tawk.to vs Tidio: free live chat, AI costs and limits compared
tawk.to gives away its chat and inbox and charges for add-ons such as AI Assist. Tidio has a small $0 tier, then plans sized by the chats your team answers. A dated look at what each costs once you add AI.
MagizAI Team7 min read
In tawk.to vs Tidio, the free offer differs most. tawk.to's live chat, inbox and seats cost nothing, and you pay only for add-ons such as AI Assist. Tidio's $0 tier covers 50 answered conversations a month, then paid plans are sized by conversations, with its Lyro AI sold separately.
Every fact here comes from each company's own pages, checked on 13 October 2026: tawk.to's add-ons page, its product pages and its help center, and Tidio's pricing and AI agent pages. Prices change, so look again before you pay. Where a page did not list something, we say so.
tawk.to vs Tidio at a glance
Sources: tawk.to's add-ons page, tawk.to's AI Assist billing guide and Tidio's pricing page, all checked on 13 October 2026. Tidio's default prices are its annual-billing prices, which it says give two months free.
| Checked on 13 October 2026 | tawk.to | Tidio |
|---|---|---|
| What is free | Live chat, the shared inbox, ticketing and the knowledge base, with unlimited team members | A $0 tier called Free: 50 billable conversations a month, up to 10 seats |
| What you pay for | Optional add-ons, priced per property rather than per seat | Plans sized by answered conversations: Starter $24.17 a month billed annually (100), Growth from $49.17 (from 250) |
| AI | AI Assist: Hobby free (100 message credits a month), Growth $29 a month (1,000), Business $99 (5,000), Enterprise $399 (20,000) | First 50 Lyro AI conversations free, once; Lyro plans from $32.50 a month for 50 a month |
| How AI use is counted | One credit for each message AI Assist sends | One Lyro conversation, however many replies it takes |
| AI hands the chat to a person | "Escalations to human agents" listed from the $29 Growth plan | "Human handoff" listed for Lyro |
| Team seats | Unlimited | Up to 10 on self-serve plans |
| Channels in the inbox | Live chat, Messenger, WhatsApp, email, SMS and Telegram | Live chat, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and email, ticked on every plan |
| Remove the vendor's branding | Whitelabel add-on, $29 a month per property | $16.67 a month add-on on Growth, included on Plus |
| Apps | iOS, Android, macOS and Windows | Desktop and mobile apps ticked on every plan |
How tawk.to and Tidio charge you
tawk.to's add-ons page says the platform is free and lists four paid extras: AI Assist, Whitelabel at $29 a month, Voice Agents from $49 a month plus usage, and Data Enrichment from $59 a month. The last two show a waitlist button. Add-ons are billed monthly and can be switched off at any time. AI Assist plans can also be paid yearly, which tawk.to's help center says includes two free months.
Tidio charges by "billable conversations", which its pricing page defines as conversations that include a message from a human agent. Unanswered messages and spam do not count, and replies from Lyro or from Tidio's Flows automations are not counted as agent replies. The $0 tier covers 50 a month, Starter 100, and Growth up to 2,000. Lyro AI and Flows each have their own allowance on top.
So the bill grows in different places. On tawk.to, more chats answered by your team cost nothing, and the cost grows with AI messages and extras. On Tidio, it grows with the chats your team answers and with AI conversations.
What the AI does on tawk.to and on Tidio
tawk.to. The add-ons page describes AI Assist as AI agents trained on your knowledge base, AI workflows for routing, qualifying and follow-ups, and a hand-off to your team with the full context. The billing guide sets the limits per plan. The free Hobby plan has 100 message credits a month, one AI chat agent and up to 100 crawled web pages. Growth, at $29 a month or $290 a year, has 1,000 credits, three AI agents, 500 crawled pages, escalations to human agents and API integrations of up to 1,000 calls. Extra credits cost $30 per 1,000 and do not expire.
Tidio. Tidio's AI agent page says Lyro answers from your support content and runs on Claude from Anthropic plus Tidio's own models. The pricing table lists FAQ upload, an FAQ scraper, a website scraper and Zendesk article import as knowledge sources. The page describes Smart Actions for order updates, lead qualification and routing tickets. Your first Action is free; full access needs a paid Lyro quota.
Why the AI numbers do not compare directly
tawk.to counts messages. Tidio counts conversations. If the AI replies five times in one chat, that is five tawk.to credits and one Lyro conversation. tawk.to's billing guide also counts Smart Reply and AI Commands, which your own team uses while typing, against the same credits, while testing in the preview is free. So 1,000 tawk.to credits and 1,000 Lyro conversations are very different amounts of AI.
Is tawk.to really free compared with Tidio?
For human chat, yes. tawk.to's live chat page offers unlimited team members, and its add-ons page says you only pay for the extras you switch on. Tidio's $0 tier is a real plan too, but it covers 50 answered conversations a month and 10 seats, and it leaves out operating hours and the live visitors list, which start on Starter.
Once you add AI, both charge. The cheapest paid AI on each side is tawk.to's Growth AI plan at $29 a month for 1,000 message credits, or Tidio's smallest Lyro plan at $32.50 a month, billed annually, for 50 conversations a month.
Channels, apps and installing
tawk.to's inbox page brings live chat, Messenger, WhatsApp, email, SMS and Telegram into one shared inbox, and says more channels are coming. Its live chat page describes pasting one snippet into your site, or one-click installers for Shopify, WordPress, Wix and others, with apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows.
Tidio's plan table ticks Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and email on every plan, Free included, along with desktop and mobile apps. It lists native Shopify actions from Growth.
Limits worth checking before you choose
- tawk.to's free AI plan lists one AI chat agent and 100 crawled pages, and escalation to a person is listed from Growth.
- If you pass your AI credits, tawk.to's billing guide says usage can run into a negative balance that you settle later.
- tawk.to's Whitelabel is priced per property, so each website you run needs its own.
- Tidio's FAQ says self-serve plans take up to 10 agents.
- Tidio's 50 free Lyro conversations are a one-off; a monthly allowance needs a Lyro plan.
Which to pick when
tawk.to is likely the better fit if
- your team will answer chats itself and you want no software bill;
- you have many people who need to see chats, since seats are unlimited;
- you want to try AI on a free tier first, then pay a fixed monthly price for more;
- you want SMS or Telegram in the same inbox.
Tidio is likely the better fit if
- you want Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger ticked on every plan, Free included;
- your chats run long, so paying per AI conversation rather than per AI message suits you;
- you want visual Flows for proactive messages and AI actions such as order updates;
- you sell on Shopify and want its native actions, listed from Growth.
Either way, test the AI on your own help content and your ten most common questions before you rely on it.
A third option
If you want AI answers from your own content included in a monthly plan with a team inbox, or you want to use your own AI key and pay the AI provider directly with no message cap from us, MagizAI is a third option. Every plan is paid. Our comparison with tawk.to and comparison with Tidio set it against each tool, and the plans are on our pricing page.