Gorgias vs Tidio
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
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The short answer
Editorial assessmentGorgias compared with Tidio
Tidio is chat-first with Lyro AI priced per AI conversation, and it is the cheaper way to deflect high-volume storefront questions before they ever reach a queue. Gorgias is a full help desk with email, social, voice, SMS, and order actions behind it. Pick Tidio if your problem is pre-purchase chat volume on a small store; pick Gorgias if your problem is post-purchase ticket handling across channels and you need agents to act on orders rather than just answer.
Choose Gorgias if
Direct-to-consumer Shopify stores doing between a few hundred and a few thousand support conversations a month, especially ones with seasonal volume spikes and a part-time or agency support rota, where most tickets are order-status, returns, and exchanges and where the fastest fix is an agent acting on the order from inside the ticket.
Choose Tidio if
Small and mid-sized ecommerce businesses, especially Shopify and WooCommerce stores, that want a live chat widget running today, AI handling order-status and shipping questions, and no per-seat charge for a rota of part-time agents.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Gorgias | Tidio |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Support | Support |
| Starting price | $10 per month for the help desk alone (Starter, 50 tickets, 3 seats), or $40 with AI Agent included (7 days trial) | $24.17/mo (Starter, as published on the pricing page) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Volume-based subscription metered by billable tickets rather than agent seats, now quoted as a combined price for the help desk plus AI Agent. The pricing page splits each plan into a Helpdesk component and an AI Agent component, bundles a number of automated interactions into each tier, and meters anything beyond the allowance per ticket or per interaction. Voice and SMS are separate usage-based add-ons. | Volume-based subscription metered by billable conversations rather than by agent, with Lyro AI conversations and Flows visitors sold as separate add-on meters. Annual billing offers two months free; the top Premium tier is quote-only and uses pay-per-resolution AI billing. |
| Free plan | No | Free tier with 50 billable conversations, 50 one-time Lyro AI conversations, 100 Flows visitors reached, and 10 seats. |
| Free trial | 7 days, capped at 10 email ticket messages | 7 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Direct-to-consumer Shopify stores doing between a few hundred and a few thousand support conversations a month, especially ones with seasonal volume spikes and a part-time or agency support rota, where most tickets are order-status, returns, and exchanges and where the fastest fix is an agent acting on the order from inside the ticket. | Small and mid-sized ecommerce businesses, especially Shopify and WooCommerce stores, that want a live chat widget running today, AI handling order-status and shipping questions, and no per-seat charge for a rota of part-time agents. |
| Setup time | Half a day to be answering tickets, one to two weeks to be answering them well. Connecting the store and forwarding the support address is quick; building the macro library, the rules, and the help center content that actually reduces handle time is the part teams underestimate. | Under thirty minutes for a live widget through the Shopify or WordPress app. Connecting Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, building Flows from templates, and training Lyro on your content is realistically one to two weeks, most of it spent making the knowledge content good enough for the AI. |
| Learning curve | Low for agents, who mostly need to learn that the order actions are in the sidebar. Moderate for the person who owns the account, because Rules, Macros, Views, and AI Guidance interact, and a badly written auto-reply Rule can make otherwise free tickets billable. | Low throughout. The interface is designed for non-technical owner-operators, Flows starts from templates rather than a blank canvas, and Lyro ingests content automatically rather than requiring a scripted bot. The genuinely hard part is not the software: it is tuning Lyro's handoff rules and monitoring the three meters so the bill does not surprise you. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS, Android, Embeddable chat widget, Shopify app, BigCommerce app, Adobe Commerce module | Web app, iOS and Android apps, Windows and Mac desktop apps, Chat widget, OpenAPI access (Plus tier) |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II (report available on request via the trust center), HIPAA capability documented in the trust center, GDPR | GDPR handling as a company operating from Poland under EU law, Detailed certification evidence is not published on the main marketing pages |
| Founded | 2015 | 2013 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Szczecin, Poland, with offices in Warsaw and San Francisco |
| Ownership | Venture-backed, independent | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
Gorgias
Strengths
- The only mainstream help desk that does not price by seat above the entry tiers, which is a structural advantage for stores with seasonal, part-time, or agency support staffing.
- Shopify actions inside the ticket are the real product. Refunding, cancelling, and editing orders without leaving the conversation removes the tab-switching that is most of the actual work in ecommerce support.
- Revenue statistics attribute sales back to support conversations, which is the single most useful reporting feature in this category and is not offered by Help Scout, Freshdesk, or Front.
- Honest AI billing boundary: you are charged for a conversation the AI resolves or for the human ticket it becomes, not for both.
Limitations
- The AI Agent requires Shopify. BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce, and WooCommerce merchants get the 2022 help desk while paying for a company whose entire current positioning is the AI.
- Two meters running at once makes the bill hard to forecast, and voice and SMS add two more. Budgeting for Gorgias is a modelling exercise, not a line item.
- The three-seat cap on Starter quietly undermines the marketing claim of never charging per agent, and the fourth seat means moving to Basic. Gorgias lifted Basic to 500 seats in 2026, so the old $60 to $360 jump for a fourth agent has gone.
- Nothing here fits non-commerce businesses. Strip out the order object and you have an ordinary shared inbox priced against a commerce feature set you cannot use.
Tidio
Strengths
- The fastest path from nothing to a working chat widget in this category, with native Shopify, WordPress, and WooCommerce apps and 120-plus integrations.
- Conversation-based rather than seat-based pricing, which is genuinely better for teams running a large rota of part-time agents; even the free plan includes 10 seats.
- Lyro is well suited to its actual job: order status, shipping, and availability questions grounded in your own content, with configurable handoff and Smart Actions for lead qualification.
- A free plan that is a real product, not a demo, including the widget, the help desk, and a one-time Lyro allowance.
Limitations
- Three separate meters (billable conversations, Lyro AI conversations, Flows visitors) make the real monthly cost genuinely hard to forecast, and all three move with success.
- Lyro bills per AI conversation rather than per resolution on every self-serve tier, so you pay when the AI participates even if it fails and a human finishes the job. Pay-per-resolution is reserved for the quote-only Premium tier.
- Conversation caps on the lower tiers are tight: 50 on Free and 100 on Starter, which a modest store will exceed in a week.
- The free plan's 50 Lyro conversations are one-time, not monthly, which is easy to misread as an ongoing allowance.
Pricing compared
Gorgias
Volume-based subscription metered by billable tickets rather than agent seats, now quoted as a combined price for the help desk plus AI Agent. The pricing page splits each plan into a Helpdesk component and an AI Agent component, bundles a number of automated interactions into each tier, and meters anything beyond the allowance per ticket or per interaction. Voice and SMS are separate usage-based add-ons.
- Starter$40
- Basic$90
- Pro$550
- Advanced$1,430
- CustomCustom
For a Shopify store doing 1,000 to 3,000 tickets a month with a fluctuating agent count, Gorgias remains the best-priced serious help desk on the market: the help desk component of Pro is $360 a month with 500 seats, which beats six or eight Help Scout seats plus a Shopify connector, and the order actions save real minutes per ticket. Two things changed in 2026 and both matter to the arithmetic. The AI Agent is now part of the headline price rather than a separate purchase, which makes Gorgias look more expensive at a glance and is genuinely cheaper for anyone who was going to buy it anyway: $30 a month on Basic replaces what used to be quoted as a commitment of a few hundred. And the Pro and Advanced overage rate is $36 per 100 tickets rather than $0.25 a ticket, so the penalty for outgrowing an allowance is 44 percent steeper than our previous figure. Below about 300 tickets a month the whole calculation still inverts, because you are paying a platform fee to answer a volume that a shared inbox handles for nothing.
Tidio
Volume-based subscription metered by billable conversations rather than by agent, with Lyro AI conversations and Flows visitors sold as separate add-on meters. Annual billing offers two months free; the top Premium tier is quote-only and uses pay-per-resolution AI billing.
- Free$0
- Starter$24.17
- GrowthFrom $49.17
- PlusFrom $300
- PremiumCustom
For a small ecommerce team, Tidio is easy to justify at the bottom: a free plan with 10 seats, a same-day Shopify install, and a genuinely competent widget. The economics get harder as you grow, because three meters move at once and none of them is headcount. A store handling 2,000 conversations a month with 1,000 of them going through Lyro is looking at the Growth plan plus roughly $500 of AI on top, and the discounted usage rates that fix this arrive at the $300 Plus tier. Compared with Crisp's flat $95 workspace with bundled AI credits, Tidio is more expensive at moderate volume and better at very low volume. Buy Tidio for the widget, the Shopify depth, and the free tier; watch the Lyro meter closely from the first month, because it bills on AI participation rather than on AI success.
Editorial verdict on each
Gorgias
Gorgias is the right answer for Shopify stores and close to the wrong answer for everyone else. The ticket meter and the 500 seats on every plan above Starter genuinely suit a support team whose headcount moves with the season, the order actions inside the ticket save minutes on every conversation that a general help desk cannot, and revenue attribution is the only reporting feature in this bracket that lets a support lead argue in the language finance speaks. What has to be modelled before you buy is the second meter: at $0.85 to $1.00 a resolution beyond a small bundled allowance, the AI Agent can cost more than the help desk itself, and it does not run on BigCommerce or Magento at all, which makes the 2026 marketing story inapplicable to a meaningful chunk of the addressable market. Buy it if you are on Shopify, doing more than a few hundred tickets a month, and willing to judge the AI component on its own business case even though it now arrives bundled in the plan price. Skip it if your customers do not have order numbers, if your volume is small enough that a shared Gmail still works, or if a variable invoice is something your finance team will not tolerate.
Read the full Gorgias profileTidio
Tidio is the most commercially polished SMB chat product in this set and the easiest to put live on a store, and its conversation-based pricing is a genuine kindness to teams with many part-time agents. Lyro is a competent agent aimed at exactly the right questions for its audience. What holds it back is the metering: three independent meters, all moving with your success, and an AI that bills on participation rather than on resolution everywhere except the quote-only Premium tier. That is the least buyer-friendly structure among the AI models in this category, even though the $0.5 unit price looks cheaper than Help Scout's $0.75. Choose Tidio for the widget, the Shopify depth, and the free tier, measure your real Lyro resolution rate during the trial, and compare the resulting number against Crisp's flat workspace fee before you commit at volume.
Read the full Tidio profileGorgias profile last reviewed 2026-10-01; Tidio last reviewed 2026-10-01. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
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Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Gorgias and Tidio?
Tidio is chat-first with Lyro AI priced per AI conversation, and it is the cheaper way to deflect high-volume storefront questions before they ever reach a queue. Gorgias is a full help desk with email, social, voice, SMS, and order actions behind it. Pick Tidio if your problem is pre-purchase chat volume on a small store; pick Gorgias if your problem is post-purchase ticket handling across channels and you need agents to act on orders rather than just answer.
Is Gorgias or Tidio cheaper?
Gorgias starts at $10 per month for the help desk alone (Starter, 50 tickets, 3 seats), or $40 with AI Agent included (7 days trial). Tidio starts at $24.17/mo (Starter, as published on the pricing page) (free plan available). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Gorgias pricing model: Volume-based subscription metered by billable tickets rather than agent seats, now quoted as a combined price for the help desk plus AI Agent. Tidio pricing model: Volume-based subscription metered by billable conversations rather than by agent, with Lyro AI conversations and Flows visitors sold as separate add-on meters.
Does Gorgias or Tidio have a free plan?
Gorgias has no free plan. Trial terms: 7 days, capped at 10 email ticket messages. Tidio has a free plan. Free tier with 50 billable conversations, 50 one-time Lyro AI conversations, 100 Flows visitors reached, and 10 seats. Trial terms: 7 days, no credit card required.
Who should choose Gorgias?
Direct-to-consumer Shopify stores doing between a few hundred and a few thousand support conversations a month, especially ones with seasonal volume spikes and a part-time or agency support rota, where most tickets are order-status, returns, and exchanges and where the fastest fix is an agent acting on the order from inside the ticket.
Who should choose Tidio?
Small and mid-sized ecommerce businesses, especially Shopify and WooCommerce stores, that want a live chat widget running today, AI handling order-status and shipping questions, and no per-seat charge for a rota of part-time agents.
What are the best alternatives to Gorgias and Tidio?
SaaSTracker profiles 27 products in Customer Support Platforms. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Help Scout (Category Leader), tawk.to (Best Value), Plain (Momentum). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
