AI chatbots for Singapore SMEs: Tidio vs Chatbase vs DIY (2026)

The short answer: count last month's enquiries before you pick anything. Long, back-and-forth chats (bookings, complaints, "can you check my order")? Tidio's per-conversation pricing is the safer meter. Short, one-shot questions your documents can answer ("what's the price", "do you deliver")? Chatbase's per-reply pricing can be roughly ten times cheaper. Fewer than ~50 enquiries a month? Don't pay either. The DIY path at the bottom costs S$0.

And one thing nobody selling chatbots mentions: PSG will fund up to 50% of a pre-approved vendor's chatbot. Neither of these tools is one.

At a glance (prices checked 15 Jul 2026)

What you're actually buying

Tidio is a customer-service suite that grew an AI: live chat, ticketing, social channels, and Lyro answering inside it. You're buying an inbox your staff will also use. Its meter is generous per interaction. A customer can go away, come back, and argue about a refund across twenty messages, and it's still one Lyro conversation at ~US$0.65–0.78 depending on billing term.

Chatbase is an AI agent you train on your documents and put on your site (voice and telephony on higher tiers). Its meter charges per model reply. A 500-credit Hobby plan works out at ~US$0.06–0.08 per simple answer, which is brilliant for FAQ traffic. But a single chatty visitor can burn a stack of credits, and premium models (Claude Opus-class at 6 credits) multiply the burn.

The decision-flip, in numbers. 200 short FAQ answers ≈ 200–400 Chatbase credits, comfortably inside the Hobby plan. The same 200 as Tidio Lyro conversations ≈ US$140+ on the ladder. Now flip the shape to 200 long service conversations. Chatbase's credits evaporate mid-month while Tidio's flat conversations plod on. So count your last month's enquiries and sort them into "one answer" vs "a conversation" before you pick a vendor. That's the whole comparison.

One display note, so you don't get a false "your numbers are wrong" moment: both vendors' pricing pages default to showing annual-billed rates. The monthly figures in brackets appear when you flip their billing toggle.

Two free-tier traps, verbatim from their own pages. Tidio's free AI allowance is lifetime, not monthly: 50 Lyro conversations once, ever. Chatbase's renews monthly, but a free-plan agent is deleted after 14 days of inactivity. Build it, ignore it for a fortnight, and it's gone.

Singapore-specific notes

• There's a PSG grant category for chatbots. It's called "Chatbots for Customer Engagement": up to 50% support for SMEs, via pre-approved vendors on GoBusiness. Tidio and Chatbase are not in it. They're buy-direct tools. So the real Singapore decision is three-way: DIY free, buy-direct at US$29–40/mo, or a PSG-supported vendor build. Get the grant-vs-direct math and read the markup check first, because a 50% grant on an inflated quote is not a saving.
• Billing is USD on both (+ GST where applicable). No SGD price lists.
• PDPA: customer chats land on these vendors' overseas clouds. State a purpose, link your privacy note, and don't repurpose captured emails into marketing without consent. Same rules as our chatbot playbook.

Which one for which business

• Service-heavy (salon, clinic, agency, anything with bookings and back-and-forth): Tidio. The conversation meter matches your traffic, and your staff get an inbox.
• Information-heavy (e-commerce FAQs, price lists, policies, a menu): Chatbase. Train it on your documents and pay cents per answer.
• Under ~50 enquiries a month, or WhatsApp-first: DIY, below. Don't subscribe to anything yet.
• Determined to have it built and grant-funded: a PSG pre-approved vendor, with the markup check in hand.

You might need neither if…

…your enquiries are few, repetitive, and mostly on WhatsApp. The free WhatsApp Business app answers after-hours and templates your top five replies (20-minute playbook), and a free FAQ flow covers the website widget on Tidio's own free plan. A chatbot subscription is worth it on volume. Below ~50 enquiries a month it's a hobby with a monthly fee.

Your first build, step by step

The first step isn't buying. It's testing on free tiers, which Tidio and Chatbase both allow without a card:

1. Sort last month's enquiries: one-shot answers vs conversations. Ten minutes with your chat history.
2. Information-shaped? Chatbase free. Upload your price list or FAQ doc and test 20 real questions against its 50 monthly credits. Set a weekly reminder so the 14-day deletion doesn't eat your agent.
3. Conversation-shaped? Tidio free. Build the five-button FAQ flow from our template, then spend the one-off 50 Lyro conversations deliberately in a single busy week to judge the AI.
4. Whichever survives contact with real customers, then price its paid tier against the table above.

FAQ

Can either answer on WhatsApp? Meaningfully? That's WhatsApp Business Platform territory, with per-message Meta fees on top. Different economics entirely: WhatsApp app vs API.

Will the AI say something wrong to a customer? Sometimes. That's why every branch should end with a human handoff, and why Chatbase's premium-model option (better answers, 3–6 credits each) is a cost decision, not just a quality one.

Is DIY really comparable? For FAQ deflection, honestly, mostly yes. That's why it's in the table. What you give up is polish, analytics, and someone else maintaining it. What you keep is S$0 and a data pathway under your control.

What about the PSG chatbot vendors? Different product class: built-for-you, contract-based, grant-eligible. Right for some, after the 7 questions that expose a grant farmer.

Next step

Do the ten-minute enquiry sort, run the free-tier test that matches your shape, and only then subscribe. If the test says "neither", the WhatsApp playbook is your S$0 answer this afternoon.