AI customer service pricing compared
Every figure below was read off the vendor’s own pricing page on . Headline prices are the easy part — the section on metered AI resolutions and add-ons is where budgets actually break.
- Cheapest to start: Tidio — free plan, conversation-based billing.
- Cheapest at scale: HighLevel — flat monthly, unlimited sub-accounts on $297.
- Most predictable per seat: Text — but watch the AI resolution meter.
HighLevel — 14-day free trial See Text pricing Start free on Tidio
The three billing models, in one table
These products are not priced the same way, which is why comparing them head-to-head misleads. Pick the row that matches how your business actually grows.
| HighLevel | Text (LiveChat) | Tidio | |
|---|---|---|---|
| You pay per… | Account (flat) | User / seat | Conversation |
| Cost grows with… | Nothing much — users and contacts are unlimited | Headcount, plus AI usage | Traffic volume |
| Entry price | $97 / mo | $25 / user / mo $19 billed yearly | Free — 50 conversations $24.17/mo Starter (100) $29 billed monthly |
| Top self-serve | $497 / mo | $99 / user / mo $79 billed yearly | from $300/mo Plus + usage, custom quota |
| AI resolutions | Included, not metered publicly | Metered — see below | Lyro: first 50 free, then 50–1,000/mo |
| Free trial | 14 days | available | Free plan + 7-day Lyro |
| Best value at | 5+ clients | A staffed support queue | Low, spiky volume |
HighLevel pricing
Month-to-month, no annual commitment required on the monthly prices.
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency Starter | $97 | — | 3 sub-accounts |
| Agency Unlimited | $297 | $2,970 | Unlimited sub-accounts, contacts and users |
| Agency Pro | $497 | $4,970 | Built for reselling under your own brand (SaaS mode) |
HighLevel add-ons (published on their pricing page):
- Premium support — $500/mo
- White-label mobile app — $497/mo
- SEO, powered by Search Atlas — $79/mo per sub-account
- WhatsApp integration — $10/mo per sub-account
- WordPress hosting — from $10/mo per site
The key structural point: on the $297 plan, each additional client adds nothing to your software bill. That is what turns a variable cost into a fixed one as you grow.
Start the 14-day HighLevel trial Affiliate link
Text (LiveChat) pricing
Priced per user, with monthly and yearly rates. AI resolutions are metered on top.
| Essential | Growth | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per user, billed monthly | $25 | $99 | Custom |
| Per user, billed yearly | $19 | $79 | Custom |
| AI agents included | 1 | 10 | Custom |
| AI resolutions included | 10 / mo (120 / yr) | 200 / mo (2,400 / yr) | Custom |
| API calls included | 10,000 / mo | 20,000 / mo | Custom |
The AI resolution meter — read this before you choose a tier
This is the number that catches people out. The entry tier includes 10 AI resolutions per month, or 120 per year. That is roughly one AI-resolved conversation every three days. If your AI agent is doing real work, you will blow through it almost immediately.
Extra resolutions are sold in packs of 50 for $49.50, and extra API capacity is $29.50 per 100,000 calls. Do the arithmetic on your own ticket volume: a plan that looks cheaper per seat can end up costing more per resolved conversation.
Check Text’s current pricing Affiliate link
Tidio pricing
Tidio bills on billable conversations rather than seats, with a permanent free plan and the Lyro AI agent on a separate meter. It is the only one of the three with a free tier you can run a real business on while you are small.
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | Billable conversations | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 50 | 10 |
| Starter | $24.17/mo | $29 (reported) | 100 | 10 |
| Growth Popular | from $49.17/mo | from $59 (reported) | from 250, up to 2,000 | 10 |
| Plus | from $300/mo + usage | — | Custom | Custom |
| Premium | Contact for pricing | — | Custom | Custom |
The yearly column is what Tidio displays by default, and we read it directly off their page. The monthly equivalents marked “reported” are not on Tidio’s page — their monthly toggle renders client-side, so we could not read those figures from the source. They come from independent listings of the same page. Confirm them on Tidio’s site before you budget against them.
The definition that changes the maths
Tidio’s own FAQ defines a billable conversation as any live chat, ticket, email or social conversation that includes a reply from a human agent. Two consequences follow, and both work in your favour:
- AI replies do not count. Responses from Lyro and from Flows are explicitly excluded from the billable total. The volume your AI absorbs does not consume the quota you are paying for — which is the opposite of how Text meters AI.
- Unanswered messages do not count. If nobody replies — spam, or a question that needs no answer — it is not billed. Multiple messages in one thread still count as one conversation.
So size a Tidio plan on the conversations a human has to touch, not the conversations that arrive. That number is usually much smaller than total traffic.
Tidio’s add-ons and meters
- Lyro AI Agent — first 50 conversations free for the lifetime of the account; paid quotas run from 50 to 1,000 conversations per month
- Lyro Actions — first action free; full access needs a paid Lyro quota
- Flows — first 100 visitors reached free; paid limits from 2,000 to 100,000
- Remove Tidio branding — $16.67/mo, the only way to put even a partial brand on it
- Premium only — a guaranteed 50% Lyro AI resolution rate, billed per resolution
See Tidio’s live pricing Affiliate link
The hidden costs nobody quotes
| Cost | Where it hits | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Metered AI resolutions | Text, Tidio | Resolutions included per tier vs your real monthly ticket volume |
| Per-seat growth | Text | Cost of adding the third, fifth and tenth agent |
| Per-sub-account fees | HighLevel | WhatsApp ($10/mo each) and SEO ($79/mo each) multiply by client count |
| White-label app | HighLevel | $497/mo if you want your own branded app |
| Premium support | HighLevel | $500/mo — budget it or accept standard support |
| Yearly vs monthly | All | Text’s yearly rate is ~24% lower per user; the trade-off is commitment |
How to estimate your real monthly bill
- Count your monthly customer conversations, not your visitors. This is the number Tidio bills on and the number that tells you how many AI resolutions you need.
- Decide how many humans you actually staff. If it is one or two people, per-seat pricing is cheap. If it is eight, it is not.
- Count your clients. If it is more than one, flat-rate platform pricing usually wins outright.
- Add the meters. Resolutions, API calls, per-sub-account add-ons. This is where the comparison changes.
- Check the yearly discount against your commitment risk. A 24% saving is worthless if you churn in four months.
Which one is cheapest for you?
- One small shop, low volume: Tidio. Start on the free plan, upgrade only when conversations force you to.
- A staffed support team: Text. Per-seat pricing matches your cost structure, provided you watch the resolution meter.
- More than one client: HighLevel. At $297 with unlimited sub-accounts, the per-client cost falls every time you add one.
HighLevel — 14-day free trial Text pricing Tidio free plan
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FAQ
Which platform is cheapest for a small business?
Tidio, if you are starting from nothing. Its free plan covers 50 billable conversations a month and 10 seats, and Starter is $24.17/mo billed yearly ($29 monthly) for 100 conversations. But “cheapest to start” and “cheapest to run” are different questions: HighLevel’s $97 plan covers three client sub-accounts, so if you run more than one business it is already cheaper per business.
What is a metered AI resolution?
A customer conversation that the AI resolved without a human. Some vendors include a fixed number per tier and bill overage in packs — Text includes 120 per year on its entry tier and sells 50 more for $49.50. Other vendors bundle AI into the plan with no published meter. Always find out which model you are buying.
Are yearly plans worth it?
Text’s yearly rate is roughly 24% below the monthly rate per user, which is a real saving. The question is whether you are confident enough in the product to commit for a year. Use the trial or the free plan first.
What counts as a billable conversation in Tidio?
Only conversations that include a reply from a human agent. Tidio’s own FAQ excludes responses from Lyro AI and from Flows, and excludes visitor messages you never answer. Multiple messages in one thread still count as one conversation. That means the quota you are paying for is consumed by human workload, not by total traffic — which makes this model cheaper than the headline numbers suggest, provided your AI is doing real work.