LiveChat vs Tidio
LiveChat is a per-agent tool for teams that answer chat all day. Tidio is a small-shop widget with a free plan, priced by how many conversations a human agent joins. Support teams with steady volume land on LiveChat; a shop owner answering between other jobs lands on Tidio.
Niels AbrahamsenAnalyst, Security & Infrastructure
Sebastiaan Smits
Hannah ReiterVendors can pay for visibility on this site; it never changes what we say about a product. How that works.
Choose LiveChat ifyour team answers chat every day, you want routing, transfers and reporting that scale with headcount, and you are happy to pay per agent from a published price list.
Choose Tidio ifyou run a small online shop, want to start on a free plan, and the person answering chats is also doing three other jobs.
LiveChat and Tidio side by side
| LiveChat | Tidio | |
|---|---|---|
| Our live chat rank | #1 of 14 | #4 of 14 |
| Established in | Poland | Poland |
| Pricing | Per agent per month, published; 14-day trial only | Free tier; paid by monthly conversations reached, published |
| Free tier | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Self-hostable | — | — |
| Built for | Support or sales teams handling steady daily chat volume properly | Small online shops where the owner answers the chats personally |
| Not for | Sites with a handful of conversations a week | Support teams of more than three or four agents |
Both are reviewed in full in our live chat ranking: LiveChat and Tidio.
Where they differ
LiveChat 1 · Tidio 1 · open 2- 01
What the invoice counts
LiveChat prices per user per month, with a published Essential plan at $19 a user on annual billing and Growth at $79. Tidio counts billable conversations, meaning any chat, ticket, email or social conversation that includes a message from a human agent. With LiveChat, headcount drives the bill; with Tidio, a good month on the website does.
Depends on the buyer
- 02
Starting without paying
Tidio has a Free plan and a 7-day trial of paid plans that falls back to Free afterwards. LiveChat has no free plan, only a 14-day trial without a card. For a shop that wants to see whether anyone chats at all, Tidio is the cheaper experiment.
Edge: Tidio
- 03
A team sharing one inbox
Our data describes LiveChat's agent interface, routing and reporting as the strongest at its price, built for several agents working a queue. Tidio's own assessment in our ranking is that routing, permissions and reporting run out beyond three or four agents. Once more than a couple of people share the inbox, LiveChat is the safer base.
Edge: LiveChat
- 04
The AI add-on
Both meter the AI answering. LiveChat's pricing page lists AI agent allowances inside each plan, starting at 10 monthly AI resolutions on Essential. Tidio meters Lyro AI conversations as a separate quantity on top of the plan. In both cases, ask what happens to the bill when the bot handles most of the volume.
Depends on the buyer
When neither fits
If chat volume is a handful of conversations a week, a paid widget is more than the job needs. Tawk.to is a free widget that charges only for extras, and Chatwoot can be self-hosted as open source. For a German-hosted option with messaging channels included, look at Userlike.
LiveChat or Tidio: questions
4 answersIs Tidio cheaper than LiveChat?
For a very small shop, yes: Tidio has a Free plan and LiveChat does not. For a team with several agents, the comparison turns on how many conversations Tidio counts against how many seats LiveChat charges for, so price both against your own monthly volume.
Does LiveChat have a free plan?
No. Its pricing page offers a 14-day trial on Essential and Growth with no credit card, and Enterprise is quoted.
Can Tidio replace LiveChat for a support team?
For two or three agents it can. Our assessment is that Tidio is built for the owner who answers personally, and that its routing and reporting are thin beyond that.
Where are the two companies based?
Both are Polish vendors, according to our category data.
Sources
Checked 8 October 2026- LiveChat pricing page: plan names, per-user prices on annual and monthly billing, 14-day trial without a card, no free plan, AI agent allowances per plan.
- Tidio pricing page: Free to Premium plans, billable-conversation unit, Lyro AI metering, 7-day trial.