Shopify Inbox, tawk.to, Tidio, Chatty, Willdesk, Chatra, LiveChat, Gorgias and FunctionalAI: what each one charges for, what its free plan really covers, and what happens when a shopper needs a person.
Most lists of Shopify live chat apps give you a star rating and a "from $X" price, and stop there. That price is rarely what you pay. One app charges for each person who answers chats, another for each conversation, another for each question its AI answers. And the free plans range from "free for good" to "5 conversations a month".
So this guide compares nine live chat apps for Shopify on three things you can check: what each one charges you for, what its free plan really covers, and what happens when the AI can't help and a shopper needs a person. Every figure comes from the app's own Shopify App Store listing or pricing page, checked on October 21, 2026, and links to it.
- Free and good enough for many stores: Shopify Inbox.
- Free human live chat, no AI: tawk.to.
- AI answers plus live chat, low entry price: Chatty, Tidio, Willdesk or FunctionalAI. Choose by how each one bills the AI (see below).
- A team answering chats all day: Chatra or LiveChat, both priced per agent.
- A full helpdesk with email and tickets: Gorgias.
First: which kind of live chat do you need?
"Live chat app" now covers three different products. Knowing which one you want removes half the list.
- Human live chat. A chat bubble on your store, answered by you or your team. When nobody is online, it shows an offline form. tawk.to and Chatra started here, and LiveChat is the per-seat version for bigger teams.
- An AI chatbot with live chat. The AI answers first, from your products and pages. A person steps into the same chat when the AI can't help. Shopify Inbox, Tidio, Chatty, Willdesk and FunctionalAI are in this group.
- A helpdesk with chat. Chat is one channel in a ticketing system that also handles email and social messages. Gorgias is the Shopify-native example. It earns its price when several people work one shared queue.
If you are a solo founder or a team of two, the second group is usually the fit: the AI takes the repetitive questions at 2 a.m., and you only see the chats that need you.
What you actually pay for: four billing models
This is where the headline prices mislead. Two apps that both say "from $25 a month" can cost very different amounts at the same chat volume. They meter different things:
| You pay per… | Apps (as listed) | Your bill grows when… |
|---|---|---|
| Agent seat | LiveChat ($25 per user a month, billed monthly); Chatra ($31 or $41 per agent a month) | You add people, whatever the chat volume. |
| Conversation or ticket | Tidio (plans by conversations); Willdesk ($12 per 100 extra conversations on Basic); Gorgias (tickets per plan, $0.40 each over on Starter) | More shoppers start chats, whether the AI or a person answers them. |
| AI conversation or resolution | Chatty ($0.40 per extra AI conversation); Gorgias AI Agent ($0.90–$1.00 per interaction); LiveChat ($49.50 per 50 extra AI resolutions); Willdesk ($20 per 100 AI conversations on Basic) | The AI does more of the work. Success costs more. |
| Assistant reply (message) | FunctionalAI ($0.10 per message past your plan, from a balance you top up) | The AI sends more replies. Your own replies in a handed-over chat are free. |
None of these is wrong. A per-seat price is easy to predict and suits a busy team. Per-AI-resolution pricing makes sense if each resolution saves you more than it costs. The trap is comparing the headline prices without the unit. We go through the numbers in our comparison of per-resolution and per-message AI pricing.
Free plans, side by side
Many listings say "Free plan available". Here is what that covers:
| App | Free plan | First paid step |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify Inbox | Free, including the optional AI agent | No paid plan |
| tawk.to | Free; the “Powered by tawk.to” branding stays | On tawk.to’s site: branding removal $29/month, AI Assist from $29/month |
| Tidio | Free plan; tidio.com lists 50 billable conversations a month and the first 50 Lyro AI conversations free once | Customer Service from $29/month for 100 conversations |
| Chatty | 50 AI conversations a month, unlimited human conversations | Basic $19.99/month for 100 AI conversations |
| Willdesk | 20 conversations, unlimited agents, 1 store | Basic $16.90/month for 100 conversations |
| Chatra | Up to 5 conversations a month | Essential $31/month per agent |
| LiveChat | No free plan; 14-day free trial | From $25/month |
| Gorgias | No free plan; 7-day free trial on Starter and Basic | Starter $10/month for 50 tickets |
| FunctionalAI | 100 messages, once, with no card and no time limit | Medium $24.99/month for 400 messages |
From each app's Shopify App Store listing on October 21, 2026, except the tawk.to add-ons and the Tidio conversation counts, which come from tawk.to/pricing and tidio.com/pricing.
The question most lists skip: what happens when the AI can't help?
Every AI chatbot meets a question it shouldn't answer: a refund, a damaged parcel, an angry customer. What the app does next matters more than its answer rate. During a trial, test these five things yourself:
- Ask for a person mid-chat. Does the shopper stay in the same chat, or get sent to an email address or a form?
- Take over. When you reply, does the AI stop answering in that chat, or can it talk over you?
- Try it at night. With nobody online, does the shopper learn when someone will be back, and does the app ask for an email so you can follow up?
- Check the alert. Where does the "a shopper needs you" notice land, and would you see it on your phone?
- Ignore it. If nobody answers a handed-over chat, is there a reminder, or does it go quiet?
Shopify Inbox is open about its answer. Shopify's Help Center says that when no staff are available, Inbox's agent gives the shopper your store's email address. Our answer is in the FunctionalAI section below, and the longer version is in when an AI chatbot should hand off to a human.
The 9 live chat apps for Shopify
They are grouped by type, not ranked. A ranking would only tell you which store we imagined.
Free options
Shopify Inbox
Shopify's own free chat app. It now includes an optional AI agent that Shopify's listing calls “an AI-powered sales associate”.
Best for: Stores that want free AI answers to product, policy and order questions on their storefront, with staff on hand to pick up the chats the AI hands over.
App Store rating: 4.6 (5,806 reviews)
Free plan: Free, built by Shopify.
What you pay for: Nothing. There is no paid plan. (see listing →)
- Free and made by Shopify. The AI agent is opt-in: you can run Inbox with or without it.
- The agent connects to your catalog, inventory and policies automatically and answers questions about products, shipping, returns, sizing and store policies.
- It can recommend products, look up orders and add items to the cart, and it replies in the language the shopper writes in.
- When a shopper signs in with Shop, it can personalise recommendations using their preferences and purchase history from across Shopify.
- Shopify lists what the agent does as answering, recommending, order lookups and add-to-cart. Refunds, cancellations and address changes aren’t on that list, so they need a person.
- It waits to be asked. A third-party review (Zipchat, August 2026) found no proactive messages or abandoned-cart follow-ups from the chat.
- If no staff are available to take a handoff, the agent gives the shopper your store’s sender email address and the shopper has to email you. Inbox can’t send that email for you.
- The agent only runs in your online store’s chat widget and needs new customer accounts. Shoppers see a “powered by Shopify” AI notice you can’t remove.
Shopify Inbox details as of October 2026, from its Shopify App Store listing and Shopify's Help Center (Managing customer conversations, Assigning your Inbox agent). The point about proactive messages comes from Zipchat's review of Shopify Inbox, and Zipchat sells a competing app. We haven't tested Inbox's agent on a live store.
tawk.to Live Chat
A long-running free live chat. You answer every chat yourself; the AI is a paid add-on on tawk.to’s own site.
Best for: Stores that want human live chat at no cost and are happy to answer every chat themselves.
App Store rating: 3.6 (89 reviews)
Free plan: The app is listed as free, and the core chat stays free.
What you pay for: Nothing for the chat itself. tawk.to's pricing page lists optional add-ons: $29/month to remove the "Powered by tawk.to" branding, AI Assist from $29/month, and hired chat agents at $1 an hour. (see listing →)
- Free live chat; the listing shows no conversation cap.
- Greeting triggers and shortcut message templates for faster replies.
- Paid add-ons only if you want them.
- The Shopify listing describes no AI features, so out of hours a shopper waits for you.
- The free widget carries tawk.to’s branding.
- Its App Store rating is the lowest of the nine, so read the recent reviews before installing.
AI chatbot plus live chat
Tidio: AI Chatbot & Live Chat
A popular live chat for small businesses, with the Lyro AI agent and Flows automation sold as separate plans.
Best for: Stores that want a polished live chat first and are willing to budget separately for AI conversations.
App Store rating: 4.8 (1,355 reviews)
Free plan: Yes. tidio.com lists 50 billable conversations a month on Free, plus the first 50 Lyro AI conversations free once.
What you pay for: On the Shopify listing: Customer Service from $29/month for 100 conversations ($59 for 250–1,000), Flows at $29/month, and the Lyro AI Chatbot plan at $39/month for up to 200 Lyro conversations. Prices on tidio.com differ slightly because they are shown billed annually. (see listing →)
- A well-designed chat widget and a free entry point.
- Lyro can resolve common questions without a person, and the listing includes native Shopify actions on the Lyro plan.
- A visual chatbot builder (Flows) if you like scripting conversations.
- Chat, AI and Flows are priced separately, so the total with AI is higher than the chat price.
- Lyro is metered by AI conversation, so the AI line grows as it answers more.
More detail: FunctionalAI vs Tidio.
Chatty AI Chatbot & Live Chat
A sales-first AI chat app with a shared inbox for chat, email and social messages.
Best for: Cost-conscious stores that want AI chat plus WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram in one inbox, with product recommendations.
App Store rating: 4.9 (1,882 reviews)
Free plan: 50 AI conversations a month and unlimited human conversations.
What you pay for: Basic $19.99/month (100 AI conversations), Pro $68.99/month (500) and Plus $199/month (1,000). Every paid plan charges $0.40 for each extra AI conversation. (see listing →)
- The highest review count among the third-party AI apps here, and a free plan that keeps human chat unlimited.
- One inbox for live chat, email, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.
- Proactive engagement and abandoned-cart recovery on Pro.
- AI usage past your plan is metered per conversation.
- Proactive messages, cart recovery and the Pro AI model start at the $68.99 plan.
More detail: FunctionalAI vs Chatty.
Willdesk: Live Chat & AI Chatbot
Live chat, a help center and order tracking in one app from Channelwill, with AI conversations billed by usage.
Best for: Stores that want live chat and a self-service order-tracking widget together, with several people answering.
App Store rating: 4.7 (380 reviews)
Free plan: 20 conversations, unlimited agents, 1 store.
What you pay for: Basic $16.90/month for 100 conversations. Over that, $12 per 100 conversations and $20 per 100 AI conversations. Pro is $89.90/month for 1,000 conversations. (see listing →)
- Unlimited agents even on the free plan.
- Order tracking and a help center built in, with no extra tracking app.
- Covers several stores from Basic up.
- Three meters to watch: conversations, tracked orders and AI conversations.
- The free plan’s 20 conversations go quickly on a busy day.
FunctionalAI (that's us)
An AI chat for your Shopify store that answers from your products and pages, and hands the chat to you when it should.
Best for: Small and growing Shopify stores that want the AI to answer around the clock, a clean handoff to a person, and a bill that doesn’t grow per resolution.
App Store rating: 5.0 (1 review). We are new, and that’s one review.
Free plan: 100 messages, once, with no card and no time limit.
What you pay for: A monthly plan with AI replies included, and no fee per resolved conversation. Medium is $24.99/month for 400 messages and Pro is $99.99/month for 1,500. A message is one assistant reply. Past your allowance, each extra message is $0.10 from a prepaid balance you top up $2–$20 at a time, so your card is never charged per message. Details are on our pricing page. (see listing →)
- The setup wizard builds the assistant from your store: products, collections, pages and blog posts, kept in sync.
- Product cards with Add to cart in the chat for assistants the wizard creates.
- You can take over any chat from Conversations, and the AI stays silent in that chat until you hand it back.
- Auto-pause rules you write in plain language (an angry customer, a refund request) hand a chat to you before the AI replies. With “Ask for an email before handing over” on, a shopper you can’t identify leaves an email first.
- Alerts in two-way Slack, Discord or Telegram when a chat is handed over, and reminders after 4, 24 and 48 hours if an auto-paused chat goes unanswered.
- The shopper’s own “talk to a person” button and the auto-pause rules are off until you turn the button on in Handoff settings, so a new assistant never hands off by itself.
- It chats on your website widget and Shopify storefront (plus share links). There is no email or social inbox, so it is not a helpdesk.
- Your replies in a handed-over chat are text only.
- Newer and smaller than everything else on this list, with one App Store review so far.
Human-first live chat for teams
Chatra: Live Chat & Chatbot
A long-running human live chat (listed since 2015) that shows you who is on the site and what is in their cart.
Best for: Stores with someone available to answer chats who want to see cart contents while they talk.
App Store rating: 4.6 (306 reviews)
Free plan: Free for good, but only up to 5 conversations a month, with live chat and an offline contact-form bot.
What you pay for: Essential $31/month and Pro $41/month, per agent. Each has a 10-day free trial. (see listing →)
- Shows each visitor’s cart in real time, plus a Cart Saver for abandoned carts.
- Instagram DM and Facebook chat in the same place on Essential.
- Chat ratings, reports and webhooks on Pro.
- The listing describes chatbots and chat automation but no AI answers.
- Per-agent pricing adds up as the team grows.
- The free plan is a demo, not a plan you can run a store on.
LiveChat: AI live chat by Text
An established live chat for support teams, now priced per seat with a monthly allowance of AI resolutions.
Best for: Teams with several people answering chats all day who want reporting and many integrations.
App Store rating: 4.4 (49 reviews)
Free plan: None. Every plan has a 14-day free trial.
What you pay for: Per user per month: livechat.com/pricing lists Essential at $25 ($19 billed annually) with 10 AI resolutions a month, and Growth at $99 ($79 annually) with 200. Each extra pack of 50 AI resolutions is $49.50. (see listing →)
- Mature agent tools: cart and past-order context, product recommendations, proactive messages.
- 200+ integrations.
- Per-seat pricing is easy to predict if your team size is stable.
- Every person who answers needs a seat, so a part-time helper costs a full seat.
- AI resolutions are rationed per plan and sold in packs beyond that.
Helpdesk with chat
Gorgias: AI Helpdesk & Chat
The best-known Shopify helpdesk: tickets from chat, email and social in one queue, with an AI Agent on top.
Best for: Established stores with a real support team that need macros, rules and multi-channel ticketing.
App Store rating: 4.3 (706 reviews)
Free plan: None. 7-day free trial on Starter and Basic.
What you pay for: Plans by ticket volume: Starter $10/month (50 tickets, $0.40 each over), Basic $60/month (300), Pro $360/month (2,000) and Advanced $900/month (5,000), billed monthly. Gorgias's pricing FAQ puts the AI Agent at $0.90 per interaction on annual plans or $1.00 on monthly, and each AI interaction also counts as a helpdesk ticket. (see listing →)
- A deep, mature helpdesk: macros, rules, multi-channel, reporting.
- Strong native Shopify integration (orders, refunds, subscriptions).
- Genuinely powerful once you have a team to run it.
- An AI answer is billed twice: as an AI interaction and as a ticket.
- Overkill and expensive for a solo founder doing a few dozen chats a day.
More detail: FunctionalAI vs Gorgias. If you are also weighing Intercom, see FunctionalAI vs Intercom.
How to add live chat to Shopify, step by step
The steps are much the same for any chat app that installs as a Shopify app embed, which covers most of this list.
- Install from the Shopify App Store. Read the permissions screen. A chat app needs to read products and, for order questions, orders. An app embed is switched on in the theme editor, so it shouldn't need to edit your theme code.
- Switch on the app embed. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes → Customize on your live theme → App embeds, turn the chat on, and click Save. Nothing shows on your store until you do this.
- Make it look like yours. Set your brand colour (copy the hex code from your theme settings) and pick the corner. If a back-to-top button or another app already sits bottom-right, use bottom-left.
- Decide what happens when you are away. Set your hours, write the message shoppers see out of hours, and make sure the app collects an email.
- Give the AI your answers (AI apps only). Connect your products and pages, and add the policies and FAQs it should quote. When an answer is wrong, check first whether the right content was there to answer from.
- Test it on your phone as a shopper. Open your store in a private window, ask your three most common questions, then ask for a person and check that the alert reaches you.
With FunctionalAI, step 1 opens a setup wizard that builds the assistant from your store, and the app's settings have a Theme Editor shortcut for step 2. The Shopify setup walkthrough shows each screen.
Why pay for a chat app when Shopify Inbox is free?
Fair question. For some stores the honest answer is: don't. If most of your questions are about products, sizing, shipping and order status, and someone is usually around to take over when the AI hands a chat on, try Inbox first. It costs nothing to find out.
The difference shows up after the AI stops answering. Here is what FunctionalAI does at that point:
- The handoff stays in the chat, at any hour. When a handoff fires, the AI pauses on that conversation and stays paused until you turn it back on. The conversation is marked unread and tagged Paused, and if you've connected Slack, Discord or Telegram you get an alert with the reason. The shopper keeps writing in the same chat, and you reply there. In Inbox, when no staff are available, the agent gives the shopper your store's email address and the shopper has to email you.
- You collect the shopper's email. With "Ask for an email before handing over" on (it is by default), a shopper you can't identify leaves an email before they keep typing, so you can follow up the next morning.
- You decide what triggers a handoff. You write each condition as a plain-language sentence, such as a refund request or an angry customer, and give it a threshold. Conditions are checked on every shopper message before the AI replies.
- Unanswered handoffs come back to you. If nobody answers an auto-paused conversation, that alert is repeated after 4, 24 and 48 hours. A reminder that falls due outside your business hours waits until you're open.
Inbox has things we don't. It's free, it's made by Shopify, and for shoppers signed in with Shop it can use purchase history from across Shopify, which we can't see. If those matter more to you than the handoff, Inbox is the better pick.
So which should you pick?
Match the app to who answers your chats and how you want to be billed, not to whichever brand is loudest:
- Just starting, and the AI only needs to answer product, policy and order questions → Shopify Inbox (free).
- You will answer every chat yourself and want to pay nothing → tawk.to.
- Want AI plus live chat and sell on social channels too → Chatty, or Tidio if you like building flows. Budget for the AI meter.
- Several people answer chats all day → Chatra or LiveChat, priced per agent.
- Large team, high volume, full helpdesk needed → Gorgias, with eyes open about per-interaction AI costs.
- Small Shopify store that wants 24/7 AI answers, a clean handoff and no fee per resolution → FunctionalAI. This is the gap we built it for.
Whatever you choose, make sure it does two things well: answer the routine questions accurately from your store's data, and get out of the way with a clean human handoff the moment a shopper needs a real person. Deciding which questions to give the AI in the first place? Our guide to Shopify AI customer support goes through it question by question.
Common questions
Is there a free live chat app for Shopify?
Yes. Shopify Inbox is free and made by Shopify, and tawk.to Live Chat is listed as free on the Shopify App Store. Tidio, Chatty, Willdesk and Chatra have free plans with caps: Chatty’s covers 50 AI conversations a month, Willdesk’s 20 conversations, and Chatra’s up to 5 conversations a month. FunctionalAI is free to install with 100 free messages, once, and no card.
Does Shopify have its own live chat?
Yes, Shopify Inbox. It adds a chat to your online store, and it now has an optional AI agent that answers product questions, recommends products, looks up orders and adds items to the cart. When no staff are available to take a handoff, the agent gives the shopper your store’s email address.
Live chat or an AI chatbot: which does a small Shopify store need?
If someone can answer chats during the day and your questions are varied, plain live chat with an offline form is enough. If the same product, sizing and shipping questions come in at all hours, an AI chatbot that answers from your store and hands the hard chats to you saves the most time. Most apps on this list now do both; the difference is what they charge for.
How do I add live chat to my Shopify store?
Install the app from the Shopify App Store, approve its permissions, then switch on its app embed in Online Store, Themes, Customize, App embeds, and save. Pick a colour and a corner that don’t clash with other floating buttons, set your hours, and test it on your phone as a shopper before you rely on it.
What happens to Shopify chats when nobody is online?
It depends on the app. Human-only live chat usually falls back to an offline contact form. An AI chatbot keeps answering, and a good one asks the shopper for an email when it hands the chat to a person, so you can follow up when you are back.
Ratings, plans and prices were read on each app's Shopify App Store listing and pricing page on October 21, 2026. App names and trademarks belong to their owners. FunctionalAI is not affiliated with any app on this list.