Best AI Chatbot for Shopify Stores in 2026: 8 Tools Compared

"Where is my order?" is the question every Shopify store answers more than any other, and a chatbot that cannot look the order up is a FAQ page with a chat window. The stores that get value from AI support use a tool that reads their policies, checks the order in Shopify, and passes the hard cases to a person without losing the thread.

This comparison is for a Shopify merchant who does their own support, or a small ecommerce team choosing its first support tool. It compares eight options on the jobs that matter in a store, prices them at two conversation volumes and explains how the order lookup works.

Every price below was read from the vendor's own pricing page or help center on 16 October 2026, so re-check the linked pages before you buy. PepoChat is our product; where another tool is the better fit, this post says so.

What should an AI chatbot for a Shopify store do?

A Shopify chatbot has five jobs, and the order lookup is the one that separates a useful tool from a decorative one.

1. Answer from your store's content. Shipping times, returns, sizing and payment methods live on your policy and product pages. The bot should answer from those pages only, and say so when the answer is not there. An AI support agent is a chatbot that answers from your own content, takes actions such as an order lookup, and hands the conversation to a person when it cannot help.
2. Look up live order status. The customer gives an order number and the bot reports whether the order is paid and shipped, from Shopify.
3. Hand off to a person with the transcript, so refunds, exceptions and upset customers reach a human who does not ask them to start again.
4. Capture the email when a follow-up is needed, and only then.
5. Never invent a discount, a delivery date or a policy.

The twelve questions that make up most of an ecommerce inbox are listed with their source of truth in our guide to ecommerce chatbot questions. Use that list as your test script for any tool on this page.

Best AI chatbots for Shopify compared (October 2026)

All eight tools below answer customers from your own content, six can show live order status in some form, and two have a free plan with AI on it.

Sources, all read on 16 October 2026: the Shopify help center page on the Inbox agent and the Shopify Inbox app listing, the Gorgias pricing page, the Tidio pricing page, the Re:amaze pricing page, the Richpanel pricing page, Zendesk's article on setting up the Shopify integration and the Chatbase pricing page. Zendesk seat and resolution prices are as read on 1 October 2026 in our Intercom vs Zendesk comparison.

Shopify Inbox: the free option built into your store

Shopify Inbox is the free chat app from Shopify, and its Inbox agent can answer customers on its own. It is the first thing to try, and for many small stores it is enough.

The App Store listing calls it "An AI sales associate for your online store" and prices it as free; it needs a Basic, Grow, Advanced or Plus plan. The Inbox agent is opt-in. Shopify's help center says it "can answer product questions, make personalized recommendations, help with order lookups, and add items to a customer's cart", working from your product catalog, policies, pages and blog posts. It can take all conversations or only the hours your staff are away, and it hands a chat to staff with its context when they are available.

The catch is sign-in. Shopify's documentation states that "the customer is prompted to sign in before the Inbox agent shares order information", and the agent only works with new customer accounts. The separate "Track my order" instant answer takes an order number and email, but reviewing an existing order still requires signing in. For a store whose shoppers check out as guests, that is the main reason to add a second tool.

Who it suits: any store starting out, and any store whose customers already have accounts. Turn it on before you pay for anything else.

Gorgias: the ecommerce helpdesk with the most order actions

Gorgias is the strongest choice for a store that gets tickets on email, SMS, Instagram and chat and wants one AI agent across all of them. It is a helpdesk first and a chatbot second, and its price follows that.

As of October 2026, Gorgias bills by ticket: Starter is $10 a month, billed monthly only, for 50 tickets; Basic is $60, or $50 on annual billing, for 300; Pro is $360 or $300 for 2,000; Advanced is $900 or $750 for 5,000, with $0.36 to $0.40 per ticket past the allowance. AI Agent is on every plan and is bought per automated interaction, a conversation resolved by the AI, a Flow or an order-management action, at $0.90 each on annual contracts or $1.00 monthly, with a few included per plan (30 on Starter and Basic, 190 on Pro, 530 on Advanced) and $1.50 for interactions beyond what you bought. Each AI interaction also counts as a ticket. There is no free plan, only a 7-day trial.

What you get is the deepest Shopify order handling in this comparison: AI actions that cancel orders, edit addresses and manage subscriptions, on Basic and above. Our Gorgias alternative page works the two meters at two volumes.

Who it suits: a team of two or more agents on several channels who want the AI to change orders, not only report on them.

Tidio: live chat with a Lyro AI quota and Shopify actions on Growth

Tidio fits a store that wants a human live chat inbox now and an AI agent it can grow into, as long as it is on the Growth plan or above.

As of October 2026, Tidio's Free plan includes 50 billable conversations a month, 10 seats and "your first 50 conversations are free (lifetime)" on its Lyro AI agent: a one-off sample, not a monthly allowance. Starter is $24.17 a month for 100 billable conversations, Growth starts at $49.17 for 250, and Plus starts at $300 plus usage. Lyro is a separate quota from $32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations, counted once a conversation has at least one AI reply.

The Shopify detail that matters: native Shopify actions, which let Lyro answer order questions from the store, are not included on Free or Starter. They start on Growth, where removing Tidio branding is a $16.67 add-on. The Tidio vs Crisp vs PepoChat comparison goes deeper on the live chat side.

Who it suits: a store that wants people answering chat with AI as a backup, on a Growth budget.

Re:amaze: a per-seat helpdesk with an AI agent in beta

Re:amaze is a per-seat helpdesk with a Shopify integration and an AI agent its own pricing page still labels beta. It fits a small team that wants a conventional inbox and a modest amount of AI.

As of October 2026, Basic is $29 per team member a month ($26.10 on annual billing) with 5 AI resolutions per user a month; Pro is $49 ($44.10) with 10 and AI Intents; Plus is $69 ($62.10) with 20. Additional AI resolutions cost $0.85 each. A flat Starter plan is $59 a month, limited to 500 responded conversations. There is no free plan; the 14-day trial includes the Plus features.

The included resolutions are small, so a store that wants the AI to handle most chats will mostly pay $0.85 a resolution, and the pricing page does not detail what the AI can look up in a Shopify order, so test that in the trial.

Who it suits: a two-to-five person team that wants a predictable per-seat helpdesk with AI as an add-on.

Richpanel: AI with a $200 monthly minimum and a self-service portal

Richpanel is an ecommerce helpdesk whose AI is priced on a token meter, with a floor that makes it a mid-sized store's tool rather than a starter one.

As of October 2026, the helpdesk is $99 a seat a month on annual billing, or $119 monthly, with no per-ticket fees. AI agents run on a credit meter at $0.50 a credit on annual terms or $0.60 monthly, with a $200 a month AI minimum; Richpanel puts the typical cost at about $0.20 per AI-handled conversation, counting a whole thread as one conversation. One seat plus the AI minimum starts at $299 a month on an annual commitment. The Self-Service Portal, where customers "track and update their orders", carries no add-on fee, and its homepage lists Shopify actions such as "Get customer orders" and "Refund order".

Who it suits: a store already past a few thousand conversations a month, where $299 is a small line and the portal replaces a chunk of returns and tracking tickets.

Zendesk: a full suite with Shopify orders in the agent's sidebar

Zendesk suits a larger team that needs email, phone and social routing with SLAs, and its Shopify integration serves the agent more than the customer.

Zendesk's help center says the integration "includes an app so agents can view Shopify order information", matched to the ticket requester's email or phone, and lets agents "process Shopify order refunds and cancellations in the Support app". It is available on every Suite plan and on Support Team, Professional and Enterprise. The documentation does not describe a customer asking the AI agent for order status in chat.

On price, as of 1 October 2026 Suite Team is $55 per agent a month on annual billing, and AI agents are included with 5 automated resolutions per agent a month, then $1.50 each on a commitment or $2.00 pay-as-you-go. Our Zendesk alternative page covers the rest.

Who it suits: a team of five or more agents on many channels.

Chatbase: a standalone bot with a Shopify integration, no free plan now

Chatbase is a standalone AI agent builder that connects to Shopify on its paid plans, and its pricing unit is credits.

As of 16 October 2026, Chatbase's pricing page no longer lists a free plan. Hobby is the lowest tier at $40 a month, or $32 billed yearly, with 700 message credits, 10 MB of training content, 2 members and 5 AI actions per agent, with a 7-day trial; Standard is $150, or $120 yearly, for 4,000 credits; Pro is $500, or $400 yearly, for 15,000. Extra credits cost $40 per 1,000, and the Shopify integration is included on all three plans.

Each reply consumes credits according to the model you choose, and there is a human takeover but no helpdesk inbox behind it. The Chatbase alternative page compares it feature by feature.

Who it suits: a store that wants to build and tune its own bot and is comfortable with a credit meter.

PepoChat: a standalone AI support agent with order status on the free plan

PepoChat is an AI support agent for your website with a team inbox built in, and its Shopify order lookup is on the free plan. It is the honest fit for a store whose support arrives through the site, and the wrong fit for a store that lives in email and Instagram.

Every feature is on the free plan: 200 AI replies a month, 5 knowledge sources, one member, the team inbox, human handoff with an escalation email to your team, lead capture and every integration. Starter is $49 a month for 2,000 replies and 3 members; Growth is $149 for 10,000 replies, 10 members and no PepoChat branding; replies past the allowance cost $10 per 1,000.

The knowledge base comes from a crawl of your store, a sitemap import, uploaded PDFs such as a size guide, and Q&A pairs for the questions it misses, as the training guide shows. The Shopify action asks for the order number and reports the payment and fulfilment status; the agent may read only the order's name, creation date, financial status and fulfilment status, and the read_orders scope covers the last 60 days. Shoppers do not need an account: an anonymous visitor can ask with an order number, and a verified visitor, one who confirmed an email with a six-digit code, can unlock personal features such as pre-filled bookings. Our post on chatbot customer verification covers how much to show before and after that check.

The limits are real. PepoChat is not in the Shopify App Store: you paste one script tag into theme.liquid before </body>, or into a custom liquid section, and connect Shopify through a custom app in the Dev Dashboard. The agent reports on orders and cannot cancel, edit or refund them, by design, since a payment should never be wired to a bot. The widget is web only, with no email, SMS, WhatsApp or Instagram channel.

Who it suits: a one-to-three person store whose questions arrive on the website, that wants order status answered at 2 a.m. and a person in the loop by 9, without a per-ticket meter.

How much does a Shopify chatbot cost at 500 and 2,000 conversations a month?

At 500 conversations a month the tools range from $0 to about $559; at 2,000 the per-resolution and per-ticket models pull away from the flat ones.

Assumptions, stated so you can swap in your own: one seat, two AI replies per conversation, half of conversations resolved by the AI without a person, monthly billing at the list prices above, and the cheapest plan that covers the volume. These are estimates from published list prices, not quotes.

Shopify Inbox is free at any volume, so it belongs in every store. The per-resolution tools charge more as the AI gets better, so Zendesk, Re:amaze and Gorgias bills grow with success, a dynamic our AI chatbot cost guide works through across pricing models. The flat tools, Chatbase and PepoChat, barely move between the two volumes.

How does a chatbot look up Shopify order status, and what can it see?

The lookup is a read-only API call: the customer types an order number, the chatbot asks Shopify for that order, and it reports the payment and fulfilment status in plain words. What the bot can see depends on the scope the merchant grants and the fields the tool lets the model read.

In PepoChat you create a custom app in Shopify's Dev Dashboard with the read_orders scope, paste its client ID and secret into the Shopify card under App Integrations, test with a real order number and switch the action on. The scope covers the last 60 days; older orders need Shopify's gated read_all_orders scope. The agent confirms the returned order name matches the number the visitor gave, and reads nothing beyond the name, date, financial status and fulfilment status. The full walkthrough, including the WooCommerce version, is in the guide to connecting a chatbot to Shopify order status and the Shopify integration docs.

Two questions to put to any vendor: can a customer get order status without creating an account, and which fields of the order reach the AI?

How do you install a chatbot on a Shopify store?

There are two ways: an App Store app that adds itself to your theme, or a script tag you paste into the theme code.

App Store tools such as Shopify Inbox, Gorgias, Tidio and Re:amaze install from the listing without touching code. Standalone tools install through Online Store, Themes, Edit code, in theme.liquid just before </body>, or in a custom liquid section if you prefer not to open the layout file. Shopify's own advice is to edit theme code only when an app or the theme editor cannot do the job, to duplicate the theme first, and to remember that a theme update does not carry custom code across, so re-paste the snippet after you update. PepoChat's website builders guide lists the exact spot, and the script tag install guide covers testing and the allowed-domains list that stops the snippet working on any other site.

What to do next

List last month's support questions by type and count how many were order status. If it is most of them, the order lookup decides the tool, and the Shopify order status walkthrough shows what a working one looks like in a chat. Turn on Shopify Inbox today, since it costs nothing, then test one standalone or helpdesk tool against the same questions for a month. To try the standalone route, create a free PepoChat workspace, import your store as one knowledge source, connect the Shopify app with the read_orders scope, and compare the plans on the pricing page once you know your real volume.