Optimal Workshop vs Maze

From $199 per month (billed annually, includes 5 launched studies)

Free tier available

Annual plans reduce the effective monthly rate substantially; recruitment is separate.

Maze has withdrawn public pricing — its pricing page is now a feature-comparison table where every paid tier resolves to a form, so the Starter figures quoted by third-party sites are not verifiable. Panel recruitment is billed separately from the platform subscription.

Free plan with limited participants per study.

Free plan with a limited number of studies and responses per month.

Established

Optimal Workshop · since 2008

Widely used

Maze · since 2018

• The reference tool for card sorting and tree testing; the analysis visualisations are excellent.
• Tree testing validates navigation before any build effort is spent.
• Well-established methodology support and training material.

• Test a Figma prototype with real users before building anything.
• Quantitative metrics make results defensible in a product review.
• Usable free tier for evaluation and small studies.

• Narrow scope — it does not do usability testing of interfaces.
• Expensive per seat for occasional use.
• Interface is dated in places.

• Unmoderated only — you cannot ask a follow-up question.
• Prototype testing measures a happy path, not the messy reality of a live product.
• Bring-your-own-participants works well; the built-in panel is smaller than UserTesting's.

Teams restructuring navigation, taxonomy or content on a large site.

Product and design teams validating flows early and often.