StarReply vs Birdeye
Every tool in this category can draft a reply. The question a multi-location owner should ask is narrower: what will it publish without me, and what does it cost to find out?
| What its own page publishes | StarReply | Birdeye |
|---|---|---|
| The price on its own pricing page | $5/month for three locations, $15/month for twenty-five. | No figure. |
| What the price is per | Per business. | A location band, by contract. |
| How you get the number | It is on the page. | A quote form: pick a band, press GET PRICING. |
| What the page says about AI-written replies | Every reply is drafted by the agent, in your voice. | Nothing on its pricing page. |
| A review class it will not answer unattended | Named: 2★ and below, enforced in code rather than by a setting. | None named on its pricing page. |
What Birdeye is
Birdeye is a full reputation and customer-experience platform: review generation and monitoring, two-way messaging, surveys, listings management, payments, referrals and appointment reminders, sold as one contract across a location estate. It is the incumbent in this category and it is genuinely broad.
It does not publish a price. No pricing page. Its pricing page is a quote form: you pick a location band (1-3, 4-9, 10-39, 40-249, 250-999, 1000+) and press "GET PRICING". Read from Birdeye — Pricing on 2026-09-21.
What StarReply is
StarReply is a single agent pointed at one job, the morning after. It polls each location overnight, reads what each new review is actually about, drafts the reply in your voice, and routes it.
- 2★ and below is approval-only, in code. There is no autonomy setting that reaches it: the branch runs before the mode is read, and the database refuses any update that clears the flag on the row.
- Below 70% confidence in what a review is even about, the reply is held whatever the rating. The agent does not answer a review it is unsure it understood.
- A 30-second kill window between your tap and the listing, and a receipt for every read, draft, hold and post. Killing inside the window means it was never published, not published and then deleted.
- On the reviews it may handle, at most 20 posts a day per location, and never more than 1 reply to any one review.
- $5/month for up to three locations, $15/month for up to twenty-five. Published, flat, per business rather than per location, and no annual contract.
Choose Birdeye if
- You want review generation, messaging, surveys, listings and payments in one contract.
- You have forty or four hundred locations and a team to run the platform.
- You are comfortable getting the price from a sales conversation.
Choose StarReply if
- The actual problem is the reply, not the platform, and the reply to the bad one is the part that keeps not getting written.
- You want the hard replies drafted for you and then to decide yourself, with the tool structurally unable to decide for you.
- You want to know what it costs before you talk to anyone.
Moving off Birdeye
Birdeye is bought as a contract across a location estate, so the question is the term rather than the export: leaving mid-term is a commercial conversation, not a settings change. The parts of it StarReply does not replace are the ones you should count first, because they are most of the platform: review requests, webchat, surveys, listings and payments all stop. What comes across is the review history on the listings themselves, because that lives on Google Business Profile and Trustpilot rather than in Birdeye, and StarReply reads it from the same place under the access you grant.
Questions
How much does Birdeye cost? Birdeye does not publish a price. Its pricing page is a quote form: you pick a location band, 1-3, 4-9, 10-39, 40-249, 250-999 or 1000+, and press GET PRICING. StarReply publishes $5/month for up to three locations and $15/month for up to twenty-five.
Does Birdeye reply to reviews automatically? Birdeye sells AI review response among a much wider platform. The difference that matters is not whether a tool can auto-reply, most can, but whether it names a review class it will not auto-reply to. StarReply names one and enforces it in code rather than in a setting.
Is StarReply a replacement for a whole reputation platform? No, and it is not trying to be. Birdeye also does messaging, surveys, listings management, payments and referrals. StarReply reads your reviews, drafts the reply, and hands you the queue. If you need the suite, buy the suite.
The rest of the shortlist
Further reading
- What to write under a one-star review, and what never to
- Replying to reviews at five addresses with one morning
- What the FTC's 2024 review rule actually bans
Every Birdeye figure on this page is the value carried in this site's claim register, read from Birdeye's own page and re-checked on rotation. Last verified 2026-09-21.