Best AI chatbot for Shopify in 2026: 11 apps and tools compared

We looked at AI chatbots that answer shoppers on a Shopify storefront. On October 7, 2026 we read each app's Shopify App Store listing (rating, number of reviews and the pricing section) and Shopify's Help Center articles, and compared:

• Order and cart actions: whether the AI can look up an order, add to cart or act on refunds, which needs access to your Shopify data.
• Where answers come from: your catalog, policies and pages, your own written information, or web results.
• Free plan and entry price as shown on the listing, and what the price is based on (conversations, AI replies, tickets or visitors).
• Rating and number of reviews on the Shopify App Store.
• How it installs: as an app with an app embed, or as a script pasted into the theme.

Ratings move daily, and app prices on Shopify listings are usually shown per month; some apps also show a yearly price, which we quote where it was listed. The "Built for Shopify" badge was visible on only two listings we checked (Chatty and Zipchat), so we don't claim it for the others.

• Best free starting point: Shopify Inbox. Native, free, and its AI agent can look up orders and add items to the cart.
• Best live chat plus AI that acts on orders: Tidio, with Lyro handling order status, refunds, cancellations and order edits within rules you set.
• Best value AI shopping assistant: Chatty, with a free plan and AI order tracking from $19.99/month.
• Best for selling across chat, email, WhatsApp and Instagram: Zipchat.
• Best for stores with a support team: Gorgias, a full helpdesk with an AI Agent.
• Best for answers strictly from your own information, in 12 languages: Nexoply, for stores whose shoppers mostly ask about products, shipping, returns and hours rather than "where is my order?".

Shopify Inbox is Shopify's own chat app, free, with 4.6 stars from 5,804 reviews. Its listing calls it "an AI sales associate for your online store". The Inbox agent is opt-in: you can run Inbox with or without it. According to Shopify's Help Center, the agent can "answer product questions, make personalized recommendations, help with order lookups, and add items to a customer's cart". It uses your product catalog, policies, pages and Knowledge Base, and can also cite web search results as a secondary source for product-adjacent content.

• Pricing: free.
• Requirements: an active online store on the Basic, Grow, Advanced or Shopify Plus plan, and new customer accounts (the agent doesn't work with legacy customer accounts). It only works in your online store's chat widget.
• Strengths: native to Shopify, no extra bill, order lookups and add-to-cart, personalized replies when shoppers sign in with Shop, 21 listed languages. You choose when the agent answers: all conversations, only when your staff is unavailable, or never (the default for stores that had Inbox before the agent).
• Considerations: complex or sensitive questions are handed to your staff; if no one is available, the agent shares your store's sender email. Shopify says you're responsible for the accuracy of what it says, and web results can be used for product-adjacent questions. Some merchants' recent reviews ask for better human handover and an API to read conversations.
• Best for: almost every Shopify store, as the first thing to try.

Tidio: AI Chatbot & Live Chat has 4.8 stars from 1,352 reviews on the Shopify App Store and has been listed since 2014. It combines live chat, a helpdesk, automation flows and Lyro, an AI agent. The listing says Lyro "acts within your rules: order status, refunds, cancellations and order edits", with native Shopify actions.

• Pricing on the listing: Free plan. Customer Service $29/month ($290/year), Flows $29/month, and the Lyro AI Chatbot plan from $39/month; the price scales with usage. 7-day trial. Tidio on the Shopify App Store.
• Strengths: AI that can handle order status and changes, live chat for your team, automation flows, a long track record with Shopify stores.
• Considerations: customer service, automation and AI are priced separately, so the total depends on which parts you use and your traffic.
• Best for: small and mid-size stores where someone also answers chats and many questions are about orders.

Comparing options? See Tidio alternatives and Nexoply vs Tidio.

Chatty AI Chatbot & Live Chat has 4.9 stars from 1,869 reviews and carries the "Built for Shopify" badge. It combines an AI shopping assistant with live chat, order tracking and abandoned-cart features.

• Pricing on the listing: Free (50 AI conversations a month, AI trained on up to 200 products). Basic $19.99/month (100 AI conversations, AI order tracking), Pro $68.99/month (500), Plus $199/month (1,000). Extra AI conversations cost $0.40 each. 7-day trial. Chatty on the Shopify App Store.
• Strengths: a real free plan, low entry price, order tracking from the first paid plan, very high rating on many reviews.
• Considerations: the free plan's AI learns up to 200 products, and AI conversations are capped per plan with a per-conversation charge beyond that.
• Best for: small stores that want AI product help and order tracking on a budget.

Zipchat AI Chatbot & Live Chat has 4.9 stars from 204 reviews and the "Built for Shopify" badge. It recommends products, answers order-status questions and works across website chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.

• Pricing on the listing: Free (120 AI replies a month, about 50 conversations, trained on 100 pages). Starter $80/month ($768/year; 750 replies, about 300 conversations), Pro $300/month, Scale $600/month. 7-day trial. Zipchat on the Shopify App Store.
• Strengths: sales focus, several channels in one place, order status.
• Considerations: priced by AI replies, and a big step from Free to $80/month.
• Best for: growing stores that sell through social and messaging as well as the website.

Gorgias: AI, Helpdesk & Chat is a full helpdesk for online stores, with an AI Agent and channels such as email, chat, SMS, voice and social. It has 4.3 stars from 705 reviews.

• Pricing: the Shopify listing shows "From $10/month": Starter $10/month (50 tickets, 3 agents, $0.40 per extra ticket), Basic $60/month ($600/year, 300 tickets), Pro $360, Advanced $900, with automation as an add-on; 7-day trial. On gorgias.com, the helpdesk with the AI Agent starts at $40/month billed monthly (50 tickets and 30 automated interactions), and AI costs $0.85 to $1.00 per automated interaction. Gorgias pricing.
• Strengths: every channel in one helpdesk, AI that can act on orders, pricing by tickets rather than by agent.
• Considerations: it's support software for a team; costs grow with tickets and automated interactions.
• Best for: stores with one or more people handling customer service every day.

Rep AI: AI Agent & Live Chat has 4.6 stars from 117 reviews. Its "behavioral AI" opens a chat with shoppers who seem to hesitate, aiming to turn visits into sales.

• Pricing on the listing: "Pay-as-you-Grow" is free to install with 100 free visitors a month, then $12 per extra 1,000 visitors. Starter $104/month (10,000 visitors), Basic $209/month, Standard $368/month. 14-day trial. Rep AI on the Shopify App Store.
• Strengths: proactive, sales-oriented approach.
• Considerations: priced by visitors, so busy stores pay more even if few people chat.
• Best for: stores with steady traffic that want to raise conversion.

Nexoply is an AI assistant for small business websites, not a Shopify app. You enter your products and prices, shipping and returns policies, FAQs, opening hours and contact details, or let Nexoply read your store's public pages and suggest them for you to approve. It answers shoppers only from that information and says so when it doesn't know. It suits stores, and service businesses that sell on Shopify, whose shoppers mostly ask about products, delivery, returns and hours.

• Pricing: Free with 50 conversations a month (no credit card), then Starter $19, Business $49 and Pro $99 a month, AI included. Yearly billing gives two months free. See the pricing page.
• Strengths: answers only from information you approved; replies in 12 languages (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean); every conversation in your dashboard, with the questions it couldn't answer listed so you can add them; your own look and placement, such as a side tab or a start screen with buttons; built-in spam protection.
• Considerations: it doesn't look up orders, edit carts or process returns, and it has no live-chat inbox for your team and no email, WhatsApp or Instagram channel. It isn't synced with your Shopify catalog: website import reads 15 to 200 pages per scan depending on the plan, so a store with hundreds of products should add its key products and policies rather than expect every item. It installs by pasting a script into theme.liquid, and theme updates can remove manual code edits.
• Best for: small stores, makers and local shops whose questions are "Do you ship to Spain?", "Can I return a sale item?" or "Is the shop open on Sunday?", especially with shoppers in several languages.

Manifest AI Chatbot + ChatGPT has 4.6 stars from 60 reviews. It's a ChatGPT-based shopping assistant with product quizzes and cart recovery.

• Pricing: the listing says "Free to test"; paid prices weren't shown, so check the Manifest AI listing for current pricing.
• Strengths: guided shopping with quizzes, cart recovery.
• Considerations: no published paid prices on the listing; fewer reviews than the apps above.
• Best for: stores that want quiz-style product discovery.

Chatbase - AI agent for support and sales joined the Shopify App Store in January 2026 and has 4.9 stars from 37 reviews. Chatbase builds an AI agent from your pages and files and can deploy it on your store and on channels such as WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.

• Pricing on the listing: Free (50 message credits, 1 MB of training data), Hobby $40/month (700 credits), Standard $150/month, Pro $500/month, the same as Chatbase's own pricing. Chatbase on the Shopify App Store.
• Strengths: many channels, actions and integrations, a choice of AI models.
• Considerations: billed in message credits, which are harder to predict; a newer listing with fewer reviews.
• Best for: brands that want one agent across their store and social channels.

tawk.to Live Chat is free on the Shopify App Store, with 3.6 stars from 89 reviews. It's live chat first: your team answers. AI replies come from tawk.to's paid AI Assist.

• Pricing: free live chat; AI Assist from $29/month on tawk.to. tawk.to pricing.
• Strengths: free live chat with no limit on agents.
• Considerations: without AI Assist someone has to answer; the lowest rating in this list.
• Best for: stores with staff available to chat that want to keep costs at zero.

Jotform AI Chatbot ‑ Live Chat has 3.9 stars from 36 reviews and has been listed since April 2025. It adds a Jotform chatbot trained on your content, with live chat.

• Pricing: the listing shows it as free; check the Jotform AI Chatbot listing for current terms.
• Strengths: fits stores that already use Jotform forms.
• Considerations: a mixed rating on a small number of reviews.
• Best for: Jotform customers who want a chatbot on the same account.

Shopify's Sidekick is an AI assistant inside the Shopify admin, for you and your staff. It helps analyze data, manage orders, edit products and generate content. It doesn't appear on your storefront and doesn't talk to shoppers. For customer chat, the Shopify option is the Inbox agent described above. Shopify Help: Sidekick.

Before choosing, sort your last month of customer emails and chats into the kinds of questions below. The answer tells you whether you need order access or just good information.

If order questions are a large share, choose a tool with Shopify order access. If most questions are about policies, products and hours, any tool here can answer them, and the choice comes down to price, languages and how strictly it sticks to your information.

• Apps with an app embed: most chat apps add their chat bubble as an app embed, which you turn on or off in the theme editor. Shopify notes that if you change your published theme, you need to re-activate app embeds in the new theme.
• A script in the theme code: Nexoply (and tools without a Shopify app) are pasted into layout/theme.liquid, just before the closing body tag, through Online Store → Themes → … → Edit code.

Shopify's Help Center gives two warnings for code edits. If your code changes are incompatible with a theme update, they are removed in the updated copy, so check the snippet after updating or switching themes. And you can only edit the code of a paid theme after you've bought it. Duplicate your theme before editing, as Shopify recommends. The step-by-step Shopify install guide covers this for Nexoply.

• A clothing store shipping hundreds of orders a month, where "where is my parcel?" is the top question: turn on the Shopify Inbox agent first. If you need refunds, cancellations or more control, try Tidio (Lyro) or Chatty.
• A brand with two or three people doing customer service across email, chat and Instagram: Gorgias, or Zipchat if selling through messaging matters more than ticket handling.
• A store with steady traffic that wants more sales from browsers: Rep AI or Zipchat, which are built around starting sales conversations.
• A small maker or local shop with a few dozen products, where shoppers ask about delivery areas, returns, custom orders and opening hours: Nexoply, if you want answers only from what you've written and a chat that looks like your brand. Shopify Inbox is a good free alternative.
• A store selling to several countries: compare languages. Shopify Inbox lists 21; Nexoply answers in 12 and replies in the shopper's language.
• A store with someone always online and no budget: Shopify Inbox without the agent, or tawk.to, both free.

1. 01

   Duplicate your theme

   Work on a copy for apps that touch theme code, so you can roll back in one click.

2. 02

   Ask your 10 most common questions

   Take them from real emails: returns on sale items, delivery times abroad, sizing, gift cards, discount codes.

3. 03

   Ask one it can't know

   For example a restock date you haven't announced. A good chatbot says it doesn't know and offers a way to reach you.

4. 04

   Test an order question

   Place a test order and ask about it. Check what the tool does: looks it up, links to your tracking page, or hands over to a person.

5. 05

   Price it at your volume

   Count last month's chats, AI replies, tickets or visitors, whichever the app charges for, and add the yearly cost.

If your shoppers mostly ask about products, shipping, returns and opening hours, and you want answers only from your own information in their language, create a free account, import your store's pages, test it on a sample page, then paste one line into theme.liquid. The Shopify install guide shows each step. For a wider comparison beyond Shopify, see the best AI chatbots for business.