TA pilot vs Slido
Slido is the default for live audience Q&A at big conferences. TA pilot is the default for presenters who want the Q&A next to their slides — inside a Chrome sidebar — without tab-switching and with voice-triggered polls.
Feature-by-feature
| Feature | TA pilot | Slido |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Chrome sidebar, docked beside any tab | Separate tab or embedded window |
| Pricing | Free for any session size | Free tier caps at 100 participants; paid from ~$12/mo |
| Live polls | Triggered by voice ("let's vote on A, B, or C") | Created via a web form, pushed to audience |
| Upvotes on Q&A | Yes, re-sorts the queue in real time | Yes |
| Inline screenshots on questions | Attendees snap a photo of the slide and attach it | Text-only |
| Countdown timers | Voice-triggered ("take 5 minutes") | Not built-in |
| Ambient background music | One-tap or voice command | Not supported |
| Live transcription | Optional captions in 20 languages | English-only (via integration) |
| Attendee app install | None — QR-scan opens a mobile web form | None — web form |
| Enterprise SSO | Not yet | Yes (Slido Enterprise) |
Pick TA pilot when…
- You present inside Chrome (Google Slides, Keynote Web, Notion, any web deck)
- You want polls without leaving your slides — trigger by voice and move on
- You need inline screenshots from audience phones
- You're teaching a class and want anonymous Q&A at zero cost
- Your audience is under 250 and you want a free, no-cap tool
Pick Slido when…
- You're running a 2000+ person conference keynote
- Your organization mandates enterprise SSO, SCIM, or on-prem deployment
- You need Webex integration (Slido is owned by Cisco)
- You want pre-built audience engagement templates / question banks
The longer take
Slido is a veteran of live audience engagement and has been battle-tested at Fortune 500 scale. It's a great fit when your event has thousands of attendees, a dedicated production team, and a procurement process that expects SSO and contract support.
For the other 95% of talks — a university lecture, a product launch webinar, a meetup, a workshop, a hybrid conference track — TA pilot's Chrome-sidebar approach saves time and attention. The sidebar stays docked beside your deck, so questions and polls are in peripheral vision the entire talk. Voice-triggered polls materialize in two seconds without you leaving your slides.
Slido's free tier caps at 100 live participants. TA pilot is free at any session size today, because we subsidize the AI costs while we figure out the right commercial model. For independent teachers, indie consultants, and small-team workshop hosts, that's a meaningful difference.
If you're on the fence: install TA pilot (it's free), try it on your next talk, keep Slido as your fallback for the big conference. The tools aren't mutually exclusive.
Related reading
TA pilot is a free Chrome install. Run your next talk with it beside your slides and see which experience lands.