BotEmbed vs Tidio vs Chatbase (2026 Pricing Compared)

If you want a chatbot on your website, three names show up a lot: Tidio, Chatbase, and BotEmbed. They are not the same product. This post compares what each is actually for, what setup looks like, and what you pay — with numbers from each company's public pricing page as of September 2026.

Short version: buy Tidio if you need a full live-chat help desk. Buy Chatbase if you want a flexible AI agent platform and will pay for credits. Buy BotEmbed if you want a cheap, site-aware widget that crawls your pages and will not recommend competitors.

Who each product is for

Tidio is a customer-service suite: live chat, ticketing, Flows automation, and an optional Lyro AI agent. Pricing is built around billable conversations (human agent replies), not “paste a script and go.”

Chatbase is an AI-agent builder. You train agents on documents and integrations, then deploy them. Plans meter message credits. The free plan exists but agents get deleted after 14 days of inactivity.

BotEmbed is a site-aware chat widget. Sign up, add your site URL, paste one script tag. We crawl your site (same host, up to 25 pages), you can upload documents, and chat uses that plus the page the visitor is on. Explicit rule: if the answer is not on your site, we connect the visitor to your team — we do not suggest another company.

Pricing (public list prices, September 2026)

Prices change. Check each site before you buy. These are the published entry points we used for this article.

BotEmbed

• Starter — $9.99/mo (1 bot, 1,000 messages)
• Pro — $19.99/mo (5 bots, 10,000 messages)
• Scale — $29.99/mo (unlimited bots, 50,000 messages)
• 14-day trial; a card is required. No free forever plan.

Tidio

• Free — $0 (50 billable conversations/mo; limited automation)
• Starter — about $24.17/mo billed annually (100 billable conversations)
• Growth — from about $49.17/mo billed annually (from 250 billable conversations)
• Lyro AI Agent add-on — from about $32.50/mo (from 50 Lyro conversations)
• Flows add-on — from about $24.17/mo (from 2,000 visitors reached)
• Plus / Premium — much higher (Plus starts in the hundreds per month; Premium is sales-quoted)

Tidio can look cheap until you need real AI volume. Lyro and Flows are often separate line items on top of the help-desk plan.

Chatbase

• Free — $0 (50 message credits/mo; limited models)
• Hobby — $40/mo (700 message credits; 2 members)
• Standard — $150/mo (4,000 credits; popular tier)
• Pro — $500/mo (15,000 credits)
• Add-ons: auto-recharge credits (~$40 / 1,000), extra agents, remove branding (~$99/mo)

Chatbase's paid entry is roughly 4× BotEmbed Starter. Annual billing is often ~20% off, but monthly sticker prices are what most small sites see first.

Setup effort

BotEmbed: one script tag. Crawl + optional uploads. No flow builder required.

Tidio: install the widget, then configure live chat, hours, Flows, and/or Lyro. Powerful if you want operators in an inbox — more moving parts if you only wanted “answer questions from my site.”

Chatbase: create an agent, add sources, pick a model, deploy. Flexible, but you are managing credits and training content.

Will it recommend competitors?

Generic chatbots can invent options or point people elsewhere when they do not know. BotEmbed is built with an explicit guardrail: stay on your company's content; otherwise hand off to your team. Tidio and Chatbase can be configured carefully, but “never recommend competitors” is not their core pitch — live chat / agent platforms optimize for resolution and integrations.

When to pick each

• Pick Tidio if you need human live chat, tickets, WhatsApp/social inbox, and are fine paying for conversation volume plus AI add-ons.
• Pick Chatbase if you want a full AI agent stack (voice, telephony, lots of integrations) and your budget starts around $40–$150/mo.
• Pick BotEmbed if you run a small site or a few client sites, want answers from your pages for about $10–$30/mo, and care that the bot will not send prospects to someone else.

Bottom line

Tidio and Chatbase are strong products. They are also priced and shaped for different jobs. BotEmbed is the narrow bet: site crawl, one script tag, competitor guardrails, transparent $9.99 / $19.99 / $29.99 pricing.

Related: Chatbase alternative for small websites, Tidio alternative for site-aware AI chat.

Sources: tidio.com/pricing, chatbase.co/pricing, botembed.ai/pricing. Re-check those pages before you subscribe.

BotEmbed is a site-aware AI chat widget. We crawl your site. 14-day trial, card required. Start a trial.