Tidio alternatives: what to use when Lyro runs out, and when to stay

Tidio sells its AI, Lyro, in blocks of conversations. For a small Shopify store that means a quota that can run out mid-month, and a bill that climbs one step at a time.

Why people look past Tidio

Lyro is priced per AI conversation, in steps. Lyro is its own package: Tidio sells it alone or with a live chat plan, so these prices are for the AI only and your live chat plan is billed separately. On monthly billing, 50 AI conversations a month cost $39, 100 cost $75, 200 cost $140, 500 cost $350 and 1,000 cost $700. Billed yearly, the first step is $32.50 a month. Above 1,000, Tidio asks you to contact it. A store that grows from 50 to 200 AI conversations goes from $39 to $140 a month for the AI alone.

What counts as one conversation depends on which Tidio page you read. A Lyro conversation is any conversation with at least one reply from Lyro. The pricing FAQ says a customer who leaves the chat and comes back later is still one conversation. The help center says a thread closes after 15 minutes of inactivity, and the next message from that customer counts again. Say a customer asks about sizes, goes to measure and writes again half an hour later: by the pricing FAQ that is one conversation, by the help center it is two. On the plus side, a conversation Lyro hands straight to a person isn't deducted.

At the limit, Lyro pauses or the plan grows. When the monthly quota runs out, Lyro stops answering until it resets on the day of the month you bought it. On new Tidio projects on a standard monthly plan (not Plus), automatic upgrade is switched on by default: at 95% of the quota Tidio moves you to the next step. Tidio's help center says the feature is only for new projects, so on an older project check for the option "Automatically upgrade the limit once it's reached". On the free plan, the 50 AI conversations come once for the life of the account, and then Lyro stops.

Your team's replies have their own meter. Tidio's live chat plans count billable conversations: any conversation where a person on your team replies. Starter covers 100 a month. At that limit, Tidio's help center says you can no longer respond to incoming messages until the quota resets or you upgrade. Lyro's own replies don't count toward it.

Telegram costs extra. It is only on Tidio's Plus plan, from $300 a month plus usage, or on Premium, whose price Tidio doesn't publish. Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp are on the free plan, but their conversations count toward the same limits. Flows, the rule-based automations, are a third package starting at $29 a month billed monthly, and removing Tidio's branding is an add-on at $16.67 a month.

When Tidio is still the right choice

Stay if Lyro fits inside a step you're happy to pay for ($39 a month for up to 50 AI conversations, $75 for up to 100), or if you need any of these:

• Lyro recommends products from your catalog with an Add to cart button, doesn't recommend unavailable items, and makes those recommendations on Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp as well as your site.
• It handles email tickets in the same inbox as chat. Email is not among ChatPal's channels (web chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram and Zendesk).
• Tidio's Shopify listing says Lyro can process refunds and order edits in Shopify, on rules you set, and can compare and recommend products proactively on product pages.

How we chose

For each tool we read the pricing page, the help center and, where there is one, the Shopify App Store listing on September 29, 2026. We noted what is metered, what happens at the limit and where the tool can answer. We make ChatPal; we did not test the others hands-on.

The tools are grouped by the situation they suit, not ranked.

Tidio and six alternatives, by situation

What the same month costs

The tools meter different things, so here is one store on the same month: 200 customer conversations the AI should handle. Some tools count replies, not conversations, and for those we assumed three AI replies per conversation, so 600 replies. That number is ours, not a measured average: count the replies in a week of your own chats and use yours.

• Tidio: 200 Lyro conversations are $140 a month billed monthly. Conversations your team answers are a separate meter: past the free plan's 50 a month, Starter covers 100 for $29, billed monthly.
• ChatPal: $50 a month, if our three-replies guess holds: 600 replies fit that plan's 1,500. The $20 plan's 500 replies would cover about 167 conversations at three replies each. Long back-and-forth conversations use more replies, so count your own.
• Shopify Inbox: free, in your store's chat window only.
• Crisp: Essentials is $95 a month and includes $25 of AI credits, which Crisp's pricing page puts at around 450 automated conversations. When the credits run out the AI stops and new chats go to your team, unless pay-as-you-go is on. WhatsApp and Instagram are included at this level.
• Gorgias: Basic at $60 a month, plus 200 AI Agent interactions. On monthly billing, AI Agent adds $30 for the first 30 ($1.00 each), and the other 170 are $1.50 each, $255, so $345 in all. Each interaction also counts as a support ticket; Basic's 300 tickets cover them.
• Fin: up to $198 if all 200 conversations count as outcomes, plus at least one seat from $39 a month.
• Chatbase: $150 a month, because the Shopify integration needs the Standard plan, which has 4,000 message credits. Credits per reply depend on the AI model you choose, and bigger models use more, so we can't say how many replies that is.

A smaller store, 50 to 100 conversations. Tidio's Lyro is $39 or $75 a month. ChatPal is free up to 100 replies, and its $20 plan's 500 replies cover 100 conversations at three replies each, with room to spare. Shopify Inbox is still free. Crisp's Mini is $45 with around 90 automated conversations, but no WhatsApp or Instagram. Gorgias (Basic plus AI Agent, $1.50 an interaction past the first 30), Fin (a seat plus $0.99 an outcome) and Chatbase (Standard, $150) all cost more than Tidio at this size.

Prices were checked on September 29, 2026, in US dollars. Tidio and Crisp show euro prices to visitors in some countries, so check the currency on the page you see.

Tidio or ChatPal

Choose Tidio if:

• your customers write by email, and you want email and chat in the same inbox;
• you want the AI to refund or edit Shopify orders;
• you want proactive AI on product pages that compares, recommends and adds to cart (per Tidio's Shopify listing).

Choose ChatPal if:

• your customers also write on WhatsApp, Instagram or Telegram, and you want the same assistant there on any plan, the free one included;
• you want a flat monthly price for a set number of replies. ChatPal isn't billed per message; the assistant stops replying when monthly usage passes 100%, and it alerts you at 80% first.

Moving off Tidio

1. Decide what happens at the limit. While you test, you don't want Tidio to move you up a step. On a new project the switch is called "Automatically upgrade the limit once it's reached"; older projects may not have it. Turned off, Lyro pauses at the quota and your customers get no AI answers until it resets, so do this only while Tidio is not your only chat, and switch it back on if it is.
2. Export what you want to keep. Contacts export as a CSV on every plan, but only the columns you have on display, so show every column before you export. Chat transcripts download one conversation at a time. Plan on the history staying behind: keep the files for your records.
3. Re-add your knowledge from the originals. Exporting Lyro's full list of data sources needs Tidio's OpenAPI, which is part of Plus. Without Plus's OpenAPI access, it is quicker to add your FAQ page, website content and files again in the new tool.
4. Decide what to do about flows. Flows are built in Tidio's editor. An AI tool answers questions from your content instead, so rebuild a flow only if it did something other than answer a question.
5. Test before you swap. Connect your store in ChatPal and leave its chat widget off. Ask ChatPal in the dashboard's Playground (its replies count toward your monthly messages) last month's ten most common questions, including something that sold out yesterday, and compare with what Lyro says.
6. Swap the chat. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store, then Themes, then Customize, open App embeds and toggle on ChatPal Chat Widget, then save. Turn off or uninstall Tidio's chat on your store (see Tidio's help center) so customers don't see two, and cancel or downgrade Lyro once you're happy. Setup is on ChatPal's Shopify page.

This is ChatPal answering from the live catalog of our own test store.

For more tools that work with Shopify, see the best AI chatbots for Shopify stores. If the AI you want to replace is website-only, the Chatbase alternatives comparison compares credit-based tools.

If you are also weighing Gorgias, see Gorgias alternatives.