Free AI Chatbot for Your Website: What Tidio Really Gives You for €0
In short
- Tidio’s Free plan puts a chat widget with automated answers on your site for $0 a month.
- Free includes 50 human-answered conversations a month, Flows for 100 visitors a month, and your first 50 Lyro AI conversations (once, not monthly).
- Covering evening chat with a person costs about €480 a month; Tidio Free costs €0, and Lyro AI starts at about €29 a month.
A customer asks “Do you ship to Germany?” at 23:40. Nobody answers. They buy somewhere else. That’s how a small shop loses money while it sleeps.
The expensive fix is a person on chat in the evenings and at weekends. The cheap fix is a chatbot that answers the same 20 questions for you, 24/7. How much does it cost to start? Nothing. But read the fine print with me — Tidio’s “free AI” has a catch, and I’ll show you exactly where.
What’s really free on Tidio
Tidio is three products in one: live chat (you answer), Flows (rule-based automations) and Lyro (the AI agent). Here is the Free plan, straight from Tidio’s pricing page:
- $0 a month. No card needed.
- 50 billable conversations a month. A conversation only counts when a human — you — replies. Replies from Flows and Lyro don’t count.
- Flows: first 100 visitors a month free. Welcome messages, FAQ buttons, “leave your email” when you’re offline.
- Lyro AI: your first 50 conversations free — lifetime. Not per month. Once.
- Live chat, ticketing and integrations for Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and email.
So be clear about what you get. The free forever part is the chat widget plus rule-based Flows that answer 24/7. The AI part is a 50-conversation trial. After that, Lyro as a standalone product starts at $32.50 a month on annual billing, for 50 Lyro conversations a month. Paid live chat (Starter) starts at $24.17 a month on annual billing.
Set it up in 30 minutes
- Write your top 15 questions first. Shipping, delivery time, returns, payment, warranty, opening hours. Write short, exact answers. This is 80% of the result.
- Create a free account at tidio.com and add the widget to your site. There are plugins for WordPress/WooCommerce and an app for Shopify; any other site gets a code snippet.
- Set your look and hours. Colors, greeting, and operating hours so the widget knows when you’re offline.
- Build a FAQ Flow. Use a ready template: a welcome message with buttons (“Shipping”, “Returns”, “Order status”). Each button returns your prepared answer. This is the free 24/7 bot.
- Add an offline Flow. When you’re away, the bot collects the visitor’s email and question, so you reply in the morning instead of losing them.
- Test Lyro with your 50 free conversations. Feed it your FAQ and website content, then watch what it answers. Correct what it gets wrong.
- Decide with numbers. After those 50 conversations, look at how many Lyro solved without you. Worth €29 a month? Then pay. Not worth it? Stay on Flows.
Do the math
Do the math: the old way is a person covering the chat when you can’t. My assumption: 2 hours every evening, 30 days, €8 an hour = €480 a month, €5,760 a year. Tidio Free with Flows: €0 a month, €0 a year. If you add Lyro AI: $32.50 a month billed annually = $390 a year, at the ECB rate of October 23, 2026 (1 € = 1.1193 $) about €29.04 a month, €348.43 a year. Even the paid AI version is roughly 16 times cheaper than a person. (Note: a person also sells; a bot mostly answers. Count that.)
The honest weak spots
- “Free AI chatbot” is half true. 50 Lyro conversations for the lifetime of the account is a trial, not a plan. I’d like Tidio to say this louder on the homepage.
- Flows are not AI. They follow your buttons and rules. A customer who types a strange question gets the fallback, not a smart answer.
- 100 visitors a month on Flows is fine for a small site, tight for a growing shop.
- Bad answers in, bad answers out. Lyro is only as good as your FAQ. Outdated prices on your site become outdated answers in chat.
Alternatives
- A FAQ page + WhatsApp/Messenger auto-reply — the zero-tech version for very small shops.
- Other live-chat tools with free tiers (Crisp, tawk.to and similar) — compare their AI add-on prices before you choose.
- Your own bot with Make + an AI model — cheapest at scale, but you build and maintain it yourself.
Ivan’s Take
Start free, but don’t believe the word “AI” on the free plan — it’s 50 conversations, once. The real free win is Flows: a FAQ bot plus offline email capture, working 24/7 for €0. Use the 50 Lyro chats as a test, and if it answers most questions without you, €29 a month is still a bargain compared to any human shift.
Source: Tidio
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