User research is an essential step in the product development process, and there’s many ways to go about it. One UX research tool is UserTesting—but it’s by no means the only way. If you’re looking for a tool to uncover authentic user insights, but don’t have a large budget, you’re in the right place.
To help assess your options, we’ve compiled a list of seven alternatives to UserTesting. They have all the features you love, like running usability testing and collecting user feedback to inform product decisions. We’ll introduce you to each solution’s pros and cons, and see how each one compares in terms of pricing.
Every business has different needs, but you’re sure to find a solution that suits you here.
Why look for an alternative to UserTesting?
Before we jump right into our alternatives, let’s take a look at UserTesting: its core offering focuses on qualitative research, running live video sessions and self-guided recordings.
UserTesting also comes with a participant panel of over a million users you can access to get test results fast. However, its elevated prices make UserTesting more suited to big companies with a large product team and extensive budget. So, you’re probably looking for a similar tool with comparable abilities, but one that:
- Is less expensive or better value
- Is more suited for both moderated and unmoderated tests
- Has better quantitative reporting
- Has a more intuitive user experience (UX)
- Integrates with multiple design tools
- Suits your team’s needs
Consider an alternative UX research tool that:
Is less expensive or better value
UserTesting’s platform comes at a high cost. UserTesting doesn’t publish prices on its website, but in 2023, users reported prices starting at $30,000 per seat/year, making it out of reach in terms of price for many businesses.
Is more suited for both moderated and unmoderated tests
While UserTesting offers unmoderated and quantitative tests, it’s more tailored to a moderated and qualitative approach. If you’re looking for a tool that lets you test anything from an idea to a live website in an unmoderated way, there are other better options available.
Offers better quantitative reporting
Since UserTesting is mostly focused on hosting moderated tests, you need to factor in additional time to extract and organize data for reporting. Meanwhile, other tools automatically process insights and produce a downloadable PDF with a summary of all your relevant quantitative results.
Has a more intuitive UX
Users also complain about UserTesting’s UX, saying it’s not intuitive enough. This might be a problem you’ve experienced yourself. Either way, you need a tool that everyone on your team can use—regardless of technical skills, who’s doing the research, and how often.
Integrates with multiple design tools
UserTesting only integrates with AdobeXD, so testing features or prototypes gets a bit more complicated. Other tools like Maze can directly integrate with Figma, the industry's biggest design tool, and other tools like Invision, Marvel, and Sketch.
Suits your team’s needs
UserTesting is a powerful user testing platform but are you its intended audience? This platform is most suited to enterprises or businesses with big product teams (20+) and designated researchers. But, while UserTesting can support large teams, it doesn’t let you have projects with shared ownership. This means that the owner is the only one able to conduct the studies on the tool, making it difficult to collaborate. The team for this tool needs to have a sizable budget to cover the cost of multiple licenses and resources to teach the tool to team members.
7 Best UserTesting alternatives
There’s a lot to consider when looking at UserTesting alternatives. To make the decision easier, we’ve broken each tool down into bitesized, comparable sections to help you make the right decision for your business. Here’s the shortlist:
- Maze
- Lookback
- Optimal Workshop
- UsabilityHub
- UserZoom
- Loop11
- Userfeel
- Lyssna
1. Maze
Maze is a continuous discovery platform that empowers people who do research (PWDR) to connect with end users and make informed product decisions based on real user data. Maze allows product teams to quickly test anything—from prototypes to copy—and collect actionable insights. So, you can get expert-level insights and continuously create better user experiences throughout the entire product lifecycle.
Pros
- Test multiple features: Maze is a versatile platform for running multiple types of unmoderated research such as:
- Maze AI: Maze AI does the heavy lifting–let AI highlight critical learnings, automate project naming, and help you craft the perfect bias-free questions
- Moderated interview studies: Quickly transform your moderated user interviews into actionable insights and shareable reports with AI-powered transcription, summaries, and sentiment analysis
- Keep track of your test participant pool: Use the Reach database to collect, store, and segment participant data
- Access Maze’s Panel: Access our pre-screened participants Panel to get fast answers on your mazes and gather high-quality insights from your target demographic
- Get quantitative results fast: Most mazes are completed within three hours, which means testing won’t delay your product development process. Also, with Reports, your insights are automatically analyzed and put together on a downloadable, customizable presentation
- Gather qualitative insights: Create and launch Surveys or invite participants to record their video and audio as they go through usability tests to catch the sentiment and thought process of your participants with Clips
- It’s easy to use: Maze comes with a simple and highly intuitive UX. It’s built to be used by anyone who does research, from a one-off survey to an expert researcher; empowering and enabling everyone on your team to make decisions based on real user insights
- Use 50+ pre-built Templates: There’s a free ready-to-go maze for almost every research need. So, your team can use the templates for inspiration—or to start getting actionable user insights in a matter of minutes
Cons
Maze doesn’t currently offer the ability to host fully-integrated moderated tests. However, Interview Studies provides a comprehensive moderated analysis tool, and Clips lets you have a deeper insight into your testers’ pain points, feelings, and processes, without needing the additional resources for a facilitator to be present. You can use Maze along with any video conferencing tools to moderate your sessions.
Pricing
Maze offers three pricing options for organizations and product teams of all sizes:
Maze vs. UserTesting
If you’re comparing UserTesting to Maze, there are some key differences to consider between the two tools:
- Price: UserTesting is out of reach for many small and medium-sized businesses, with pricing reportedly starting at ~$30k per seat/year. Maze is a lot more affordable for the majority of businesses. Offering multiple price points tailored to individuals, small organizations, and enterprises, Maze allows for flexibility in project users.
- Test method: While UserTesting’s emphasis is on moderated testing, Maze offers unmoderated and moderated testing solutions. Where UserTesting is mostly focused on gathering insights coming from user videos, Maze gives you access to additional types of feedback—such as video recordings, survey responses, heatmaps, paths taken, click data, and more—as well as user interview analysis.
- Integrations: Maze lets you run validation tests using Figma, Sketch, AdobeXD, Axure, and InVision designs, while UserTesting only connects to AdobeXD.
- Time to insights: Since UserTesting is mostly based on video, you might need to invest more time listening to the conversations and analyzing the data. Maze, on the other hand, creates an automated report including the most relevant test information in one place—the report is then ready to download and share with key stakeholders in real-time.
The verdict: Choose Maze if you want both moderated and unmoderated testing and reporting capabilities. Maze is also a user-friendly alternative if you want to enable more people from your team to conduct continuous research at any time in the development lifecycle.
2. Lookback
Lookback focuses on qualitative, moderated testing, allowing your team to host research calls and organize the data live. Lookback also helps product teams work collaboratively, with the ability to have multiple people from your team join the call, chat, and highlight comments—without interrupting the conversation with participants. This tool is mostly for moderated research interviews and usability testing, but does offer some unmoderated functionality.
Pros
- Lookback makes collaboration among research teams easy, with a live share feature that allows researchers to invite team members to watch and take time-stamped notes
- It records all sessions in the player, which allows researchers to access time stamps and comments from the live session to find information faster
- Your team can also create projects and add mixed forms of testing. Test one of your app’s features in both a moderated and unmoderated way, and keep all answers stored in one place
Cons
- Participants are required to download an app to take part and some users have trouble joining the calls due to connectivity or technical issues
- Organizations are billed on the number of sessions they run, rather than number of seats. Teams that test continuously might find this expensive
- Lookback doesn’t offer multiple-choice questions for participants, or provide quantitative metrics such as time on task or a system usability scale (SUS)
Pricing
Lookback’s plans are billed annually and come with a 60-day free trial:
Lookback vs. UserTesting
Lookback and UserTesting are similar in terms of testing types. Both focus on remote moderated testing but offer some unmoderated capabilities. However, Lookback’s prices are much more affordable for small businesses.
Unlike UserTesting or Maze, Lookback doesn’t have a pool of testers available, meaning you’d need to recruit test participants separately or through an agency.
They both have good video capabilities, but Lookback’s live and time-stamped comments allow for easier navigation of video user research.
The verdict: Choose Lookback if you need to easily scan your customer interviews. If you need multiple team members to have access to the tool and conduct user research, Lookback might be a more cost-effective solution.
3. Optimal Workshop
Optimal Workshop is a user research platform that uses multiple testing methods to collect qualitative and quantitative insights. The platform offers solutions for user research, UX design, and information architecture.
Pros
- This tool lets you collect data like clicks and paths taken, as well as user expectations and the sentiment behind their actions
- It offers multiple testing methods like card sorting, tree testing, moderated usability testing, first-click testing, and surveys
- Optimal Workshop gives you access to tests using their pre-screened and ready-to-answer pool of participants. Or, find custom participants to answer your queries
Cons
- Doesn’t integrate with design tools, meaning you can only test text or image prototypes
- A common complaint among users is that the testers assigned by the platform don’t meet their specifications and that the integration options are limited
Pricing
These prices are based on annual billing:
Optimal Workshop vs. UserTesting
Optimal Workshop is fairly accessible for a range of users. The main difference between Optimal Workshop and UserTesting is that Optimal Workshop is more accessible for smaller teams and startups.
UserTesting and Optimal Workshop both support unmoderated and moderated tests, but UserTesting is more focused on moderated sessions.
The verdict: Pick Optimal Workshop if you’re a small team that’s just starting to incorporate user research and you’re working with a limited budget or don’t mind working without design integrations. If your product team has over 15-20 seats, or you’re looking for more nuanced prototype feedback, try a solution like Maze or UserTesting to increase the quality of reports and insights.
4. Lyssna
Lyssna–formely UsabilityHub–is a research tool made for designers, product managers, and marketers looking for a fast way to run remote research. Solutions include usability testing, user interviews, surveys, market research, and research participant recruitment.
Pros
- You get access to multiple unmoderated testing methods like five-second, first-clicks, prototype, or preference tests
- Lyssna allows you to create surveys referencing parts of your UI
- The cost per answer is low, making Lyssna a suitable solution for short tests run with multiple participants
Cons
- You can’t access the screen recording of users who completed the tests
- It can be hard to budget for this tool as you’ll need to pay for the monthly subscription and each participant panel
- Risk of paying multiple times if initial insights aren’t useful
Pricing
Prices based on annual subscriptions:
Lyssna vs. UserTesting
Lyssna and UserTesting are both highly-qualified user research tools that can provide answers quickly. However, users believe Lyssna is easier to adopt than UserTesting. Mostly because Lyssna was designed for non-researchers, giving the app a gentler learning curve.
UserTesting only connects to AdobeXD, whereas Lyssna connects to Figma, Sketch, Invision, and Balsamiq so if you’re looking to integrate with a variety of other tools, Lyssna offers more options. Both tools offer moderated and unmoderated user research tools so you’re able to run a variety of research projects.
The verdict: If you want both moderated and unmoderated research solutions and you use Figma, Sketch, Invision or Balsamiq for design, Lyssna is best for you. If you design in Adobe XD, stick to UserTesting or another alternative.
5. UserZoom
UserZoom is an end-to-end user research platform that helps teams manage and measure UX to create better digital experiences. It’s mostly aimed at designers, marketers, and product teams, and offers remote moderated and unmoderated testing. It’s important to note that UserZoom is now a part of UserTesting, although its platform and pricing remain separate.
Pros
- You can run user interviews on the platform and invite stakeholders to view the session from a virtual observation room
- UserZoom lets you access qualitative and quantitative insights from your tests
- It uses QXscore to measure your user’s experience and combines your platform’s net promoter score (NPS), appearance, trust, and ease of use
Cons
- Users complain about the platform being unintuitive, with confusing screening and logic panel functionalities
- Enterprise-focused, it’s out-of-reach for smaller teams or individuals looking to gather insights
Pricing
UserZoom doesn’t publicly share its prices, but these are its plans available with a custom quote.
UserZoom vs. UserTesting
UserTesting recently acquired UserZoom, so the platforms are very similar. They both offer moderated and unmoderated testing and come with a large panel of testers. However, customers often comment that the UX and functionality of these platforms could be improved and more intuitive.
While both tools can run quantitative and qualitative tests, UserTesting is more advanced at providing qualitative insights from moderated tests. Meanwhile, UserZoom is slightly superior at unmoderated tests with quantitative reports.
The verdict: If you’re looking for a tool with a UX so intuitive that anyone from your team can use it, you should consider a different tool like Maze or Optimal Workshop. But, if you need to choose between UserTesting or UserZoom and want to test for usability, then go with UserTesting. If you want to evaluate your complete UX, UserZoom is a better choice.
6. Loop11
Loop11 is a moderated and unmoderated research tool that aims to uncover insights with minimal hassle. Loop11 lets you test usability, benchmark, run A/B tests, evaluate your search engine findability, do architecture testing, and more.
Pros
- You can create and deploy tests quickly to gather a mix of quantitative and qualitative data
- Test on desktop, mobile and tablet
- This tool lets you record the user's audio and video on unmoderated tests
- Loop11 connects to design tools like Figma, AdobeXD, InVision, Axure, and JustInMind
Cons
- While you don’t need to write any code, users claim Loop11 come with a steep learning curve
- Once published, you’re unable to edit a test—instead, you’ll need to delete it and start again, which could lose valuable insights
Pricing
Loop11 plans come with a 14-day free trial. These are based on annual billing:
Loop11 vs. UserTesting
Loop11 and UserTesting both allow for moderated and unmoderated testing. However, both tools also receive criticism from users for ease of use, though Loop11’s learning curve appears to be slightly less steep. Unlike UserTesting, Loop11 doesn’t let you export your data on its most basic plan, and the reporting capabilities of UserTesting are more detailed than Loop11’s.
The verdict: If you want to run remote moderated and unmoderated tests at an accessible cost, then it’s worth considering Loop11 over UserTesting. However, if you need more in-depth moderated testing analytics and have the budget, UserTesting or another tool on this list might be a better choice.
7. Userfeel
Userfeel is a moderated and unmoderated user research platform designed by UX researchers. Instead of subscription-based pricing, with Userfeel you can pay on an as-needed basis. You can also run multiple types of tests to measure UX and conversion rates.
Pros
- The biggest advantage of this platform is the pricing model—you don’t need to commit to a monthly or yearly subscription, you can simply pay for the tests you run, whenever you need
- It has a participant pool of over 150k global people, but you’re also allowed to use your own testers’ pool
- You get access to unlimited users and seats per paid-for test
Cons
- According to reviews, users have issues filtering participants with limited screening options
- Pay as you go pricing can be a double-edged sword, especially if you aim to perform tests continuously. It can end up being more expensive in the long term than paying a fixed price. If a project takes longer, or requires more research than initially planned, you can end up running out of budget before getting the insights you need
- Participants report performance issues with Userfeel’s testing app
Pricing
Price per test varies accordingly:
Userfeel vs. UserTesting
UserTesting and Userfeel are very different platforms. UserTesting is aimed at big companies that perform regular testing, whereas Userfeel is useful for any business looking to run a quick test.
Userfeel appears to be more popular in terms of providing a seamless customer experience—unsurprising, considering it was designed by UX researchers. Its unique pricing plan also makes it an interesting alternative.
The verdict: Pick Userfeel if you’re not testing your platform frequently. If, however, you follow a more continuous approach to testing, it’s worth going with any of the other platforms in this list.
What to consider in a UserTesting alternative
Now we’ve covered seven different alternatives to UserTesting, you can go forward and make an informed decision about which tool best suits your research needs. If you’re still unsure, here are four things to consider before committing to your next user testing tool.
1. Testing methodology
Determine the type of insights you need from a user research tool before you settle on a platform. While UserTesting can run unmoderated tests with quantitative metrics, it’s mostly focused on moderated, qualitative answers.
So, if you need to run usability, prototype, or five-second tests in an unbiased, data-driven environment, you should consider a tool like Maze. With the best product decisions being informed by a mix of both quantitative and qualitative insights, Maze enables you to use mixed methods like heatmaps, card sorting, surveys, and live website testing. You can also run moderated user interviews on Maze, with AI-powered analysis for faster insight collection.
2. Test setup and templates
When selecting your research tool, you want to consider how easy the set-up is, how intuitive the product is (for your product team and the participants), and how quickly it will get you results. Look for a tool that:
- Makes it easy for your users to open the test and answer, by offering recruitment tools and integrated outreach campaigns
- Has a pool of vetted testers that are ready to solve your tasks and can be segmented for future use
- Is intuitive and comes with pre-built templates to set up tests in no time, whatever your experience level
Options that fit these criteria are: Maze, Optimal Workshop, and UserZoom.
3. Scalability
One of UserTesting’s biggest downsides is that people find it too expensive, especially if they have a team of over 10 people doing research. You need a tool that’ll grow with you and enable your team to scale research, without becoming unaffordable. Consider the options that offer unlimited tests or seats per plan like Maze, UserZoom, or Userfeel.
4. Design tools integrations
User research helps you improve your user experience, but it also allows you to reduce development costs, identify issues early on, and fuel product decisions with real user data. To do this, you need to be able to test real products with live testing, and access prototype integration. So it’s worth looking for an alternative to UserTesting that allows live website testing and the ability to test clickable prototypes from Figma, AdobeXD, InVision, or Sketch. Options that do this are Maze, Lyssna and Loop11.
Which is the best alternative to UserTesting?
All things considered, UserTesting could still be the solution for you. However, it could also set you back around $30k/year at its lowest price point. It depends on what you’re looking for, but if you’re interested in quality user testing at an affordable price—we’ve got some good news for you.
There are plenty of other tools with everything you need to get incredible feedback without breaking the bank. For example, if you’re looking for the most similar option to UserTesting at a lower price, you could consider Optimal Workshop. This platform allows you to run all types of tests and use their panel to answer your questions.
However, if you’re looking for a dedicated unmoderated platform with live website testing and multiple design tool integrations, then Maze is the right choice for you. Maze is a continuous product discovery platform that simplifies product research for people who do research and powers product decisions with user feedback. Plus, Maze comes with advanced reporting capabilities and the ability to record users’ audio and video. It’s one of the best value solutions in the market—enabling teams to conduct both moderated and unmoderated testing quickly and easily.
Frequently asked questions about UserTesting alternatives
What is an alternative to UserTesting?
What is an alternative to UserTesting?
An alternative to UserTesting is any platform that allows you to run usability tests and collect insights from your users. For example, you could use Maze for running remote, unmoderated prototype tests using your Figma design.
Here are seven user research platforms that are similar to UserTesting:
- Maze
- Lookback
- Optimal Workshop
- Lyssna
- UserZoom
- Loop11
- Userfeel
How much is UserTesting?
How much is UserTesting?
It’s not possible to say how much UserTesting costs as it doesn’t share pricing details on its website. However, based on user reviews and testimonials, their lowest price point is estimated to be around $15k a year.
What is similar to UserTesting.com?
What is similar to UserTesting.com?
There are plenty of tools that are similar to UserTesting.com, which can be used for various types of user testing. One stand-out tool that’s similar to UserTesting is Maze. It offers the quality tests, questions, and surveys you’re looking for without the premium price tag.
What is a good substitute for in-person usability testing?
What is a good substitute for in-person usability testing?
Remote usability testing is a great option if you’re unable to run in-person usability tests. Plus, testing remotely makes user research more cost-efficient and accessible to a larger audience. It’s fast and simple to run impressive remote usability tests with Maze.