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: 200 monthly AI messages, renewable, on the free plan

A note of transparency before going further: we are Bravos AI, so the assistant we're asking is ours. The chatbot we have on our own website is the Enterprise tier (custom model, custom system prompt), just like Lyro is Tidio's premium product and Hugo is Crisp's. What matters for this article isn't which tier — it's what each premium chatbot says about its own platform's free plan. The question was identical:

Bravos AI's Free plan does include real AI — specifically, it uses the GPT-4o-mini model, not just pre-configured replies.

You get 200 AI messages per month with this plan, and these message limits renew every month.

If you run out of your 200 messages before the month ends, the chatbot will temporarily stop working for your users until the next month when the message count resets — or you can upgrade to a paid plan anytime to keep it running.

The same answer was returned in Spanish with the same level of detail: same model, same 200 monthly figure, same explanation of what happens when they run out. The contrast with Hugo in English is hard to miss.

These figures can be verified directly on the official pricing page: Bravos AI's free plan costs €0/month (no credit card), includes 1 functional bot with 200 monthly AI messages (GPT-4o-mini with strict RAG technology) that renew every month, and allows uploading up to 20 URLs, 10 files and 20 manual text blocks into the knowledge base.

To be clear: 200 monthly messages aren't enough for an e-commerce site with thousands of daily visitors. They're enough to test the product in real conditions or to power low-traffic websites. To scale, there are paid plans, just like with every other platform in the space. The Starter plan (€19/month) gives you 2,000 monthly messages and the Pro plan (€49/month) gives 3,000 messages per bot with up to 3 bots. The full breakdown 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?

Bravos AI offers 200 monthly messages with GPT-4o-mini on its free plan, automatically renewable each month. No credit card required at any point. When the 200 messages run out, the bot stops responding until the next month or until the plan is upgraded.

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.