Tidio vs Crisp: Pricing, AI Limits and Which One Actually Costs Less (2026)

2026-09-03 · Laurentiu Dobra · 19 min read · Comparisons

Tidio bills per billable conversation and sells its AI separately; Crisp is flat per workspace with unlimited conversations and a small AI credit allowance. A price-accurate comparison of both, on the same billing cycle, with the free-tier catch spelled out.

Tidio and Crisp both sell a website chat widget with a shared inbox and an AI agent bolted on. That is where the similarity ends. They have opposite billing shapes — Tidio meters every conversation a human touches and charges for AI as a separate product, Crisp charges one flat fee per workspace with unlimited conversations and a small pot of AI credits — and both pages show you a number that is not what you will pay.

This article compares the two on the same billing cycle, states the cycle on every figure, and says plainly which one is cheaper for which kind of team. All prices below were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 3 September 2026.

Table of Contents

• Short answer
• What do Tidio and Crisp actually cost, side by side?
• What is a "billable conversation" on Tidio?
• Why does Crisp cost the same no matter how busy you get?
• Is Tidio's free plan really free?
• How much does AI cost on each platform?
• Where Tidio genuinely wins
• Where Crisp genuinely wins
• Which one should you pick?
• Where Wallu fits, and where it does not
• Frequently asked questions

Short answer

Crisp is cheaper and far more predictable than Tidio once you include AI, and it is the better default for most small support teams. Crisp Mini is $45/month flat per workspace, month-to-month, with 4 seats, unlimited conversations and $5 of AI credits included. The equivalent Tidio setup — Starter at $29/month plus the Lyro AI Agent add-on at $39/month, both month-to-month — is $68/month for 100 human-handled conversations and 50 AI conversations. Tidio is worth the premium if you run an ecommerce store, because its widget surfaces Shopify and WooCommerce order data, its Flows builder is a genuinely capable visual automation tool, and Lyro resolves more cleanly than a credit-metered generic assistant. Crisp wins on cost certainty; Tidio wins on depth.

What do Tidio and Crisp actually cost, side by side?

Everything here is the month-to-month rate, because that is the only cycle both vendors publish. Crisp does not publish an annual price anywhere on its pricing page — there is no billing toggle at all. Tidio does have a toggle, and it loads on Annual, so the numbers you see first on tidio.com are not monthly prices.

Sources: tidio.com/pricing (read 2026-09-03), crisp.chat/en/pricing (read 2026-09-03), wallu.ai/pricing (read 2026-09-03).

Two notes on cycles, because they are where most comparison articles go wrong:

• Tidio's annual is a 12-month prepay. The badge on the page reads "2 months free" — you pay for 10 months and get 12, an exact ×10/12 multiplier. That is where the widely quoted $24.17/mo for Starter and $32.50/mo for Lyro come from. They are annual-effective rates on a 12-month commitment, not monthly prices. If you quote them as monthly, you understate Starter by $4.83 and Lyro by $6.50.
• Crisp publishes no annual rate at all. There is no toggle and no discount percentage stated anywhere on the pricing page. Yearly billing exists inside the app after you subscribe, but the rate is unpublished. So $45, $95 and $295 are the only Crisp numbers anyone can honestly cite, and they are month-to-month.

What is a "billable conversation" on Tidio?

This is the single most important thing to understand about Tidio's pricing, and the vendor is refreshingly direct about it:

> Any live chat, email, or social media message handled by a human agent counts as a billable conversation. Limits reset monthly.

So the meter is not seats. It is not messages. It is *conversations a human touched*, across every channel — chat, email, Instagram, Messenger. Starter's 100/month is not 100 chats; it is 100 threads of any kind that one of your people replied to.

Three consequences worth planning around:

• Your bill scales with volume, not headcount. A one-person store doing 600 conversations a month pays $129/month month-to-month on Growth. A five-person team doing 250 pays $59/month month-to-month. This is the opposite of the per-seat model that Zendesk, Freshdesk and Intercom use, and for small high-volume operations it can be genuinely worse.
• Email counts. If you route support email into Tidio, every thread eats the same allowance as a live chat. Teams that migrate their inbox in and then hit the cap in week three are not misusing the product; they are using it as designed.
• The ladder steps are chunky. Going from 250 to 400 conversations is $59 → $89/month month-to-month. From 1,000 to 1,500 is $179 → $249/month. There is no smooth overage, so you buy the next rung and eat the slack.

Above the self-serve ladder, Tidio Plus starts at $300/month plus usage (from 5,000 billable conversations), and Premium is contact-for-pricing.

Why does Crisp cost the same no matter how busy you get?

Crisp charges per workspace, per month, with a seat cap per tier, and does not meter conversations at all. Its own FAQ raises the question and answers it with a fairly pointed rhetorical jab at the rest of the category:

> Why are there no limits on the number of conversations? ... Why would we bill based on consumption (as all others do)

You can decide how much you enjoy the tone. The substance is real: Mini at $45/month month-to-month covers 4 seats and unlimited chats, emails and messages. Essentials at $95/month covers 10 seats. Plus at $295/month covers 20+ seats, and is the only tier where extra agents are purchasable, at $10/agent/month.

The practical effect is that Crisp's bill is a line, not a curve. A Black Friday spike costs you nothing extra. A support backlog costs you nothing extra. What Crisp *does* cap is customer profiles (100 on Free, 5,000 on Mini, 50,000 on Essentials, 200,000 on Plus) and sub-inboxes (0, 0, 2, 5) — so growth pressure shows up as a database limit or an org-structure limit rather than a usage bill.

There is one metered thing on Crisp, and it is the AI. More on that below.

Is Tidio's free plan really free?

It is free, but the AI part of it is a trap for anyone evaluating on the strength of the free tier.

Tidio Free gives you 50 billable conversations and 100 Flows visitors per month, both of which reset monthly. It also gives you 50 Lyro AI conversations — and those do not reset. The vendor states it in two places:

> Your first 50 conversations are free (lifetime).

and, in the FAQ:

> you need to upgrade to the Lyro AI Agent plan to refresh it monthly.

In the page's own plan data, the free Lyro allowance is typed one-time, while every paid Lyro rung is typed monthly. So the sequence for a lot of evaluators is: sign up free, watch Lyro handle 50 conversations well, decide it is worth paying for, and then discover the entry price for a monthly AI allowance is $39/month month-to-month on top of whatever conversation plan you are on.

Crisp's free tier is smaller in features but honest in shape: 2 seats, 100 customer profiles, unlimited conversations, and it says plainly "No AI credits included." You do not get an AI trial that quietly expires; you get no AI until you pay. Crisp also offers a 14-day trial of any plan with no card required, against Tidio's 7-day trial.

How much does AI cost on each platform?

This is where the two pricing philosophies diverge hardest.

Tidio sells AI as a separate product. The Lyro AI Agent has its own ladder, entirely independent of your conversation plan. Month-to-month: 50 AI conversations for $39, 100 for $75, 150 for $110, 200 for $140, 300 for $210, 500 for $350, 750 for $525, 1,000 for $700. A Lyro conversation is defined as a customer interaction with at least one reply from the AI agent. At the 1,000 rung that is $0.70 per AI conversation. Flows — the visual automation builder, which is *not* Lyro — is a third separately metered product, from $29/month month-to-month for 2,000 visitors reached.

So a Tidio bill can have three lines: conversations, Lyro, Flows. A store on Growth 600 with 200 Lyro conversations and 5,000 Flows visitors is at $129 + $140 + $49 = $318/month month-to-month.

Crisp bundles AI as a credit allowance inside the flat fee. Mini includes $5 of credits, which Crisp estimates at "around 90 automated conversations." Essentials includes $25, "around 450." Plus includes $75, "around 1,350." Note the hedging — *around* — because credits are consumed by usage, not by conversation count, so your real number will vary with how much work each answer takes.

Compare like for like at the entry tier:

• Tidio: $29 (100 human conversations) + $39 (50 AI conversations) = $68/month month-to-month
• Crisp Mini: $45/month month-to-month, unlimited human conversations, ~90 automated conversations, 4 seats

Crisp is $23/month cheaper, gives you roughly twice the AI conversations, four seats instead of a conversation quota, and no cap on human volume. That is not a close call at the bottom of the ladder.

Higher up it stays true but narrows. Crisp Essentials at $95/month gets you ~450 automated conversations and 10 seats. Matching 450 AI conversations on Tidio means the 500 rung of Lyro at $350/month month-to-month, plus a conversation plan on top. If your AI volume is meaningful, Crisp's bundled credits are the cheaper structure by a wide margin.

The counter-argument, and it is a fair one: resolution quality is not priced. If Lyro resolves a materially higher share of your tickets than Crisp's AI, paying more per AI conversation can still be the cheaper outcome once you count the human minutes saved. Neither vendor publishes a resolution rate you can verify at these tiers — Tidio only offers a "guaranteed 50% Lyro AI resolution rate" on its unpublished Premium plan — so this is a judgement you have to make in the trial, not from the pricing page.

Where Tidio genuinely wins

Ecommerce depth. Tidio's widget surfaces Shopify and WooCommerce order data to the agent in the conversation. For a store where half of all tickets are "where is my order" and "can I change the size," having order status in the reply pane without tab-switching is a real, daily time saving. Crisp has ecommerce integrations too — Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Adobe — but the store-operator workflow is more of a first-class citizen on Tidio.

Flows. The visual automation builder is a proper product, not a checkbox: branching, triggers, visitor targeting, pre-chat qualification. If you want a deterministic bot that runs a defined script — a lead qualifier, a returns wizard — Flows is more capable than what you can assemble from Crisp's routing rules. It costs extra, from $29/month month-to-month, which is at least honest about it being a separate thing.

Lyro's answer quality is something Tidio will underwrite. Neither vendor publishes a resolution rate you can verify at these tiers, but Tidio sells a "guaranteed 50% Lyro AI resolution rate" on its Premium plan — a commercial commitment Crisp makes nowhere on its pricing page. If your ticket mix is nuanced and a wrong answer is expensive, test both in trial and treat that guarantee as the only published signal either vendor offers.

Multiple team inboxes and social channels. Instagram, Messenger and email all land in the same place and are all handled the same way — with the caveat that they all count against the same billable conversation meter.

Where Crisp genuinely wins

Cost certainty. This is the headline and it is not a small thing. You know in January what December costs. No overage, no rung-jumping, no meter anxiety, no incentive to discourage your team from replying to a customer because the reply is billable. For a small team, the operational calm of a flat bill is worth real money.

Unlimited conversations. Not "generous limits" — no limit. Crisp explicitly declines to bill on consumption. If your volume is spiky, seasonal, or growing faster than your budget review cycle, this is the safer structure by a distance.

Seats included, not rationed. 4 seats on Mini at $45/month, 10 on Essentials at $95/month, 20+ on Plus at $295/month. Per seat, Essentials works out to $9.50/month, which is well under any per-agent helpdesk in the category. Extra agents beyond the cap are $10/agent/month, and only on Plus.

A shared email inbox with a custom domain, from Mini. At $45/month month-to-month you get a genuine shared inbox on your own email domain, plus unlimited data retention and internal search. That is a helpdesk feature at a chat-widget price.

A real free tier. 2 seats, unlimited conversations, forever, with no AI grant that quietly runs out. For a solo founder who just wants a widget and an inbox and no AI at all, Crisp Free is a defensible permanent home.

Which one should you pick?

• You run a Shopify or WooCommerce store and order-context-in-the-widget is the job. Tidio. Budget $68/month month-to-month minimum with AI, and model your actual conversation volume against the ladder before you commit.
• You have 3-10 people, unpredictable volume, and you want one number on the invoice. Crisp. Mini at $45/month month-to-month, Essentials at $95/month when you outgrow 4 seats or need routing and analytics.
• You are one person with low volume and no AI needs. Crisp Free, indefinitely.
• You want to test an AI agent before committing. Tidio's free 50 Lyro conversations are the fastest way to see quality — just remember they are lifetime, not monthly, and price the real plan at $39/month month-to-month before you get attached.
• Your AI volume is high and your human volume is low. Crisp, clearly. Bundled credits beat a separately-metered AI ladder at every rung.

If neither shape fits — because the thing you actually need is a lot of AI answers to repetitive questions, across channels neither vendor treats seriously — read on.

Where Wallu fits, and where it does not

Wallu has the same billing shape as Crisp — flat per month, no conversation meter, no per-seat charge — at a fraction of the price, with the AI allowance in the plan rather than sold alongside it. Pricing is flat from $4.99/month across eight channels, with 350 AI replies a month on the entry plan, knowledge-base-only mode (the bot answers strictly from your documented content and says nothing it cannot source) and human handover when it should not answer. Check the plan page for the current reply allowance on each tier.

Against the two plans compared above, month-to-month: the $4.99 entry price is about one-thirteenth of the $68 Tidio Starter + Lyro combination and about one-ninth of Crisp Mini's $45. The allowances are not comparable across the three — Tidio meters Lyro *conversations*, Crisp burns *credits* against a usage estimate it labels "around", and Wallu counts *replies* — so size the tier against your own volume in a trial rather than against a headline multiple. The channel coverage is the other differentiator: Discord and Telegram are first-class here, where both Tidio and Crisp centre on the website widget, email and the Meta channels. Integration lists change — check each vendor's current one against the channels you actually run before deciding.

Now the concessions, because they are real and you should weigh them:

• Wallu has no free tier. Crisp Free is genuinely free forever for 2 seats, and Tidio Free will answer 50 AI conversations before it asks for anything. Wallu starts at $4.99/month with a 7-day trial on the entry plan — shorter than Crisp's 14 days on any plan, and no substitute for a free tier that never expires. If "free", or a long unpaid evaluation, is a hard requirement, Crisp wins outright.
• The ecosystem is much smaller. Crisp lists Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Adobe integrations; Tidio's ecommerce and app marketplace is deeper still. Wallu's WooCommerce integration is on Assist Pro, not the entry plan. If your workflow depends on a long tail of third-party connectors, both competitors are ahead.
• There is no enterprise tooling. No SSO, no multi-brand workspaces, no sub-inbox hierarchy, no dedicated CSM, no procurement-grade security paperwork. Crisp Plus at $295/month month-to-month and Tidio Plus from $300/month plus usage exist for organisations that need that, and Wallu does not compete for those buyers.
• Wallu is an AI answering layer, not a full helpdesk. Crisp Mini's shared email inbox on a custom domain, and Tidio's multi-inbox ticketing, are helpdesk features. If you need agents living in a ticket queue all day, you want one of those two products — possibly with Wallu in front of it.

The honest framing: Wallu is the right choice when your problem is *volume of repetitive questions across many channels*. It is the wrong choice when your problem is *a team of humans that needs a workplace*.

Frequently asked questions

Is Crisp cheaper than Tidio?

Yes, once AI is included. Month-to-month, Crisp Mini is $45/month flat per workspace with 4 seats, unlimited conversations and $5 of AI credits (~90 automated conversations). The comparable Tidio setup is Starter at $29/month plus the Lyro AI Agent at $39/month — $68/month for 100 human conversations and 50 AI conversations. Crisp is cheaper, less capped, and does not get more expensive as you get busier.

How much is Tidio per month, really?

Starter is $29.00/month month-to-month for 100 billable conversations. Growth starts at $59.00/month month-to-month for 250. The $24.17 and $49.17 figures shown by default on tidio.com are annual-effective rates on a 12-month prepay (pay 10 months, get 12) — not monthly prices. The Lyro AI Agent is separate, from $39.00/month month-to-month for 50 AI conversations.

Does Crisp have annual pricing?

Crisp publishes no annual rate on its pricing page. There is no billing toggle and no stated discount. Yearly billing is only exposed inside the app after you subscribe. The only citable Crisp prices are the month-to-month ones: Free $0, Mini $45/month, Essentials $95/month, Plus $295/month, all flat per workspace.

Is Tidio's free plan really free forever?

The 50 billable conversations and 100 Flows visitors reset monthly, so yes for those. But the 50 Lyro AI conversations are a one-time lifetime grant, not a monthly allowance — Tidio's own FAQ says you must upgrade to the paid Lyro AI Agent plan to refresh it monthly. Plan on $39/month month-to-month if you want ongoing AI.

What counts as a billable conversation on Tidio?

Per Tidio: any live chat, email, or social media message handled by a human agent. Limits reset monthly. Messages the AI handles alone are metered separately as Lyro conversations. Seats are a feature cap, not the billing unit.

Does Crisp limit the number of conversations?

No. Conversations are unlimited on every Crisp tier including Free, and the vendor explicitly rejects consumption billing in its FAQ. What Crisp does cap is seats (2 / 4 / 10 / 20+), customer profiles (100 / 5,000 / 50,000 / 200,000), sub-inboxes (0 / 0 / 2 / 5) and AI credits ($0 / $5 / $25 / $75 per month).

Which is better for a Shopify store, Tidio or Crisp?

Tidio, in most cases. Order data surfaced inside the widget and the Flows automation builder make it the stronger fit for store operators, and Lyro handles product and order questions well. Crisp has Shopify and WooCommerce integrations too, and wins if your volume is high enough that Tidio's conversation ladder becomes the dominant cost.

Is there a cheaper alternative to both Tidio and Crisp?

Wallu is flat from $4.99/month across eight channels, with 350 AI replies a month on the entry plan, knowledge-base-only mode, human handover and no per-seat charge — the same flat shape as Crisp at a fraction of the price. The trade-offs are real: no free tier (Crisp has one), a much smaller integration ecosystem than either, no enterprise tooling, and it is an AI answering layer rather than a full agent helpdesk.