Nickel Plating Handbook [pdf]

Is it true that nickel plating is less expensive than chrome plating, but chrome is more durable? Is that the trade off?

The trade offs are more complex than that. Depending on your application chrome might be more or less durable. Chrome is more toxic from what I can tell. I used to work at a factory that did chrome platting (technically the next building over - I never went into that building but it was the same company), and so I had to get special safety training before I was allowed to work. Mostly my training amounted to we have our own sewer system for just the chrome plating work, it can handle chrome salts but regular sewage will clog it and cause a toxic release - use the regular city sewer for everything else.

Chrome is shinier. (Possibly shinier than silver, but I don't thing I've seen a comparison.)

It's a good thing that we replaced most of the people-facing platings with plastics, because those are some nasty metals. The one metal that we still use everywhere is zinc, that isn't a big issue.

But nickel in particular allows for a lot of possibilities on the plating color, including some very-high absorption blacks. (And I think all the high-absorption for solar radiation, low absorption for thermal radiation coatings are nickel based.)