Denser vs Tidio Lyro
Tidio sells live chat with AI attached, metered separately and capped at a handful of conversations on the lower plans. Denser is built the other way round: cited answers, a retriever benchmarked on MTEB above vector search alone, and thousands of pages per bot.
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Valk WeldingCity of San JoséOnondaga CountyEOS AustraliaPortfolioboxUpsiideValk WeldingDenser links each reply to the exact passage it came from, so a customer or an agent can confirm it in one click. Tidio does not advertise source citations for Lyro answers. An answer nobody can check is an answer nobody should act on.
A chatbot can only answer from the passage retrieval hands it, so retrieval quality sets the ceiling on everything downstream. Denser Retriever combines keyword search, vector search, and an XGBoost reranker, and on MTEB retrieval benchmarks that combination beats a vector-search baseline outright, by 13.07% NDCG@10 over top vector baselines on MS MARCO. Tidio does not publish Lyro's retrieval approach. In support, that gap is the difference between a correct answer and a confident wrong one.
A Denser bot holds 2,000 pages or 1 GB on Standard and up to 50,000 pages on Enterprise, with reranking that keeps retrieval accurate at that size. Lyro answers from a comparatively small configured set, because answering deeply from documentation is not what Tidio is built for.
Denser grades every answer and clusters the failures by topic, so the questions your content never covered arrive as a ranked list.
Tidio is a full live-chat suite: agent seats, a shared inbox, visitor tracking, flows automation, and e-commerce integrations. Denser replaces none of it. The AI inside it is sold as a separate add-on, metered apart from your conversation limit, and bundled only from the $749 tier upward.
| Denser | Tidio Lyro | |
|---|---|---|
| Source citations | Every answer cited to its exact passage | Not advertised |
| Retrieval | Hybrid keyword + vector + XGBoost reranking, MTEB-benchmarked above vector search alone. Open source (MIT) | Not publicly disclosed |
| Content per bot | 100 pages (Starter) to 50,000 (Enterprise) | Configured content sources |
| AI answers at ~$39/mo | 1,500 queries | ~50–100 Lyro conversations |
| AI billing | Included in the plan | Add-on, metered separately from conversations |
| Free AI allowance | 20 queries per month, recurring | 50 Lyro conversations in total, not monthly |
| AI bundled from | Every paid plan | Plus, $749/mo (5,000 conversations) |
| Top published tier | $899/mo, 50,000 queries | $2,999/mo, 10,000 conversations |
| Product category | AI answer layer for your own content | Live-chat suite with an AI add-on |
| Human live chat | Not supported | Full agent inbox and seats |
| Flows / automation builder | Actions and integrations | Visual flows (separate add-on) |
| E-commerce integrations | Shopify, WordPress, API | Shopify, WooCommerce, and more |
| Best for | High-volume AI answers from your content | Human live chat with AI assistance |
Real cost
Tidio meters Lyro in conversations and Denser in questions, so this assumes roughly three questions per conversation — about 500 Lyro conversations against 1,500 Denser queries.
| Denser | Tidio Lyro | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan needed | Starter, $39/mo (1,500 queries) | Lyro tiers scale to ~$79–$149 at 500–1,000 chats |
| Live-chat platform | Not included — Denser is not a helpdesk | Tidio plan on top of the Lyro add-on |
| AI bundled instead | Included at every tier | Plus, $749/mo, 5,000 conversations |
| Double metering | One query per question | AI chats billed apart from conversations |
| Monthly total | $39 | $79–$149 for the AI alone, plus the Tidio plan |
Lyro pricing is tiered by conversation volume, read on 19 August 2026. This prices the AI answering job only: Tidio's figure also buys live chat, which Denser does not provide.
Switching
Tidio runs live chat; Denser answers from content. Most teams keep Tidio for human conversations and put Denser where visitors are looking for information.
Lyro answers from a configured set of content. Give Denser the full documentation, help centre, and PDFs — the scale is where the difference shows.
Put Denser on documentation, pricing, and support pages so questions get answered before a chat starts and before the Lyro meter runs.
Take last month's Lyro conversation count and the questions inside them, then price both. This is the comparison that decides it.
Questions
For AI answering volume, yes by a wide margin: Denser Starter is $39/mo for 1,500 questions where Lyro at a similar price covers roughly 50 to 100 AI conversations. Denser is not an alternative to Tidio itself, which provides human live chat, a shared inbox, and flows that Denser does not.
Lyro is an add-on on the lower Tidio plans, starting around $39/mo for roughly 50 to 100 AI conversations and scaling to about $79 to $149 for 500 to 1,000. It is bundled into Plus at $749/mo with 5,000 conversations and Premium at $2,999/mo with 10,000. Tidio's own plan price sits on top on the lower tiers.
No. On the Free and Starter plans the 50 Lyro conversations are a total rather than a monthly allowance, and once they are used Lyro stops responding. Denser's free plan resets every month and paid allowances reset monthly.
Not as a live-chat suite. Denser has no agent seats, shared inbox, visitor tracking, or flows builder. It replaces the AI answering layer, which teams typically deploy on documentation and product pages so fewer conversations start in the first place.
Tidio does not advertise source citations for Lyro answers. Denser links every reply to the exact passage it came from, which matters when the answer concerns pricing, policy, or product specifications.
Because the products are sold to different buyers. Tidio's revenue centres on live chat, so AI is priced as an add-on measured in conversations. Denser sells the answering layer itself, so its plans are measured in questions and priced for volume.
Point Denser at your website or upload your documents, ask the questions your customers actually ask, and check the source behind every answer. It takes about five minutes.
