The short answer
Pick Tidio if you are a small team or an online shop that wants live chat, an AI agent and simple automations in one tool, starting from a free plan. Pick Intercom if you run a support team that needs a full helpdesk with tickets, email and several channels, and you are prepared to pay per seat plus a fee for each AI outcome.
As of October 30, 2026, Tidio starts free and its Starter plan is $24.17 a month billed yearly for the whole account. Intercom starts at $29 a seat a month billed yearly ($39 billed monthly) on Essential, with its AI agent, Fin, at $0.99 per outcome on top. Every figure below comes from the vendors’ own pages and help centers, checked that day, with the links at the end. Both change their pricing often, so check again before you buy.
Tidio vs Intercom at a glance
| Tidio | Intercom | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Per plan, with three meters: billable conversations, Lyro conversations, Flows visitors | Per seat, with Fin charged per outcome on top |
| Free plan | Yes: 50 billable conversations, the first 50 Lyro conversations once | None listed |
| Trial | 7 days, no card, then the Free plan | 14 days, no card |
| Entry price | Starter: $24.17 a month billed yearly ($29 billed monthly) | Essential: $29 a seat a month billed yearly, $39 billed monthly |
| AI agent | Lyro | Fin |
| How AI is counted | A conversation with at least one Lyro reply | An outcome: resolved, assumed resolved, a completed workflow, or a sales outcome; one a conversation |
| AI price | Lyro tiers from $32.50 a month for 50 conversations | $0.99 per outcome |
| Chats your team answers | Counted as billable conversations, with an allowance per plan | Not metered, but each teammate needs a seat |
| Several websites | “Multiproject” listed on Plus and Premium; not stated for lower plans | Multibrand Messenger and Help Center on Expert |
Pricing side by side (as of October 2026)
The two tools charge for different things, which makes a straight price comparison misleading. Tidio prices the account and meters conversations. Intercom prices people and meters AI outcomes.
Tidio’s plans
| Plan | Price (billed yearly) | What’s included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 50 billable conversations, the first 50 Lyro conversations once |
| Starter | $24.17 a month | 100 billable conversations, 100 Flows visitors, 50 Lyro once |
| Growth | From $49.17 a month | 250 to 2,000 billable conversations; Lyro as a paid quota of 50 to 1,000 |
| Plus | From $300 a month plus usage | Custom limits |
| Premium | On request | Lyro from 3,000 conversations |
Source: tidio.com/pricing, as of October 2026.
Tidio’s page shows yearly prices by default, labeled “2 months free”. Billed monthly, Starter is $29 and Growth starts at $59. Lyro is priced in tiers from 50 to 1,000 conversations a month, printed in the page’s calculator: $32.50 a month for 50 billed yearly ($39 monthly), up to $583.33 for 1,000 ($700 monthly). Our Tidio pricing guide works through each plan and how Lyro is billed.
Intercom’s plans
| Plan | Per seat, billed yearly | Per seat, billed monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Essential | $29 | $39 |
| Advanced | $85 | $99 |
| Expert | $132 | $139 |
Sources: intercom.com/pricing for the yearly figures, and Intercom’s help center (plans explained, seats) for both, as of October 2026.
Fin costs $0.99 per support outcome on every plan. Fin’s pricing page also bills disqualifications and self-serve routing as outcomes, and lead qualifications at $9.99 each, as of October 2026. On October 30, 2026 the pricing page also showed new customers $19 a seat on Essential, a 35% offer with no end date given; we leave it out of the totals below. Copilot, Intercom’s AI assistant for your own teammates, is a separate $29 an agent a month billed yearly, or $35 monthly.
What a three-person team pays with AI switched on
Take a shop with three people on chat, one website, about 300 chats a month answered by the AI and 200 handled by the team.
Intercom: three Essential seats are $87 a month billed yearly, or $117 billed monthly. If all 300 AI chats end as outcomes, Fin adds $297. That’s $384 a month billed yearly, or $414 billed monthly. Chats that Fin hands to your team through its default escalation aren’t charged, so the Fin part is a ceiling, not a floor.
Tidio: 200 team chats is more than Starter’s 100 billable conversations, so you’d need Growth at 250, $49.17 a month billed yearly ($59 billed monthly). Lyro is on top: the 300 tier is $175 a month billed yearly ($210 monthly). That’s $224.17 a month billed yearly, or $269 billed monthly, from the prices in Tidio’s calculator.
At 1,000 AI chats a month and five seats
Intercom: five Essential seats at $29 is $145, and 1,000 outcomes at $0.99 is $990: about $1,135 a month billed yearly, or $1,185 billed monthly. That matches the worked example in our Intercom Fin pricing guide, which goes through the outcome rules in full.
Tidio: 1,000 is the top of the Lyro quota on Growth. That tier is $583.33 a month billed yearly, or $700 billed monthly, plus the Growth plan sized for your team’s chats (from $49.17 billed yearly). Tidio’s Plus plan lists discounted usage rates, so at this volume a quote is worth asking for.
The pattern holds at most volumes: Tidio is cheaper for small teams, and Intercom’s bill grows with every seat and every outcome. For other volumes, the AI chatbot cost calculator works it out with the dated figures shown.
The AI agents: Lyro vs Fin, and how each is billed
Both AI agents read your content, answer customers and pass the chat to a person. The biggest difference is what each one charges you for.
Tidio Lyro
- What counts: a Lyro conversation is any conversation where Lyro replies at least once. Several questions in one conversation count once.
- Price: the first 50 Lyro conversations are free, once per account. After that, Lyro is sold in its own tiers, from $32.50 a month for 50 conversations, or a paid quota of 50 to 1,000 a month on Growth. Premium starts Lyro at 3,000 conversations.
- Focus: Tidio’s Lyro page leans on online-shop questions such as order status, shipping and product availability.
A Lyro conversation is charged whether or not Lyro solved the problem. That makes the bill easy to predict: it tracks how many chats the AI touches.
Intercom Fin
- What counts: an outcome. Intercom charges one when the customer confirms the problem is solved, when they don’t ask for more help after Fin replies, or when Fin completes a workflow you set up (a Procedure), including one that ends in a handoff. At most one per conversation. Fin’s pricing page also lists sales outcomes: disqualifications and self-serve routing at $0.99, and lead qualifications at $9.99.
- What doesn’t count: a chat Fin hands to a person through its default escalation, or one where Fin couldn’t give an answer.
- Price: $0.99 per support outcome, on every plan. Fin also runs on another helpdesk at the same $0.99 with no seats, with a minimum of 50 outcomes a month ($49.50), per fin.ai/pricing.
Fin’s model means you pay less when it fails and more when it succeeds. The catch is the “assumed” outcome: a customer who reads Fin’s answer, doesn’t believe it and closes the tab can be charged the same as one who got what they needed. Our Fin pricing guide has the full list of cases.
What to test on both
Neither price tells you whether the answers are right. Before you choose, ask each AI a question your website doesn’t answer, and one where two of your pages disagree. A good agent says it isn’t sure and offers a person; a weak one guesses. Our guide on why chatbots give wrong answers has a short test list.
Handoff to your team
Both tools put the AI and your team’s inbox in one product, so a handed-over chat lands where your team already works.
- Tidio: live chat and a helpdesk sit in the same tool, with human handoff listed as a Lyro feature. The chats your team then answers count against your plan’s billable conversations.
- Intercom: Fin hands over to teammates in a shared inbox with ticketing. A default escalation is free; a Procedure you build that ends in a handoff is a $0.99 outcome. If you design many workflows that finish with “let me get someone”, those add up.
For what a good handover looks like, whichever tool you pick, see our guide to chatbot human handoff. Our roundup of the best AI chatbots with human handoff compares how other tools do it.
Setup effort
Neither vendor’s pricing page says how long setup takes, so we compare what each plan asks you to decide.
- Tidio asks you to size three meters: billable conversations for your team, Lyro conversations for the AI, and Flows visitors if you use automations. Each plan sets its own allowance for each, and you choose yearly or monthly billing.
- Intercom asks you to decide who needs a full seat, which plan (Essential, Advanced or Expert), and how Fin should behave: which workflows it runs and when it escalates. Those choices also decide which chats become billable outcomes.
In short, Tidio has fewer decisions about people and more about volumes. Intercom has more to configure, which is also what gives a larger team its control.
Who each one suits
| Your situation | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A small shop that wants to start free | Tidio | Free plan, and Starter from $24.17 a month billed yearly for the account |
| You want the AI to deal with order and shipping questions | Tidio | Lyro’s page is built around those questions |
| You want pop-ups and scripted automations | Tidio | Flows, sold by visitors reached |
| A support team of ten or more, with tickets and several channels | Intercom | A full helpdesk with ticketing, priced per seat |
| You already use another helpdesk and only want the AI | Either (Fin or Lyro) | Fin from 50 outcomes a month; Lyro sold alone from $32.50 a month |
| Several brands from one account | Intercom, on Expert | Multibrand Messenger and Help Center |
| You want to pay only when the AI solves something | Intercom | Fin charges per outcome; Lyro charges per conversation it replies in |
| Only website chat, with AI answers and a team taking over | Consider a third option | See below |
If you’ve already decided neither fits, our pages on Tidio alternatives and Intercom Fin alternatives go through the other options, and the alternatives hub compares them all. If Crisp is also on your list, see Tidio vs Crisp.
A third option for website chat
If your customers mostly reach you through your website, you may not need a messaging suite or a helpdesk. SupportVia is an AI chatbot for your website that answers only from your own pages, Q&As and notes, shows up to five “Read more” links to the pages it used, and hands the chat to your team’s shared inbox when it isn’t sure or the customer asks for a person. How it answers explains the rules it follows.
How it compares on the points above:
- One meter, no price per seat. Plans count AI conversations only; chats your team answers are unlimited. Starter is $29 a month for 150 AI conversations, Growth $79 for 500, Pro $199 for 1,500 (see plans).
- Your own AI, on every plan. Connect your own OpenAI, Claude or other OpenAI-compatible account on any plan: up to 1,000 conversations a month on Starter, 5,000 on Growth and no monthly cap on Pro. Its answers never use your plan’s AI conversations.
What it doesn’t do: no WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger or email channels, no ticketing, no automations, no order lookup, and no mobile app for your team. If you need those, Tidio or Intercom will serve you better. The free trial lasts 7 days or 50 AI conversations, whichever comes first, with no card.