Gorgias vs Tidio (2026): Pricing, AI and Which to Pick

Gorgias vs Tidio comes down to how your support team works. Pick Gorgias if you sell on Shopify, run a ticket queue, and want people and AI to refund, cancel and edit orders inside it. Pick Tidio if you want live chat on a free-forever plan, with Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp included, and an AI agent you add when you need it.

Below: prices checked 22 October 2026 on each vendor's own pages, AI billing, a worked monthly cost for a small Shopify store, Shopify order actions, setup, and what to use when neither fits.

Gorgias vs Tidio at a glance

Gorgias is the deeper Shopify helpdesk; Tidio is the cheaper place to start.

How much does Gorgias cost?

Gorgias Starter costs $10 a month for 50 tickets, and the self-serve ladder tops out with Gorgias Advanced at $900 a month for 5,000 tickets on monthly billing. The AI Agent is an extra line on top of whichever plan you pick.

A Gorgias ticket is billable once your helpdesk replies, whether a person, a rule or the AI Agent sends the reply, and counts once however long the thread (Gorgias billing docs). The plans, as listed on Gorgias's pricing page:

Extra tickets cost $0.40 each on Gorgias Starter and Basic and $0.36 on Pro and Advanced. Seats aren't priced per agent. Voice and SMS are add-ons from Basic, priced by volume, with no figure on the pricing page. Enterprise is a custom quote.

How much does Tidio cost?

Tidio Starter costs $29 a month, or $24.17 a month billed yearly, for 100 billable conversations. Tidio Growth starts at $59 a month ($49.17 billed yearly) for 250. The Lyro AI agent and Flows automation are priced separately and can be bought on their own.

A Tidio "billable conversation" is any chat, ticket, email or social conversation that includes a reply from a human agent. Replies from Lyro and Flows don't count, and unanswered messages are free (Tidio pricing). Yearly billing gives "2 months free", so each yearly price is ten-twelfths of the monthly one.

On top of a plan, Tidio Lyro costs $39 a month for 50 AI conversations, $75 for 100, $350 for 500 and $700 for 1,000. Tidio Flows starts at $29 a month for 2,000 visitors reached.

Can I use Tidio for free?

Yes. Tidio's Free plan is free forever and needs no card. It includes 50 billable conversations a month, up to 10 seats, live chat and ticketing, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and email, and Flows that can reach 100 visitors a month.

The AI part is limited. Free accounts get 50 Lyro conversations for the lifetime of the account, and they only refresh monthly once you buy a Lyro plan (Tidio FAQ). New accounts also get a 7-day trial of the paid features, then drop back to Free unless they upgrade.

Gorgias has no free plan. It offers a 7-day trial with all features and doesn't ask for payment details to start it.

How do Gorgias and Tidio charge for AI?

Gorgias charges when its AI resolves a conversation. Tidio charges for every conversation Lyro replies in, resolved or not. That one difference decides most of the AI bill.

Gorgias AI Agent. Gorgias defines an automated interaction as "a customer request that's fully resolved without a human agent." Each costs $1.00 on monthly plans or $0.90 on annual plans, comes in a bundle sized to your plan (30, 190 or 530), and costs $1.50 above that bundle. Each one also counts as a helpdesk ticket. If the AI hands over to a person, you pay the ticket fee only, and if an agent replies within 72 hours of an AI resolution, it's charged as a ticket instead. Gorgias's docs say the AI Agent works across email, chat, SMS, Instagram DMs, Messenger and WhatsApp, in over 80 languages (AI Agent explained). On Gorgias Starter, the plan table shows no AI actions or brand-voice controls; both start on Basic.

Tidio Lyro. Tidio counts "a customer interaction initiated through any channel integrated with Tidio that has at least one reply from our AI Agent" as one Lyro conversation. However many times Lyro replies, it's still one. But a chat Lyro starts and a person finishes still uses a Lyro conversation, and becomes a billable conversation too. At list prices that works out to $0.78 per Lyro conversation at 50 a month and $0.70 at 1,000, or $0.65 and $0.58 billed yearly. Lyro answers in 45+ languages, according to Tidio. Tidio Premium offers pay-per-resolution billing, but that plan is sales-led.

What does a month cost for a small Shopify store?

For a store with 1,000 support conversations a month where AI fully resolves half, monthly list prices come to $1,015–$1,075 on Gorgias and $479–$829 on Tidio. Tidio's range depends on whether Lyro touches every conversation or only the ones it can finish.

The assumptions: 1,000 conversations, each one ticket, none split or reopened. AI resolves 500 with no human reply; people handle the other 500. Monthly billing, published prices only.

Gorgias. All 1,000 conversations get a reply from the helpdesk, so all 1,000 are billable tickets, and the 500 AI resolutions are also automated interactions.

Tidio. Only the 500 conversations a person replies to are billable, which puts you on the 600-conversation tier of Tidio Growth at $129 a month.

Billed yearly, the Tidio totals fall to about $399 and $691 a month. Gorgias Pro billed annually comes to $471 + $465 = $936 a month.

Where the numbers move:

• Gorgias's billing docs say you can raise a product's usage limit to avoid overage, but the pricing page lists no prices for bigger AI bundles. At the $1.00 base rate, 500 interactions would cost $500 rather than the bundle plus $1.50 overage, so ask before you buy.
• A Gorgias chat that gets a new message more than three days after the last one becomes a new ticket, so returning customers can add tickets.
• On Tidio, every conversation Lyro replies to counts, even if a person ends it, so routing changes the bill.
• Crossing a Tidio Growth tier (250, 400, 600, 800 and up) moves you to the next price.

Which is better for Shopify order actions?

Gorgias. Both let your team act on Shopify orders from the inbox, but Gorgias's AI Agent has refunds, cancellations and order edits as ready-made actions, while Tidio's Lyro reaches order systems through actions you connect to your APIs.

Gorgias says agents can "create, duplicate, edit, and refund Shopify orders within Gorgias," and cancel them, without leaving the helpdesk (Gorgias for Shopify). Its AI Agent page lists actions such as a full or partial refund, cancelling an eligible order, editing or replacing an order, updating an address before fulfillment, starting a return with a prepaid label, applying a discount, adding to cart, and pausing or skipping a subscription, with "130+" in its action library (Gorgias AI Agent). Its plan table marks these actions from Basic.

Tidio lists native Shopify actions on Growth and above: agents can "cancel orders, offer refunds, or change shipping addresses directly from your support dashboard," see order history and preview carts (Tidio for Shopify). For the AI, Lyro's Smart Actions check order status, change delivery details on unfulfilled orders and start returns, through connections to your systems' APIs (Lyro Smart Actions). The Free plan gets one action, a paid Lyro plan three, and Plus up to ten.

Not on Shopify? This flips. Gorgias's docs say its AI Agent and Order Management support Shopify only, not BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce or PrestaShop (compatibility table). Its helpdesk still connects to WooCommerce on every plan, BigCommerce from Basic and Magento from Pro. Tidio lists integrations for WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce (Magento), PrestaShop and Wix (Tidio integrations).

For AI that sells before the order, see our guide to AI chat commerce from add-to-cart to checkout.

Which is easier to set up?

Tidio is quicker to get running. Gorgias takes more configuration, with more hands-on onboarding on its bigger plans.

Tidio installs from the Shopify App Store in three steps, or with one line of code elsewhere, and says you can "start for free in under 5 minutes." Lyro learns from FAQ uploads, a website scraper and imported Zendesk articles.

Gorgias says its AI Agent can be "live in under an hour." You shape it with skills, knowledge, actions and tone of voice, and can test it on real tickets in a sandbox first. Onboarding is self-serve on Starter and Basic, one-to-one on Pro and white-glove on Advanced. Both setup times are the vendors' own claims.

When neither fits

If what you mainly need is AI answers in WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and Messenger at a flat monthly price, a helpdesk may be more than you need. Full disclosure: Aivastark is our product, and it's built for that case.

Aivastark answers WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, Messenger, Telegram and email from its Starter plan at $39 a month (pricing). It connects your own WhatsApp Business account, so Meta bills message fees to you directly and Aivastark adds no markup. Starter includes 5,000 credits, and a standard reply is one credit. In the example above, five AI replies in each of the 1,000 conversations would use the whole allowance; Shopify lookups and other tool steps use extra credits, and paid plans bill overage rather than stop answering. With Shopify connected, it looks up live orders and can change a delivery address, start a return or add to cart, each after the customer confirms. With handoff switched on, a customer who asks for a person lands in a unified inbox with the full thread.

Be clear about the trade. Aivastark is not a full helpdesk. It doesn't issue refunds or cancel orders, and it has no SMS or phone line. Gorgias has much deeper Shopify helpdesk workflows, and Tidio gives you live chat with messaging channels on a free plan, where Aivastark's Free plan covers the website widget only. More detail: Aivastark vs Gorgias, Aivastark vs Tidio, all comparisons and AI support for ecommerce.

Bottom line

Choose Gorgias if you're a Shopify brand with a team working tickets and you want refunds, cancellations and order edits handled in the conversation, by people or by AI. Budget for per-resolution AI fees on top of ticket fees.

Choose Tidio if you want to start free with live chat and messaging channels, and add Lyro once you know your volume. Route chats so Lyro takes the ones it can finish.

If you want AI answering DMs at a flat price and don't need a helpdesk, compare Aivastark's plans.