The best AI chatbots for small and mid-sized websites in 2026
Tidio takes first place because it is the only platform here that gives a ten-person team a working AI agent for roughly the price of one Intercom seat. What separates these seven is not the chat widget, which is a solved problem, but how each vendor meters the AI behind it.
Ten seats are included at every self-service tier, so the bill tracks your chat volume rather than your headcount.
Disclosure: WhatAllSay is reader-supported. One product on this page, Tidio, is a partner we earn a commission from if you subscribe through our link, at no extra cost to you. The other six are here because the comparison needs them, and we make nothing if you pick one. Rankings are not for sale, and no vendor saw this page before it went live.
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Five common cases, and the pick that fits each one. Jump straight to yours.
Seven AI chatbots, ranked
Every price below is the vendor's own published rate. Where a vendor shows both monthly and annual billing, the annual rate is quoted and labelled.
Tidio
Tidio is a live chat widget with an AI agent called Lyro bolted on, aimed squarely at ecommerce and small service businesses. The ranking rests on one structural decision: Tidio bills for conversations, not seats. Starter is $24.17 a month on annual billing ($290 a year, which Tidio frames as two months free) and includes ten seats, where Intercom's entry tier charges $29 for each seat and Zendesk charges $55.
Lyro itself runs on Claude from Anthropic plus Tidio's own models, which the company states on its Lyro page. Tidio claims Lyro “boosts your resolution rate to 67% on average” and backs a floor of 50% contractually, but only on the Premium tier. A Lyro conversation is counted as any customer interaction that gets at least one AI reply, and follow-up replies inside that same interaction do not count again, which is a more honest meter than per-message credits.
Sentiment is genuinely strong rather than merely positive: 4.6 out of 5 across 1,879 reviews on G2 and 4.7 across 590 on Capterra, with speed of setup the theme customers return to most.
What we liked
- Ten seats included on Free, Starter and Growth, so a small team never pays per person
- A real free tier: 50 billable conversations a month, not a countdown trial
- Lyro is built on Claude plus in-house models, named openly on Tidio's own page rather than hidden behind “proprietary AI”
- Conversation-based AI metering, so a long back-and-forth is charged once
- Premium carries a contractual 50% Lyro resolution floor, which almost nobody else puts in writing
Watch out for
- Three separate meters run at once: billable conversations, Lyro AI conversations and Flows visitors reached, each with its own quota and its own add-on price
- The free plan's 50 Lyro conversations are a one-off lifetime allowance, not a monthly refill, which is easy to misread
- Lyro is an add-on from $32.50 a month on top of your plan, so the headline price is never the real price
- The gap from Growth (from $49.17/mo) to Plus ($300/mo base plus usage) is roughly sixfold with nothing in between
- Customers on Capterra describe the 2024 repricing bluntly, one reporting a bill that went “from $32 a month to $64 a month”
Intercom is the platform Tidio's customers graduate to, and the reason is Fin. Fin is priced at $0.99 per outcome, where an outcome means the customer confirmed the issue was resolved, stopped asking, or the workflow completed. One charge per conversation, however many questions it answers.
That model only makes financial sense above a certain volume, which is exactly why it sits second rather than first here. A five-person team on Essential pays $145 a month before a single AI resolution. The same five people on Tidio Growth pay from $49.17 with Lyro added on top.
Fin ships on all three plans, including the $29 entry tier, so the AI is not held hostage to an enterprise upsell the way it is at HubSpot or Zendesk.
What we liked
- Fin is included on every plan, not gated to the top tier
- Outcome pricing at $0.99 means an unresolved conversation costs nothing
- Deepest ticketing and routing feature set of anything in this list
- Early-stage startups qualify for up to 93% off plus a year of Fin
Watch out for
- Per-seat pricing compounds fast: Expert is $132 for each agent every month
- The $0.99 resolution fee sits on top of seats, so two meters again
- No free tier at all, only a 14-day trial with a one-seat minimum commitment
Crisp prices per workspace rather than per seat, and it is openly opinionated about it: the pricing page asks why anyone would bill on consumption “while we are used to unlimited plans everywhere else”. Mini is $45 a month for the whole team, Essentials $95, Plus $295.
The AI is metered as a credit pool inside each plan rather than a separate subscription. Mini bundles $5 of AI credits, worth around 90 automated conversations; Essentials bundles $25 for around 450; Plus bundles $75 for around 1,350. That is a cleaner mental model than Tidio's three meters, and it is why Crisp is close behind.
It ranks third rather than higher because the free plan includes no AI credits at all, and a two-seat cap is tight for anything past a solo operation.
What we liked
- One price for the whole workspace, so adding a teammate costs nothing
- AI credits bundled into the plan instead of sold as a second subscription
- Free tier covers the widget, shared inbox, mobile apps, chat SDKs and ecommerce integrations
- European-founded, which matters if EU data residency is on your checklist
Watch out for
- The free plan ships with zero AI credits, so the chatbot is effectively paid-only
- Two seats on Free is restrictive next to Tidio's ten
- Credit-to-conversation ratios are approximate by Crisp's own wording (“around 90”, “around 450”), so budgeting takes a month of real data
Chatbase is the narrowest tool here and better for it. You point it at your documentation, it builds an agent, you paste a snippet. There is no live chat team product underneath, so if a human needs to take over you are relying on an integration rather than a native inbox.
Credits scale steeply: 700 a month on Hobby at $40, 4,000 on Standard at $150, 15,000 on Pro at $500. Standard is where the helpdesk features, voice, telephony and API access appear, which makes the real entry point $150 rather than $40 for most teams.
What we liked
- Fastest path from a help centre to a working agent of anything on this list
- Free tier of 50 monthly credits refreshes, unlike Tidio's one-off Lyro allowance
- Standard bundles Stripe and Zendesk integrations plus API access at $150
Watch out for
- Every paid tier below Enterprise includes exactly one AI agent; a second costs $25 a month
- The free plan has “limited access to models” and one workspace member
- No native live chat inbox, so human handoff depends on a third-party tool
LiveChat is the veteran of the group and still the most comfortable product to staff a sales chat with. Every plan includes Text Intelligence: reply suggestions, chat summaries, tag suggestions and a Copilot assistant.
The autonomous piece is a separate product, the Text AI Agent, from $19 per user a month. That places it fifth for AI-first buyers, because the thing you came for is the upsell rather than the platform.
One quiet detail worth knowing before you sign: reply suggestions draw on three knowledge sources on Starter and ten on Team and Business, so the cheap tier's assistant is meaningfully weaker.
What we liked
- Cheapest per-agent entry here at $19 a month on annual billing
- AI assistance features ship on every tier rather than the top one
- The most mature agent-side interface of the seven
Watch out for
- Monthly billing costs roughly 25% more: $25, $59 and $89 against $19, $49 and $79
- The autonomous AI Agent is a separate subscription from $19 per user
- Starter caps reply-suggestion sources at three, a real ceiling on answer quality
- No free plan
Zendesk earns its place for the same reason it costs the most: if the chat widget is one channel inside a real ticketing operation, nothing here matches its back end. AI agents are included in every Suite and Support plan, and Zendesk bills only for customer requests “successfully resolved by the AI agent, without any escalation to a human agent”.
The entry price is the problem for the audience this list is written for. Suite Team at $55 per agent a month on annual billing means a five-person team starts at $275 before AI usage, roughly eleven times Tidio Starter for a team of the same size.
What we liked
- You pay only for resolutions the AI handled without escalating
- AI agents included on every Suite and Support plan, no separate subscription
- The deepest reporting, SLA and routing layer of any product here
Watch out for
- The highest per-agent entry price in this comparison at $55 a month
- Monthly billing is available at higher rates that Zendesk does not publish on the Suite table
- App Builder, Action Builder and Voice bill on consumption above plan allowances
- No free tier
tawk.to is last on AI capability and first on honesty about money. The live chat product is free with unlimited agents, and the founder's stated position is that the company only charges “at the junction where our customers derive value and benefit, not just by limiting access to certain features”.
The AI Assist chatbot starts at $29 a month, with a free tier for sites with limited chat volume. Removing the “Powered by tawk.to” badge is another $29. Hired human agents are billed at $1 an hour, which is a genuinely unusual option nobody else on this list offers.
What we liked
- Unlimited agents at no cost, which no paid product here matches
- Hired chat agents at $1 an hour for round-the-clock cover
- A free AI Assist tier exists for low-volume sites
Watch out for
- The vendor badge stays on your site unless you pay $29 a month to remove it
- AI Assist is the weakest automation layer in this comparison
- Two $29 add-ons stack quickly, so “free” rarely stays free for a commercial site
Website AI chatbots compared
| Product | From | Best for | How the AI is billed | Key limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tidio | $24.17/mo annual | Small ecommerce and SMB teams | Add-on from $32.50/mo per conversation bundle | Three separate meters on one invoice |
| Intercom | $29/seat/mo | Scaling support teams | $0.99 per resolved outcome | Per-seat cost compounds to $132 on Expert |
| Crisp | $0 (Free), $45/mo Mini | Teams that hate per-seat pricing | Bundled AI credits per plan | No AI credits on the free tier |
| Chatbase | $40/mo | Turning docs into an agent fast | Message credits, 700 to 15,000/mo | One AI agent per plan, $25/mo for more |
| LiveChat | $19/agent annual | Sales-led chat | Separate AI Agent from $19/user/mo | Starter limits reply sources to three |
| Zendesk | $55/agent annual | Enterprise ticketing | Per automated resolution, no escalation | Highest entry price here, no free tier |
| tawk.to | $0 | Zero-budget sites | AI Assist from $29/mo | Paid badge removal, weakest automation |
How we scored these
| Factor | Weight | What we looked at |
|---|---|---|
| Total cost at realistic volume | 30% | What a five-person team actually pays once AI usage is added, not the headline tier price |
| How the AI is metered | 25% | Per conversation, per resolution or per credit, and how easy that is to forecast |
| Live chat and human handoff | 20% | Whether a person can take over natively, with context, inside the same inbox |
| Free tier honesty | 15% | Whether the free plan renews monthly or quietly expires, and what it withholds |
| Verified customer sentiment | 10% | Rating aggregates and the recurring themes in written complaints |
How to choose
Count your seats before you count features. Below about five agents, conversation-priced platforms like Tidio and workspace-priced ones like Crisp are dramatically cheaper than anything per-seat. Above fifteen, the arithmetic reverses and Intercom's $0.99 outcome fee starts looking like the cheaper meter.
If your support load is repetitive and well documented, Chatbase will get an agent answering accurately in an afternoon, and you can keep your existing inbox. If it is varied and emotional, pay for a platform with a proper handoff instead.
Budget for the second line item. Only Crisp and Zendesk fold AI into the plan price. Tidio, LiveChat and tawk.to all sell the AI separately, so double the number you first thought of and check it still works.
Run the free tier for a month before committing to annual billing. Tidio, Crisp, Chatbase and tawk.to all have one, and a month of real conversation counts is worth more than any comparison table, including this one.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI chatbot for a small business website?
Tidio, on cost structure. It includes ten seats on every self-service plan and starts at $24.17 a month on annual billing, so a small team is not charged per person. Crisp is the closest alternative if you would rather have AI credits bundled into the plan price than sold as an add-on.
Is Tidio's free plan actually free?
Yes, with one catch worth understanding. The free plan gives you 50 billable conversations a month, 10 seats and 100 Flows visitors a month on an ongoing basis. The 50 Lyro AI conversations, however, are a one-off lifetime allowance rather than a monthly refill, so the AI stops once you have used them.
Tidio vs Intercom: which is cheaper?
For small teams, Tidio, by a wide margin. Intercom charges $29 per seat per month at entry, so five agents cost $145 before any AI usage, against $24.17 total for Tidio Starter. Intercom's $0.99-per-resolution Fin pricing becomes competitive at higher volumes where you would otherwise be buying large conversation bundles.
Do you have to pay extra for Tidio's Lyro AI?
On every self-service tier, yes. Lyro is an add-on starting at $32.50 a month for a bundle of 50 AI conversations, charged on top of your plan. A Lyro conversation is any customer interaction that receives at least one AI reply, and further replies within that interaction are not counted again.
What is the best free live chat with AI?
tawk.to for unlimited free agents, Crisp for the best free feature set, Chatbase if you only want the bot. tawk.to's live chat is free with unlimited agents but keeps a vendor badge on your site unless you pay $29 a month. Crisp's free tier covers two seats and ships no AI credits at all.
How many support questions can an AI chatbot actually resolve?
Vendors publish figures in the 50 to 70 percent range, and the honest answer is that it depends entirely on how well your help content is written. Tidio states Lyro averages 67 percent and contractually guarantees a 50 percent floor on its Premium tier. Zendesk and Intercom sidestep the question by billing only for resolutions that did not escalate to a human.
The bottom line
Tidio wins this list for small and mid-sized websites because it is the only platform that puts ten seats and a working AI agent within reach of a solo founder's budget, and it says openly which models Lyro runs on. Read the three meters carefully before you commit, because the headline price is never the whole invoice.
If you are running fifteen agents or more, Intercom's outcome pricing is the better arithmetic. If you refuse to pay per seat on principle, take Crisp. If your budget is genuinely zero, tawk.to will keep working indefinitely with a badge on your widget.