Meet the 19 top-rated UX research tools & software for 2026

Building your UX research tool stack is an essential step in establishing an effective research practice. Read on for a round-up of essential tools that will help you conduct UX research and move the needle in your organization.

UX research tools do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to user research. From recruiting participants and planning the interviews to getting feedback, and sharing your findings, having a great tool stack is important for running a great research practice.

Selecting the right UX research toolkit depends on where you are in the research process, the research method you’ll be using, the size of your organization, and the type of product you’re researching.

Here are some tools to consider.

Maze is an AI-first user research platform that makes user insights available at the speed of product development. Maze provides both moderated and unmoderated research methods to teams big and small, enabling researchers and Product people to put users at the center of every decision and, ultimately, to build better products.

You can run various studies at different stages of the design and development process, like concept validation, usability testing, content testing, and feedback collection. As a holistic UX research platform, Maze goes beyond user testing—offering participant recruitment and management solutions, a variety of user research templates tailored to different research needs, and advanced AI features and capabilities for planning, conducting, analyzing, and reporting on research studies.

Maze offers pricing options for organizations and Product teams of all sizes. The Free plan is ideal for individuals, with one study per month and five seats for basic prototype tests and surveys with pay-per-use panel credits.

The Enterprise plan offers additional custom study volumes, unlimited seats, access to a global participant panel, AI-moderated interviews, card sorting, tree testing, mobile testing, full Maze AI, automated analysis and reports, and enterprise-grade security and support.

Loop11 supports both moderated and unmoderated usability testing on live websites, prototypes, and competitors’ websites, among others. You can set up task-based studies, invite participants, and get quantitative metrics, like task success, time on task, NPS, and SUS, plus heatmaps and clickstream analytics. GPT-4–powered summaries and AI insights highlight key findings and design recommendations faster.

On the downside, reviewers often mention a learning curve and pricing that’s on the higher side for small teams, especially if you only run ad-hoc projects.

Userlytics is a remote UX research platform for running video-based usability tests and 1:1 interviews on websites, apps, and prototypes. You can run moderated and unmoderated studies, capture rich qualitative feedback, and layer in quantitative UX metrics, like task success and standardized UX scores. It’s built for deep, project-based research where specialist researchers want granular insight into user behavior rather than lightweight, always-on testing.

Lyssna is an unmoderated UX research platform for fast, lightweight testing of designs, copy, and information architecture. You can run quick studies like surveys, five-second tests, first-click tests, card sorting, tree testing, and prototype validation in a browser, mainly on a desktop.

Lyssna doesn’t support native mobile app testing or deep, interview-led studies, so it tends to fit smaller teams that want rapid feedback more than end-to-end, continuous discovery.

Lookback is a qualitative UX research platform for running live and unmoderated sessions on desktop and mobile. You can run user interviews, usability tests, and diary-style studies, capturing screen, camera, and audio. Stakeholders join via a virtual observation room, add notes and tags in real time, and later use ‘Eureka’—Lookback’s AI assistant—to turn long recordings and transcripts into digestible summaries and highlights.

It doesn’t support core quantitative methods, like card sorting, tree testing, or benchmarking dashboards, so it’s usually paired with analytics or experimentation tools for a full picture.

Lookback only offers annual plans, priced by sessions, seats, and panel access.

UserTesting is an enterprise‑focused human insight platform used to run moderated and unmoderated, video‑based research on websites, apps, prototypes, and concepts. It combines a large global participant network with live interviews, task‑based usability testing, surveys, and AI‑assisted insight summaries.

It’s built for large organizations that want standardized, high-volume research across product, UX, and marketing teams, but it’s also one of the most expensive tools in the market, with opaque, enterprise-only pricing that puts it out of reach for most smaller teams.

UserTesting doesn’t publish pricing. Based on third-party benchmarks and buyer reports, most contracts sit in the five-figure range, with a common median around $40,000 per year. On public forums, teams report quotes from ~$10,000 up to ~$42,000+, with older ‘unlimited’ deals near $15,000 and per-seat pricing in the low thousands.

Dscout is a qualitative research platform for running in-context and longitudinal or diary studies through three main modules: Diary, Express, and Live. Participants (called ‘scouts’) use a mobile app or the web to submit videos, photos, screen recordings, and survey answers as they complete tasks or log moments over days or weeks.

Teams use it to study real behavior in real environments, run quick unmoderated usability or concept tests, and conduct moderated video interviews—all in one workspace where you can recruit participants, manage incentives, and analyze recordings.

Dscout doesn’t publicly publish its pricing plans. Based on external benchmarks and buyer reports, individual projects are said to start around $3,000 each, with annual subscriptions averaging just over $60,000/year, and Enterprise plans reportedly starting around $75,000/year. In practice, that makes Dscout a better fit for mid-to-large companies with dedicated research budgets.

Rally UXR is a user research CRM platform that lets you store and manage your own user panels by importing customer data via CSV, Salesforce, or Snowflake integrations. It has screeners with conditional logic, email outreach, consent management, scheduling with calendar sync, and global incentives with 2000+ redemption options.

Rally UXR does not publicly disclose specific platform pricing on its website. However, when you recruit from external panels (Respondent or User Interviews) through Rally, this is what they cost:

Ethnio is a UX research recruitment and CRM platform for your own users. It lets you recruit people directly from your website or app, screen them with custom surveys, store them in a first-party research pool, and then handle scheduling, consent, and incentives from one place. You still run the actual research in other tools (like Maze), but Ethnio is where you manage who you invite, how often, and under which consent and compliance rules.

Respondent gives you on-demand access to 4M+ phone-verified participants across 150+ countries. You define your study, target by job title, skills, or demographics, add screener questions, and Respondent’s matching engine surfaces candidates—often delivering your first qualified participant in about 15 minutes. You then run the actual research in your tool of choice (e.g., Maze, Lookback, SurveyMonkey), while Respondent handles recruitment logistics and incentive payouts.

Optimal offers a suite of testing tools to help you conduct information architecture (IA) tests. For card sorting, you can use their OptimalSort tool to understand how people expect your content to be organized and categorized.

Another component of Optimal is Treejack, which helps you conduct unmoderated tree tests to identify if users are currently getting lost on your site and where they expect to find key information.

kardSort is an online card sorting tool that offers moderated, unmoderated, and hybrid card sorting. As user-friendly as they come, kardSort operates in a simple drag-and-drop function that makes card sorting easy for researchers and participants alike.

Working on all browsers, you can set up and run a card sorting session incredibly quickly, and it’s ideal for asynchronous sessions due to its simplicity and ability to add pre- or post-study questions.

UXArmy provides a variety of user testing solutions to help you run information architecture testing via tree tests and card sorting. You can create tests on the platform or import existing ones.

UXArmy makes evaluating your layout easy, and in-depth analytics help you uncover insights from tests—including participant analysis, path analysis, and destination matrices. It’s quick and easy to get started, and provides an intuitive process for your participants.

Hotjar is a behavior analytics and on-site feedback tool for websites and web apps. It helps teams see what users do (heatmaps, session recordings, funnels) and hear why they do it (surveys, feedback widgets, interviews). It’s commonly used alongside traditional analytics, like Google Analytics, and comprehensive research platforms, like Maze, to explain why people drop off, hesitate, or rage-click.

Kissmetrics is an event analytics platform that helps you track user behavior across your site. By giving you information about how customers interact with your product, Kissmetrics helps you acquire qualified prospects, convert trials to customers, and reduce churn. It gives you tools to gain insights into how users interact with your product—especially if your primary focus is revenue.

Mixpanel is an events analytics tool that lets you see every moment of the customer experience. It lets you splice and dice data to uncover trends and find the root of the problem.

It’s a great tool for getting insights the whole team can understand and use, with collaborative notes, goals, and boards. With an easy learning curve, it’s a fast tool to pick up and get started with.

SurveyMonkey is a popular survey tool that helps you collect customer feedback via online questionnaires. It’s easy to use and easily customizable—from the in-survey branding and background to the font and URL.

SurveyMonkey’s AI feature—SurveyMonkey Genius—provides guidance and support to help you create optimized surveys. It’s a quick and easy tool for making surveys that get the insights you need.

Typerform is another online survey builder that helps you build forms that stand out and collect the information you need. Typeform integrates with your existing workflow to help streamline the customer feedback collection process, and provides a smooth, effortless experience for the users you’re surveying—ideal when UX is crucial, and you don’t want a clunky experience to get in the way of authentic insights.

Jotform is an online form builder that provides templates for you to use in your customer feedback process. It shares many key features with the other survey tools on our list, but also offers a number of other solutions—like a no-code app builder and online storefront builder. It’s an intuitive platform that helps you create branded surveys in minutes, making it a great all-in-one platform if you’re limited on budget.

The research platform you choose depends on what kind of research you do, who’s involved, and how the results will be used.

Keep these considerations in mind to pressure-test any platform against your needs.

Whatever your needs, there’s a UX research tool out there for you. For example, if you’re focused purely on information architecture, tools like Kardsort or Optimal are purpose-built for card sorting, tree testing, and refining navigation.

For user interviews and capturing rich qualitative data, platforms like Dscout and Lookback help you gather insights directly from your target audience via video recordings and live sessions.

But if you want to streamline your entire UX research process from brainstorming and wireframes to A/B testing, usability tests, surveys, interviews, and more, Maze offers a high-quality, AI-enabled experience.

Maze helps product managers, designers, and researchers conduct research to make better design decisions, fast. Whether you're testing mockups, wireframes, or live prototypes, Maze makes it easy to gather insights, analyze research data, and share insights with stakeholders—all in one place.