Short answer: on platforms that publish a price, one unmoderated test session with a recruited participant costs somewhere between about $3 and $65 in 2026. Moderated interviews start around $115. UserTesting, Testlio and Applause do not publish prices at all and sell by quote.
We sell one of the products on this list, so read it with that in mind. Every competitor price here was taken from that company's own pricing page on 15 September 2026. Where a company does not publish a number, we say so instead of guessing one. Prices change, so check the page before you buy.
Price per participant, side by side
The fairest way to compare is the cost of one person testing your product once, with the platform finding that person for you. These models are not identical (some include the participant's pay, some add it on top), so the notes matter as much as the numbers.
- Prolific: no fixed price. You pay participants at least $8 an hour (recommended $12) plus a platform fee that is usually 42.8% for companies. A 15-minute study at the recommended rate works out to about $4.28 a person. It is a research panel, so you design and host the test yourself.
- TestFi: $3.99 per tester for written feedback, $5.99 for a screen recording with narration. Both include an AI-scored report. Longer or more detailed sessions cost more, up to about $11.68 for a 20-minute detailed recording.
- Maze: its help center prices panel participants in credits at $5 each, including the participant's incentive. An unmoderated consumer test is 3 credits ($15), a moderated consumer session 25 ($125), a moderated B2B session 45 ($225). That sits on top of a plan, and the plan page would not load for us.
- Userlytics: "as low as $30 per session" on an annual Enterprise plan. Project-based work is quoted, with a 5-session minimum.
- Respondent: $40 per session for consumers, $80 for B2B, and that is the recruiting fee only. You pay the participant's incentive on top.
- Userbrain: $45 per tester per session from its panel. Bringing your own testers costs nothing extra on a paid plan.
- PlaybookUX: $65 per participant for a 10 to 15 minute unmoderated test, $115 for a moderated one, on top of an annual plan.
- BetaTesting: project credits cost $23 to $39 each depending on volume, and testers get a minimum $5 incentive for up to 15 minutes. How many credits a test uses depends on the test.
A price per participant tells you nothing about what comes back. We run the sessions, so that part we can measure:
Issues are the entries our AI report extracts from each session, not bugs a developer confirmed, so treat them as leads to check. Averaged over 622 video and 613 written sessions on TestFi. Google Play closed-test campaigns are excluded. Prices are the current base rates for a 10-minute session. Recomputed from the production database daily.
Written sessions turn up about as many issues as recordings, just fewer severe ones. And campaigns are smaller than people expect: the median one costs less than a single moderated session on Maze or PlaybookUX.
Subscriptions: when the monthly fee is the real price
Research tools usually charge a platform fee first and participants second. That makes sense if you test every week and gets expensive fast if you test twice a year.
- Userbrain: free plan with 5 of your own testers a month. Pro is $49 a month billed yearly ($588), with 100 testers a month.
- BetaFamily: free Starter plan with unrated testers. Growing is $49 a month for 3 apps and top-rated testers.
- Useberry: free for 10 responses a month. Growth is €83 a month billed yearly, with 300 responses.
- Lyssna: free for 15 self-recruited responses. Growth is $166 a month on annual billing, and panel participants are priced separately through a calculator.
- BetaTesting Teams: $3,588 a year with 225 credits.
- PlaybookUX Scale: $5,400 a year, before participant costs.
Several of those are a yearly bill divided by twelve. If you need one round before a launch, take the yearly price and divide it by the tests you'll actually run. That's your real cost per test.
The platforms that only sell by quote
UserTesting lists its plans (Advanced, Ultimate, Ultimate+) without a price. Testlio charges a platform fee plus an annual consumption fund, with no figures published. Applause prices per project on annual or multi-year terms. test IO's pricing page lists packages without amounts. uTest is Applause's tester community and does not sell to customers directly.
You'll find annual figures for these companies quoted all over the web. We couldn't confirm a single one on the vendors' own sites, so they aren't here. Ask sales for a written quote.
Google Play closed testing is priced differently
If what you need is the 12 testers for 14 days Google requires before a new personal developer account can publish, you're buying compliance rather than research, and you pay once per app.
- Testers Community: $15 for 15 testers over 16 days, $25 for 25. There is also a free route where you earn credits by testing other people's apps.
- PrimeTestLab: $19.99 plus a 5% service fee for 12 testers over 14 days, shown as a discount from $25.
- TestFi: $39.99 for 16 testers over 14 days, including written feedback, with a free re-run if fewer than 12 are still in on day 14.
We are the most expensive of the three. The difference is the extra seats against drop-outs and the feedback. If you only need the requirement met, the cheaper options exist for a reason. Our closed testing guide covers all the routes, free ones included.
Costs that do not show up in the headline
- Annual billing shown as a monthly price. Userbrain, Lyssna and Useberry all do this.
- Participants priced separately from the plan. Lyssna and UXtweak charge for panel recruits on top of the subscription.
- Incentives excluded. Respondent's $40 is the recruiting fee only.
- Fees added at checkout. Prolific adds its platform fee to participant pay, PrimeTestLab adds 5%.
- Prices that vary by visitor. Maze says it runs pricing experiments on new sign-ups, and Testers Community shows local currency based on where you are.
- Your own time. A free plan with self-recruited testers costs nothing on the invoice and several hours of chasing people.
Where TestFi is the wrong choice
- You need moderated interviews. We do not run them. Maze, PlaybookUX and Respondent do.
- You are testing a Figma prototype rather than a working app or site. Maze, Lyssna, Useberry and UXtweak are built for that.
- You need participants filtered by job title or industry. Respondent and Userlytics recruit B2B profiles. We do not.
- You need a large US-only sample fast. Our US tester pool is small, and a US-only campaign fills slowly.
How to choose
Testing a working app a few times a year? Pay per participant. Userbrain, Maze credits, Prolific and TestFi all let you skip a subscription you won't use.
Running studies every week with a research team? Then a subscription starts to pay for itself. Compare yearly totals.
Managed QA across hundreds of devices is the quote-only tier, and there a quote is the only honest price you'll get.
Undecided? Start small. The median campaign on TestFi uses five testers, and five people using your product is usually enough to show what to fix first. There is a longer look at the alternatives to uTest and UserTesting if you want the platforms compared on more than price.