custom limits and seats, departments, OpenAPI |
| Premium | Contact sales | - | From 3,000 Lyro conversations, SSO, pay-per-resolution Lyro |
Growth tiers on monthly billing: 250 conversations $59, 400 $89, 600 $129, 800 $159, 1,000 $179, 1,500 $249, 2,000 $349. Annual billing gives two months free, so each price is multiplied by 10/12. Lyro is a separate package: 50 conversations $39, 100 $75, 200 $140, 500 $350 and 1,000 $700 a month on monthly billing. Flows, the automation builder, is free for 100 visitors a month and then from $29.
Tidio counts a billable conversation only once a human agent replies to it or starts it. Conversations answered only by Lyro or Flows, and conversations nobody answers, are not billed.
LiveChat (Text) plans
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing (per month) | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | $25/user | $19/user | 1 AI Agent, 10 AI resolutions/month, 60-day history, inbox and ticketing, 50 live visitors tracked |
| Growth | $99/user | $79/user | 10 AI Agents, 200 AI resolutions/month, unlimited history, supervision and takeover, team reports, chat summaries |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | SSO, SLAs, SOC 2 Type 2 documentation, white-label widget |
Extra AI resolutions cost $49.50 for 50 ($0.99 each), and 100,000 extra API calls cost $29.50. There is no conversation cap, but every person who answers chats needs a seat.
Worked examples
| Scenario | Tidio | LiveChat (Text) |
|---|---|---|
| Solo owner, about 80 human chats a month, little AI | Starter: $29/month ($24.17 annual) | Essential, 1 user: $25/month ($19 annual) |
| 3 agents, about 350 human chats a month | Growth 400: $89/month ($74.17 annual) | Essential: $75/month ($57 annual); Growth: $297/month ($237 annual) |
| 5 agents, about 1,000 human chats plus 200 AI-handled chats a month | Growth 1,000 + Lyro 200: $319/month ($265.83 annual) | Growth, 5 users: $495/month ($395 annual), 200 AI resolutions included |
On price alone, LiveChat Essential beats Tidio for one to three agents, but Essential gives you only 10 AI resolutions, 60 days of history and no supervision. Once you need Growth-level features, Tidio is much cheaper per team because its 10 seats are included. The exception is a small team with very high volume: two agents answering 2,000 chats a month pay $349 on Tidio Growth against $198 on LiveChat Growth (monthly billing).
One caveat on AI: the units differ. A Lyro conversation is counted when Lyro replies, whether or not it solves anything. A LiveChat AI resolution is counted only when the AI Agent actually answers the question. So 200 of one is not the same as 200 of the other.
AI agents: Lyro vs LiveChat AI Agent
Both agents learn from your own content. Lyro scans up to 100 website pages, takes Q&A pairs you write, imports CSV and PDF files and Zendesk help articles, and syncs Shopify or WooCommerce products. It can run Procedures (plain-language, multi-step workflows), call external systems through Actions, and connect to MCP servers. Tidio’s help centre says Lyro is powered by Claude, Anthropic’s model (see our Claude review). Lyro is also sold on its own for Zendesk and Salesforce users.
The LiveChat AI Agent learns from websites (with automatic re-scans), files such as PDF (up to 200 pages), DOCX, PPTX and CSV, and articles written in the app. Its skills include handling tickets, collecting customer details, transferring to a human and sending discount codes, and since 2026 it reads images and recommends products from Shopify, WooCommerce or an uploaded catalog. LiveChat does not say which model provider powers it.
Metering is where they differ most. Lyro counts a conversation on its first reply in a thread, and a thread closes after 15 minutes of inactivity, so a customer who comes back later counts again. LiveChat counts one resolution per conversation when the AI solves at least one question, and does not count transfers without an answer, spam or tests. On included quotas, Tidio gives 50 Lyro conversations on Free (lifetime) and 50 one-off on Starter, while LiveChat includes 10 resolutions a month on Essential and 200 on Growth.
Both vendors publish resolution-rate claims, and Tidio’s own pages disagree with each other (75% average on the pricing page, “up to 70%” in the help centre). Test either agent on your real questions during the trial. Clear custom instructions help both; our guide to writing better prompts applies.
Live chat, inbox and team features
Tidio keeps it simple: 10 seats on every plan up to Growth, a shared inbox for chat, email and social messages, and ticketing. Growth adds macros, automatic chat assignment, live typing preview and user permissions. Departments arrive on Plus. Flows, the no-code automation builder, handles things like cart recovery and lead capture before a human gets involved.
LiveChat is the more managed tool for staffed teams. Growth adds chat supervision and takeover, shared canned responses, team performance reports, chat topic insights and AI summaries of chats and tickets. Its sales side is stronger too: Conversion Radar flags visitors showing buying signals and pairs them with proactive campaigns, Playbook handles automations, and sales and lead-conversion reports compare chats handled by AI, humans or nobody. Ticket handling also got faster in October 2026, when ticket skills arrived in the Inbox for making several ticket updates in one click. Essential is noticeably thinner, with 60-day history and three workflow rules. Custom roles and multiple brands are listed as “coming soon” on the pricing page, so do not plan around them yet.
Channels and WhatsApp costs
Both connect a website widget, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp to one inbox. Tidio adds email as a channel. LiveChat adds SMS through Twilio and in-app chat, and its native WhatsApp channel (June 2026) and Instagram chats in the Inbox (October 2026) are recent additions, per its changelog.
WhatsApp service messages since October 2026
Tidio’s help centre says that from 1 October 2026 Meta bills replies sent inside the 24-hour service window. Tidio includes 1,000 free outgoing WhatsApp messages per phone number per month, covering agents, Lyro and Flows. Above that it bills Meta’s per-country rates at the end of the month with what it calls “no markup”, and on Free or trial accounts sending stops at 1,000. Sending message templates outside the 24-hour window needs Growth or higher. LiveChat had not documented how Text bills Meta’s WhatsApp fees when we checked, so ask its sales team before relying on WhatsApp at volume.
Integrations and ecommerce
Both install on Shopify and WooCommerce and recommend products in chat. LiveChat says it has 200+ integrations and offers MCP support, a ChatGPT marketplace plugin for querying conversations, and a Chat API. Tidio offers MCP connections for Lyro, an OpenAPI on Plus, and Lyro as a standalone add-on for Zendesk or Salesforce help desks. For a typical store, both cover the basics; LiveChat’s revenue tracking and sales reports are the more developed of the two.
Which should you choose?
Choose Tidio if you want to start free, have four or more people who answer chats occasionally, or want an AI agent to take a large share of first-line questions at a low cost. Its 10 included seats and per-conversation pricing suit seasonal businesses and small stores.
Choose LiveChat (Text) if one to three dedicated agents handle a lot of chats, you want supervision and team reports, or chat is a sales channel and you want Conversion Radar and revenue reporting. Growth is the plan most teams will need.
Choose neither if your customers live on WhatsApp (Wati is built for that), your conversations start in Instagram DMs and comments (Manychat), or you run a Shopify store where order tickets matter more than chat (Gorgias). If you are choosing a full helpdesk rather than a chat tool, our best AI tools for customer support teams guide compares both with Zendesk, Intercom and Freshdesk. Our support and messaging tools directory lists more options, and the comparisons hub has our other head-to-heads.
Both have free trials without a credit card. Run each for a week on your real traffic, count how many chats the AI closes, and price your actual volume, not the brochure example.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tidio better than LiveChat?
For most small businesses, yes: Tidio has a free plan, includes 10 seats on every plan and sells AI capacity more cheaply. LiveChat (now sold as Text) is better if a small team handles a lot of chats, because it charges per seat with no conversation cap, and its Growth plan adds supervision, team reports and sales reporting.
Is Tidio cheaper than LiveChat?
It depends on team size and volume. At the time of writing, Tidio Growth with 400 conversations is $89 a month for up to 10 seats, while LiveChat Growth is $99 per user per month. But a solo owner pays $25 a month on LiveChat Essential versus $29 for Tidio Starter, and a small team with very high chat volume often pays less on LiveChat because it does not count conversations.
Does LiveChat have a free plan?
No. LiveChat (Text) offers a 14-day free trial of Essential and Growth with no credit card, then you must pay per user. Tidio has a permanent free plan with 50 billable conversations a month and 10 seats.
Is LiveChat now called Text?
New sign-ups on livechat.com get Text, the next product from the team behind LiveChat, with Essential, Growth and Enterprise plans and a built-in AI Agent. Existing LiveChat customers keep their legacy Starter, Team or Business plans, which is why many comparison sites still quote those.
Does Tidio's Lyro cost extra?
Mostly, yes. The Free plan includes 50 Lyro conversations for the lifetime of the account and Starter includes 50 one-off. After that Lyro is a separate monthly package, from $39 for 50 conversations to $700 for 1,000 on monthly billing at the time of writing.
