We asked Tidio, Crisp and Freshchat's own chatbots whether their free plans include real AI. Here's what they said.

The most popular AI chatbot platforms market themselves the same way: chatbot with artificial intelligence. Some of them also offer a permanent free plan. The natural question for anyone evaluating options is straightforward: is that AI actually included in the free plan, or is it gated behind a paid tier?

Instead of signing up for each platform to find out, we asked the official chatbots they themselves run on their own websites. Those chatbots are their premium products, running in real conditions. If they admit how the free plan works, that's the most authoritative source you'll get.

Here's what Lyro (Tidio), Hugo (Crisp) and the Freshchat pricing page had to say, and what happened when we tried to repeat the experiment with the Bravos AI assistant. To keep the experiment symmetrical: in all three cases we asked the premium chatbot of each platform about its own free plan. The fourth case is our own — Bravos AI.

Tidio: 50 AI conversations «forever» — but they don't renew

Tidio has a permanent free plan. Their pricing page highlights that this plan includes 50 Lyro AI Agent conversations. What isn't highlighted, and what most visitors miss, is that those 50 conversations are a one-time lifetime total, not monthly. Once you burn through them, they don't renew.

To confirm this, we asked Lyro — Tidio's official assistant on their own website — directly. The answer was unambiguous:

The 50 free Lyro AI conversations are a one-time lifetime total, not a monthly allowance. This means that on the Free, Starter, and Growth plans, you get 50 Lyro AI conversations in total, and they do not reset or renew each month.

And on how to get a renewable monthly quota, Lyro made it explicit:

To get a renewable monthly quota of Lyro conversations, you'd need the Lyro AI plan, which offers between 50 and 1,000 conversations per month (resetting every 30 days).

In short: Tidio's free plan gives you 50 AI conversations. Once they're gone, they're gone. To get a renewable monthly allowance you have to pay for the Lyro AI plan separately.

Crisp: the free plan does not include AI. And their own chatbot confirms it.

What the pricing table shows

Crisp has four plans: Free (€0), Mini (€45/month), Essentials (€95/month) and Plus (€295/month). On the «Compare our plans» table there's a row called «AI credits» showing how much each plan includes: €0 on Free, €5 on Mini, €25 on Essentials and €75 on Plus.

On the free plan, AI credits are zero. Not a single euro.

In English, Hugo doesn't answer

To understand what this actually means in practice, we asked Hugo — Crisp's official assistant on their own website — in English. Here's what came back:

Sorry, I don't know how to answer that question.

You have been transferred to our support team.

Then it asked for an email so someone could reply later. Crisp's official assistant, in English, couldn't answer a question about its own pricing model and escalated to human support.

But in Spanish, Hugo answers in detail

Out of curiosity, we asked the exact same question in Spanish. The response was the opposite — Hugo answered with three concrete data points that aren't obvious from the pricing page (translated from Spanish):

The Free plan doesn't include AI credits, so Hugo (our AI agent) isn't available. You can only use human agents.

AI credits are token-based. The average cost of a conversation handled by Hugo is around $0.05 to $0.10. With the $5 included in Mini, that's roughly 50-100 automated conversations per month (the pricing page estimates around 90 conversations).

The documentation doesn't specify exactly what happens when they run out.

Three numbers the homepage doesn't show: on Free, zero AI; on Mini, the €5 buys around 50-100 automated conversations per month; and no official clarity on what happens when credits run out mid-month. The same question, in a different language, returns the entire answer — which is what happens when a chatbot's knowledge base only covers some of the languages it's supposed to support.

Freshchat: AI starts at the paid tier. And there's no chatbot on their own website.

Freshchat also offers a permanent free plan: €0/month for up to 10 agents. But Freshchat's AI, branded Freddy, is not included on the free plan.

On the pricing table, under the «Boost your results with Freddy AI» section, AI is sold as two separate products:

• Freddy AI Agent: only available from the Growth plan upwards (€21/agent/month on monthly billing). The first 500 sessions are included; after that, €45 per additional 100 sessions.
• Freddy AI Copilot: only on the Pro and Enterprise plans. Even there, it costs an extra €35/agent/month.

We wanted to ask Freshchat's own official chatbot the same question, the way we did with Lyro and Hugo. But Freshchat doesn't have a chatbot installed on its own website. To get in touch, you have to fill out a form and wait for an email reply, or schedule a demo. The platform that sells AI chatbots doesn't use AI chatbots for its own customer support.

Bravos AI: we decided not to play the “free plan with fine print” game

Transparency note: we are Bravos AI. When we first published this article, we did have a permanent free plan (200 monthly messages, renewable, with GPT-4o-mini). It worked well as a hook, but after months of auditing how other platforms package theirs — and seeing what you've just read — we realized we were playing the same game.

200 monthly messages sound like a lot until 50 visitors land over a weekend and the bot stops mid-conversation. The visitor has no idea what happened. You don't find out until next month. And the promise of “real AI, free” turns into “real AI for the first 3 days of the month”.

So we changed the model. We removed the permanent free plan and replaced it with 7 days free on the full PRO plan: 3 chatbots, unlimited messages, all integrations (Shopify, PrestaShop, Resales Online, WhatsApp), lead capture, and the most advanced AI model. No asterisks. After 7 days, if it's worth it, plans start at €19/month (Starter, also with unlimited messages); if it isn't, you cancel before the first charge and pay nothing.

It's less “attractive” on a pricing page than a “Free Forever” badge. But it's honest: for 7 days you get the real, full version — not a stripped-down one that breaks on day 7 of the month. And from day 8 onwards, you know exactly what you pay.

The full pricing comparison (ours and the rest of the market) is in our AI chatbot pricing guide for 2026.

What anyone who actually asks learns

When a platform says «free AI chatbot» on its homepage, the detail of what the free plan actually includes isn't always where the visitor looks first. It's there, but it's in comparison tables, footnotes or FAQs. Sometimes you have to ask the platform's own chatbot directly to get a concrete number.

Two questions worth answering before picking a platform:

1. Is the free-plan AI renewable each month, or does it get burned once and that's it?
2. Is the AI included in the plan, or is it sold as a paid add-on?

This experiment can be repeated with any other platform that runs its own chatbot on its website. The answers the bot gives are often clearer and more specific than the pricing page itself.

Frequently asked questions

Does Tidio's free plan include AI?

Yes, but only 50 Lyro AI conversations as a one-time lifetime total. They are not monthly and they don't renew. Once they're gone, you need to pay for the separate Lyro AI plan to get a renewable monthly quota, which ranges from 50 to 1,000 conversations per month depending on the tier.

Does Crisp's free plan include AI?

No. Crisp's free plan has €0 in AI credits, so Hugo (their AI agent) isn't available on that tier. Only human agents can be used. AI starts on the Mini plan (€45/month) with €5 in credits, equivalent to roughly 50-100 automated conversations per month according to Crisp's own official chatbot.

Does Freshchat's free plan include AI?

No. Freshchat's AI is sold as two separate products (Freddy AI Agent and Freddy AI Copilot), both available only from the Growth plan (€21/agent/month) and Pro plan respectively, with extra charges per additional session. The free plan only includes up to 10 human agents with no AI.

Which AI chatbot platform offers real AI on a renewable monthly free plan?

After auditing the main platforms, the honest answer is that none of them offer a useful free plan with real AI: it's either spent once and gone (Tidio) or not included at all (Crisp, Freshchat). That's why at Bravos AI we chose a different model: instead of a free plan with fine print, we offer 7 days free of the full PRO plan with unlimited messages, AI included and all integrations. After 7 days you decide whether it's worth paying (plans start at €19/month).

How can I check if a chatbot's free plan includes AI before signing up?

The most direct way is to ask the platform's own official chatbot installed on their website (Lyro on Tidio, Hugo on Crisp). It's their premium product running live, and it usually responds with concrete data about the free plan. If the platform doesn't have an official chatbot on its site (like Freshchat), the detailed pricing table usually has the answer in a row called «AI credits», «AI usage» or similar.

Notes

• Intercom, Zendesk, Drift and Ada are not in this comparison because they don't offer a permanent free plan — only limited trials or enterprise demos.
• HubSpot and Landbot also lock their AI behind paid plans, although they do have a basic free tier.
• Pricing verified in May 2026. Platforms change their conditions frequently; check the official pricing page before making decisions.

Verification: how to reproduce this experiment

Every number and quote in this article was checked in May 2026. Any reader can reproduce the experiment by asking the official chatbots directly and checking the pricing pages:

• Tidio — Pricing: www.tidio.com/pricing. Lyro chatbot at www.tidio.com.
• Crisp — Pricing: crisp.chat/en/pricing. Hugo chatbot at crisp.chat.
• Freshchat — Pricing: freshworks.com/live-chat-software/pricing. No official chatbot on their own site as of publication.
• Bravos AI — Pricing: bravos-ai.com/en/pricing. Official chatbot at bravos-ai.com.