Key Takeaways
💰 Maze pricing ranges from a free plan to custom pricing, with the Starter plan at $99/month.
🚧 Maze testing capabilities are limited in lower-tier plans, especially for advanced features like interview studies and mobile testing.
🚨 Users have reported bugs, mobile testing issues, and unreliable heatmaps affecting research quality.
🚩Maze competitors like UXtweak more flexibility, scalable features, and comprehensive tools at a better value.
Quick answer: how much does Maze cost?
Maze plans have varying pricing, starting with a free option and going up to custom plans that can reach several thousand per month, depending on your needs.
Maze software offers a Free plan with 1 study per month and 5 seats, a Starter plan at $99/month or $1,188/year, which includes additional features like unlimited blocks and AI rephrasing, and an Organization plan with custom pricing, unlimited seats, and advanced research tools such as interview studies and tree testing.
Did you know that…?
Some Maze users have reported issues with tests being automatically archived after going live – without any action on their part?
Users have experienced:
⚠️ Tests becoming unavailable immediately after launch.
⚠️ Confusing error messages stating that the test has been archived.
⚠️ No clear option to restart Maze, making it difficult to troubleshoot.
⚠️ Lack of support response, leaving users stuck without a solution.
Maze pricing plans
Maze offers three pricing plans – Free, Starter, and Organization. Each is catering to different sales (not necessary research) needs.
Free Plan (€0/month)
- Limited to 1 study per month with only 3 studies per project.
- Up to 5 seats, but no team management or advanced collaboration tools.
- Offers only few research features – lacks tools like tree testing, variant comparison, or interview studies.
- No access to CSV exports, conditional logic, or in-depth analytics.
Starter Plan (€99/month or $1,188/year)
- 1 study per month, but with unlimited studies per project.
- Includes basic collaboration tools like custom reports and team management.
- Adds conditional logic, CSV exports, and Clips for better research capabilities.
- Still lacks interview studies, tree testing, variant comparison, in-app video conferencing, and advanced participant targeting.
Organization Plan (Custom Pricing)
- Unlimited studies and projects, plus unlimited seats for larger teams.
- Includes all research features like interview studies, tree testing, variant comparison, and legal block controls.
- Supports advanced analytics, workspace-level collaboration, and participant recruitment with custom credits.
- Adds premium support options, including priority support, dedicated onboarding, and security features like SSO.
Did you know that…?
Users on Reddit have reported major performance issues when using Maze with Figma prototypes, especially on mobile devices?
Long-time users have shared concerns about:
⚠️ Slow loading times, even for simplified prototypes.
⚠️ Frequent crashes and reloads, making usability testing frustrating.
⚠️ Massive performance drops when using unsupported interactions like swipe and drag.
⚠️ Mobile-specific bugs, such as persistent re-zooming in webviews when selecting text fields.
Some users feel that as Figma prototypes have become more complex, Maze struggles to keep up, impacting the reliability of test results. This has led many to explore alternative usability testing tools that offer better stability and support for modern prototyping workflows.
Takeaway
- Free plan is very restrictive and mainly for trying out the tool.
- Starter plan is best for small teams but still lacks critical research tools.
- Organization plan is required for full-scale UX research, but the pricing is not transparent and requires custom negotiation.
Discounts you can get at Maze
The Maze product provides students, faculty, and staff at educational institutions or programs with a 50% discount on the Starter plan for three months.
A more in-depth look into the Starter plan
The Maze Starter plan offers unlimited blocks (the number of missions and questions in a test), which is an improvement over the Free plan. It includes conditional logic, CSV export for better data handling, and Clips for presenting insights to stakeholders and collecting key findings.
However, it still has limitations compared to the Organization plan, lacking features like tree testing, open card sorting, variant comparison, and in-app video conferencing. Threfore it’s suitable for small teams and researchers who need more flexibility in usability testing but don’t require the full capabilities of the highest-tier plan.
An alternative to the Maze Starter plan
Maze’s Starter plan is a mid-tier Maze plan aimed at small teams and businesses looking for user research capabilities. However, Maze competitors like UXtweak’s Basic plan offer significantly more flexibility, unlimited usage in key areas, and advanced features not included in Maze’s Starter plan.
Feature | UXtweak | Maze |
Price | €113/month (annual billing) | $99/month (annual billing) |
Number of studies | Unlimited | 1 study per month |
Tree Testing | ✓ | ✗ |
User Testing (moderated & unmoderated) | ✓ | ✗ |
Mobile testing | ✓ | ✗ |
Built-in Participant | Participants from 100+ countries | Pay-per-use |
Custom Branding | Included | Only in Organization Plan |
Survey Tool | Unlimited responses | Limited |
In-app video conferencing | ✓ | ✗ |
Mobile app testing | ✓ | ✗ |
Card Sorting | ✓ | ✗ |
What do users say about Maze?
Users appreciate Maze for its ease of use and ability to generate valuable insights, especially through session recordings and path testing. Maze testing capabilities allow easy recruitment of global participants and prototype testing early in development.
However, there are complaints about technical limitations, such as frequent crashes, especially during mobile testing, and bugs that disrupt the experience. Users also request more flexibility in test conditions, improved heatmap functionality, and better tester database management. Some find the Maze design pricing structure less suitable for large teams, but they praise the platform’s customer service and continuous improvements based on user feedback.
💡 Tip: Want to know more what users think about Maze? Check out our Maze reviews article!
Most common complaints about Maze
Complaint 1 – Mobile testing issues and unreliable heatmaps
Issues with mobile testing and unreliable heatmap functionality can lead to inaccurate data, which ultimately impacts decision-making in UX design processes. Inaccurate insights may result in misguided product improvements, poor user experience decisions, and wasted resources, as teams might base their strategies on faulty research.
👌 What do you like best about Maze?
The customer service team is exceptionally responsive and genuinely open to feedback, which makes working with Maze a pleasure. The interface is clean and intuitive, and the tool generally performs well for most testing scenarios. I appreciate their commitment to constantly improving the platform based on user input.
👎 What do you dislike about Maze?
The mobile testing monitoring could use some improvement, particularly when dealing with longer screens. The heatmap functionality becomes less reliable in these scenarios, making it harder to track user interactions accurately. While these issues don’t break the tool’s core functionality, they can make mobile-specific research analysis more challenging than it needs to be.
Complaint 2 – Limitations and bugs
While Maze works well for lightweight tests and supported needs, users report significant bugs and limitations that impact its overall performance. Common issues include heatmaps not displaying clicks properly, scalability problems (like Figma prototypes needing excessive optimization), and a lack of features like counterbalancing for tests. These bugs and limitations can slow down testing processes, frustrate users, and lead to inefficient workflows.
👌 What do you like best about Maze?
Can easily see path users collectively took as a series of screens
Can easily see heatmaps of user clicks for specific screens
Doesn’t require testers to install apps or plugins or create accounts just to take a test
👎 What do you dislike about Maze?
-Noticeably buggy! Including “obvious” bugs that are should have been caught before release, and old bugs that seem to remain there for months. Granted most of these bugs don’t break things — Maze staff is good at responding to critical ones — but the bugs that do exist can be disappointing. For example, heatmaps sometimes not correctly showing clicks properly
-Not providing certain commonly expected features (e.g. better built-in counterbalancing for within & between subjects testing i.e. test (A or B, A-B, B-A))
-Strange quality-of-life limitations (e.g. cannot move Maze studies from one project / folder to another)
-Scalability issues (e.g. Figma prototypes often need to be specifically optimized or “scaled down” before they can be used in Maze. This process can get a little extreme as designers are forced to figure out how to “make their prototype smaller” and having to take extra time beyond what they expect to do for a study prep)
-Tester database management that feels bare-bones; you can do what you need if all you care is Maze, but don’t expect more
Complaint 3 – Unreliable testers
One of the major drawbacks of Maze is the quality of testers. Users have reported issues with testers abandoning tests or completing them too quickly just to receive their incentive, leading to poor-quality data. Despite paying for participants, these issues result in inaccurate insights, impacting the overall reliability of research findings.
👌 What do you like best about Maze?
It is really great for design discovery and just getting started with user testing and learning. I would say to get more in depth you would need to spend more money on other tools that are out there. How easy it is to use, the prices aren’t that bad and the results report is amazing.
👎 What do you dislike about UXtweak?
The issue with their users for testing is not that great. We have had a lot of issues with people closing out our test and dropping off even though we paid for them to complete the test. I think a lot of their testers are just going through these tests quickly without caring just to get their incentive at the end.
The best Maze alternative – UXtweak
UXtweak is an all-in-one user research tool designed to support organizations throughout the entire development process, from initial concepts to the final product. It provides a diverse set of usability testing features, including prototype testing, five-second tests, screen recordings, live interviews, remote usability studies, and first-click testing.
UXtweak Pricing
- Free Plan (€0/month) – Perfect for trying out UX research tools at no cost. Includes 15 responses per month, 1 active study, and 14-day result access.
- Basic Plan (€113/month, billed annually) – Ideal for small teams needing core UX research tools. Offers 50 responses/month (expandable), 1 active study (expandable), unlimited tasks per study, and 12-month data retention.
- Custom Plan (Pricing upon request) – Designed for organizations with advanced research needs, featuring unlimited active studies and tasks, customizable responses, live interviews, and access to a global user panel.
What do users say about UXtweak?
Users of UXtweak appreciate ours comprehensive analytical outputs, including detailed reports, heatmaps, session replays, and in-depth study audits. Here’s what was said about us:
👌 What do you like best about UXtweak?
I liked the analytics and all the different data you can get from them. It’s not just the recordings of sessions. There are profiles for each participants, task completion rates, lostness metric and overal usability score. You can see exactly where visitors click the wrong thing, the time it takes them to complete your tasks, and can understand how and why they got confused if so.
👎 What do you dislike about UXtweak?
Didn’t have any big problems with it, the setup process definitely got a learning curve but they provide tips that guide you through it, so it’s no big deal.
UXtweak also helps users save time through smart integrations, making the research process more efficient:
👌 What do you like best about UXtweak?
I love how easy and quick it is to set up the tests. To import the prototype from Figma you just need a link. It imports all your transitions directly from Figma or you can choose to connect the screens manually during setup.
The analytics are great, you can easily filter out specific respondent groups, based on different criteria, and analyze results for each of them. I like that you can get a great amount of qual and quant insights without having to spend hours on the manual analysis.
👎 What do you dislike about UXtweak?
I guess the biggest drawback for some teams could be that they only support Figma and Invision testing.
Another thing our users value is the seamless combination of powerful analytics, reliable participant recruitment, and a great set of tools, making it a truly all-in-one research platform:
👌 What do you like best about UXtweak?
I like how you have all the user research tools in one place. It was a big benefit for us, as the team was not ready to invest in a bunch of different tools every time we introduce a new research method.
Another big plus is the quality of support. Big thanks to UXtweak support team for being so responsive and helping us solve minor setup complications in no time!
👎 What do you dislike about UXtweak?
I really missed branding customization options, it is not available in the Plus plan.
Discounts
UXtweak provides special discounts for universities and NGOs to support research and education. Reach out to the sales team to learn more!
Final decision: Is Maze worth it?
Maze offers three pricing plans, starting with a free plan and moving to custom pricing for larger teams. While it’s easy to use, users report limitations with mobile testing, unreliable heatmaps, and frequent bugs. The Starter plan is suitable for small teams but lacks advanced features like interview studies and tree testing, which are only available in the Organization plan.
Given the limitations and performance issues that many users face with Maze, especially around mobile testing, bugs, and lack of advanced features in lower-tier plans, it may not be the best choice for teams needing a more robust, flexible, and reliable tool. For users who require more comprehensive UX research tools, better mobile testing support, and clearer pricing, UXtweak appears to be a better alternative to Maze. Therefore, Maze may not be worth it if you’re looking for a more scalable and feature-rich solution.
