In this guide
As of October 2026, Tidio's Lyro AI Agent starts at $32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations. That works out to 65¢ a conversation. A conversation counts once Lyro has replied at least once, whether or not the visitor got what they needed. Fifty conversations is fewer than two a day over a 30-day month.
That's the short version. Below we look at what a Lyro conversation is, how conversation billing compares with billing per reply, and what three different shops would pay. We make a competing chatbot, so we've kept to Tidio's published figures and included the cases where Tidio is the better buy. For some shops it clearly is.
Tidio Lyro pricing (as of October 2026)
These are the two entry prices on Tidio's pricing page as we read it in October 2026:
| Plan | Starting price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Lyro AI Agent | From $32.50/mo | 50 AI conversations |
| Growth (helpdesk) | From about $49/mo | 250 billable conversations |
The two plans meter different things. Lyro is the AI agent, and it counts conversations that Lyro answers. Growth is Tidio's helpdesk plan, and its "billable conversations" are ones where a human agent sent a message. Tidio's pricing page says replies from Lyro and from its automated Flows don't count as agent replies. So a shop that wants both an AI and a person answering chats is looking at two meters, not one.
The page has a calculator for higher Lyro volumes. We haven't quoted those tiers here because the price depends on the volume you pick. Run your own number on Tidio's pricing page, and treat that page as the authority over any summary, ours included.
What counts as a Lyro conversation
Tidio's pricing page defines a Lyro conversation as a customer interaction, through any channel connected to Tidio, that has at least one reply from Lyro. If Lyro replies many times in the same chat, it's still one conversation. If the customer comes back later in the same thread, it's still one.
Two things follow from that:
- Long chats are good value. A visitor who asks about shipping, then returns, then sizing, then whether you ship to Canada uses one conversation for four answers.
- Short or failed chats cost the same as long ones. A visitor who asks one question, gets an answer that doesn't help and closes the window has also used one conversation. It counts whether or not anything was solved.
Our guide to chatbot pricing models goes through conversations, replies, credits and resolutions side by side if you want the wider picture.
Conversation billing vs reply billing
We bill on replies. One reply is one answer to one question, so the visitor above who asks four things uses four replies on our plans and one conversation on Lyro. Neither way is better in general. Which one costs less depends on how your visitors chat.
At entry prices, here is what one answer costs on Lyro depending on how many questions a typical chat holds. These are illustrations, not measurements; check your own chat history for the real figure.
| Questions per chat | Lyro cost per answer ($32.50 ÷ 50 conversations) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 65¢ |
| 2 | about 32.5¢ |
| 3 | about 21.7¢ |
| 5 | 13¢ |
| 10 | 6.5¢ |
Our Starter plan is $49 a month for 1,000 replies, about 4.9¢ a reply. Growth is $149 for 5,000 (about 3¢) and Scale is $449 for 20,000 (about 2.2¢). On a per-answer basis, a Lyro conversation would need about 13 questions in it to match Starter.
That comparison leaves out the thing that matters most for a small shop, which is the minimum. Lyro's entry price is $32.50 and ours is $49. If you only need a few dozen AI chats a month, you'll pay less on Lyro, however you slice the unit cost.
We're also not the cheapest per reply. As of October 2026, Botsonic ($19 for 1,000 messages), SiteGPT on its cheaper model ($59 for 4,000) and Chatling ($25 for 1,750 credits) all cost less per message than our Starter plan.
How far 50 conversations go
Fifty conversations a month is about 1.7 a day. Whether that's enough depends on traffic, not business size. A one-person shop with a popular product page can pass 50 in a week. A consultancy with a quiet site may never reach it.
A few rough ways to estimate before you buy:
- Count your current contact-form messages and emails that ask something your website already answers. Those are the chats a bot would take.
- Check whether you already run live chat. If you do, its monthly chat count is a better guide than anything we can tell you.
- Allow for chats that go nowhere. People open the widget, type "hi" and leave. If Lyro replies, that's a conversation.
Tidio's pricing page, as we read it, didn't say what happens to Lyro when you reach your 50. Ask Tidio before you rely on it at the end of a busy month. On our plans, when you reach your monthly reply limit, visitors get a contact form instead of an answer, and you're never billed extra.
Three worked months
Each example uses Tidio's prices as of October 2026 and our own for comparison. Our plans are Starter at $49 for 1,000 replies, Growth at $149 for 5,000 and Scale at $449 for 20,000. New monthly subscriptions get 30% off the first three months, and paying yearly gets 12 months for the price of 10. Lead capture is included from Starter, and there's no branding fee on any plan. Details are on our pricing page.
Month 1: a quiet site
A bookkeeper's site gets about 40 chats a month, most with one or two questions. Nobody needs to chat live.
- Lyro: 40 conversations fits inside 50. $32.50.
- Us: about 60 replies, on Starter. $49, or $34.30 a month for the first three months.
Lyro is cheaper here, by $16.50 a month at full price. If your volume looks like this and stays there, Lyro is a sensible choice.
Month 2: a small online shop
A shop gets about 200 chats a month, averaging two questions each. The owner wants the bot to take contact details when it can't help, and doesn't want to answer chats personally.
- Lyro: 200 conversations is four times the 50 in the entry price. Price the 200-conversation tier on Tidio's calculator; it will be above $32.50.
- Us: 200 × 2 = 400 replies, on Starter. $49.
Month 3: a busier shop with longer chats
A shop gets about 600 chats a month, averaging three questions each, mostly about products and delivery.
- Lyro: 600 conversations is twelve times the entry allowance. Again, use Tidio's calculator for that tier.
- Us: 600 × 3 = 1,800 replies. That's over Starter's 1,000, so Growth. $149.
If your chats ran to ten questions each, the sums would shift toward Lyro, because Tidio would still bill one conversation and we'd bill ten replies. Count your questions, not your visitors.
To try your own figures across several vendors, use our chatbot cost calculator. For a broader look at budgets, see what an AI chatbot costs a small business.
When Tidio is the better choice
Tidio is a helpdesk first, and the AI is one part of it. That makes it a better fit than us for several kinds of shop:
- You want to chat with customers yourself. Tidio has a shared inbox and a mobile app for answering chats in person. We don't do live chat with humans at all. Our bot answers, and when it can't help it takes the visitor's contact details through lead capture for you to follow up by email or phone.
- You want the AI to hand a chat to a person mid-conversation. Tidio hands over to a human in the inbox. Ours says it doesn't know, captures a lead and flags the gap.
- You want flows, email and chat in one place. Tidio puts these together. We're a website chatbot and nothing else.
- You get fewer than 50 AI chats a month. Lyro at $32.50 costs less than our $49 Starter, as Month 1 shows.
There are also things our chatbot can't do that you might be expecting from any chat tool. It can't look up a customer's order, so "where's my parcel?" gets your published delivery information, not a tracking status. It doesn't book appointments; it takes a request as a lead for you to confirm. It isn't covered for health information under HIPAA, and it doesn't give legal advice.
Where we'd suggest looking at us instead: you don't want to answer chats live, your visitors ask several questions or many short ones, and you'd rather the bill depend on answers given than on chats opened. The answer gaps view shows you which questions it couldn't answer, so you can add the missing detail to your site.
If you're on Shopify, our post on Shopify Inbox vs an AI chatbot covers Shopify's own chat tool too. Our full Tidio comparison lists the differences point by point, and the 3-day free trial on our signup page gives you 100 replies with no card to see how many your own visitors use.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Tidio Lyro cost?
As of October 2026, Tidio's pricing page lists the Lyro AI Agent from $32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations. Higher volumes are priced on the calculator on the same page. Tidio's Growth helpdesk plan, which covers chats answered by people, is listed separately from about $49 a month for 250 billable conversations.
What counts as a Lyro conversation?
According to Tidio's pricing page, it's any customer interaction through a channel connected to Tidio that gets at least one reply from Lyro. Further replies in the same chat, or the customer coming back later in the same thread, don't count again. A chat counts whether or not Lyro solved the problem.
Is 50 Lyro conversations enough?
For a quiet site, often yes. Fifty a month is about 1.7 a day, so a shop that gets a chat or two a day will be close to the limit, and a shop with steady traffic will pass it. Count the questions your contact form and inbox get now before deciding.
Is a conversation or a reply cheaper?
It depends on how many questions a typical chat holds. At entry prices, Lyro costs 65¢ a conversation and our Starter plan about 4.9¢ a reply, so a chat with one or two questions costs less per answer on replies, and a very long chat costs less on conversations. The entry price matters too: Lyro starts lower than our Starter plan.
Can The Biggest Nerd do live chat like Tidio?
No. We don't offer live chat with humans. Our chatbot answers from your website, and when it can't help it collects the visitor's contact details so you can follow up. If you want to talk to customers in a chat window yourself, Tidio is built for that and we aren't.