If you’re adding an AI chatbot to your WordPress site, Tidio is probably one of the first names you’ve encountered. It’s been around since 2013, has a large user base, and shows up in almost every “best chatbot” roundup.

But Tidio wasn’t built for WordPress specifically, and its pricing model — with multiple add-ons, separate AI quotas, and conversation-based billing — can get complicated fast.

Inqyra takes a different approach: a WordPress-native plugin, built on BYOK (Bring Your Own Key), where you pay the AI provider directly and keep your costs predictable.

This comparison breaks down how the two tools differ across pricing, features, data privacy, and setup — so you can make the right choice for your site.

 

Quick comparison

	Inqyra	Tidio
Pricing model	BYOK — pay provider directly	Subscription + per-conversation AI add-on
Free tier	Forever free (unlimited pages)	50 conversations/month
AI cost at 1,000 conversations	~$3/month (GPT-4o mini)	$39–$149/month (Lyro add-on)
WordPress-native	Yes — plugin only	No — SaaS with WordPress embed
Data stays on your server	Yes — browser-based embeddings	No — processed on Tidio servers
AI providers	5 (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, Mistral, DeepSeek)	Lyro (proprietary, powered by Claude)
RAG (answers from your content)	Yes	Yes (Lyro)
Live chat / human handoff	No	Yes
Lead extraction	Yes (Premium)	Yes (paid plan)
Webhooks / integrations	Yes (Premium)	Yes (Zapier, CRM)
Paid plan price	€99/year per site	$29–$749+/month

 

 

Pricing: where the biggest difference is

This is where Inqyra and Tidio diverge most sharply.

Tidio’s base plans start at $29/month, but that doesn’t include AI. Lyro — Tidio’s AI chatbot — is a separate add-on starting at $39/month for 100 AI conversations. If your site gets 500 AI conversations per month, you’re looking at $79–$149/month for Lyro alone, on top of your base plan. For a growing site, total costs of $100–$300/month are realistic.

Inqyra uses a BYOK model. You connect your own API key from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Mistral, or DeepSeek and pay the provider directly at their published rates. For 1,000 conversations using GPT-4o mini, that’s roughly $3/month. The plugin itself costs €99/year — about €8/month — for the Premium version. The free version is genuinely free with no conversation limits.

For most WordPress sites, Inqyra works out 10–30x cheaper than Tidio once AI is factored in.

 

WordPress integration: native vs embedded

Tidio is a SaaS platform — it runs on Tidio’s servers and embeds a widget on your site via a script or plugin. Your content is sent to Tidio’s servers for processing, your conversations are stored there, and your data lives in Tidio’s cloud.

Inqyra is a WordPress plugin. It installs directly in your WordPress admin, indexes your content using browser-based embeddings (meaning the indexing process runs on your own server — your content never leaves), and stores conversations in your own database.

For site owners who handle sensitive content — legal, medical, financial, or internal documentation — the privacy difference is significant. With Inqyra, your data stays under your control.

 

AI features: flexibility vs simplicity

Both tools use RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) to answer questions based on your actual content — so neither one makes things up out of thin air.

The key difference is who controls the AI:

• Tidio uses Lyro, their proprietary AI agent powered by Claude (Anthropic) in the background. You don’t choose the model, and you can’t switch providers.
• Inqyra lets you connect any of five providers — OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic, Mistral, or DeepSeek — and switch between them at any time. You can use different models for different purposes or swap when a better or cheaper model comes out.

Inqyra also includes query rewriting (the plugin reformulates vague visitor questions into better search queries before hitting the AI), cost tracking with budget limits, and a full prompt engineering interface for customizing the system prompt.

 

Where Tidio is genuinely better

Tidio has real advantages, and it would be dishonest not to acknowledge them:

• Live chat with human agents: Tidio is built around combining AI with live human support. If you need your team to jump in and take over conversations, Tidio handles this seamlessly. Inqyra doesn’t offer live chat.
• Multichannel support: Tidio integrates with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, and email — all in one dashboard. Inqyra is focused on your website.
• E-commerce automation: Tidio has deep Shopify integration with order status lookups, product recommendations, and cart recovery flows. Inqyra works with WooCommerce but at a more general level.
• Established platform: Tidio has been around since 2013, has 300,000+ users, and a large knowledge base. Inqyra is newer.

 

 

Which one should you choose?

Choose Inqyra if:

• You want AI chat that answers questions based on your content, without paying per conversation
• Cost predictability matters — you want to know exactly what you’re spending on AI each month
• You handle sensitive content and want your data to stay on your own server
• You’re a developer or agency managing multiple WordPress sites
• You want flexibility to switch AI providers as the market evolves

Choose Tidio if:

• You need live chat with human agents alongside AI — customer service teams that jump into conversations
• You run an e-commerce store and want deep Shopify integration with order and product automation
• You need to manage conversations across multiple channels (website, WhatsApp, Instagram) in one place
• You’re willing to pay a premium for a more polished, all-in-one customer service platform

 

 

The bottom line

Tidio is a solid, mature platform if you need live chat and multichannel support. But if your goal is simply to help visitors get accurate answers from your website content — without paying $100+/month for the privilege — Inqyra is a more cost-effective and privacy-respecting choice.

The free version of Inqyra gets you further than Tidio’s free tier, the paid version costs a fraction of what Tidio charges, and you’re never at the mercy of someone else’s pricing decisions for AI access.

 

Try Inqyra free on WordPress.org →  |  Compare plans →

If you’ve ever shopped for an AI chatbot plugin for WordPress, you’ve probably noticed a pattern: the pricing pages are vague, the “free” tiers are heavily limited, and the moment your site gets real traffic, costs start climbing fast.

There’s a reason for that — and once you understand it, you’ll never look at chatbot pricing the same way again.

How most AI chatbot plugins actually make money

Most WordPress AI chatbot plugins follow the same business model: they connect to an AI provider like OpenAI on the backend, mark up the cost per conversation, and charge you that markup on top of a monthly subscription.

In practice, that means:

• You pay a monthly fee for the plugin (often $30–$100/month)
• You pay per conversation or per message on top of that
• The plugin vendor pockets the difference between what they pay the AI provider and what they charge you

At low traffic volumes, this is barely noticeable. But as your site grows and more visitors start asking questions, the markup compounds quickly.

The numbers: what you’re actually paying

Let’s look at a concrete example. Say your site handles 1,000 conversations per month — not a lot for a growing business.

With a typical AI chatbot plugin that charges $0.05–$0.20 per conversation, that’s $50–$200/month just for the AI interactions. Add the base subscription and you could easily be spending $100–$300/month.

Now compare that to the actual cost of those same 1,000 conversations if you were paying the AI provider directly:

• GPT-4o mini: ~$0.003 per conversation → $3/month
• Gemini Flash: ~$0.001 per conversation → $1/month
• GPT-4o: ~$0.01–$0.03 per conversation → $10–$30/month

The difference isn’t marginal — it’s a 10x to 100x markup. You’re paying for the convenience of not having to manage an API key yourself.

What is BYOK and why does it matter?

BYOK stands for Bring Your Own Key. Instead of paying the plugin vendor for AI access, you create your own account with an AI provider (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Mistral, DeepSeek), get an API key, and connect it directly to the plugin.

The plugin becomes a connector — it handles the indexing, the chat interface, the search logic — but the AI costs go directly to the provider at their published rates. No markup, no middleman.

There are two benefits beyond just cost:

• Control: You can switch AI providers without switching plugins. If OpenAI raises prices, you move to Gemini. If a new model comes out that’s faster or cheaper, you try it immediately.
• Transparency: You see exactly what you’re spending in your AI provider’s dashboard. No surprise bills from the plugin vendor.

“But isn’t setting up an API key complicated?”

This is the most common objection — and it’s understandable. The word “API key” sounds technical. But in practice, getting one takes about five minutes:

• Go to platform.openai.com (or your preferred provider)
• Create an account and add a payment method
• Generate an API key
• Paste it into the plugin settings

That’s it. You’re billed directly by the AI provider at the end of the month for what you actually used. Most small-to-medium sites spend less than $5/month on AI costs.

The other hidden cost: your data

Beyond money, there’s a privacy consideration that most people don’t think about.

When a chatbot plugin indexes your content — your pages, your products, your blog posts — it needs to convert that content into vector embeddings so it can search it efficiently. With many plugins, that indexing process happens on their servers. Your content leaves your site and gets processed externally.

With browser-based embeddings, the indexing runs entirely on your own server. Your content never leaves. For anyone handling sensitive content — legal services, healthcare information, internal documentation — this isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s essential.

What to look for in a BYOK chatbot plugin

Not all BYOK plugins are equal. Here’s what separates a well-built implementation from a basic one:

• Multiple provider support — being locked to one API provider defeats half the purpose of BYOK
• Built-in cost tracking and budget limits — so you always know what you’re spending and can cap it
• RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) — answers grounded in your actual content, not hallucinated
• Browser-based embeddings — content stays on your server
• Query rewriting — the plugin reformulates vague questions into better search queries before hitting the AI

The bottom line

AI chatbot plugins that handle the API key for you are selling convenience. For some users, that’s worth paying for. But for most WordPress site owners who are willing to spend five minutes setting up an account, BYOK is the smarter choice — dramatically lower costs, full control over which AI model you use, and no dependency on the plugin vendor’s pricing decisions.

The AI itself costs almost nothing at scale. What you’re paying for is the software that wraps it. Make sure you’re not also paying a hidden tax on every conversation.

Inqyra is a free WordPress plugin built on the BYOK model. Connect your own OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, Mistral, or DeepSeek key and go live in under 5 minutes. Download free on WordPress.org →