15 Best usability testing tools for better UX

It’s common to presume all usability testing platforms offer the same usability testing functionality, however not all research tools are equal. Usability testing tools vary in price, features, and research methods.

Finding the right tool to help evaluate usability is just as important as assessing usability in the first place. Usability tools simplify how you recruit users, streamline the usability testing process, and provide a window into how people experience your product. So, before you dive into testing, check out the top 15 usability testing tools to consider.

Before you sign up for a usability testing tool, look for one that accommodates the usability testing methods your team uses. Here’s a quick reminder of the different types of usability testing:

Before we get into the details of the options out there, here’s our shortlist:

Maze is a continuous product discovery platform that empowers product teams to collect and consume user insights. It’s ideal for testing at each stage of the design process—and even after you’ve launched your tool, with Live Website Testing.

Maze offers integrations with Figma, Adobe XD, InVision, and Sketch so your team can import an existing prototype from their preferred design tool. The platform includes pre-made templates to get you started and help your team run in-depth quantitative and qualitative usability tests that research participants find easy to access.

You’ll also be able to auto-generate a user-friendly usability test report to share with anyone on your team through a link or PDF. This instant reporting functionality means your team won’t have to spend hours finding key usability metrics like completion rates, misclick rates, or time spent.

The free plan allows you to review up to 300 responses per year. Paid plans start at $75/month for 3 seats and 1,800 viewable responses per year. Maze also offers an Enterprise plan to suit your organizational needs.

Lookback is a user experience (UX) screen recording tool for designers and product managers who want to see how users interact with their applications. Lookback’s testing tools allow your team to see what the users see and catch their reactions in real time—in a recording. Lookback promotes team collaboration as researchers can invite others from the product team to view the test, leave comments, and tag others on an internal hub—without disrupting the participant’s progress.

Lookback offers a 60-day free trial on all plans after you've signed up for an account. Pricing for team plans starts at $149/month with limited sessions but unlimited collaborators.

UserTesting offers customer experience (CX) solutions for designers, product managers, marketers, and executives. It lets your team see, hear, and talk to customers as they interact with websites, applications, or prototypes in moderated testing sessions.

While the platform offers a mix of moderated and unmoderated testing solutions, its main focus is user interviews. UserTesting has one of the largest participant pools on the market—but you do pay extra to test your tool on pre-screened and qualified users.

UserTesting doesn’t publicly share costs, but users have reported prices starting at $15,000 per seat per year.

Optimal Workshop offers usability testing functionality limited to task completion and moderated sessions. Your team can use Optimal Workshop to test information architecture (IA) and create tasks for users to complete. Its feature set includes tools for card sorting, tree testing, and first-click testing.

The free plan lets you explore all the functions of Optimal Workshop tools with sessions and template limitations. Paid plans start at $208 per user/month and come with a two-month free trial.

UsabilityHub is a remote user research platform that allows teams to run different types of tests and identify usability issues. The UsabilityHub platform is best known for its range of first-click tests, design surveys, preference tests, and five-second tests. It also has a built-in participants panel with over 170,000 testers available on-demand, at a pay-per-answer price. Alternatively, researchers can invite existing users to participate in the test.

You can run tests up to two minutes for free, or upgrade to paid plans starting from $75/month for three seats.

Loop11 is another prominent online usability tool that allows you to run website usability testing, A/B testing, and prototype testing. It uses GPT-4 to create AI-powered summaries, audio transcripts, and reports. Loop11 allows your team to combine both tasks and questions in tests for a mix of quantitative and qualitative results. It also offers a range of video, audio, and screen recording features, making it suited for unmoderated usability testing. Additionally, Loop11 also offers a pool of participants to recruit from.

Pricing ranges from $199 to $599/month. All plans include a 14-day free trial, and users can choose to subscribe for one month at a time or access a 10% discount with an annual subscription.

Userfeel is a usability testing tool that’s ideal if you aren’t wanting to conduct regular usability tests, as you don’t need to pay for a monthly subscription—you can simply pay when needed. Of course, this does mean it can add up without you noticing. Userfeel allows your team to set up a list of tasks for users to complete on your website, define the target audience, and then collect recorded videos of users.

Userfeel charges per test length and type. Its prices start at $30/hour-long unmoderated session with current users. Prices go up to $180/hour for moderated or unmoderated sessions with a user from the Userfeel panel.

Trymata (formerly TryMyUI) allows you to run remote usability tests and gain user insights to inform your product, marketing, e-commerce, startup, or agency strategy—and build products your users will enjoy. It lets you run live product analytics to test your customer’s journey, and you can conduct unmoderated tests then watch the recording to identify user frustrations.

Trymata’s usability testing plans start at $333/month. It allows for two seats and comes with 120 yearly panel credits.

Hotjar helps measure the usability of a website by recording real user behavior through clicks and mouse tracking—and is well known for its live heatmap recording functionality. Additional features include session recordings, conversion funnel analysis, as well as the collection of user feedback via forms and surveys.

Hotjar offers four different packages with plans available at multiple price points—ranging from $32/month to upwards of $9448/month depending on your chosen features.

The usability testing software market is vast. So, if you’re still undecided, check out these six additional tools that didn’t quite make our shortlist. As far as we’re concerned, they’re stronger for other testing methods—not just usability testing—but they still deserve an honorable mention:

This UX research tool was recently acquired by UserTesting and is a strong option for running all kinds of UX tests. While it can conduct moderated and unmoderated tests, it's more solid as a quantitative, unmoderated tool. With UserZoom, teams have access to a virtual observation room. Plus, UX test results come with a QXscore that’s measured by mixing: NPS + appearance + trust + ease of use.

This isn’t a dedicated usability testing tool, but Qualaroo allows you to add feedback surveys as website prompts to test your UX, gain product information, and improve your conversion rate. With Qualaroo you can use AI sentiment analysis and access a large survey template bank.

GetFeedback (formerly Usabilla) allows you to collect in-app feedback. It integrates with your Salesforce database so you can improve your segmentation game. Meaning, you can hold all of your users’ information and test answers in one place. If you use Maze, you can do this easily using its Reach feature.

Similar to Hotjar, Crazy Egg allows you to see how your users navigate your website. Access heatmaps, conduct A/B tests, review their session recordings, and launch surveys. Crazy Egg gives you quantitative insights in the form of scrollmaps, confetti, and heatmaps reports. And, it lets you conduct A/B tests.

Get qualitative and quantitative insights from a panel of 2,000,000 users. Test your website for usability, conduct prototype testing, and evaluate your IA with Userlytics. Userlytics lets you run moderated sessions and comes with a think aloud feature so you can catch users’ thoughts as they perform your unmoderated tests.

Userbrain is a prototype testing tool that simplifies research. It allows you to test Figma, Sketch, InVision, Axure, Framer, and AdobeXD prototypes. You can either invite your own users or access the Userbrain pool of participants of over 100,000 pre-screened users. Userbrain allows you to schedule recurrent tests and gives you presentation-ready metrics reports.

If you're conducting user research, you might also want to check out our comprehensive list of the top UX research tools.

Skipping usability testing is a fast way to misunderstand what your users really want. To really simplify your testing process and make your product user-centric, you need a reliable, flexible usability testing tool.

There are many usability testing tools on the market that meet different use cases and offer specific methods, functionalities, and price points. Consider involving your product team in the decision-making process so you choose one that meets their needs—and that they’re excited to start gathering insights with!

Lastly, if you want a tool with extensive unmoderated usability testing capabilities that comes at an accessible price, we suggest you try Maze. Maze is a continuous discovery platform that empowers your team to seek users' insights early and often. Our tests—we call them mazes— are browser-based, quick to set up, and easy to share. Plus, if you ever need to moderate the sessions, you can always use Maze in tandem with a video conferencing platform like Zoom or Google Meet.