Crisp vs Tidio: Flat Per-Workspace Pricing Against a Per-Conversation Meter

These two tools look similar on a feature list and bill on opposite principles. Crisp charges a flat monthly price per workspace and does not meter your conversations. Tidio charges by billable conversation and meters its Lyro AI agent again on a second line. Which one is cheaper for you is not a matter of taste. It is arithmetic, and the inputs are your monthly conversation volume and how much of it you want a machine to answer.

Every figure below comes from the two vendors' own pricing pages, captured on 2026-08-21. Both pages have gaps, and I will point at them as they come up rather than fill them in with guesses.

The two price lists

Crisp, as of publication, per Crisp's pricing page:

Those prices are per workspace, not per seat. Customer profile caps run 100, 5,000, 50,000 and 200,000 across the four tiers. Extra agents are published only on Plus, at $10 a month each. Enterprise sits above with unique pricing.

Tidio, from Tidio's pricing page:

Then the AI, priced separately: the Lyro AI Agent add-on starts at $32.50 a month for 50 Lyro conversations. Flows, the rule-based automation product, starts at $24.17 a month from 2,000 visitors reached.

A caveat you need before comparing anything. Tidio's page is mostly an interactive calculator, and it publishes almost no prices in static text beyond the entry rungs. The Lyro slider offers 50, 100, 150, 200, 300, 500, 750 and 1,000 conversations a month, and only the 50 step carries a published price. Growth is labelled "starts at" and covers a range up to 2,000 billable conversations with nothing published in between. There is also a monthly-versus-annual toggle above prices ending in seventeen cents, and the capture does not record which side was active. Tidio's published figures are floors, not quotes.

Crisp's page has the opposite shape of gap. Its plan cards and pricing rows are readable, but the long per-feature checkmark grid renders in the browser and did not survive the capture. So every Crisp feature named below comes from a plan card that names it in text. Where a feature appears in the grid without a legible tier mark, I have left it out.

What each meter counts

Crisp's unit is the workspace. Its FAQ defines that as the place where you invite operators, tied to a unique identifier, billed per workspace rather than per domain, so three storefronts on one workspace is one subscription. The pricing page argues explicitly against consumption billing, comparing it unfavourably to how we buy mobile plans, and states you pay one consistent price regardless of monthly conversation volume. Conversations are the thing Crisp refuses to charge for.

AI is the thing it does charge for. Crisp denominates it in dollars of credit and annotates each allowance with a conversation estimate: $5 for around 90, $25 for around 450, $75 for around 1,350. Divide those pairs and all three land on the same number, a little under six cents per automated conversation. Crisp never prints that rate, so treat it as arithmetic on their figures.

Tidio's unit is the billable conversation, which it defines generously: any live chat, ticket, email or social conversation "that includes a message from a human agent (you)." Spam nobody answers never counts. A forty-message thread counts once. And the line that matters most here, from Tidio's own FAQ: "Responses from Flows and Lyro AI Agent are not counted as 'agent replies'." A conversation Lyro handles alone does not consume a billable conversation. It consumes a Lyro conversation, on the second meter.

The Lyro free allowance catches people out. Tidio's comparison table states it plainly: "Your first 50 conversations are free (lifetime)." Not monthly. Starter's feature list carries the same "50 Lyro AI Agent conversations (one-off)" line, so $24.17 a month buys you no renewing AI quota at all.

The arithmetic, both directions

On AI, at the entry rung, Crisp is dramatically cheaper. Tidio's $32.50 for 50 Lyro conversations works out to 65 cents apiece. Crisp's implied credit rate is around six cents. That is roughly a twelvefold gap on published numbers. Tidio's higher rungs are unpriced and almost certainly carry volume discounts, so the gap at 500 conversations a month is unknown, but it would have to be a very steep curve to close.

On the cheapest renewing AI setup, Tidio is cheaper by $12.50. Tidio's FAQ confirms Lyro can be bought standalone while keeping the free human-conversation allowance, so the floor is $32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations and 50 billable ones. Crisp's floor for any AI at all is Mini at $45, which brings around 90 automated conversations, four seats and no cap on human volume. Cheapest wins Tidio; most AI per dollar wins Crisp.

On human volume, the crossover sits between 100 and 250 conversations a month. Under 100 billable conversations, Tidio Starter at $24.17 undercuts Crisp Mini at $45 and throws in six more seats. At 101, Tidio's floor becomes Growth at $49.17 and climbs from there, while Crisp Mini stays $45 at any volume. Above roughly 250 human-answered conversations a month, Crisp is cheaper on published prices and gets cheaper the busier you are.

On a genuinely AI-first queue, Crisp wins on published figures and it is not close. A store wanting 400 automated conversations a month buys Crisp Essentials at $95, which covers around 450 and includes ten seats and unlimited human chat. The Tidio equivalent is a chat plan plus the 500-conversation Lyro rung, and that rung has no published price. Its only anchor is the 65-cent entry rate.

On a seasonal spike, Crisp wins by construction. If December triples your volume, a flat per-workspace fee does not move. A per-conversation meter does.

Where price is not the deciding factor

Several things separate these two that have nothing to do with volume.

Social channels. Tidio's comparison table marks Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and email integrations as included on every tier, Free included. Crisp names its omnichannel inbox (WhatsApp Business, Instagram DMs, SMS, Line, Viber) on the Essentials card at $95. If most of your customers reach you by DM, Tidio hands you that at $0 and Crisp asks $95 a month for it. Crisp also limits a workspace to one connection of each channel type, with email as the exception, so two Instagram accounts means two subscriptions.

Ticketing. Tidio's table shows live chat and ticketing across all five tiers. Crisp names its ticketing system and customer portal on the Plus card, at $295. For a store that wants tickets rather than chat threads, that is a wide gap.

Ecommerce connection. Crisp's Free card names ecommerce integrations for Shopify, Adobe, WooCommerce and Prestashop, at zero dollars. Tidio marks native Shopify actions as unavailable on Free and Starter, starting at Growth. Worth reading precisely: Crisp describes syncing conversations with the store, Tidio describes actions inside chat. Those are different capabilities and the pages do not describe them in comparable terms.

Getting the badge off. Tidio sells branding removal as a $16.67 add-on on Growth and includes it on Plus and above. Crisp names white labelling on Plus at $295. If an unbranded widget is a requirement, Tidio's route costs $65.84 a month and Crisp's costs $295.

Seats at the small end. Ten agents on every Tidio self-serve plan against 2 on Crisp Free and 4 on Mini. A six-person team on modest volume is a Tidio customer on seat count alone, unless it wants to jump to Crisp Essentials at $95.

Trials. Crisp gives 14 days of everything with no card. Tidio gives 7, also with no card, then drops you to Free.

Picking one

Web-only store, under 100 unique customers, no AI yet. Crisp Free. Unlimited conversations and the Shopify connection at zero dollars, with the profile cap of 100 as the thing that eventually ends it.

Store whose customers mostly DM on Instagram or WhatsApp. Tidio, at whatever tier your volume demands. Crisp charges $95 to open those channels.

Team of five to ten, moderate volume, humans doing the answering. Tidio Starter at $24.17 if you stay under 100 billable conversations. Cross that line and Crisp Mini at $45 wins, though you drop to four seats. Crisp Essentials at $95 buys back the ten seats and keeps volume unlimited.

Busy queue, 500 or more human-answered conversations a month. Crisp. Flat pricing is worth most exactly where a meter hurts most.

AI as the primary responder. Crisp on published pricing, with a caveat: Crisp does not publish a top-up rate for extra credit either, so both vendors leave you guessing about the cost of exceeding your AI allowance.

Needing ticketing, a customer portal or an unbranded widget on a budget. Tidio.

Multi-brand. Neither is comfortable. Crisp wants a workspace per brand, discounted 20% at three or more additional workspaces on Essentials and Plus only. Tidio puts Multiproject on Plus at $300 and up.

For the full tier-by-tier breakdown of either, we have written up Crisp's pricing and Tidio's pricing separately, including the numbers each vendor leaves off its page.

If neither shape fits

Both of these are shared inboxes that added AI. If what you want is the AI answering order status, returns and product questions for a small store, and the inbox is secondary, Ernest prices for that: one meter, AI included at every tier, $0 for 100 conversations that never expire, then $49 a month for 500, $149 for 2,000 and $299 for 10,000. No seat fees, no separate AI quota. The honest limits, since both tools here beat it on several: storefront widget and email only, so no WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger or SMS, and no ticketing portal or CRM. Refunds always need merchant approval.

The wider field is sorted by shopping reason in our roundup of customer service chatbots.

Before you sign

Do two things. Open Tidio's calculator, move both sliders to the volumes you actually expect, and write down the total, because the published prices are floors and the rungs above them are computed in the browser. Then ask Crisp in its own chat widget what extra AI credit costs mid-month, because that number is not on the page and it is the one that decides whether flat pricing stays flat.

All figures here are as of publication and come from each vendor's public pricing page. Both change their prices, and their pages are the authority over this one.