OctaDezx vs Tidio: where the free plan stops being free
Tidio has the friendliest entry point in this market, including a genuine free tier. The question worth asking before you commit is what happens to the price when Lyro starts handling real volume.
Comparison · 25 July 2026 · 8 min read · By The OctaDezx team, Builders of the OctaDezx AI customer care platform
Key takeaways
- Tidio has a real free plan and a low entry price, with Starter listed at 24.17 dollars a month and Growth from 49.17.
- Lyro, the AI agent, is metered by conversation. It starts at 32.50 dollars a month for 50 conversations, and Growth allows up to 200 a month.
- So the AI allowance, not the plan price, is usually what decides your real cost, and 200 conversations a month is not many for a busy store.
- Tidio is excellent for website live chat on a small site, and its free tier is a genuinely good way to start.
- OctaDezx starts at 9 dollars a month for up to 300 unique customers a day with AI included, and covers WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Shopify as well as the website.
Tidio is easy to recommend to someone starting out. The widget is clean, the free plan is real rather than a disguised trial, and Lyro answers questions properly rather than pattern matching keywords. If you have a small site and want chat on it this afternoon, it is a sound choice.
The comparison gets interesting at the point where the AI stops being a novelty and starts being how you handle volume.
Where the meters are
Tidio lists Free at zero, Starter at 24.17 dollars a month, Growth from 49.17 and Plus from 300 plus usage. Lyro is charged separately, starting at 32.50 dollars a month for 50 AI conversations, with Growth allowing up to 200 Lyro conversations a month and higher tiers offering custom limits and discounted rates.
Those AI numbers are the ones to plan against. Two hundred AI conversations a month is roughly six or seven a day. A store running promotions on Instagram will pass that in an afternoon.
OctaDezx measures capacity in unique customers per day rather than AI conversations, starting at 300 a day on the 9 dollar plan and 1,000 a day at 29 dollars, with the AI included rather than metered.
| OctaDezx | Tidio | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 24 hour full access trial, no card | Yes, an ongoing free plan |
| Entry paid price | 9 dollars a month | 24.17 dollars a month |
| AI pricing | Included in the plan | From 32.50 dollars a month for 50 conversations |
| AI volume at entry | Up to 300 unique customers a day | 50 conversations, 200 a month on Growth |
| Channel focus | WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Shopify, web | Website live chat first |
| Order taking | Native, verified against catalogue | Not the product's focus |
What Tidio is genuinely better at
- Getting started for nothing. The free plan is usable, which is rarer than it should be.
- Website live chat as a craft. The widget, the visitor experience and the human handover are well judged.
- Simplicity. There is very little to learn, which matters when the person setting it up also runs everything else.
- Visitor targeting on a website, such as triggering chat on specific pages or behaviours.
What OctaDezx does better
- AI volume economics. A busy day does not consume a metered allowance.
- Channel coverage. Most small business messages arrive on WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, not the website.
- Selling. The agent completes orders with server verified prices rather than answering and handing off.
- Comment replies on social posts, which is where pre sale questions cluster during a campaign.
- Over fifty languages detected per customer without a separate charge.
How to choose
If your traffic is on your website, your volume is modest, and you want to spend nothing to begin with, start with Tidio. That is a reasonable decision and there is no need to overthink it.
If your customers message you on WhatsApp and Instagram, if your busy days are much busier than your quiet ones, or if you want conversations to end in orders rather than answers, the metered AI model will fight you and a flat plan will not.
A quick test: count how many AI conversations you would have had last month if the AI had been live. If that number is comfortably under two hundred, the meter is not your problem yet.
Prices here were checked in July 2026 from each vendor's own public pricing page. Every vendor in this comparison changes pricing regularly, so treat these as a starting point and confirm the current numbers before you commit to anything.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Tidio free plan good enough for a small business?
- For a low traffic website that needs a chat widget and occasional AI answers, yes, and it is one of the more honest free tiers in this market. The constraint is the Lyro conversation allowance rather than the widget itself, so it stops being sufficient once AI conversations become routine rather than occasional.
- How much does Lyro AI cost?
- Lyro is priced from 32.50 dollars a month starting at 50 AI conversations. The Growth plan allows up to 200 Lyro conversations a month, higher tiers offer custom limits and discounted usage rates, and the top tier offers pay per resolution billing. The meter is the conversation, so your cost tracks how often customers actually use the AI.
- What is the difference between Tidio and OctaDezx?
- Tidio is a live chat product with an AI agent metered by conversation, strongest on your website. OctaDezx is an AI agent with a flat plan measured in unique customers per day, built to answer and take orders across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Shopify as well as a web widget.
Where this fits in OctaDezx
Keep reading
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About the author
The OctaDezx team, Builders of the OctaDezx AI customer care platform. We build OctaDezx, an AI customer care platform used by online stores, restaurants, agencies and clinics to answer customers and take orders around the clock. Everything here comes from running that product and reading real support conversations across those businesses, not from a keyword brief.