❕ Important note: This review site presents information relevant for researchers, not for participants in the user panel.
Key Takeaways
💸 UserTesting delivers real-time user insights, but its high costs, unclear pricing, and seat limitations make it an expensive choice.
📉 UserTesting’s pricing is not publicly listed, forcing potential buyers into sales calls with unclear cost structures, making budgeting difficult.
🚀 UXtweak offers transparent pricing, flexible plans, and powerful research tools, making it a smarter choice for teams of all sizes.
🎯 UserTesting helps observe real-time user reactions, but its rigid test setup and unreliable panel make it harder to trust the data at scale.
🐝 Why overpay for limitations? Get started with UXtweak for free and unlock powerful research tools without the hassle.
Quick answer: how much does UserTesting cost?
UserTesting‘s pricing isn’t publicly listed, as it varies based on factors like company size, testing needs, and selected features. However, data from Vendr indicates that annual costs typically range between $12,000 and $113,642, with a median of $40,000 per year.
For smaller-scale needs, some reports suggest starting prices around $250 per user.
Why does UserTesting hide its price and leave the buyer in the dark?
Here’s what users think:
“The reason they hide their pricing is because they know bigger companies get more value out of testing and can afford a lot more. But at the same time they don’t want to price out smaller companies. So they just charge different sized companies differently based on what they’re willing to pay.”
UserTesting plans
UserTesting offers three pricing plans: Essentials, Advanced, and Ultimate. Each is designed for different levels of research needs. However, they don’t publicly list their pricing anywhere, making it difficult for potential customers to estimate costs.
Essentials Plan
- Designed for basic user testing and feedback collection.
- Includes access to a test builder and template gallery, unmoderated tests (such as surveys and interaction tests), standard demographic filters, transcripts, and basic integrations (Slack, Jira, Teams, Figma, Miro).
- Does not include advanced tools like sentiment analysis, live conversations, or test planning features.
Did You Know?
⚠️ Many users are frustrated with UserTesting’s lack of clear pricing, often turning to forums like Reddit to find answers. Instead of straightforward pricing details, potential customers are forced into sales calls, making it difficult to compare costs or budget effectively.
⚠️ Some even describe the pricing model as overly complicated, with different seat plans, credits, and discounts that vary based on negotiations. This lack of transparency has led many to seek alternative platforms with clear, upfront pricing.
Advanced Plan
- Adds test plan and audience management, live conversation testing, and advanced demographic filtering.
- Supports interactive path flows and click maps, sentiment analysis, and unlimited workspaces for better collaboration.
- Provides deeper insights and improved testing capabilities compared to Essentials.
Ultimate Plan
- The most comprehensive plan, designed for enterprises needing advanced targeting, security, and analytics.
- Includes card sorting and tree testing, onboarding custom audiences, secure prototype testing, AI-powered analysis, and smart tags.
- Offers enterprise-level features like approval flows and an Insights Hub for advanced reporting.
For pricing details, UserTesting requires direct contact, as they adjust costs based on company size and usage needs.
Did you know that…?
Users have expressed frustration over UserTesting’s lack of publicly available pricing, making it difficult to estimate costs before reaching out to sales.
Long-time users have shared concerns about:
⚠️ No clear pricing structure – Costs are not listed anywhere in their documents or website.
⚠️ Usage-based pricing uncertainty – Companies are often asked for their budget before receiving a quote.
⚠️ High costs for enterprise teams – Many feel that per-seat pricing is too expensive for larger teams conducting part-time research.
⚠️ Overuse concerns with unlimited plans – Some users worry that unlimited testing leads to unnecessary tests and improper research protocols.
Many believe UserTesting tailors its pricing based on what a company is willing to pay, allowing them to charge higher rates to enterprises while keeping options open for smaller companies. This has led some teams to explore alternative usability testing platforms that offer more transparent pricing and flexible plans.
Discounts at UserTesting
UserTesting offers free or discounted services to non-profits through the OneWorld program, helping charities improve their customer experience research. For certain universities and students, UserTesting provides the Education Partner Program, giving qualifying institutions free access to the Human Insight Platform for academic use.
What users say about UserTesting
Users appreciate UserTesting’s fast recruitment and user-friendly interface but frequently criticize its high costs and lack of pricing transparency, making it difficult for growing and large teams to scale research. Many report frustration with vague, usage-based pricing that requires negotiation, leaving companies unsure of actual costs before committing. Additionally, unreliable testers who manipulate screeners for incentives and a rigid test setup further add to user concerns.
💡 Tip: Want to know more what users think about Maze? Check out our UserTesting reviews article!
Most common complaints about UserTesting
Complaint 1 – High costs and limited scalability
UserTesting is known for its fast recruitment, but its high costs and seat limitations make it a less cost-effective choice for growing teams looking to scale their research without overspending.
👌 What do you like best about UserTesting?
User Testing offers a quck and covenient way to recruit non-users for unmoderated tests from their panel. The size and diversity of the panel allows to get responses within hours instead of days. The platform is user fliendly and test builder is robust, supporting a variety of research study types and integrations.
Sometimes the quality of feedback some users provide can be low, but luckaly User Testing offers to replace any session that wasn’t useful with another one free of chanrge, and this action is only a button away.
👎 What do you dislike about UserTesting?
While UserTesting is an excellent tool for recruitment speed, the pricing is quite high. It’s one of the more expensive options out there and the subscription caps the number of seats. This limits the scalability for growing teams or when trying to democratize research to other departments. This became a challenge as our team expanded, and it wasn’t cost-effective.
Complaint 2 – Unreliable tester panel
UserTesting’s unclear pricing and unreliable tester panel make it difficult to trust the platform for high-quality research.
👌 What do you like best about UserTesting?
It is one of the more thorough options in the unmoderated testing space. If you pay as an add-on, they have a dedicated and accessible team for questions on structuring tests, upcoming roadmap updates, etc.
👎 What do you dislike about UserTesting?
Very confusing pricing structure that feels like smoke and mirrors at times. Low level of trust in their panel – a lot of “testers” that come across as falsfiying screener responses for incentives. The product itself is pretty limited in terms of test flexibility. Doesn’t go in-depth in any particular research capability area. UserZoom acquisition doesn’t seem to have fully happened and/or provides any additional benefit.
Complaint 3 – Lack of flexibility
UserTesting’s lack of flexibility and reliance on support for basic actions make it a less efficient and cost-effective option for teams needing more control over their research.
👌 What do you like best about UserTesting?
I like its simplicity in the interface, it’s intuitive to create your tests. I also like that it’s automated: if a tester is not good, just a few clicks to get another one. And responses are so quickly, it really makes it easy to turn around a test in a couple of days (analysis included). Also the interviews work well, it’s not required to install software (other than zoom) and there’s an observer room, it’s easy to share links to colleagues.
👎 What do you dislike about UserTesting?
I feel there’s room for improvement, I don’t like that I can’t self serve to delete my tests (need to write to support). And once you create a study, there’s no flexibility to edit the type of test or device, same for interviews, once you set the parameters, you can’t change after creation of the study.
The best UserTesting alternative – UXtweak
UXtweak is an all-in-one user research tool designed to support organizations at every stage of development, from initial concepts to the final product. It offers 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 plans
- Free Plan – A great way to explore UX research tools at no cost. Includes 15 responses per month, one active study, and 14-day access to results.
- Basic Plan ($1,728/year) – Ideal for small teams requiring essential UX research tools. Offers 50 responses/month (expandable), one active study (expandable), unlimited tasks per study, and 12-month data retention.
- Custom Plan (Pricing upon request) – Tailored for organizations with advanced research requirements. Includes unlimited active studies and tasks, customizable response limits, live interviews, and access to a global user panel.
💡 Info Tip: UXtweak’s latest update brings screen, voice, and face recordings to Website Usability Testing on desktop, providing richer insights into user interactions!
UXtweak Discounts
UXtweak offers exclusive discounts for universities and NGOs to support research and education. Contact the sales team for more details!
UXtweak vs UserTesting features
UXtweak’s Basic plan includes features that aren’t available in UserTesting’s Essentials plan, despite UserTesting being significantly more expensive.
Feature | UXtweak (Basic plan) | UserTesting (Essentials plan) |
Price | $1,728/year | $40,000/year |
Flexibility (Monthly subscription option) | ✓ Available, cancel anytime | ✗ Annual contracts only |
Tree Testing | ✓ | ✗ |
Card Sorting | ✓ | ✗ |
Mobile apps usability testing | ✓ | ✗ |
First click testing | ✓ | ✗ |
Session recording with heatmaps | ✓ | ✗ |
Detailed public documentation and guides | ✓ | ✗ |
Bring your own participants | ✓ | ✗ |
Recruitment for moderated research | ✓ | ✗ |
Recruitment widget | ✓ Turn your website visitors into participants | ✗ |
What do users say about UXtweak?
UXtweak users value our extensive analytical insights, including detailed reports, heatmaps, session replays, and in-depth study audits. Here’s what they have to say:
👌 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.
Final Decision: Is UserTesting worth it?
Not really – it’s more hassle than it’s worth.
With so many usability testing tools now offering clear pricing, flexible plans, and straightforward access, UserTesting’s opaque pricing model and complicated trial process make it hard to justify the effort. Unlike other platforms where you can instantly sign up and start testing, UserTesting requires a request just to get a free trial, leaving potential users waiting for a response from sales.
Many users also report issues with vague pricing, expensive enterprise plans, and inconsistent participant quality, making it difficult to trust the platform for reliable insights.
If you need a tool that offers transparent pricing, flexible plans, and high-quality participant recruitment, UXtweak is a great alternative. It provides an all-in-one user research platform with a clear pricing structure, a free plan to get started instantly, and powerful usability testing features – including prototype testing, tree testing, session recording, and first-click testing.
